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    Facing Global Outrage, Netanyahu Calls Civilian Deaths in Rafah Strike ‘Tragic Accident’

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    The strike on Sunday, which Israeli officials said targeted two Hamas leaders taking cover near a civilian encampment, ignited a fire that killed 45 people, according to the Gazan authorities.With international condemnation mounting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said on Monday that the killing of dozens of people a day earlier at a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah was “a tragic accident,” but gave no sign of curbing the Israeli offensive in the southern Gaza city.The deadly fire that tore through the encampment on Sunday after an airstrike came at a particularly delicate time for Israel, just days after the International Court of Justice appeared to order the country’s military to halt its offensive in Rafah and as diplomats were aiming to restart negotiations for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas.The Israel military said that the target of the strike in Rafah on Sunday was a Hamas compound, and that “precise munitions” had been used to target a commander and another senior militant official there.But at least 45 people, including children, were killed by the blast and by the fires it set off, according to the Gaza health ministry. The ministry said that 249 people were wounded.In a speech to the Israeli Parliament on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu said the military had sought to protect noncombatants, by issuing evacuation orders, adding that about a million civilians had left Rafah ahead of, or during, the offensive. “Despite our supreme effort not to harm uninvolved civilians,” he said, “a tragic accident occurred to our regret last night.”Palestinians mourning relatives killed on Monday in Rafah.Haitham Imad/EPA, via ShutterstockWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ICJ Orders Israel to Halt Its Military Incursion Into Rafah

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      The International Court of Justice has no means to enforce its order in the Gazan city, but the ruling added pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.The International Court of Justice on Friday ordered Israel to “immediately” halt its military offensive in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, dealing another blow to the country as it faces increasing international isolation and a drumbeat of criticism over its conduct in the war.The court has few effective means of enforcing its order, and it stopped short of ordering a cease-fire in Gaza, with some of the court’s judges arguing that Israel could still conduct some military operations in Rafah under the terms of their decision.But the order added more pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has faced domestic and external calls to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas that would lead to the release of hostages held in Gaza.“The court considers that, in conformity with obligations under the Genocide Convention, Israel must immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” the court’s president, Nawaf Salam, said in reading the 13-2 ruling.The court, based at The Hague, also specified the need for open land crossings, in particular the Rafah crossing, as part of its request for “the unhindered provision” of humanitarian assistance and services. Israel has controlled the Rafah crossing for more than two weeks, and very few aid trucks have entered the enclave since, according to United Nations data.The Israeli government said in a statement that its military “has not and will not” take actions that would lead to the partial or complete destruction of the Palestinian population of Rafah. In effect, it said that the court’s decision has no bearing on Israel’s offensive because the prohibited acts are not occurring. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      South Africa Again Asks the ICJ to Order Israel to Withdraw From Rafah

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      Days after an Israeli military incursion into Rafah, in southern Gaza, South Africa once again asked the United Nations’ top court to issue constraints on Israel, saying “the very survival” of Palestinians in Gaza was under threat.In filings disclosed by the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Friday, South Africa asked the court to order Israel to immediately withdraw from Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city where more than a million Palestinians displaced by the war have sought shelter, and to “cease its military offensive” and allow “unimpeded access” to international officials, investigators and journalists.South Africa’s latest move is part of a case the country filed in December in which it accused Israel of genocide. Since then, the court has ordered Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza and ordered the delivery of more humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the face of growing starvation in areas. But the court has not ordered Israel to stop its military campaign against Hamas.Israel has strongly denied South Africa’s accusations and said that it had gone to great lengths to admit deliveries of food and fuel into Gaza and to lessen harm to civilians. It has also said that its war in Gaza was necessary to defend itself against the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas and other armed groups that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to the capture of about 250 others.Friday’s request is the fourth time that South Africa has asked the U.N. court for temporary injunctions. The filings noted that conditions had deteriorated significantly for civilians sheltering in Gaza.“Rafah is the last population center in Gaza that has not been substantially destroyed by Israel and as such the last refuge for Palestinians in Gaza,” South Africa stated.The court has not indicated when it will respond to the South African request, but its rules require that it must give priority to petitions for emergency orders. The 15-judge court has no means of enforcing its orders.The main case, dealing with the question of genocide, is not expected to start until next year. More

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      Germany Rebuffs Claim Its Arms Sales to Israel Abet Genocide in Gaza

