The Palestinian Authority, the official representative of Palestine at the international level, sent to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) a notification accepting “with immediate effect” its jurisdiction, following a complaint by South Africa against Israel over the war it is waging in the Gaza Strip, was released today.

The ICJ, responsible for resolving disputes between countries, is an institution linked to the United Nations, so technically, its decisions are binding on all UN member states. However, it is also possible for a "state not party" to the statute to submit a declaration 'motu proprio'.

Palestine is recognized by the UN as a non-member observer state and, on May 31, expressed to the ICJ its desire to accept its jurisdiction as well. It thus committed to respecting the ICJ's decisions "in good faith" and to accepting "all obligations" incumbent upon any UN member state.

Since April 2014, Palestine has also been a party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the basis of the complaint filed by South Africa against Israel.

The ICJ has already spoken out several times this year on the situation in the Palestinian territories, in particular to urge Israel to take all possible measures to prevent a possible genocide in the Gaza Strip and facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid.

On May 24, he ordered Israel to “immediately” end the offensive on the city of Rafah, in the south of that territory, where around 1,4 million Palestinians were concentrated, more than half of the entire population.

On October 07th of last year, Israel declared war on the Gaza Strip to “eradicate” the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, after it had carried out an attack hours earlier that killed 1.189 people, most of them civilians.

The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), in power in Gaza since 2007 but classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, took 252 hostages during the attack, 121 of whom remain in captivity and 37 have died since, according to the most recent report from the Israeli Army.

The war, which entered its 241st day today and continues to threaten to spread throughout the Middle East region, has so far left more than 36.000 dead in the Gaza Strip, more than 83.000 injured and around 10.000 missing, presumably buried in the rubble, most of them civilians, according to updated figures from local authorities.

The conflict has also displaced nearly two million people, plunging the overpopulated and impoverished Gaza enclave into a severe humanitarian crisis, with more than 1,1 million people, most of them children, in a "catastrophic famine" that is claiming victims, "the highest number ever recorded" by the UN in studies on food security in the world.