Updates: ICJ rules against imposing measures on Germany over Israel aid

You can stay updated with all our coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza here.

We’re closing this live page soon. Here are some of today’s main developments.

• The International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected a request by Nicaragua to order Germany to halt military and other aid to Israel and renew funding to UNRWA.
• The International Court of Justice says that legal conditions for making such an order weren’t met and ruled against the request in a 15-1 vote.
• Presiding Judge Salam said the court was “deeply concerned about the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip“.
• The ICJ reminded all parties that they are under obligation to “respect and ensure respect” to Article 1 of the Geneva Convention.

Germany’s argument was that 98 percent of their military transfers to Israel after October 7 were non-military in nature, that three out of four of their export licences related to non-lethal material, and the justices looking at those facts as presented by the German legal team have accepted them.

The other crucial argument that has wider implications is that they are not found to be in violation of the Genocide Convention because Israel itself … have not been found to be in violation of the genocide convention and that will be key to other countries that may face similar cases relating to their arms transfers to Israel.

“The court by 15 votes to one finds that the circumstances as they now present themselves to the court are not such as to require [the] exercise of its power under Article 41 of the statute to indicate provisional measures,” Salam said.

Against

• President Nawaf Salam – Lebanon
• Vice-President Julia Sebutinde – Uganda
• Judge Peter Tomka – Slovakia
• Judge Ronny Abraham – France
• Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf – Somalia
• Judge Xue Hanqin – China
• Judge Dalveer Bhandari – India
• Judge Iwasawa Yuji – Japan
• Judge Georg Nolte – Germany
• Judge Hilary Charlesworth – Australia
• Judge Leonardo Nemer Caldeira Brant – Brazil
• Judge Juan Manuel Gomez Robledo – Mexico
• Judge Sarah H Cleveland – United States
• Judge Bogdan-Lucian Aurescu – Romania
• Judge Dire Tladi – South Africa

For

• Ad-hoc Judge Mohsen Aghahosseini – Iran

The ICJ says in its ruling that it remains “deeply concerned about the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in particular in view of the prolonged and widespread deprivation of food and other basic necessities to which they have been subjected”.

“The Court recalls that pursuant to Article 1 of the Geneva Conventions, all States parties are under an obligation ‘to respect and to ensure respect’ for the Conventions ‘in all circumstances’.

“It follows from that provision that every State party to these Conventions, ‘whether or not it is a party to a specific conflict, is under an obligation to ensure that the requirements of the instruments in question are complied with’.”

It was a grey and drizzly mid-morning on Sonnenallee, commonly known as Berlin’s “Arab Street”.

Since late last year, large-scale protests have erupted here, in the German capital’s borough of Neukoelln, and they have allegedly been followed by police crackdowns described by pro-Palestinian demonstrators as shocking and violent.

Locals Francesca Leone, 31, and 27-year-old Lea* have been joining the thousands across Germany taking to the streets regularly since October 7, when the latest escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict began, to call for Palestinian rights and urge Germany to reconsider its unflinching support of Israel.

Lea, who arrived in Germany in 2015 seeking refuge from Syria, said she was arrested at a demonstration recently. She asked Al Jazeera to withhold her real name out of fears her employer might take action against her.

Read more here.

On Friday, police in Berlin began clearing a pro-Palestinian camp set up in front of the German parliament, demanding the government stop arms exports to Israel.

The Berlin camp “Besetzung Gegen Besatzung” (Occupy Against Occupation), began on April 8, coinciding with the start of Nicaragua’s ICJ hearings.

“The idea was to draw attention to that and … to the German complicity and active enabling of the Israeli genocide in Gaza,” the camp organiser, Jara Nassar, told the Reuters news agency.

But police said the prohibition order for the camp, which was granted authorisation at the start, was due to repeated violations, including the use of unconstitutional symbols and forbidden slogans.

An independent review group on the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) found some “neutrality-related issues,” in its report last week.

The UNRWA remains “irreplaceable and indispensable to Palestinians’ human and economic development,” according to a 54-page report led by French diplomat Catherine Colonna.

The review group was created following allegations made by Israel that some UNRWA staff may have participated in the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Due to the allegation, numerous donor states suspended or paused about $450m in funding to the UNRWA.

But Colonna’s team said “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence” for its claim that the UNRWA employs more than 400 “terrorists”.

Since then, many have announced they will resume funding, including Germany, Sweden, Canada, Japan, the EU, and France.

Nicaragua has urged the ICJ to order Germany to stop supplying Israel with weapons.

The case draws on the Genocide Convention and Geneva Conventions and is notable for being the first to involve two countries not directly involved in the alleged atrocities.

Experts talk on Al Jazeera’s Inside Story what the case means for other countries that contribute to Israel.

Watch the discussion below:

As we wait for the ruling, it’s important to note that Nicaragua’s case is not the only “genocide” case involving the war currently being decided on at the ICJ.

In January, South Africa took Israel to the court accusing it of committing “genocide” in Gaza.

South Africa’s representatives argued that the high death toll, the destruction of homes and the blockade of food and water meant Israel was in breach of the Genocide Convention.

While a ruling in the case is not expected any time soon and could take years, the court issued preliminary measures ordering Israel not to commit acts that could fall under the convention.

However, Israel has denied all allegations and reiterated it had a right to defend itself against Hamas.

During the court hearing earlier this month, Nicaragua requested five provisional measures.

They include:

• Germany shall immediately suspend its aid to Israel.
• Germany must immediately ensure that weapons already delivered to Israel are “not used to commit genocide, contribute to acts of genocide or are used in such a way as to violate international humanitarian law”.
• Germany must immediately do everything possible to comply with humanitarian law.
• Germany must reverse its decision to suspend the funding of UNRWA*.
• Germany must “cooperate to bring to an end the serious breaches of peremptory norms of international law by ceasing its support, including its supply of military equipment to Israel”.

*Last week, the German government announced it plans to resume cooperation with UNRWA following a report into the agency’s ability to ensure neutrality.

At the ICJ earlier this month, Germany denied that it was aiding “genocide” in Gaza by giving military aid to Israel.

Tania von Uslar-Gleichen, a legal adviser for the German Foreign Ministry, was one of the representatives who laid out Berlin’s case at the World Court. She said Nicaragua’s case was rushed and based on flimsy evidence.

“Germany only supplies arms based on a meticulous scrutiny that far exceeds the demands of international law,” said von Uslar-Gleichen.

Those supplies are “subject to a continuous evaluation of the situation on the ground”.

“Germany is doing its utmost to live up to its responsibility vis-a-vis both the Israeli and the Palestinian people,” she said, adding that Israel’s security was a priority for Germany due to what the Nazis did during World War II.

“Germany has learned from its past, a past that includes the responsibility for one of the most horrific crimes in human history, the Shoah,” she said, using the Hebrew word.

Earlier this month, Nicaragua took Germany to the ICJ and argued that it was violating the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1949 Geneva Conventions by providing Israel with military aid to use during its war on Gaza.

“There can be no question that Germany … was well aware, and is well aware, of at least the serious risk of genocide being committed” in the Gaza Strip, Nicaragua’s agent ambassador Carlos Jose Arguello Gomez told the World Court.

He told the judges that Berlin was ignoring its obligations under international law by continuing to provide military assistance to Israel.

“This has got to stop,” Arguello Gomez said.

The representatives for Nicaragua also called for Germany to resume its support and financing of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).