A defiant Netanyahu says no one can halt Israel’s war to crush Hamas, including the world court
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israel will pursue its war against Hamas militants until victory and will not be stopped by anyone, including the world court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a defiant speech Saturday, as the fighting in the Gaza Strip approached the 100-day mark.
Netanyahu spoke after the International Court of Justice at The Hague held two days of hearings on South Africa’s allegations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, a charge Israel has rejected as libelous and hypocritical. South Africa asked the court to order Israel to halt its blistering air and ground offensive in an interim step.
“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anyone else,†Netanyahu said in televised remarks Saturday evening, referring to Iran and its allied militias.
The case before the world court is expected to go on for years, but a ruling on interim steps could come within weeks. Court rulings are binding but difficult to enforce. Netanyahu made clear that Israel would ignore orders to halt the fighting, potentially deepening its isolation.
Israel has been under growing international pressure to end the war, which has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza and led to widespread suffering in the besieged enclave, but has so far been shielded by U.S. diplomatic and military support.
Israel says that ending the war would mean victory for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 and is bent on Israel’s destruction.
On Friday afternoon, Germany said it wants to intervene in the proceedings on Israel’s behalf, saying there was “no basis whatsoever†for an accusation of genocide against Israel.
“Hamas terrorists brutally attacked, tortured, killed and kidnapped innocent people in Israel,†German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in a statement. “Since then, Israel has been defending itself against the inhumane attack by Hamas.â€
Concerns of a wider conflagration have been palpable since the start of the war, triggered by the deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas and other Gaza militants in which they killed at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 240 others.
As the death toll mounts in Gaza, new fronts have emerged, with Iran-backed groups — Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria — carrying out a range of attacks. From the start, the U.S. increased its military presence in the region to deter an escalation.
Following a Houthi campaign of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, the U.S. and Britain launched multiple airstrikes against the rebels Friday, and the U.S. hit another site Saturday.
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In Gaza, where Hamas has put up stiff resistance to Israel’s blistering air and ground campaign, the war continued unabated.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said Saturday that 135 Palestinians were killed in the last 24 hours, bringing the overall toll of the war to 23,843. The count does not differentiate between combatants and civilians. The ministry has said about two-thirds of the dead are women and children. The ministry said the total number of war-wounded has surpassed 60,000.
Following an Israeli airstrike before dawn Saturday, video provided by Gaza’s Civil Defense department showed rescue workers searching through the twisted rubble of a building in Gaza City by flashlight.
Video showed them carrying a young girl wrapped in blankets with injuries to her face, and at least two other children who appeared dead. A boy, covered in dust, winced as he was loaded into an ambulance.
The attack on the home in the Daraj neighborhood killed at least 20 people, according to Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Bassal.
Another strike late Friday near the southern city of Rafah on the Egyptian border killed at least 13 people, including two children. The bodies of those killed, primarily from a displaced family from central Gaza, were taken to the city’s Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital, where they were seen by an Associated Press reporter.
Israel has argued Hamas is responsible for the high civilian casualties, saying its fighters make use of civilian buildings and launch attacks from densely populated urban areas.
The Israeli military released a video Saturday that it said showed the destruction of two ready-to-use rocket-launching compounds in Al-Muharraqa in central Gaza. A large grove of palm trees and some homes are seen in the frame. In the video, a rocket is being thrown into the air by the blast. The military said there had been dozens of launchers ready to be used.
Netanyahu and his army chief, Herzl Halevi, said they have no immediate plans to allow the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, the initial focus of Israel’s offensive. Fighting in the northern half has been scaled back, with forces now focusing on the southern city of Khan Yunis, though combat continues in parts of the north.
Netanyahu said the issue had been raised by U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken during his visit earlier this week. The Israeli leader said he told Blinken that “we will not return residents [to their homes] when there is fighting.â€
At the same time, Netanyahu said Israel would eventually need to close what he said were breaches along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Over the years of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border had constituted a major supply line for Gaza.
However, the border area, particularly the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, is packed with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled northern Gaza, and their presence would complicate any plans to widen Israel’s ground offensive.
“We will not end the war until we close this breach,†Netanyahu said Saturday, adding that the government has not yet decided how to do that.
With the war in Gaza entering its 100th day on Sunday, the World Health Organization has said only 15 of the territories’ 36 hospitals are still partially functional, according to OCHA, the United Nations’ humanitarian affairs agency.
The main hospital in central Gaza, Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir al Balah, went dark Friday morning after running out of fuel.
Staff were able to keep ventilators and incubators operating with solar-charged batteries during the day, and received a small emergency shipment of fuel from another hospital late Friday.
Fuel was expected to run out again Saturday unless the WHO is able to deliver a promised shipment, hospital officials said. Aid deliveries were being disrupted by a renewed drop in telecommunications connectivity in much of Gaza, which began late Friday.
Since the start of Israel’s ground operation in late October, 187 Israeli soldiers have been killed and 1,099 others injured in Gaza, according to the military. More than 85% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced as a result of Israel’s air and ground offensive, and vast swaths of the territory have been leveled.
Amid already severe shortages of food, clean water and fuel in Gaza, OCHA said in its daily report that Israel’s severe constraints on humanitarian missions and outright denials had increased since the start of the year.
The agency said only 21% of planned deliveries of food, medicine, water and other supplies have been successfully reaching northern Gaza.
American and other international efforts pushing Israel to do more to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians have met with little success.
At the same time, Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the territory’s main hospital that had been shut down since November, had begun partially functioning again, the WHO said Friday.
Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus said his organization has delivered 2,460 gallons of fuel to Shifa, allowing a 60-person medical team to begin treating more than 1,000 patients.
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