RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel will continue its war against Hamas until victory and will not let anyone, including the World Court, stop it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a defiant speech Saturday as the fighting in Gaza approached the 100th anniversary .Day mark.

Netanyahu spoke after the International Court of Justice in The Hague held two days of hearings into South Africa’s allegations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians, an accusation Israel has rejected as slanderous and hypocritical. South Africa asked the court to order Israel, as an interim step, to stop its devastating air and ground offensive.

“No one will stop us, not The Hague, not the axis of evil and no one else,” Netanyahu said in a televised address on Saturday evening, referring to Iran and its allied militias.

The case is expected to take years before the world court, but a decision on interim measures could come within weeks. Court rulings are binding but difficult to enforce. Netanyahu made it clear that Israel would ignore orders to end the fighting, potentially deepening its isolation.

Israel is under growing international pressure to end the war, which has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza and caused widespread suffering in the besieged enclave, but has so far been shielded by U.S. diplomatic and military support.

Thousands took to the streets in Washington, London, Paris, Rome, Milan and Dublin on Saturday to demand an end to the war. Protesters gathered outside the White House held signs questioning President Joe Biden’s eligibility as a presidential candidate given his strong support of Israel during the war.

Israel argues that ending the war represents a victory for Hamas, the Islamic militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 and is bent on Israel’s destruction.

The war was sparked by a deadly attack on October 7 in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel. About 250 others were taken hostage, and while some have been released or confirmed dead, more than half are believed to still be in captivity. Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the fight.

Since the beginning of the war, the fear of a major conflagration has been palpable. New fronts quickly opened, and Iranian-backed groups—Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria—carried out a series of attacks. From the outset, the US increased its military presence in the region to prevent escalation.

After a Houthi campaign of drone and missile attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea, the United States and Britain launched multiple airstrikes against the rebels on Friday, and the United States attacked another site on Saturday.

In a further fallout from the war, the World Court this week heard arguments on South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel. South Africa cited the rising death toll and suffering among civilians in Gaza, as well as inflammatory comments from Israeli leaders, as evidence of what it described as genocidal intent.

In its counterarguments on Friday, Israel called for the case to be dismissed as without merit. Israel’s defense argued that the country had the right to defend itself against a ruthless enemy, that South Africa had barely mentioned Hamas and that it had ignored what Israel saw as attempts to mitigate harm to civilians.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu and his army chief Herzl Halevi said they had no immediate plans to allow the return of displaced Palestinians to the northern Gaza Strip, the initial focus of the Israeli offensive. Fighting in the northern half has scaled back, with forces now focused on the southern town of Khan Younis, although fighting continues in parts of the north.

Netanyahu said the issue was raised by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit earlier this week. The Israeli leader said he told Blinken that “we will not return residents (to their homes) if there is fighting.”

At the same time, Netanyahu said Israel must eventually close what he said were gaps along the Gaza-Egypt border. During the years of the Israeli-Egyptian blockade, smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border formed an important supply line for Gaza.

However, the border area, particularly the southern Gaza town of Rafah, is teeming with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had fled northern Gaza, and their presence would complicate any plans to expand Israel’s ground offensive.

“We will not end the war until we close this gap,” Netanyahu said on Saturday, adding that the government had not yet decided how to do that.

In Gaza, where Hamas put up stiff resistance to Israel’s heavy air and ground assault, the war continued unabated.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said on Saturday that 135 Palestinians had been killed in the past 24 hours, bringing the war’s total casualties to 23,843. The count does not distinguish between combatants and civilians, but the ministry said about two-thirds of the dead were women and children. According to the ministry, the total number of war casualties exceeded 60,000.

After an Israeli airstrike before dawn on Saturday, video provided by Gaza’s Civil Defense showed rescue workers using flashlights searching the twisted rubble of a building in Gaza City.

Footage showed them carrying a young girl wrapped in blankets with injuries to her face and at least two other children who appeared to be dead. A dust-covered boy winced as he was loaded into an ambulance.

According to civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal, at least 20 people were killed in the attack on the house in the Daraj district.

Another attack late Friday near the southern town of Rafah on the Egyptian border killed at least 13 people, including two children. The bodies of those killed, mostly from families displaced from the central Gaza Strip, were taken to the city’s Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital, where they were seen by an Associated Press reporter.

Palestinian telecommunications company Jawwal said two of its employees were killed on Saturday while trying to repair the network in Khan Younis. The company said the two were hit by gunfire. Jawwal said the company had lost 13 employees since the war began.

Israel has argued that Hamas is responsible for the high civilian casualties, saying its fighters use civilian buildings and launch attacks from densely populated urban areas.

The Israeli military released a video on Saturday showing the destruction of two operational rocket launch sites in Al-Muharraqa in the central Gaza Strip. In the picture you can see a large palm grove and some houses. In the video, the explosion sends a rocket into the air. According to the military, dozens of launchers were ready for use.

According to the military, 187 Israeli soldiers have been killed and another 1,099 injured in Gaza since Israel’s ground operation began in late October.

More than 85% of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced as a result of Israel’s air and ground offensive, and large swathes of the territory have been razed to the ground.

According to OCHA, the United Nations humanitarian affairs organization, less than half of the territory’s 36 hospitals remain partially functional.

Given Gaza’s already severe shortages of food, clean water and fuel, OCHA said in its daily report that Israel’s strict restrictions on humanitarian missions and outright denials had increased since the beginning of the year.

The agency said only 21% of planned deliveries of food, medicine, water and other aid had successfully reached northern Gaza.

American and other international efforts to pressure Israel to do more to ease the suffering of Palestinian civilians have met with little success.

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Magdy reported from Cairo. Mroue reported from Beirut.

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For more AP coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war