UN court tells Israel to ease Gaza aid restrictions as Knesset backs West Bank annexation

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The US State Department has issued a scathing statement condemning the World Court after it told Israel to allow aid into Gaza on Wednesday.

In an advisory opinion, the International Court of Justice said Israel was not permitted to use starvation as a weapon of war and that it must ensure the basic needs of Palestinians are met. 

It also dismissed claims by Israel that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) had cooperated with Hamas.

In the statement, the US described the court as a "partisan political tool" and the ruling as "corrupt".

"As President Trump and Secretary Rubio work tirelessly to bring peace to the region, this so-called "court" issues a nakedly politicized non-binding "advisory opinion" unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep entanglement with and material support for Hamas terrorism," it said.

Another corrupt ruling by the ICJ.

As President Trump and Secretary Rubio work tirelessly to bring peace to the region, this so-called "court" issues a nakedly politicized non-binding "advisory opinion" unfairly bashes Israel and gives UNRWA a free pass for its deep…

— Department of State (@StateDept) October 22, 2025

Saudi Arabia has become the latest Arab country to condemn the Israeli Knesset's decision to advance to two bills to annex the occupied West Bank. 

The legislation is aimed at "legitimising Israeli sovereignty over illegal colonial settlement," the Saudi foreign ministry said.

"The kingdom stresses its complete rejection of all settlements and expansionist violations perpetrated by the Israeli occupation authorities," it said, urging international action to "put an end to all blatant Israeli attacks on the Palestinian territories and and the Palestinian people".

Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman will visit the US next month for talks with Donald Trump, according to multiple US news reports.

MBS will arrive on 17 November and discuss political, economic and security files with the US president the following day, a source told AFP.

Work is underway to prepare a package of agreements that Trump and the crown prince could sign or witness during the visit, US officials familiar with the plans for the trip told The Associated Press.

The trip is tentatively scheduled for 17-19 November, but the timing and status of the visit could change, according to two people.

The 40-year-old has not visited the US since the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents at the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul.

A spokesperson for the UN secretary-general told journalists earlier this evening that "much more needs to be done" to bring aid into Gaza.

Israel was supposed to allow aid to enter the territory unimpeded under the ceasefire that came into effect on 10 October.

But 12 days into the truce, it has only opened two crossings and allowed less than half of the required aid to enter.

"We need to have more crossing points open. We need to get more aid in," Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the secretary-general, said at a press conference.

A senior UN official warned Wednesday of "generational" impacts in Gaza from malnutrition among pregnant women and babies, urging a surge of aid to help prevent potential lifelong health issues.

"The sheer extent of the devastation looked like the set of a dystopian film," Andrew Saberton, deputy executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told reporters after his visit to the war-torn enclave.

He said that a quarter of Gaza's population is "starving."

"That includes 11,500 pregnant women for whom starvation is particularly catastrophic for both mother and newborn," said Saberton, whose agency leads reproductive and maternal health programs around the world.

As a result, 70 percent of newborns are premature or underweight, compared to 20 percent before Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel kicked off the war.

"Malnutrition will have generational effects, not on the mother, but on the newborn, likely to result in ever longer lasting care and problems throughout the life of the baby," he said at UN headquarters in New York.

(AFP and TNA staff)

Qatar's foreign ministry has condemned "in the strongest terms" Israeli lawmakers' approval of two early stage bills that would annex the occupied West Bank and an illegal settlement near Jerusalem.

The Gulf state described the move as a "blatant violation of the historical rights of the Palestinian people and a challenge to international law" in a statement on Wednesday evening.

It called on the international community to "take urgent action to compel Israeli occupation authorities to halt their expansionist plans and settlement policies in the occupied Palestinian territories".

Two of Turkey's top basketball clubs protested on Wednesday over a EuroLeague decision to once again let Israeli teams host European competition home games in Israel.

In a joint statement, Istanbul's Fenerbahce Beko and Anadolu Efes expressed concern at the decision, questioning how it was reached and saying that they had begun talks with EuroLeague's management over the issue.

Israeli clubs in the EuroLeague and EuroCup have played their home games abroad since Israel began its devastating war on Gaza in October 2023.

But following the 10 October ceasefire agreement, EuroLeague clubs met on Tuesday and "approved the proposal to return matches to Israel starting 1 December 2025", the body said.

(AFP)

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday said Israel should comply with an International Court of Justice  ruling directing it to ensure Palestinians have the "basic needs" to survive.

"This is a very important decision. And I hope that Israel will abide by it," Guterres said when asked to respond to the ruling.

(AFP)

Iran welcomed the conditional release of an Iranian student from French prison, the country's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, adding Tehran will strive for her full release.

Iran has accused France of arbitrarily detaining Mahdieh Esfandiari, a student living in the French city of Lyon, who was arrested this year over anti-Israel social media posts.

"Iran's Foreign Ministry welcomes the decision of a French judge to issue a conditional release order for Ms. Esfandiari and will continue its efforts until this Iranian compatriot is fully released and returns to her homeland," a ministry statement said.

(Reuters)

Palestinian armed group Hamas condemned Israeli lawmakers' approval of preliminary bills to annex the occupied West Bank on Wednesday.

