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World Court to Rule Friday on Measures over Israel's Rafah Offensive

A Palestinian woman stands next to a damaged building after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 22, 2024. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
A Palestinian woman stands next to a damaged building after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 22, 2024. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
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World Court to Rule Friday on Measures over Israel's Rafah Offensive

A Palestinian woman stands next to a damaged building after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 22, 2024. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)
A Palestinian woman stands next to a damaged building after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 22, 2024. (Photo by Eyad BABA / AFP)

The International Court of Justice will rule on Friday May 24 on South Africa's request to order a halt to Israel's Rafah offensive in Gaza, it said on Thursday.
In hearings last week South Africa had asked the ICJ, also known as the World Court, to order a halt to Israel's offensive in Gaza, and in Rafah in particular, to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people.
The demand for such an emergency measure is part of a larger case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide.
Israel has denounced South Africa's claim that it is violating the 1948 Genocide Convention, saying it makes a mockery of the crime of genocide. The court has previously rejected Israel's demand to throw out the case and has ordered it to prevent acts of genocide against the Palestinians.

Israeli forces killed 35 Palestinians in aerial and ground bombardments across the Gaza Strip on Thursday and battled in close combat with Hamas-led militants in areas of Rafah, health officials and Hamas media said.
Israeli tanks advanced in Rafah's southeast, edged towards the city's western district of Yibna and continued to operate in three eastern suburbs, residents said.

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Arab World

Beirut Remains Among the World’s ‘Worst’ Cities in Terms of Quality of Life

A view of the Beirut waterfront (Reuters)
A view of the Beirut waterfront (Reuters)
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Beirut Remains Among the World’s ‘Worst’ Cities in Terms of Quality of Life

A view of the Beirut waterfront (Reuters)
A view of the Beirut waterfront (Reuters)

Beirut maintained its low ranking on the list of Arab and international cities in the Quality of Life index, despite recording slight progress in the cost of living, purchasing power, and residential rent allowances, which was offset by a failure to achieve any improvement in safety, pollution, and health care.
The Lebanese capital ranked 171 out of 178 cities in the world in the measurement of the quality of life index issued by Numbeo.

The results are drawn according to eight main indicators that measure the level of quality of life. They include the purchasing power index, the safety index, healthcare, and cost of living, the ratio of house price to income that reflects the affordability of housing, the traffic or travel time index, the pollution index, as well as the climate index.
Beirut recorded a score of 73.3 points, and was preceded in the Arab world by Cairo, which scored 75.9 points, while the Gulf cities occupied the best positions among Arab cities included in the index.
In parallel, Beirut emerged as the sixth most expensive Arab city compared to prices in New York City, according to field surveys conducted periodically by the same international institution. The Lebanese capital registered a cost of living index of 45.2 points, ranking it 113th in the world. New York City is adopted as a reference indicator for measurement.
Moreover, Beirut recorded a score of 16.9 on the residential rental price index, which means that rental prices there are 83 percent less expensive than in New York City.
The commodity price index reached 34 points, 66 percent less expensive than the reference city.
Prices in Lebanon increased in the period between mid-2019 and mid-2022, before returning to a decline in the statistical survey period between mid-2023 and mid-2024.
The rise in the cost of living index recorded in the previous measurement period, which approached 100 percent in mid-2022, reflected the severity of the economic and social repercussions produced by the economic and financial crisis and the drastic local currency devaluation against the US dollar.
However, the average index witnessed a significant decline to register 45 percent in the middle of 2023, then decreased to 45.2 in mid-2024, as a result of the decline in all indicators of the survey, including the local purchasing power index, which improved from 11.7 points in mid- 2022 to 12.3 points mid-2023, and then to 20.5 mid-2024.