Fierce fighting continues between the Israeli army and members of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip, with both sides resisting arrest warrants for their leaders requested by an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor for the alleged commission of war crimes.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announced yesterday that he has requested the issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallad for crimes such as “deliberate starvation of civilians”, “intentional murder” and “extermination and/or murder”. during Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip.
It also called for arrest warrants once morest three Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniya, Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar, accusing them of “extermination”, “rape and other forms of sexual violence” and “hostage kidnapping”, acts that constitute ” war crimes”.
The Israeli prime minister rejected “with disgust the comparison by the prosecutor of The Hague of Israel”, a “democratic” country, with the “butchers of Hamas”. His government’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, blasted the “scandalous decision” and the “historic dishonor” of the Hague tribunal.
The Palestinian Islamist movement, for its part, condemned the “attempts of the prosecutor (…) to equate the victim with the executioner.”
US President Joe Biden, Israel’s most important international ally, called the request for an arrest warrant for Mr. Netanyahu “outrageous,” rejecting any “equation” of Israel and Hamas. While he “rejected” the term “genocide” used for Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip during an event on American Jewish heritage at the White House.
The head of American diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, described the request for the issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders as “shameful”, warning that it might call into question the continuation of negotiations to declare a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, while adding that the ICC has no “jurisdiction” in Israel.
On the contrary, the French diplomacy emphasized that Paris “supports the International Criminal Court, its independence and the fight once morest impunity in all situations” following the announcements of its prosecutor.
The war broke out on October 7, when Hamas’s military arm launched the bloodiest attack in history on Israel’s founding territory, killing more than 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on in official data. Fighters from Hamas and other Palestinian armed movements also kidnapped 252 people during the attack, of which 124 are in the Gaza Strip, but 37 of them are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli army.
The bodies of four hostages found last week were in underground tunnels in the Jabalia refugee camp, the same source said yesterday.
Israel’s government has vowed in retaliation to wipe out Hamas, in power in the Gaza Strip since 2007, a movement labeled a terrorist organization by the US and EU.
The large-scale military operations since then in the besieged and devastated Gaza Strip have killed at least 35,562 people, most of them civilians, including 106 in 24 hours, according to the latest figures released by Hamas’ health ministry. yesterday.
Military operations also cause humanitarian devastation. The vast majority of the enclave’s 2.4 million residents are at risk of starvation and more than half have been forcibly displaced, according to the UN.
“They kill us in our sleep”
Aircraft and helicopters launched new strikes yesterday in the Gaza Strip, where ground fighting raged for another day.
In the northern part of the enclave, the air force bombed Gaza City and the refugee camp in Jabalia, where the military also spoke of “probably the toughest” fighting since October.
The Civil Protection spoke of eight dead and wounded in an Israeli bombardment that hit the apartment of the Al-Attar family, in the neighborhood of Sheikh Radwan in Gaza.
The Israeli military said it carried out “targeted raids” in the central part of the small Palestinian enclave.
In the south, airstrikes hit a house in Tal al-Sultan district in the western sector of Rafah, killing three people and injuring eight others, according to hospital sources. Rafah also came under fire from the Israeli navy, according to eyewitnesses.
“They are killing us in our sleep, civilians, among them women and children, are dying, and no one gives a damn regarding us,” summed up Ubaid Khafaja, a resident of Tal al-Sultan.
“Duty”
The Israeli army intensified its ground operations, mainly in eastern Rafah, on the closed border with Egypt, where according to it the “last” ranks of Hamas are located. It says it is conducting “targeted raids once morest terrorist infrastructure”.
Despite the objections of many foreign capitals and humanitarian organizations to a major ground offensive in Rafah, Israeli Defense Minister Gallad insisted on “Israel’s duty to expand the ground operation in Rafah, dismantle Hamas and guarantee the return of the hostages” during the meeting who had the weekend with the national security adviser of the American presidency, Jake Sullivan.
After the order for the hasty evacuation of civilians was given on May 6, on the eve of the tank invasion of the eastern part of Rafah, “almost half of the population of Gaza” – or 800,000 people – “was forced to leave once once more”, he underlined. yesterday the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini.
“The burning question for us is where we are going. Now, we are all wondering how we will find food and how we will save ourselves from death,” said Rafah resident Shahran Abu al-Said.
After Israeli military operations began on May 7 in eastern Rafah, they closed two critical land crossings for aid and fuel deliveries to the enclave (the one at the border with Egypt and Kerem Shalom), further worsening the already dire situation. The lack of fuel in particular is increasingly pressing, as without it the hospitals that are still open cannot operate, nor can vehicles that distribute food and other absolutely necessary goods be refueled.
“Action Plan”
With no prospect of an end to hostilities on the horizon, Mr Netanyahu is under increasing pressure to prepare a “strategy” for the future of the Gaza Strip.
Last Sunday in Jerusalem, Mr. Sullivan invited him to accompany the ongoing military operations with a “political strategy” for the future of the Palestinian enclave.
While Benny Gantz, a minister without portfolio in Mr Netanyahu’s wartime government, has threatened to resign if an “action plan” for the post-war situation in the Gaza Strip is not drawn up and adopted within three weeks. And Defense Minister Yoav Gallad also demanded “immediate preparation” for an “alternative” government in the Palestinian enclave, or a new regime that would not involve Hamas.
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