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      Germany argued against the accusation brought by Nicaragua at the International Court of Justice, but Germans are questioning their country’s unwavering support for Israel.Germany on Tuesday defended itself against accusations that its arms sales to Israel were abetting genocide in Gaza, arguing at the International Court of Justice that most of the equipment it has supplied since Oct. 7 was nonlethal and that it has also been one of the largest donors of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians.The case at the U.N. court in The Hague pits Germany, whose support for Israel is considered an inviolable part of the country’s atonement for the Holocaust, against Nicaragua, which brought the allegations to the court and is a longstanding supporter of the Palestinian cause.Debate over Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip has been muted in Germany, whose leadership calls support for Israel a “Staatsräson,” a national reason for existence, and where people have historically been reluctant to question that support publicly. But the mounting death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza have led some German officials to ask whether that unwavering backing has gone too far.Lawyers for Germany said Tuesday that the allegations brought by Nicaragua had “no basis in fact or law” and rested on an assessment of military conduct by Israel, which is not a party to the case. Tania von Uslar-Gleichen, an official at Germany’s Foreign Ministry and lead counsel in the case, told the 15-judge bench that Nicaragua had “rushed this case to court on the basis of the flimsiest evidence.”On Monday, Nicaragua argued that Germany was facilitating the commission of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by providing Israel with military and financial aid, and it asked for emergency measures ordering the German government to halt its support. The court is expected to decide within weeks whether to order emergency measures.Some German news media said it was absurd that Germany should have to answer to accusations from Nicaragua, whose authoritarian president, Daniel Ortega, has jailed critics or forced them into exile, and has been accused in a United Nations report of crimes against humanity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ocasio-Cortez, in House Speech, Accuses Israel of ‘Genocide’

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      Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had called for a permanent cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, but had resisted labeling the conflict a genocide.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned on Friday that Israel’s blockade of Gaza had put the territory on the brink of severe famine, saying publicly for the first time that the nation’s wartime actions amounted to an “unfolding genocide.”In a speech on the House floor, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, forcefully called on President Biden to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel unless and until it begins to allow the free flow of humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip.“If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes,” she said. “It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves, while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away.”The comments were a sharp rhetorical escalation by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, the de facto leader of the Democratic Party’s left wing, and they illustrated the intense pressure buffeting party officials as they grapple with how to respond to Israel’s war tactics and the deepening humanitarian crisis.Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, defying party leaders, has been a proponent of a permanent cease-fire since Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7, and has called for putting conditions on American military aid to Israel. But she had resisted describing the ensuing war, which has killed 30,000 Gazans and left the territory in ruins, as a genocide.Israel has firmly denied that the term applies, and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez indicated in January that she was waiting for the International Court of Justice to render an opinion on a legal designation. Privately, she has expressed concerns to some allies that the highly contentious term would alienate potential supporters of a cease-fire.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Defends Israel’s Occupation of the West Bank at Top U.N. Court

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      A U.S. official urged judges not to call for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territory, arguing that Israel faced “very real security needs” and that a Palestinian state must be established for a lasting peace.The United States on Wednesday defended Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, arguing at the U.N.’s highest court that Israel faced “very real security needs.”The defense came a day after the United States issued its third veto against a call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza at the United Nations Security Council, a vote that drew an angry response from nations and aid groups that have urged a stop to the fighting to help Gaza’s civilians.The latest show of American support for Israel was at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Richard C. Visek, the acting legal adviser at the U.S. State Department, urged a 15-judge panel not to call for Israel’s immediate withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territory.The United States urged the International Court of Justice not to call for immediate withdrawal of Israel from Palestinian territories, and to consider the country’s security needs.Piroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersHe said that only the establishment of an independent Palestinian state “living safely and securely alongside” Israel could bring about lasting peace, repeating a longstanding U.S. position, but the prospect of which appears even more elusive amid the war in Gaza.“This conflict cannot be resolved through violence or unilateral actions,” Mr. Visek said. “Negotiations are the path to a lasting peace.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      At UN Court Hearing, South Africa Says Palestinians Endure ‘More Extreme Form of Apartheid’

