MADRID, 12 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Egyptian Government announced this Sunday that it will request its incorporation into the proceedings against Israel due to the risk of genocide in Gaza before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“Egypt announces its intention to formally intervene to support the complaint brought by South Africa against Israel before the International Court of Justice to investigate violations by Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” according to a statement from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry.
The Egyptian Government has decided to present this petition days after the new Israeli operation in the Gazan city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt, which has once again pushed the Palestinian population to “flight” and has ended up creating “uninhabitable conditions in Gaza Strip, in flagrant violation of the provisions of international law, international humanitarian law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.”
In January, the court ordered Israel to “take all possible measures” to prevent a genocide in Gaza and to “urgently” ensure that the Palestinian population received the necessary aid. Two months later, it issued new provisional measures due to the humanitarian crisis situation caused by the offensive.
This Friday, South Africa requested additional measures from the court, as well as a review of the previous ones, given the military operation on the city of Rafá after denouncing the Israeli “contempt” for those dictated in January and March, which have been “ignored” and “violated”, in favor of an “escalation of the humanitarian catastrophe” through a “total military onslaught”.
The Egyptian request, according to the Ministry, “comes in light of the worsening severity and scope of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, and the continued perpetration of systematic practices against the Palestinian people,” adds the note.
With this announcement, Egypt marks a turning point in its relations with Israel since the outbreak of the Gaza war on October 7, which reached a critical moment last week when Israel assumed control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing that separates the Palestinian enclave from Egypt.
It should be recalled that Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979 under which Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula while the two countries normalized their relations, which has been weakened by recent events.
Sources close to the situation confirmed to the ‘Wall Street Journal’ in February that Egyptian officials had warned that the peace treaty could be suspended if Israel Defense Forces troops entered Rafah, or if any of the Rafah refugees left. was forced to move south, towards the Sinai Peninsula.
In an effort to prevent a mass influx of refugees, Egypt has stationed tanks near its border with Gaza, after reinforcing the border wall since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, both structurally and with surveillance equipment.
In contrast, the Arabic spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, Ofir Gendelman, acknowledged shortly after the operation at the Rafah crossing that “Israel is very aware of the sensitivity of the operation,” but understood that “it did not violate the terms of the agreement.”
