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This morning it was reported that the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice, ordered Israel to cease all military actions in Rafah:

 
But according to the former Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post, that’s not what the ICJ said. Avi Mayer writes that the ICJ ordered a cessation of military action that could bring about the “physical destruction” of the civilian population, not that Israel must cease all military action in Gaza:

It is simply false that the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt all military operations in Rafah.

What the ICJ ordered was the cessation of actions that “may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The proper interpretation of the ruling, confirmed by several of the judges, is that Israel must do whatever it can to protect civilians in pursuing its legitimate military objectives—as it has, in fact, already done by successfully evacuating around one million civilians from Rafah and getting them out of harm’s way.

As Judge Bogdan Aurescu wrote in a declaration appended to the decision, “the Court should have used the opportunity of the present Request and Order to make clear that the provisional measures indicated… do not affect in any way the legitimate right of Israel to undertake actions, which should be conducted in strict conformity with international law, including in a manner responding to the criteria of proportionality and necessity, to protect its civilian citizens and to free the hostages still held in the Rafah area by Hamas and other armed groups.”

It is important to state this again: the Court did not order Israel to cease its military operations in Rafah altogether (and it, in fact, said nothing about military operations elsewhere in Gaza).

What it did was order the cessation of military action that could bring about the “physical destruction” of the civilian population.

So long as Israel conducts its operations in Rafah in a manner that seeks to avoid that destruction—as, again, it has been doing, despite Hamas’s deliberate efforts to endanger Palestinian civilians—this order would enable it to continue doing so.

Not that any of this really matters in terms of Israel’s right to defend itself. The ICJ has no way of enforcing its dictate and thus this ruling is only symbolic. But since this news has been widely reported this morning, it is good to get right what it actually said.