Yeni Safak – May 26, 2024
With 81 Palestinian killings in 24 hours, number of people killed in Gaza
approaches grim figure of 36,000
At least 35,984 Palestinians killed in Israel's ongoing offensive on Gaza since last Oct. 7, 2023, Health Ministry saying, adding 81 more killed, 223 injured in latest attacks in past 24 hours
With 81 Palestinian deaths reported in the last 24 hours in the latest Israeli forces bombardments on the besieged Gaza Strip, the total number of people killed in the enclave since last October has approached the grim mark of 36,000.
At least 35,984 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's ongoing offensive on Gaza since last Oct. 7, 2023, the Health Ministry in the besieged enclave said in a statement on Sunday.
The statement said 80,643 people have been injured as a result of the ongoing Israeli military offensive.“Israeli attacks killed 81 people and injured 223 others in the last 24 hours,” it said, adding, “Many people are still trapped under rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them.”Israel has waged an unrelenting offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas last Oct. 7 which killed some 1,200 people.
More than seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.Israel is accused of “genocide” at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which in its latest ruling has ordered Tel Aviv to immediately halt its operation in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza where more than a million displaced Palestinians had sought refuge.
Hamas fires rockets at Israel’s Tel Aviv, causing first sirens for months
The Israeli army has said that eight rockets were fired from Gaza, targeting central Israel, including Tel Aviv.
Hamas says it has launched rockets at Tel Aviv, prompting sirens to sound in the Israeli city for the first time in several months.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that eight rockets were launched from the Rafah area in southern Gaza, where its forces have continued a ground assault despite an order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt operations there.
Israel’s air defence system intercepted several of them, the military said.
Rafah is located around 100km (62 miles) south of Tel Aviv.
According to local media reports, sirens sounded in about 30 areas across central Israel including Tel Aviv, and there have been reports of several light injuries due to the attack.
Hamas’s military wing the Qassam Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement on its Telegram channel on Sunday that the rockets were launched in response to “Zionist massacres against civilians”.
Hamas-linked Al-Aqsa TV said the rockets were launched from the Gaza Strip.
Israel says it wants to root out several Hamas battalions holed up in Rafah and rescue hostages it says are being held in the area, but its assault has worsened the plight of civilians and caused an international outcry.
On Sunday, Israeli strikes killed at least five Palestinians in Rafah, according to local medical services.
Israeli tanks have launched attacks around the edges of the city, close to the main southern crossing point into Egypt, but there has not yet been a full-scale ground assault.
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said the rocket attack raises questions about Israel’s military operation in Rafah.
“The Israeli military has been operating aggressively in the area and they made it clear that they are in control and they have pretty much cleared the area from the presence of any fighters on the ground or Hamas associates,” he said.
“But all of a sudden we see now a barrage of rockets fired from that particular area, raising questions about Israeli claims that it had cleared the area of the Hamas fighters.”
Israel’s military said on Sunday that over the previous 24 hours it had destroyed “over 50 terror targets across the Gaza Strip”, Mahmoud said.
In Jabalia, in northern Gaza, troops raided a weapons depot “embedded inside a school where troops located dozens of rocket parts and weapons”.
Israeli political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera that the Hamas rocket attack on Israel will encourage Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “play the victim”.
Eldar said it could also allow Netanyahu to make an argument against the ICJ ruling to halt military operations in Rafah, by saying that they are needed to ensure the safety of Israeli civilians in the face of such attacks.
Eldar said the attack could make Netanyahu believe he has the “justification” to go “deeper into Rafah until, as he has promised, the total victory.”
At least 35,984 people have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials in Gaza.
Israel launched the operation after Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7, seizing more than 250 hostages and killing at least 1,139 people, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on Israeli statistics.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/26/hamas-fires-rockets-at-israels-tel-aviv-causing-first-sirens-for-months
Abu Obeida: Israeli force killed, injured, taken captive in Jabalia
The spokesperson for al-Qassam Brigades makes a landmark announcement on Sunday, regarding the fate of an Israeli force that was ambushed by the Resistance.
The al-Qassam Brigades military spokesperson, Abu Obeida, revealed that al-Qassam's Resistance fighters killed, wounded, and took captive an Israeli force in northern Gaza.
In an announcement that is expected to have massive ramifications on the Israeli occupation entity, both politically and socially, Abu Obeida said that the Resistance carried out a "complex operation" on Saturday in Jabalia, the first stage of which was luring an Israeli occupation force into a tunnel and ambushing them inside.
The Brigades' fighters confronted the force at point blank, killing and wounding its members, he said.
After an Israeli reinforcement unit arrived at the scene, the Resistance group targeted it using explosives and confirmed direct hits.
Detonating the tunnel behind them, Abu Obeida said that the "fighters then withdrew... having inflicted casualties on all members of the [Israeli] force, leaving them dead, wounded, or captured, and seizing their military equipment."
"Every day the enemy continues its aggression against our people and our homeland will come at a high and significant cost, and we will continue to make the enemy pay this price with Allah’s help and support," he vowed.
"We will persist in confronting the aggression in every street, neighborhood, city, and camp in [Gaza], from Beit Hanoun to Rafah."
The spokesperson said that more details about the complex operation will be revealed "at the appropriate time."
Israeli invasion 'blind', 'futile'
Abu Obeida made the landmark announcement at 12:30 am (local time), an unusual timing, pointing to the importance of what was to be revealed.
The military spokesperson lambasted the Israeli regime for its "blind and futile" policies, aimed at taking revenge on the Palestinian people and destroying the Gaza Strip. Abu Obeida said that the regime is attempting to market the massacres it is committing as markers of victory.
