DOHA (Reuters) – Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on Friday was an important development that contributed to isolating Israel and exposing its crimes in Gaza.
“We call for compelling the occupation to implement the court’s decisions,” he added, speaking to Reuters.
The World Court ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide against the Palestinians and do more to help civilians, although it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire in the Gaza war as requested by South Africa.
While the ruling denied Palestinian hopes of a binding order to halt the war in Gaza, it also represented a legal setback for Israel, which had hoped to throw out a case brought under the genocide convention established in the ashes of the Holocaust.
Islamic Jihad, a smaller Palestinian militant group fighting alongside Hamas against Israel in Gaza, condemned what it said was ICJ reluctance to demand an immediate ceasefire.
“The Court’s hesitation to immediately call for a halt to the fighting is evidence of the control of evil global powers over the global legal systems for their interests at the expense of the oppressed,” the group said in a statement.
(Reporting by Nidal Al-Mughrabi, Writing by Clauda Tanios and Tala Ramadan, Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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