Chile joins SA against Israel at UN court

Chilean President Gabriel Boric said on Saturday his country was joining South Africa in its case at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of “genocide” in the war against Hamas.

Speaking to the National Congress, Boric decried the “catastrophic humanitarian situation” in Gaza and called for “a firm response from the international community”.

“Chile will become a party to and support the case that SA presented against Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague,” he said.

The ICJ is considering SA’s case, but in the interim has brought in “preliminary measures” ordering Israel to do everything it can to prevent acts of genocide during its campaign against Hamas.

The top UN court last month ordered Israel to halt military operations in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where displaced Palestinians are seeking safety from Israel’s military offensive.

Before that offensive began, the United Nations said up to 1.4 million people were sheltering in the city. Since then one million have fled the area, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said.

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Chile’s stance on the Gaza conflict

Chile has recognised Palestine as a state since 2011, and Boric previously said the war in Gaza has “no justification” and is “unacceptable.”

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented 7 October attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1 189 Israelis, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 36 379 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Last month the International Court of Justice also demanded the immediate release of all hostages still held by Palestinian militants, hours after the Israeli military announced it had recovered the bodies of three more of the captives from northern Gaza.

The Hague court, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms, also ordered Israel to keep open the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza closed earlier this month.

The orders come ahead of separate meetings on the Gaza conflict in Paris between the CIA chief and Israeli representatives on one side and French President Emmanuel Macron and the foreign ministers of four key Arab states on the other.

In its ruling, the ICJ said 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”.

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