ICJ to hold hearings on Israel’s UNRWA ban, restrictions on Gaza aid (2025)

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has published an itinerary for public hearings it will hold in The Hague next week to discuss Israel’s legal obligations around allowing United Nations, NGO and neutral state activity in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.

The UN has asked the ICJ to provide a legal opinion on Israel’s right to limit or bar UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) operations, as well as Israel’s weeks-long ban on humanitarian aid entering Gaza.

Some 45 countries and international organisations have submitted written statements before the hearings, which will start on April 28.

Israeli representatives are not expected to attend, but Israel’s Foreign Ministry has said it will submit a written statement to the court.

Dozens more Israeli settlers have once again stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, under the protection of Israeli police, Al Jazeera reports.

The settlers carried out provocative tours in the courtyards and performed Talmudic rituals, according to Palestinian sources in the occupied territory.

Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and the Palestinian rights group Al Mezan said they have rejected the Israeli military’s investigation into the killing of 15 Palestinian rescue workers in Gaza in March, Al Jazeera reports.

“The Israeli military’s self-exonerating report appears designed to whitewash atrocities and shield perpetrators, not to deliver justice,” MAP and Al Mezan said in a joint statement.

The medical charity and rights group said the Israeli report was a “gross distortion of reality” that was designed to cover up and deflect responsibility for the slaying of the 15 emergency workers, in what has been described as a possible war crime.

Both organisations also pointed out that the only survivor of the attack — Palestine Red Crescent Society medic Assad al-Nasasrah — is still held in Israeli custody, and is one of some 300 healthcare workers abducted from Gaza by Israeli troops since October 2023.

MAP and Al Mezan said “genuine international accountability” is necessary for the killing of the 15 emergency workers.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has warned that Israel’s blocking of aid supplies reaching Gaza has deprived the territory’s population of the “necessities for human survival”, Al Jazeera reports.

In its latest situation assessment, OCHA had this stark message: “The Gaza Strip is now likely facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the 18 months since the escalation of hostilities in October 2023.”

According to OCHA, aid operations have stalled in the territory due to a combination of Israel’s expanding military operations, blockade on the entry of humanitarian aid and commercial supplies for more than 50 days, Israel’s killing of aid workers and attacks on their premises, as well as severe restrictions on movement in the enclave.

The situation was described by an OCHA official as the “deliberate dismantling of Palestinian life” in Gaza.

Yale has accused the protest group, Yalies4Palestine, of briefly setting up a campus encampment to protest against visiting Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Al Jazeera reports.

Ben-Gvir — who said this week that Republican lawmakers support bombing “food and aid depots” in Gaza — last night addressed the Shabtai Society, a Yale Jewish student group not officially affiliated with the school.

In a statement, Yale accused Yalies4Palestine of organising the encampment, which it said violated campus protest policies. Yalies4Palestine has denied being responsible.

A university statement said the protest “occurred only one day after Yalies4Palestine had met with Yale College officials to discuss recent policy violations and were warned that further violations would jeopardise the group’s privileges”.

“Because Yalies4Palestine has flagrantly violated the rules to which the Yale College Dean’s Office holds all registered student organisations, Yale College today notified Yalies4Palestine that the College is withdrawing its status as a registered student organisation,” the university was quoted as saying.

A funeral procession set off from the Jenin government hospital heading towards the occupied West Bank town of al-Yamoun, where Israeli forces shot Mahmoud Abu al-Haija, Al Jazeera cites Wafa news agency as saying.

The 12-year-old boy was standing in the street with a group of children earlier on Wednesday when Israeli forces opened fire and fatally wounded him in the thigh and abdomen, according to Wafa.

Israeli human rights group Yesh Din has shared photos and a video clip of Israeli settlers attacking and burning Palestinian homes and agricultural trees in the village of Sinjil, located in the northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reports.

Yesh Din, which works on rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, said settlers have attacked the village twice so far this week.

Israeli forces also assisted an earlier attack by firing tear gas canisters at locals trying to put out the fires started by the settlers, the rights group said, adding that one resident of the village was killed.

“The military enables this and prevents emergency services from accessing the area,” Yesh Din was quoted as saying.

It noted that the violence corresponds with the establishment of a new settler “farm outpost” near the Palestinian village.

Dr Ahmed Al Farra, director of the al-Tahrir Hospital in the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza, has said medical treatment of children in Gaza “experiencing the most severe stages of malnutrition” is hampered by a shortage of medicine and infant formula, Al Jazeera reports.

A Gaza health ministry statement on the hospital director’s warning also featured photographs of an emaciated Palestinian child, Osama Al Raqab, who the ministry said “epitomises the suffering of children in Gaza due to the lack of proper nutrition and drinking water”.

“The Gaza Strip is experiencing stage five of malnutrition, the most severe stage according to the World Health Organisation,” the ministry said.

A deadly Israeli attack on a tent shelter west of Nuseirat, in central Gaza, has killed three children, Al Jazeera reports, citing Palestinian media.

The air strike set fire to the tent shelter of the Farajallah family.

There are also reports that the children were burned to death in the blaze.

Hamas has released a video showing an Israeli hostage alive in Gaza, speaking in Hebrew and walking through a tunnel.

The nearly three-minute clip released by the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades shows the captive speaking to the camera. AFP was unable to immediately identify him or verify when the footage was recorded.

Palestinian patients in Gaza are emerging as among the hardest-hit victims of Israel’s aid blockade, with critical medicine and medical supply shortages now pushing countless lives to the brink, Anadolu reports.

The prolonged closure of crossings since March 2 has depleted hospitals of essential resources, creating life-or-death crises for those requiring treatment, from chronic illnesses to injuries.

The Health Ministry in Gaza has repeatedly warned of the increasing medicine shortage crisis in Gaza, which affects their already poor capabilities in treating people.

Read more here.

Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has claimed that US Republicans back his call for bombing food and aid stores in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.

The minister attended a dinner at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Tuesday evening, which was attended by Republicans and businessmen.

In a statement, he alleged that senior Republicans in Mar-a-Lago supported “his clear position on how to act in Gaza, and that the food and aid warehouses should be bombed”.

This is the means “to create military and political pressure (on Hamas) to bring our hostages home safely”. he claimed.

There was no immediate comment from the Republican Party on Ben-Gvir’s claim.

France has expressed its support for the Arab plan for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip, Wafa news agency reports.

This announcement came during a joint press conference held in Baghdad by French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot and his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein.

Noël Barrot said that his country supports the Arab plan to rebuild Gaza, stressing that the prospect of a two-state solution is the only way to achieve peace and security.

He further emphasised, “A political solution must be found in Gaza and humanitarian aid must be allowed in.”

At least 39 bodies and 105 wounded people arrived at Gaza Strip hospitals over the past 24 hours, Gaza’s health ministry said in its daily bulletin, Al Jazeera reports.

A number of victims remain under the rubble and on roads, unable to be reached by ambulances and civil defence crews.

Since October 7, 2023, Israeli forces have killed at least 51,305 people and wounded 117,096.

Since March 18, when Israel resumed its bombing of the enclave, breaching a ceasefire, at least 1,928 have been killed.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas has urged Hamas to release hostages still held in Gaza, calling it the main factor fuelling Israeli attacks on the territory, AFP reports.

“Hamas has given the criminal occupation excuses to commit its crimes in the Gaza Strip, the most prominent being the holding of hostages,” Abbas said at a meeting in Ramallah.

“I’m the one paying the price, our people are paying the price, not Israel. My brother, just hand them over. “

Several bodies, wrapped in white shrouds, were laid at the morgue of Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital, an AFP journalist reports, after an Israeli attack on a school-turned-shelter killed 17 people.

The wounded were also being treated at the facility.

At the hospital, women were seen weeping over the body of a child wrapped in a white shroud. Grieving relatives carried the bodies of their loved ones for burial, including those of children, while women wept nearby.

“We want nothing more than for the war to end, so we can live like people in the rest of the world,” said Walid al-Najjar, a resident of Khan Younis after a strike in the area.

“We are a people who are poor, devastated — our lives are lost.”

Gaza’s civil defence agency has said its crew recovered charred bodies from a school-turned-shelter for displaced people, as Israeli strikes killed 17 people since dawn, AFP reports.

“Seventeen people have been killed since dawn,” civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP, as Israel pounded the territory.

He said 11 of the victims, who included women and children, died in an air strike targeting the Yafa school building in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighbourhood.

“The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered,” he said.

Al Jazeera reports on the Israeli attack on the Moh El Dorra Pediatric Hospital in Gaza City overnight.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza says the bombing caused “significant damage” to the hospital’s intensive care unit as well as its solar panel system.

The ministry condemned the attack, called for global action and said, “The occupation does not stop at preventing medicine and food from reaching the children of Gaza, and is also depriving them of life.”

Tens of thousands of children are now showing symptoms of malnutrition as Israel has been blocking food and medical supplies from entering the enclave for nearly two months, Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Khalil Deqran has said, Al Jazeera reports.

Since March 2, the Israeli military has imposed the blockade on the Strip, insisting it is a tool to pressure Hamas into releasing all the remaining captives. It also resumed its offensive on Gaza on March 18.

Since the blockade began, all 25 UN-supplied bakeries making bread have been shut, with aid agencies warning that the population is on the precipice of starvation and mass disease.

Reuters and AFP have reported that a Hamas delegation is heading to Cairo for a new round of discussions aimed at securing the release of captives and ending Israel’s war on Gaza.

According to Reuters, two sources familiar with the mediation effort said the delegation would discuss a new offer which would include a truce for five to seven years following the release of all captives and an end to fighting.

The sources told the agency that Israel had yet to respond to a revamped long-term truce proposal.

Meanwhile, AFP quoted a Hamas official as saying that the delegation, led by the chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, “will meet with Egyptian officials to discuss new ideas aimed at reaching a ceasefire”.

The group is yet to comment publicly on the reports.

Germany, France and Britain have called on Israel to stop blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death”, AFP reports.

“This must end”, their foreign ministers said in a joint statement. “We urge Israel to immediately restart a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians.”

“The Israeli decision to block aid from entering Gaza is intolerable,” the three ministers said.

They also criticised Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz for “recent comments politicising humanitarian aid” and described Israeli plans to remain in Gaza after the conflict as “unacceptable”.

“Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change,” they said.

The foreign ministers also expressed “outrage at recent strikes by Israeli forces on humanitarian personnel, infrastructure, premises and healthcare facilities” in Gaza, adding, “Israel must do much more to protect the civilian population, infrastructure and humanitarian workers.”

The deadly Israeli strike that killed four Palestinians hit residential buildings along al-Nakheel Street in the Tuffah neighbourhood east of Gaza City, Al Jazeera Arabic reports, quoting Gaza’s civil defence.

Several people also remain missing following the strike.