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After considering an application from South Africa, the UN’s top court on Friday ordered Israel to “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”.

The court also described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “disastrous” and told Israel it must allow full access for aid agencies and UN investigators.

However, before the weekend was over, Israeli forces bombed a refugee camp in Rafah, killing dozens of Palestinians, most of them women and children.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, has said that “rulings of the International Court of Justice are binding, and they have to be implemented”.

South Africa has accused Israel in the ICJ of breaching the 1948 Genocide Convention through acts and omissions “intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group, that being the part of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip”.

The ICJ imposed its first provisional measures in January, ordering Israel to “take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian aid”. Further provisional measures were imposed in April, as the court warned of a risk of famine.