Oct. 22 (UPI) — The International Court of Justice said Wednesday that Israel must allow humanitarian aid to Gaza by the United Nations.
The opinion by the United Nations’ highest court is non-binding but has moral and diplomatic weight.
It also said that Israel has not proven its allegations that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees had a significant number of employees that were members of Hamas. The United Nations denied those claims. There are 13,000 employees of the UNRWA in 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. “After examining the evidence, the court finds that the local population in Gaza Strip has been inadequately supplied.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that the opinion was “entirely predictable from the outset regarding UNRWA.”
An U.N. truck passes the UNRWA near Bethlehem, West Bank, in January. On Wednesday, the International Court of Justice said that Israel had to allow UNRWA aid into Gaza. File Photo by Debbie Hill/ UPI
“This is yet another political attempt to impose political measures against Israel under the guise of ‘international law,'” it added. Israel said it will not cooperate with UNRWA.
Israel has alleged that UNRWA has more than 1,000 Hamas-affiliated employees and that they teach hatred of Israel in its schools.
In December, the U.N. General Assembly asked the ICJ to decide what legal obligations Israel had regarding U.N. relief agencies. This happened after Israel’s parliament passed a law banning any UNRWA activity in Israeli territory.
Sam Rose, UNRWA’s acting Gaza director, told the BBC that the opinion “underscores the obligations of Israel under international law.”
“The ruling of today says that Israel’s laws against UNRWA have gone against those obligations, as have its actions on the ground,” he said.
While the world recognized that there was famine and starvation in Gaza last summer, Israel continued to deny it, often blocking any aid to reach hungry Gazans.
“The IDF emphasizes that there is no starvation in Gaza,” an IDF post said in July. “This is a false campaign promoted by Hamas.”
