The Spanish government demanded on Saturday that Israel comply with an order by the top UN court to immediately stop its bombardment and ground assault on Rafah, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

According to AFP, Spain stressed that the ruling on Friday by the international court of justice (ICJ) was legally binding.

“The precautionary measures set out by the ICJ, including that Israel should cease its military offensive in Rafah, are compulsory. Israel must comply with them,” Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares wrote on X.

“The same goes for a ceasefire, the release of the hostages and access for humanitarian aid [to Gaza],” he wrote, adding that “the suffering of the people of Gaza and the violence must end”.

Spain is one of the European countries to have been most critical of Israel over the war in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Spain, Ireland and Norway said their governments would recognise a Palestinian state from next week.

Israel summoned their envoys to “reprimand” them for the decision and on Friday said it would ban Spain’s consulate in Jerusalem from helping Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

The UK government has criticised the international court of justice (ICJ) for ordering Israel to immediately halt its military assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, saying the ruling would strengthen Hamas, reports Reuters.

The ICJ, which is the highest UN body for hearing disputes between states, made the emergency ruling on Friday in South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide.

“The reason there isn’t a pause in the fighting is because Hamas turned down a very generous hostage deal from Israel. The intervention of these courts – including the ICJ today – will strengthen the view of Hamas that they can hold on to hostages and stay in Gaza,” a UK foreign ministry spokesperson said late on Friday, according to Reuters.

The spokesperson added: “And if that happens there won’t be either peace, or a two-state solution.”

The ICJ, or world court, has no means to enforce its orders, but the ruling highlighted Israel’s global isolation over its military campaign in Gaza.

An Israeli drone strike in central Syria killed two fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement on Saturday, a war monitor said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“An Israeli drone fired two missiles at a Hezbollah car and truck near the town of Qusayr in Homs province, as they were on their way to al-Dabaa military airport, killing at least two Hezbollah fighters and wounding others,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

AFP report that it was the third strike against Hezbollah targets in Syria in about a week.

On Monday, Israeli strikes in the Qusayr area, which is close to the Lebanese border, killed eight pro-Iranian fighters, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor with a network of sources in Syria.

At least one Hezbollah fighter was among those killed, a source from Hezbollah told AFP at the time.

Another strike, on 18 May, targeted “a Hezbollah commander and his companion”, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It did not report any casualties.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence there.

The Kuwait Speciality hospital in Rafah pleaded for fuel deliveries on Saturday “to ensure its continued operation”, saying it was the only one in Rafah governorate still receiving patients, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said on social media site X on Friday that the situation had reached “a moment of clarity”.

“At a time when the people of Gaza are staring down famine … it is more critical than ever to heed the calls made over the last seven months: Release the hostages. Agree a ceasefire. End this nightmare,” he wrote.

French court finds three Syrian officials guilty of crimes against humanity

Kim Willsher

Kim Willsher is a foreign correspondent based in Paris.

A French court has found three Syrian officials of the regime of Bashar al-Assad guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes, sentencing them in absentia to life imprisonment on Friday after a landmark trial in Paris.

The verdicts against Ali Mamlouk, head of the Syrian secret services and security adviser to Assad, Jamil Hassan, who was head of the Syrian air force intelligence unit until 2019 and a member of Assad’s entourage, and Abdel Salam Mahmoud, intelligence director at the notorious Mezzeh detention centre, send a strong message about the long arm of international justice.

The judges ordered that international arrest warrants against the three officials should remain in force. The verdict gives some hope of justice for the families of thousands of Syrians believed to have been tortured to death by intelligence officials working for the Damascus regime.

Mamlouk, 78, Hassan, 72, and Mahmoud, who is in his early 60s, were charged with complicity in the arrest, torture and death of student Patrick Dabbagh, 20, and his father, Mazzen, 48, both Franco-Syrians.

You can read Kim’s full piece here:

G7 finance leaders will call on Israel to maintain correspondent banking links between Israeli and Palestinian banks to allow vital transactions, trade and services to continue, according to a draft joint statement seen by Reuters on Saturday.

The statement, which Reuters say is to be released at the end of a G7 finance ministers and central bank governors’ meeting in northern Italy, also calls for Israel “to release withheld clearance revenues to the Palestinian Authority, in view of its urgent fiscal needs”.

Reuters report that the statement echoes a warning on Thursday from US treasury secretary Janet Yellen, who said the failure to renew a soon-to-expire banking waiver would cut off a critical lifeline for the Palestinian territories amid a devastating conflict in Gaza.

“We call on Israel to take the necessary measures to ensure that correspondent banking services between Israeli and Palestinian banks remain in place, so that vital financial transactions and critical trade and services continue,” the draft statement said, according to Reuters.

Reuters report that the G7 finance leaders also called for the removal or relaxation of other measures “that have negatively impacted commerce to avoid further exacerbating the economic situation in the West Bank”.

Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani announced on Saturday that Rome would resume funding for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), at a meeting with Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Mustafa.

“Italy has decided to resume financing specific projects intended for assistance to Palestinian refugees but only after rigorous controls that guarantee that not even a penny risks ending up supporting terrorism,” he said, according to Agence France- Presse (AFP).

According to AFP, Mustafa was also scheduled to meet Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni on what was his first trip to Europe since being appointed by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in March.

Tajani, whose country holds the G7 presidency this year, offered his government’s “full support” to the Palestinian Authority.

