Israel will continue its war against Hamas until victory and will not be stopped by anyone, including the world court, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a defiant speech on Saturday, as fighting in Gaza approached the 100-day mark.
Netanyahu spoke after the International Court of Justice in The Hague held two days of hearings into South Africa’s claims that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, a charge Israel has dismissed as slanderous and hypocritical. South Africa asked the court to order Israel to stop its air and ground attack in an interim step.
“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and no one else,” Netanyahu said in televised remarks on Saturday night, referring to Iran and its allied militias.
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The case before the world court is expected to drag on for years, but a decision on the interim measures could be issued within weeks. Court decisions are binding but difficult to enforce. Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel will ignore orders to stop fighting, potentially deepening its isolation.
Israel is under increasing international pressure to end the war, which has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza and led to widespread suffering in the besieged enclave, but has so far been shielded by US diplomatic and military support.
Thousands of people took to the streets of Washington, London, Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin on Saturday to demand an end to the war. Protesters converging on the White House held up signs questioning President Joe Biden’s viability as a presidential candidate because of his staunch support for Israel during the war.
Israel argues that ending the war means victory for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 and is determined to destroy Israel.
The war was sparked by a deadly October 7 attack in which Hamas and other militants killed an estimated 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians. About 250 more were taken hostage, and while some have been freed or confirmed dead, more than half are believed to still be in captivity. Sunday marks 100 days of fighting.
Fears of a wider conflagration were evident from the start of the war. New fronts quickly opened, with Iran-backed groups – Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria – carrying out a series of attacks. From the beginning, the US increased its military presence in the region to prevent an escalation.
Following a Houthi campaign of drone and missile attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea, the US and Britain launched multiple airstrikes against the rebels on Friday and the US struck another site on Saturday.
In more fallout from the war, the world court this week heard arguments on South Africa’s complaint against Israel. South Africa cited the mounting death toll and suffering among Gazan civilians, along with inflammatory comments from Israeli leaders on display, as evidence of what it called genocidal intent.
In counterarguments on Friday, Israel asked that the case be dismissed as moot. Israel’s defense argued that the country has the right to strike back against a rogue enemy, that South Africa had barely mentioned Hamas and that it ignored what Israel sees as attempts to mitigate civilian harm.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu and his army chief, Herzl Halevi, have said they have no immediate plans to allow the return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza, the initial focus of Israel’s offensive. Fighting in the northern half has been contained, with forces now concentrated in the southern city of Khan Younis, although fighting continues in parts of the north.
Netanyahu said the issue had been raised by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken during his visit earlier this week. The Israeli leader said he told Blinken that “we will not return residents (to their homes) when there is fighting.”
At the same time, Netanyahu said Israel would eventually need to close what he said were violations along Gaza’s border with Egypt. During the years of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, the smuggling tunnels under the Egyptian-Gaza border had been an important supply line for Gaza.
However, the border area, particularly the town of Rafah in southern Gaza, is teeming with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled northern Gaza, and their presence would complicate plans to expand Israel’s ground offensive.
“We will not end the war until we close this breach,” Netanyahu said Saturday, adding that the government has not yet decided how to do that.
In Gaza, where Hamas has put up strong resistance to Israel’s terrifying air and ground campaign, the war has continued unabated.
Gaza’s health ministry announced Saturday that 135 Palestinians had been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the war’s total toll to 23,843. The count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but the ministry said about two-thirds of the dead were women and children. The ministry said the total number of war wounded exceeded 60,000.
Following an Israeli airstrike before dawn on Saturday, video provided by Gaza’s Civil Defense department shows rescuers searching through the twisted rubble of a building in Gaza City with a flashlight.
Footage showed them carrying a young girl wrapped in blankets with facial injuries and at least two other children who appeared to be dead. A boy, covered in dust, crumpled as he was loaded into an ambulance.
The attack on the house in the Daraj district killed at least 20 people, according to Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.
Another attack late Friday near the southern Egyptian border town of Rafah killed at least 13 people, including two children. The bodies of the dead, mostly from a family displaced from central Gaza, were taken to the city’s Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital where they were seen by an Associated Press reporter.
Palestinian telecommunications company Jawwal said two of its employees were killed on Saturday while trying to repair the network in Khan Younis. The company said the two were hit by shelling. Jawwal said it has lost 13 employees since the war began.
Israel has held Hamas responsible for the high civilian casualties, saying its fighters use civilian buildings and launch attacks from densely populated urban areas.
The Israeli military released a video on Saturday that it said showed the destruction of two ready-to-use rocket launchers in Al-Muharraqa in central Gaza. A large grove of palm trees and some houses can be seen in the frame. In the video, a rocket is launched into the air by the explosion. The military said there were dozens of launchers ready to be used.
Since the start of Israel’s ground operation in late October, 187 Israeli soldiers have been killed and another 1,099 wounded in Gaza, according to the military.
More than 85% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have been displaced as a result of Israel’s air and ground offensive, and vast tracts of land have been leveled.
Fewer than half of the territory’s 36 hospitals are still partially operational, according to OCHA, the United Nations humanitarian agency.
Amid already severe shortages of food, clean water and fuel in Gaza, OCHA said in its daily report that Israel’s severe restrictions on humanitarian missions and flat denials have increased since the beginning of the year.
The agency reported that only 21 percent of scheduled deliveries of food, medicine, water and other supplies have successfully reached northern Gaza.
US and other international efforts to push Israel to do more to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians have had little success.