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      South Africa said Tuesday that Israel’s policies toward Palestinians were “a more extreme form of apartheid,” invoking its charged history of racial discrimination to add to global pressure on Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.The court, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, is hearing six days of arguments over Israel’s “occupation, settlement and annexation” of Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The U.N. General Assembly asked the court to review the legality of Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories more than a year ago, before Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.In the proceedings, which began Monday, more than 50 countries were scheduled to argue before the 15-judge bench over the next week, a level of participation never before seen at the court. The court is expected to issue an advisory opinion that would be nonbinding. Israel has said it will not participate in the oral arguments, saying it does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction in the matter.South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusi Madonsela, addressed the judges on Tuesday morning, weeks after his country argued at the court that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. In that case, the court ordered Israel, which has denied the charges, to take action to prevent genocide in Gaza, but has not yet ruled on whether one is occurring.Mr. Madonsela, recalling South Africa’s “painful experience” of decades of apartheid and discrimination, drew parallels with what he called Israel’s colonization of Palestinian territories it seized in 1967. Citing the separate court systems, land zoning rules, roads and housing rights for Palestinians, he said Israel had put in place a “two-tier system of laws, rules and services” that benefit Jewish settlers while “denying Palestinians rights.”South Africans see “an even more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalized against Black people in my country,” Mr. Madonsela said. He said that South Africa had a special obligation to call out apartheid practices wherever they occur. He also called on Israel to dismantle the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank, which the court had ordered be removed in 2004 and still stands.The United States is scheduled to make arguments on Wednesday. More

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      Netanyahu Says He Won’t Bow to Pressure to Call Off Rafah Invasion

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      The Israeli leader has come under international pressure to drop a threatened incursion into the city where more than a million Palestinians are gathered, seeking refuge from the war.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel insisted on Saturday that Israel would not bow to international pressure to call off its plan for a ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza that is now packed with more than a million Palestinians.Many of the people now in Rafah are displaced and living in schools, tents or the homes of friends and relatives, part of a desperate search for any safe refuge from Israel’s military campaign, which has dragged on for more than four months. Their lives are a daily struggle to find enough food and water to survive.“Those who want to prevent us from operating in Rafah are basically telling us: Lose the war,” Mr. Netanyahu said at a news conference in Jerusalem on Saturday evening. “It’s true that there’s a lot of opposition abroad, but this is exactly the moment that we need to say that we won’t be doing a half or a third of the job.”About the same time as Mr. Netanyahu addressed the news conference, thousands of anti-government protesters filled a central thoroughfare in Tel Aviv — the largest protest against the prime minister in months. They filled the same street where mass protests against Mr. Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the country’s judiciary riled the nation before the start of the Israel-Hamas war.Calls for an immediate election rose above a din of air horns. Protesters lit a red flare in the middle of a drum circle while others wielding flags stared down half a dozen police officers on horseback.“The people need to rise up, and the government needs to go,” said one protester, Yuval Lerner, 57. Mr. Lerner said that even before the war, he lost confidence that the government has the nation’s best interest at heart, but “Oct. 7 proved it,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The 8 Days That Roiled the U.N.’s Top Agency in Gaza

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      The crisis that threatens the future of the main United Nations agency in Gaza, amid a humanitarian disaster, began at a routine meeting between diplomats in Tel Aviv.When a senior U.S. diplomat called the Israeli military last week to request further details about Israeli allegations against a United Nations agency in Gaza, military leaders were so surprised that they ordered an internal inquiry about how the information had reached the ears of foreign officials.The allegations were grave: 12 employees of the organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, were accused of joining Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel or its aftermath.The claims reinforced Israel’s decades-old narrative about UNRWA: that it is biased against Israel and influenced by Hamas and other armed groups, charges that the agency strongly rejects.But while most Israeli officials oppose UNRWA, some military leaders did not want to see it shuttered amid a humanitarian disaster in Gaza. In fact, it was not the military that disclosed the information to the United States but UNRWA itself.The sequence of events began on Jan. 18, when Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, met with a top Israeli diplomat in Tel Aviv. Mr. Lazzarini meets roughly once a month in Israel with the diplomat, Amir Weissbrod, a deputy director general at the Israeli Foreign Ministry who oversees relationships with U.N. agencies. This was meant to be a routine discussion about the delivery of food, fuel and other aid supplies to Gaza, according to a U.N. official briefed on the meeting.Instead, Mr. Weissbrod came supplied with the shocking intelligence about UNRWA, which had been given to him by officers in the military, according to four officials familiar with the situation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More