However, he saw that Palestinian Resistance fighters continued to "teach the occupation lessons" on every front in the Gaza Strip.
The spokesperson pointed specifically to the Israeli attacks on Jabalia and Rafah, saying that Israeli occupation forces' operations in these areas are another chapter in a long list of Israeli failures.
Moreover, he spoke of the Israeli military's attempts to excavate large portions of the areas they invaded, looking for the remains of killed troops and captives, which they had intended to kill in previous attacks.
He said that thousands of Israeli troops are being pushed into the Gaza Strip for the benefit of Benjamin Netanyahu's personal ambitions.
Today's announcement comes following multiple Israeli military campaigns into Jabalia and surrounding areas, which the Israeli occupation forces and political regime claim have been "cleansed" from Resistance fighters.
'Israel' admits 635 soldiers killed in Gaza since October 7
The Israeli military admits to the death of a sergeant on Sunday, during clashes against Resistance in Gaza.
The Israeli occupation military admitted on Sunday that a sergeant from its ranks was killed in confrontations against the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza.
Under the "permitted to publish" clause, the occupation military revealed that the Israeli soldier killed was a sergeant from the Netzah Yehuda Battalion in the Kfir Brigade. Reportedly, the occupation soldier had succumbed to serious injuries he sustained in clashes against the Palestinian Resistance in North Gaza.
This raises the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza to 635 since October 7, 282 of whom were killed since the beginning of the ground invasion of the Strip.
The Conversation – May 26, 2024
Hypocrisy: Washington supports the Int’l Criminal Court only when it suits US Interests
By Andrea Furger, The University of Melbourne | –
This week, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) applied for arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, in connection with the ongoing war in Gaza.
The reaction of the United States, Israel’s main backer, was swift. President Joe Biden condemned the prosecutor’s action against Israel’s leaders as “outrageous” and accused the ICC of drawing false moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel.
While it is not yet clear if the ICC’s judges will decide to issue the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the Biden administration has already hinted at the possibility of imposing US sanctions against ICC officials.
Yet, just a year ago, when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official for alleged international crimes in the Ukraine war, US officials were full of praise for the court. Biden welcomed the action, calling it “justified”.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in fact, the US has continually displayed its support for the ICC. One top US official, the ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, said the ICC “occupies an important place in the ecosystem of international justice”.
The US’ apparent about-face when the court targeted its ally is nothing new. Nor is it surprising.
Rather, this vacillating approach is merely symptomatic of the US’ complicated relationship with the ICC since its creation in 1998. Its hostile reaction to the Israel-Palestine situation will certainly have been expected by court officials.
Wariness from the court’s inception
I worked for many years as a cooperation advisor at the ICC’s office of the prosecutor. During that time, Washington’s position towards the court shifted several times – it supported the court at certain times and criticised it at others.
This has largely been tied to a broader assessment of US foreign policy goals and the anticipated costs and benefits that supporting the court could bring.
The US was initially a keen supporter of the creation of a permanent international criminal court and was an active participant in the ICC treaty negotiations in the 1990s.
But it ultimately voted against the Rome Statute that created the court in 1998 due to concerns with the court’s jurisdictional framework. The US feared it could allow for the prosecution of Americans without US consent.
Although the US still signed the Rome Statute, President George W. Bush later effectively unsigned it, saying the US would not ratify the document and had no legal obligations to it.
The US remains a non-member state to the ICC today.
Once the ICC was created, the US adopted laws to restrict its interactions with the new court. Most importantly, it passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act of 2002 (ASPA) that prohibited providing any support to the ICC.
This law also allowed the US president to use “all means necessary” – a phrase understood to include armed force – to free American officials or servicemembers should they ever be detained for prosecution in The Hague, the seat of the ICC. This earned it the nickname of “The Hague Invasion Act”.
That same year, however, an amendment was passed to the law allowing exceptions for when the US could assist international courts to bring to justice:
Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosovic, Osama bin Laden, other members of al-Qaeda, leaders of Islamic Jihad and other foreign nationals.
The amendment created significant flexibility, demonstrating that the US was ready to assist international justice efforts as long as they targeted designated US “enemies” or other foreign nationals.
US support in African cases
The US soon adopted a pragmatic approach towards the court, supporting its activities depending on the circumstances and its interests.
In 2005, Washington allowed a UN Security Council referral to the ICC in relation to possible genocide and war crimes committed in Darfur, Sudan. The conflict was among the US’ top foreign policy priorities in Africa at the time.
Later, the Obama administration formally adopted a “case-by-case” strategy to cooperate with the ICC when it aligned with US interests.
Under this policy, the US played an important role in the 2011 referral of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Libya to the ICC. This was, again, in line with US foreign policy interests.
US diplomats also provided vital support in the arrest of Congolese warlord Bosco Ntaganda, who was later sentenced to 30 years in prison by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity. And the US assisted with the arrest of Dominic Ongwen of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, who was later sentenced to 25 years.
Another falling out over Afghanistan
The relationship between the US and the court soon soured again, though, during the Trump administration.
This was in part because of developments in the ICC’s investigation into alleged crimes committed in Afghanistan, which marked the first time the court probed possible crimes committed by US forces.
In 2020, ICC judges authorised an investigation into US, Afghan and Taliban forces. Soon after, the US imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and another senior ICC official.
After some delays, the investigation is continuing again, with a focus solely on crimes allegedly committed by the Taliban and Islamic State Khorasan Province. