The International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision is an important development that contributes to isolating Israel and exposing its crimes in Gaza, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters on Friday.
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“We call for forcing the occupation to implement the court’s decisions,” he added.
The ICJ, also known as the World Court, ordered Israel on Friday to prevent acts of genocide against the Palestinians and do more to help civilians, although it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire 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.
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The court found that Palestinians were protected under the convention, and that there was a case to be heard about whether their rights were being denied in a war that the court said was causing grievous humanitarian harm.
It also called for Palestinian armed groups to release hostages captured in the October 7 attacks that precipitated the conflict.
Israel unleashed its latest war in Gaza after Hamas attacks inside Israel on October 7.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, thousands of Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, have been killed in the conflict. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are displaced, causing a humanitarian disaster.
The death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.
