The US and the UK will reject the international court of justice order directing Israel to end its offensive on Rafah after slowly blurring their red lines that once stated that they could not support a military offensive in Rafah.
The line was first adapted by saying they could not support a major ground offensive without a credible plan to protect civilians, but since then the definition of what constitutes a major offensive has become more flexible.
Is the USA not a member of the icc anyway?
Do you mean the ICC or the ICJ? The ICJ is a part of the UN, so yes, the US is connected to that decision.
But the ICC is an independent organization connected to a separate treaty called the Rome Statute. The US is one of a small number of (usually terrible) countries that haven’t signed it.
Yes, I meant icc, but I see now that it’s the icj.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The deputy foreign secretary, Andrew Mitchell, told MPs on Monday “the UK could only support a constructive plan for Rafah that complies with international humanitarian law on all counts”.
On Tuesday he told the UK business select committee that “the significant operation in Rafah, it appears, has not yet started”, even though 800,000 people had fled the area, including 400,000 who had been warned to do so by the Israel Defense Forces.
Mitchell replied that the UK was doing what it could do to help with aid, adding the fact “800,000 had chosen to go of itself would not lead us to make a change in the assessment” of whether a serious breach of IHL had occurred.
It seems, according to interpretation, that the US either feels it has persuaded Israel to adjust its plans to make them acceptable or, faced with an Israeli fait accompli that the invasion would proceed regardless of Washington’s objections, the US has effectively backed down.
The calculation may have been that the threat to oppose a Rafah invasion was useful in trying to get both sides to agree to a ceasefire, but when those talks collapsed, the US administration saw no alternative to the Israeli offensive that removes what Israel regards as the last four Hamas battalions.
The foreign secretary, David Cameron, said: “While there has been some progress in some areas of humanitarian relief, Israel must do more to make good its promises, and I am pressing them on this directly.”
The original article contains 814 words, the summary contains 248 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!