The bills to apply Israeli law on the settlement of Maale Adumim and the entire territory reflected "the ugly face of the colonial occupation," it said in a statement.

"We affirm that the occupation's frantic attempts to annex West Bank lands are invalid and illegitimate," it said.

Syrian authorities said on Wednesday they had arrested a former military official accused of executing detainees at the infamous Saydnaya prison during the rule of former president Bashar al-Assad.

In a statement, the interior ministry said the Damascus province's counter-terrorism branch arrested Major General Akram Salloum al-Abdullah.

It said he had held "several positions, most notably as Commander of the Military Police at the defence ministry between 2014 and 2015, during the rule of the former regime".

The ministry stated that Abdullah was "implicated in committing serious violations against detainees in Saydnaya prison", accusing him of being "directly responsible for carrying out the executions of detainees inside Saydnaya military prison... during his tenure as commander of the military police".

The prison, outside Damascus, was one of the darkest elements of Assad family rule, which ended after more than five decades when Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by an Islamist-led offensive in December.

Rights group Amnesty International has called the facility a "human slaughterhouse".

(AFP)

Israel's Deputy Prime Minister Yariv Levin said Wednesday he had ordered the deportation of 32 foreign activists who had helped Palestinians harvest olives in the occupied West Bank, on the grounds they violated a military order.

Levin said the deportation order came after a complaint filed by Northern West Bank Settlements Council president Yossi Dagan, who said the activists were "anarchists who carried out provocations in the Samaria area."

Rudy Schulkind, a 30-year-old British national among the deported, told AFP he had come to the West Bank to support Palestinian farmers.

This year's olive season has been particularly violent, with several acts of vandalism and attacks from Israeli settlers.

Foreign activists often provide a presence meant to deter these incidents in rural West Bank areas.

Schulkind said he was held 72 hours by Israeli forces before being deported on October 19.

"We were arrested after they declared the area we were harvesting in as a military zone," he said, alleging that this was a common Israeli tactic against Palestinians.

He added that all 32 international volunteers were arrested in an olive grove near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Norway will propose a UN General Assembly resolution demanding that Israel lift restrictions on aid to Palestinians, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said Wednesday, following an International Court of Justice ruling on the war.

"Norway intends to follow up on this (ICJ) decision with a new resolution at the UN General Assembly," Barth Eide told a press conference.

The Scandinavian country initiated the UN resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ on Israel's obligations, and the court ruled on Wednesday that Israel was obliged under international law to facilitate the delivery of aid to Gaza.

UN rights expert Francesca Albanese on Wednesday criticised a US-brokered ceasefire plan in Gaza as insufficient to address what she called a "genocide" of the Palestinian people by the United States and Israel.

A fragile truce is in place as part of a deal to end two years of the Israel-Hamas war, which also involves the recovery of hostages, delivery of more aid to Gaza and eventual rebuilding of the devastated Palestinian territory.

The plan is "absolutely inadequate and it doesn't comply with international law", said Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

There needed to be commitment to "ending the occupation, ending exploitation of Palestinian resources, ending colonisation", Albanese told reporters.

Israeli troops currently control around half of the coastal Palestinian territory.

"It's not a war, it's a genocide where there is a determination to destroy a people as such," said Albanese, who is mandated by the United Nations but does not speak on its behalf.

The Palestinian delegate to the International Court of Justice on Wednesday urged the world to ensure Israel comply with the court's ruling to allow aid into Gaza.

"It is about time that the international community rise up to the challenge because we know... that Israel will not oblige and will not uphold these responsibilities as delineated by the court," Ammar Hijazi told reporters at the court.

"So, the responsibility is on... the international community to uphold these values and oblige Israel, bring Israel into compliance with these laws," added Hijazi.

Israel rejected a ruling by the International Court of Justice on Wednesday which said Israel was obliged to ease the passage of aid into Gaza and meet the "basic needs" of the population.

The ICJ also said Israel had not stood up its allegations that members of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also worked for Hamas.

"Israel categorically rejects the ICJ's 'advisory opinion,' which was entirely predictable from the outset regarding UNRWA," foreign ministry spokesman, Oren Marmorstein, posted on X. "This is yet another political attempt to impose political measures against Israel under the guise of 'International Law.'"

The International Court of Justice on Wednesday said Israel was obliged to ease the passage of much-needed aid into Gaza, including that provided by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

"The court considers that Israel is under an obligation to agree to and facilitate relief schemes provided by the United Nations and its entities, including UNRWA," said ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa.

The International Court of Justice ruled Wednesday that Israel has not stood up allegations that members of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also worked for the Hamas group it is fighting in Gaza.

"The court finds that Israel has not substantiated its allegations that a significant part of UNRWA's employees are 'members of Hamas... or other terrorist factions'," said ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa.

A bill applying Israeli law to the occupied West Bank, a move tantamount to annexation of land which Palestinians want for a state, won preliminary approval from Israel's parliament on Wednesday.

