Russian Envoy to the UN Security Council Vasily Nebenzya said on Saturday that South Africa's lawsuit against Israel in the UN International Court of Justice (ICJ) yielded tangible results.
Ordering temporary measures against Israel, the ICJ recognized "plausible" information about the genocide in Gaza, Nebenzya said in an interview with the Russian news agency TASS.
"As for the content of the interim measures themselves, it seems hardly possible to implement them without Israel ending its military operation," he noted.
Contrary to many expectations, the ICJ decision did not urge Israel to cease hostilities and withdraw troops from Gaza, he stressed, adding that Russia will continue seeking these demands from the UN Security Council.
'US turns blind eye'
"For more than seven decades, the unresolved Palestinian issue has remained a source of regional and international disagreement. ... The unresolved problem brings incalculable suffering to the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, the Arab States, and the numerous Palestinian diasporas located there," he said.
The situation has been aggravated by Washington's attempts to impose on Israel's neighbours "economic peace" without settlement of the Palestinian problem, he said.
Pursuing this goal, the US started moving forward initiatives, undermining the international legal basis for the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, he stressed.
"In particular, the US tried to turn a blind eye to the ongoing construction of Israeli settlements in the oc cupied territories, it recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights," he said.
Obstructing aid
Throughout these years, Russia has openly warned about the futility and danger of such a course, but Washington "was and remains blind and deaf to any arguments of common sense," he argued.
South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel to the ICJ in late December and asked it to grant emergency measures to end the bloodshed in Gaza, where more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7.
The UN court on Jan. 26 found South Africa's claim that Israel is committing genocide plausible.
The court issued an interim order urging Israel to stop obstructing aid deliveries into Gaza and to improve the humanitarian situation.
Continued onslaught
Despite the ICJ’s provisional ruling, Israel continues its onslaught on the Gaza Strip, where at least 27,947 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and 67,459 injured since Oct. 7, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.
The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
➤Click here to follow our WhatsApp channel for more stories.
