RAFAH: Israel bombed the Gaza Strip, including Rafah, on Saturday, a day after the top UN court ordered it to halt military operations in the southern city as efforts get underway in Paris to seek a ceasefire in the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) also demanded the immediate release of all hostages still held by Palestinian militants, hours after the Israeli military announced troops had recovered the bodies of three more of the captives from northern Gaza.
The Hague-based court, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms, also ordered Israel to keep open the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which it closed earlier this month at the start of its assault on the city.
Israel gave no indication it was preparing to change course in Rafah, insisting that the court had got it wrong.
“Israel has not and will not carry out military operations in the Rafah area that create living conditions that could cause the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part,” National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a joint statement with Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, welcomed the ICJ ruling on Rafah but criticized its decision to exclude the rest of war-torn Gaza from the order.
Continued fighting
Hours after the ICJ ruling, Israel carried out strikes on the Gaza Strip early Saturday while clashes between the Israeli army and the armed wing of Hamas continued.
Palestinian witnesses and AFP teams reported Israeli strikes in Rafah and the central city of Deir Al-Balah.
“We hope that the court’s decision will put pressure on Israel to end this war of extermination, because there is nothing left here,” said Oum Mohammad Al-Ashqa, a Palestinian woman from Gaza City displaced to Deir Al-Balah by the war.
“But Israel is a state that considers itself above the law. Therefore, I do not believe that the shooting or the war will stop other than by force,” said Mohammed Saleh, also met by AFP in the central Gaza Strip city.
In its keenly awaited ruling, the ICJ said Israel must “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
It ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing for humanitarian aid and also called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
The Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,800 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The Israeli military said the three hostages whose bodies were recovered in north Gaza on Friday — Israeli hostage Chanan Yablonka, Brazilian-Israeli Michel Nisenbaum and French-Mexican Orion Hernandez Radoux — were “murdered” during the October 7 attack and their bodies taken to Gaza.
Truce talks
The court order comes ahead of separate meetings on the Gaza conflict in Paris between the CIA chief and Israeli representatives on one side and French President Emmanuel Macron and the foreign ministers of four key Arab states on the other.
Ceasefire talks involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators ended shortly after Israel launched the Rafah operation, though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office this week said the war cabinet had asked the Israeli delegation “to continue negotiations for the return of the hostages.”
CIA chief Bill Burns was expected to meet Israeli representatives in Paris in a bid to relaunch negotiations, a Western source close to the issue said.
Separately, French President Emmanuel Macron received the prime minister of Qatar and the Saudi, Egyptian and Jordanian foreign ministers on Friday “to press for a ceasefire,” according to Cairo.
The French presidency said they held talks on the Gaza war and ways to set up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The five countries discussed “the effective implementation of the two-state solution,” it added.
Top US diplomat Antony Blinken also spoke with Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz about new efforts to achieve a ceasefire and reopening of the Rafah border crossing as soon as possible, Washington said.
Aid stuck
Israeli ground troops started moving into Rafah in early May, defying global opposition.
Troops took over the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, further slowing sporadic deliveries of aid for Gaza’s 2.4 million people.
But on Friday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi agreed in a call with his US counterpart Joe Biden to allow UN aid through the other entry point into southern Gaza, the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel, the White House said.
The US military has also installed a temporary jetty on the Gaza coast to receive aid by sea that a UN spokesman said had delivered 97 trucks of aid after “a rocky start” a week ago.
The security and humanitarian situation in the territory remains alarming, with a risk of famine, hospitals out of service, and around 800,000 people, according to the United Nations, having fled Rafah in the last two weeks.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said the situation had reached “a moment of clarity.”
“Aid workers and UN staff must be able to carry out their jobs in safety,” he posted on social media site X late Friday.
“At a time when the people of Gaza are staring down famine... it is more critical than ever to heed the calls made over the last seven months: Release the hostages. Agree a ceasefire. End this nightmare.”
Israel strikes Rafah after top UN court orders it to halt offensive
https://arab.news/5dban
Israel strikes Rafah after top UN court orders it to halt offensive
- Israel gives no indication it is preparing to change course in Rafah, insists that the court had got it wrong
- Top UN court earlier ordered Israel to halt military operations in the southern city
Alexandria bids farewell to historic tram in latest urban upheaval
- For over 160 years, the tram has cut through Alexandria’s heart, in an 11-kilometer stretch that includes many of the city’s schools and main universities
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt: Along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, the oldest tram in Africa and the Middle East rumbles for a final few weeks before its removal — the latest urban upheaval Alexandrians say is hollowing out their city’s identity.