“We are also committed as a G7 presidency to working towards a period of peace. We strongly ask for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza,” he said.

AFP reports that Tajani said he had informed Mustafa that Rome had “arranged new funding for the Palestinian population, of a total of €35m ($38m)”.

“Of this, €5m will be allocated to Unrwa,” he said. The remaining €30m will be allocated to Italy’s “Food for Gaza” initiative in coordination with UN aid agencies.

Unrwa, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, has been in crisis since January, when Israel accused about a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza employees of being involved in the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas.

That led many nations, including top donor the US, to abruptly suspend funding to the agency, threatening its efforts to deliver aid in Gaza, although several have since resumed payments.

An independent review of Unrwa, led by French former foreign minister Catherine Colonna, found some “neutrality-related issues” but said Israel had “yet to provide supporting evidence” for its leading allegations.

It also said Unrwa was “irreplaceable and indispensable to Palestinians’ human and economic development” and was, for many, “a humanitarian lifeline”.

My colleague, Patrick Wintour, who is diplomatic editor for the Guardian, has written an analysis piece on how 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 the southern Gaza city.

You can read the full piece here:

Israel bombed the Gaza Strip, including Rafah, on Saturday, despite an order from the UN’s top court for it to “immediately halt” its military offensive in the southern city, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The Hague-based ICJ, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms, also instructed Israel to keep open the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which Israel closed before sending troops and tanks into the besieged city and crossing earlier this month.

Israel gave no indication it was preparing to change course in Rafah, insisting the court had got it wrong.

In spite of the ICJ ruling, Israel carried out strikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning as fighting raged between the army and Hamas’s armed wing, reports AFP.

Palestinian witnesses and AFP teams reported Israeli strikes in Rafah and the central city of Deir al-Balah.

“We hope that the court’s decision will put pressure on Israel to end this war of extermination because there is nothing left here,” Oum Mohammad al-Ashqa, a Palestinian woman from Gaza City displaced to Deir al-Balah by the war, told AFP.

Mohammed Saleh, also interviewed by AFP in the central Gazan city, said, “Israel is a state that considers itself above the law. Therefore, I do not believe that the shooting or the war will stop other than by force.”

In its ruling, the ICJ said Israel must “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”.

It ordered Israel to allow UN-mandated investigators “unimpeded access” to Gaza to look into the genocide allegations.

It has just gone 10am in Gaza and Tel Aviv. This is our latest blog covering the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has reiterated US opposition to a major Israeli offensive on Rafah, the southern Gaza city where 1.4 million Palestinians had until recently sought refuge, in a phone call with war cabinet minister Benny Gantz.

The brief statement from Blinken’s office came after the UN’s top court ordered Israel to halt its assault on Rafah in a ruling that is expected to further ratchet up pressure on the increasingly isolated country.

But the statement made no mention of the international court of justice’s ruling, while a White House spokesperson merely said that “we’ve been clear and consistent on our position on Rafah.”

The US had previously said any assault on Rafah without “credible” humanitarian provisions for civilians would be a red line. However, after Israel launched an offensive on the city earlier this month it watered down its position.

More on that soon. In other developments:

• The UN’s top court voted by a majority of 13 votes to two that Israel must “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 would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. The ruling came days after the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, a separate court also based in The Hague, said he was seeking arrest warrants for senior Hamas and Israeli officials for war crimes, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

• Netanyahu’s office on Friday rejected the ruling in the ICJ case, which was brought by South Africa, calling the country’s allegations of genocide by Israel, “false and outrageous”. In a statement, Netanyahu’s office said the Israeli campaign in Rafah has not and will not “lead to the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population”.

• Residents and Palestinian media reported a series of strikes hitting roads and houses in the Shaboura neighbourhood in central Rafah shortly after the ICJ ruling was read out in The Hague. Heavy fighting was also reported in the Jabalia refugee camp in the north. Medics said at least five Palestinians had been killed when houses were hit in Jabalia and more were believed to be trapped under rubble, but that the area could not be reached due to the intensity of the bombardment. In Rafah, residents reported explosions and smoke rising in the distance as tanks advanced further into the eastern district of Jenina.

• South Africa described the ICJ ruling was “groundbreaking”. The South Africa international relations department said: “This order is binding and Israel has to adhere to it.” South Africa added that it would be approaching the UN security council with Friday’s ICJ order.

• The Palestinian Authority welcomed the ICJ ruling, saying it represented an international consensus to end the war on the Gaza Strip. Hamas also welcomed the decision but said it was not enough and urged an end to Israel’s offensive on all of Gaza. Hamas called on the UN security council to implement the ICJ decision.

• The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said that the EU had to choose between respecting the EU’s support for international institutions or its support for Israel. “What is going to be the answer to the ruling of the international court of justice that has been issued today, what is going to be our position? We will have to choose between our support to international institutions of the rule of law or our support to Israel,” he said.

• Egypt and the US have agreed to temporarily send humanitarian aid to the UN in Gaza via Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, the Egyptian presidency said. Only 906 truckloads of humanitarian aid have entered the Gaza Strip since 7 May, after Israel began its military operation in Rafah, according to figures from the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha).

• More than 200 staff members of EU institutions and agencies have signed a letter expressing “growing concern” over the union’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, arguing that it runs contrary to its core values and aim of promoting peace. The letter, signed by 211 people in their personal capacity as citizens and addressed to the EU’s top three officials, begins by condemning the 7 October attacks “in the strongest terms”.