The Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says the International Court of Justice needs to take urgent action to stop Israel’s genocidal campaign in the besieged Gaza Strip.
During a cabinet session in the city of Ramallah on Monday, Shtayyeh said, “We will demand that Israel in international courts bear the full costs of everything it destroyed in the Gaza Strip, and bear full responsibility for the lives of our people it has committed crimes against.”
The prime minister said Gaza has been subject to ethnic cleansing, starvation, abuse, torture, and daily killing.
He said 101 days have passed and Gaza remains without electricity, water and medicine.
Israel shut off electricity to Gaza on October 11 and has not resumed the supply. People living in the Gaza Strip have been enduring a near-complete communications blackout.
The Palestinian official said he hoped international media would be allowed into Gaza, so that the Israeli crimes would be documented.
The Palestinian prime minister also called on the Red Cross to work for reaching the detainees held by Israel in unknown places.
On January 11, the International Court of Justice in The Hague began hearings over a charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
South Africa, in an 84-page suit filed against Israel at the top UN court on December 29, asked the top court to urgently declare that the regime has breached its responsibilities under international law since October 7, 2023, when it launched hostilities in the besieged territory.
Israel has killed nearly 24,000 people, mainly women and children, in Gaza since that October day.
It’s estimated that virtually 7,000 people remain unaccounted for.
UN rapporteurs say half of the population in Gaza is starving. Schools, mosques, churches, hospitals and ambulances have been a frequent target of strikes.
Despite all this, Israel has failed to achieve any of its declared objectives in removing the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas or releasing its captives.
