Few times in its history has the International Court of Justice been this busy, if ever. For anyone ignorant of the world court’s existence till now, it has blanketed news coverage with provisional orders and advisory opinions on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Each order is accompanied by another layering of exasperation and, it must be said, hope that the situation on the ground will somehow alter. The topics have been sanguinary and cruel in their consistency: starvation, the restriction of humanitarian aid, policies of racial segregation and apartheid, population displacements masquerading as evacuation orders and the possibility (to be officially ruled upon) that Israel has committed genocide in the enclave.
The October 22 advisory opinion is the first to be handed down after the cease fire centred on the straining 20-point peace plan of President Donald Trump. The view of the Court was sought by the United Nations General Assembly in December on Israel’s obligations as both a UN member and an occupying power, towards the body’s agencies and other relevant international entities operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The request was prompted by Israel’s passage of two laws on October 28, 2024 banning any activity by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Israeli soil and areas of its control and prohibiting state agencies from having contact with UNRWA. These actions effectively excluded an aid body familiar with the vicissitudes and problems of supplying assistance to Palestinian civilians, leaving the way open for the murderous invigilating model of distribution run by the US-Israeli backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. (The Israeli submission thought that arrangement perfectly suitable, despite the mass killings of aid recipients by the IDF and woefully inadequate distribution channels.)
The hoary contention by Israeli authorities is that the aid organisation has been an active nest of Hamas militants, some of whom participated in the October 7, 2023 attacks. Despite the findings of the Office of International Oversight Services (OIOS) that such infiltration had not taken place to any appreciable degree, or the more thorough review on the neutrality of the organisation undertaken in the Colonna Report, obstinacy remains. (The Colonna Report, while noting breaches of neutrality in UNRWA in the expression of political opinions by staff and the use of certain textbooks, identified “a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with humanitarian principles, with the emphasis on the principle of neutrality, and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar UN and NGO entities”.)
Of enormous irritation to the Israeli authorities is the continued insistence on cooperation with UNRWA. Israel’s obligations, along with other Member States, to cooperate with the UN “with respect to the question of Palestine is of paramount importance in addressing the critical situation on the ground since October 2023, in which the United Nations, together with other actors, plays a crucial role in delivering and co-ordinating humanitarian aid and development assistance to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular through UNRWA in the Gaza Strip”.
While Israel was, as an occupying power, free to pick the humanitarian organisations of its own choosing, Article 59 of the Fourth Geneva Convention limited “an occupying Power’s discretion in so far as it requires that Power to allow and facilitate sufficient relief to ensure that the population is adequately supplied.” UNRWA, in that regard, has shown itself to be “an indispensable provider of humanitarian relief in the Gaza Strip” thereby obligating Israel to deal with it.
In brutal contrast, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, along with the private security firm Safe Reach Solutions, had overseen a constricted aid system characterised by “chaotic and militarized distribution centres unable to deliver aid at the scope and scale needed.” As of September 2025, over 2,100 Palestinians had been killed seeking humanitarian assistance at or in proximity to the distribution sites. Israel, furthermore, was prohibited from restricting and limiting the presence and activities of the UN, other international organisations and third States “in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory to a degree that creates, or contributes to, conditions of life that would force the population to leave.” But leave, they have, by the hundreds of thousands, displaced, dislocated and relocated.
On a logistical level, the Court noted that Israel, as an occupying power, was unconditionally obligated by Article 59 “to agree to and facilitate relief schemes if the local population is inadequately supplied”. While States were within their rights to inspect consignments of aid, this did not extend to impeding “the delivery of relief consignments in a manner that undermines the performance of [their] obligations as set out in Article 59.”
Israel could count on the dissenting view of one judge – that of Julia Sebutinde. The familiar talking notes were issued: her fellow justices had given inadequate consideration to the infiltration of UNRWA by Hamas. Israel retained discretion to determine how humanitarian aid would be distributed and was hardly obligated to do so through UN aid channels, especially those “acting contrary to the Charter’s principles”.
In its savage response, the Israeli Foreign Ministry continued to rage about 1,400 Hamas operatives in UNRWA whose existence it has never confirmed, dismissing the legal outcome as “yet another political attempt to impose political measures against Israel under the guise of ‘International Law.’” With unequivocal solidarity, the US Department of State showed contempt verging on the puerile, complaining that the judges issued an opinion that “unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism.”
When a UN member state takes issue with any injunction of international law, the affirmed tendency, especially for the powerful, is to dismiss such strictures as all sham and naked politics. Despite this, the body of jurisprudence directing states to protect civilian populations and avoid murdering and starving them, continues to swell.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
