UN’s top court rebukes Israel over Gaza aid restrictions during war

By Lauren Kent, CNN

(CNN) — The United Nations’ top court issued a legal opinion Wednesday stating that Israel, as an occupying power, is obligated to work with UN agencies to facilitate humanitarian aid in Gaza, a rebuke of the blockade it imposed on the Palestinian enclave earlier this year.

The International Court of Justice also said in its advisory opinion that the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the main UN body serving Palestinian refugees, has not violated impartiality rules and that Israel must support the agency’s relief work.

The opinion was requested by the UN General Assembly in December after Israel passed laws banning UNRWA, from operating in the country, significantly curtailing its ability to deliver aid to Gaza.

“The occupying power may never invoke reasons of security to justify the general suspension of all humanitarian activities in occupied territory,” Judge Iwasawa Yuji said while delivering the opinion, which also said Israel is obliged to ensure the basic needs of civilians in Gaza are met. “After examining the evidence, the court finds that the local population in Gaza Strip has been inadequately supplied.”

The advisory opinion – aimed at addressing Israel’s obligations to the UN, aid organizations and third-party states in the occupied West Bank and Gaza – is non-binding, but it does carry political weight and is expected to increase pressure on Israel to cooperate with the UN and other aid agencies.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN criticized the court’s opinion as “shameful.”

The US State Department called the opinion “corrupt” and claimed that it “unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism.”

Israel has accused UNRWA of having more than a thousand employees affiliated with Hamas, and of teaching hate against Israel in its schools. UNRWA has repeatedly denied the accusations, saying there are no grounds for “a blanket description” of the whole institution as being infiltrated by Hamas. A UN investigation found that nine employees from UNWRA’s 13,000 staff in Gaza “may have” been involved in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks.

But the court said Wednesday that Israel has not substantiated allegations “that a significant part of UNRWA employees are members of Hamas or other terrorist factions.”

“The court concludes that in the present circumstances, the United Nations, acting through UNRWA, has been an indispensable provider of humanitarian relief in the Gaza Strip,” the judge said, also criticizing the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which Israel has claimed was a replacement for some of UNRWA’s work.

“The court recalls Israel’s obligation not to use starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare as an occupying power,” he added.

Israeli officials have accused the UN court of being politicized and weaponized against Israel.

“They are blaming Israel for not cooperating with UN organs … They should be blaming themselves. Those organs became breeding grounds for terrorists,” Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, claimed Wednesday in response to the opinion, which he described as a “political document.”

A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been in place for more than a week, and Israel is allowing increased aid into Gaza in line with the truce agreement’s goal of 600 trucks per day, according to US and Israeli officials.

Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA Commissioner-General, welcomed the “unambiguous” legal opinion in a post on X and stated that the UN has the resources to “immediately scale up” the humanitarian response in the territory.

More international court cases pending

Wednesday’s opinion is one of several cases related to Israel that the UN court has weighed in on since the war began in 2023.

In July 2024, the ICJ said that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal, in an unprecedented move that called on Israel to end its decades-long occupation of territories that Palestinians want for a future state.

The sweeping opinion ran through a list of Israeli practices that the ICJ said violated international law, including confiscating land, building Israeli settlements in the territories, and depriving Palestinians of natural resources and the right to self-determination. In a case that predated the Israel-Hamas war, the court said Israel abused its position as an occupying power and called on it to cease new settlement activity, evacuate settlers and make reparations for the damage caused.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other politicians firmly rejected that ICJ opinion at the time.

The ICJ also issued a series of emergency measures related to Gaza in 2024, including ordering Israel to immediately halt its controversial military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, classifying the humanitarian situation there as “disastrous.”

Those measures are part of a broader case brought by South Africa against Israel, which accuses Israel of breaching its obligations under the genocide convention – a claim Israel has vehemently and repeatedly denied.

The ICJ case on genocide is ongoing and expected to last several years. It comes against a backdrop of an independent UN inquiry’s conclusion in September that found Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, which echoed the findings of other genocide experts and human rights groups, and which Israel rejected.

The Israeli government has maintained that it conducted the war in Gaza in compliance with international law. The government has also repeatedly accused the UN of anti-Israel bias.

The UN court’s proceedings are separate from the investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza being carried out by the International Criminal Court – another international legal body based in The Hague, Netherlands.

Late last year, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and a now-deceased senior Hamas official, Mohammed Deif, who Israel has said was one of the masterminds of the October 7 attacks, and others.

Israel doesn’t recognize the ICC, but it is bound by the statute of the ICJ as a UN member state.

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CNN’s Eugenia Yosef, Nadeen Ebrahim, Mitchell McCluskey, Jennifer Hansler and Billy Stockwell contributed to this report.