The vote was the first of four needed to pass the law and it coincided with the visit of US Vice President JD Vance to Israel, a month after President Donald Trump said that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party did not support the legislation, which was put forth by lawmakers outside his ruling coalition and passed by a vote of 25-24 out of 120 lawmakers. A second bill by an opposition party proposing the annexation of the Maale Adumim settlement won by 31-9.

Some members in Netanyahu's coalition - from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's Jewish Power party and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism faction voted in favour of the bill, which would require a lengthy legislative process to ultimately pass.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will arrive in Israel on Thursday, an Israeli government spokeswoman said, announcing the third visit by a senior Washington official this week.

Speaking while Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff were already in the country promoting the plan to end the war in Gaza, Shosh Bedrosian told reporters that Rubio would meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday.

"This is the secretary of state third trip to Israel since mid-September which further shows the hand-in-hand relationship that Israel and the United States have as we mark this historic time," she said.

The International Court of Justice on Wednesday started handing down its ruling on Israel's obligations towards agencies providing humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza.

ICJ President Yuji Iwasawa opened the public hearing to deliver its "advisory opinion" laying out Israel's duty to facilitate aid in Gaza.

Israel's President Isaac Herzog met with US Vice-President J.D Vance at the presidential residence in Jerusalem on Wednesday. 

Herzog said he was grateful for Trump and "for his steadfast insistence on moving forward," Israeli media reported.

"We must move forward, we must offer hope for the region, for Israel, for our Palestinian neighbors, and for the future of our children," Herzog said.

Israel returned the bodies of 30 Palestinians to Gaza on Wednesday, bringing the total number handed over under the ceasefire deal to 195, the health ministry in Gaza said.

Under the deal brokered by US President Donald Trump, Israel was to turn over the bodies of 15 Palestinians for every deceased Israeli returned.

Israel's military said Wednesday that the remains of two more captives returned the day before from Gaza had been identified as those of Aryeh Zalmanovich and Master Sergeant Tamir Adar.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted on Wednesday at his opposition to any role for Turkish security forces in the Gaza Strip as part of a mission to monitor a US-backed ceasefire with Hamas.

Speaking in Jerusalem alongside visiting US Vice President JD Vance, Netanyahu said they had discussed the "day-after" for Gaza, including who could provide security in the territory shattered by two years of war.

Vance, who said on Tuesday US President Donald Trump's ceasefire plan was going better than expected, reiterated his optimism. "I never said it was easy. But what I am is optimistic that the ceasefire is going to hold and that we can actually build a better future in the entire Middle East," he said.

Having secured a ceasefire, mediators are focused on the second phase of Trump's Gaza plan which demands Hamas disarm and foresees the deployment of an International Stabilisation Force that would train and support vetted Palestinian police.

Responding to a question about the idea of Turkish security forces in Gaza, Netanyahu said: "We will decide together about that. So I have very strong opinions about that. Want to guess what they are?"

Vance said on Tuesday there would be a "constructive role" for Turkey to play as the truce moved towards the next stage.

An Israeli strike on the southern Lebanese town of Ain Qana killed the platoon commander from Hezbollah's Radwan Force, the Israeli military said. 

The strike is the latest in a series on southern Lebanon, which have been near continuous since the enactment of a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in November 2024.

The Palestinian Prisoners Society has said that Israel has detained 45 people, according to Al Jazeera, most of whom were in Hebron, but also in the regions of Nablus, Ramallah, Qalqiya and Tulkarem.

US Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the Gaza ceasefire brokered by Washington could pave the way for broader alliances for Israel in the Middle East.

"I think this Gaza deal is a critical piece of unlocking the Abraham Accords," Vance said at a press conference in Jerusalem, referring to the series of normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab countries in 2020.

"But what it could allow is an alliance structure in the Middle East that perseveres, that endures, and that allows the good people in this region, the world, to step up and take ownership of their own backyard."

Roland Friedrich, Director of UNRWA affairs for the Occupied West Bank, has said that "the future of Gaza and West Bank are one,"  in a statement issued by the agency on X.

Friedrich said that Israel's ongoing rolling annexation in the occupied West Bank and stifling of UNRWA operations in the territory have led to the shuttering of schools and "de facto" eviction of staff.

"A drawdown in Gaza should not become an opportunity to tighten the grip of occupation elsewhere," UNRWA said, adding, "UNRWA has remained on the ground to stay and deliver throughout this escalation, as we have throughout multiple crises before."

“In the northern occupied #WestBank, destruction and forced displacement persist.

The three refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams have been emptied, and residents actively prevented from returning. Settler violence and settlement expansion have spiralled, pushing… pic.twitter.com/6dTTIQUZIX

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) October 22, 2025

US Vice President JD Vance is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the PM's office in Jerusalem, according to the Times of Israel, citing the White House pool. 

The meeting is set to be followed by an expanded meeting with senior staff, according to the report.

Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Burqa, near Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank through the night, according to Palestinian news agency Wafa, which added that Israeli forces raided houses in villages around Bethlehem and arrested a man in Qalqilya.

The United Arab Emirates normalised relations with Israel to foster tolerance and change mindsets in the region, UAE Minister of State Lana Nusseibeh said during a panel at the Reuters NEXT Gulf Summit in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.