Government plans to replace the colorful streetcars on one of the city’s routes with a partially elevated light rail line have angered Alexandrians, for whom the 163-year-old track is “heritage, not just a means of transport,” local urban researcher Nahla Saleh told AFP.
Inaugurated in 1863, the tram is one of the world’s oldest, and among only a few to operate double-decker cars.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, it helped the city become a bustling metropolis, home to sizable European diasporas and a distinct cosmopolitan culture.
Now, Egyptians young and old have flocked for farewell rides, before the streetcars come to a halt in April.
As one locomotive screeches into the old El-Raml Station, commuters and visitors crane their necks out of giant windows at the historic neo-Venetian buildings overhead.
“We’re not against progress,” psychologist and writer on culture Mona Lamloum told AFP.
She and other Alexandrians agree the tramway needs work: inside the hand-calligraphied blue exterior, grime covers every surface. Underfoot, the rubber flooring is torn and strewn with trash.
“We just have bad experiences of everything they call ‘progress’ becoming synonymous with destruction,” Lamloum said.
In recent years, development projects in Egypt’s second city have razed historic parks and — most egregiously to locals — privatised and obstructed much of its Mediterranean coastline.
- Heart of Alexandria -
For over 160 years, the tram has cut through Alexandria’s heart, in an 11-kilometer stretch that includes many of the city’s schools and main universities.
The new project, led by Egyptian and international companies including Systra, Hyundai and Hitachi, promises to double speed and triple capacity.
Over half of it will be elevated — a major concern for Alexandrians who fear the tree-lined track will be replaced by eyesore concrete stilts.
Ahead of the first phase of suspension, the transport ministry said the new project was the “only solution to the city’s traffic problems.”
Locals like Saleh and Lamloum disagree, saying government plans are making the city more car-dependent and worsening traffic.
Already, because so many students rely on the tram, the city has staggered school and university hours to pick up the slack of the partial shutdown.
“Traffic’s getting worse, people can’t get anywhere, when we’ve already lost the inner-city train,” said Saleh, referring to another project under construction for the past two years, the new Alexandria Metro Line.
“Besides, it being slow was always an advantage,” she added, making it safe for “the most vulnerable in society: children and the elderly.”
Retired science teacher Hisham Abdelwahab, 64, has been riding the tram since he was a child.
“I don’t want it to go fast, I like watching the world go by,” he told AFP on a station bench.
“Our parents never thought twice about sending us out on the tram alone. Now I have a car, I just like leaving it parked to come ride the tram.”
When the next streetcar rolls in, the upper deck fills with a gaggle of schoolgirls, squabbling over who gets the window seat closest to the sea breeze.
- The old tram and the sea -
“This tram is our heritage,” Abdelwahab said, his sentiment shared by those several decades younger.
Engineering student Mahmoud Bassam, 24, has visited Alexandria just to ride the streetcar “since our tram in Cairo was removed,” he told AFP.
With a controversial slew of bridges and widened streets completed in 2020, Cairo’s historic Heliopolis neighborhood lost its last tram tracks, along with many of its trees.
“Now the same is happening here,” Bassam lamented.
Many Alexandrians are feeling the loss, intermingled with their other most treasured heritage.
“It’s like the sea. We used to go for long scenic drives on the corniche, but now we’re losing both the sea and the tram,” Abdelwahab said.
Parallel to the tramway, much of Alexandria’s iconic corniche is now hidden behind overpasses, private businesses and beachside food courts.
By 2024, over half of the city’s Mediterranean coastline had disappeared from view, according to a study by the Human and the City for Social Research center.
Four-lane highways now dominate long stretches of the seaside, where the landmark sight of fishermen perched over the waves grows ever-rarer.
For many, the waterfront that Lebanese singer Fairouz immortalized in 1961 — crooning about “the coast of Alexandria, coast of love” — is no more.
“Now all you see is concrete,” said Lamloum.
Saleh calls it “short-sighted” that the city could lose its charm to sprawling concrete.
“Tourists used to love coming to see the tram and sit by the sea, why take away both?“
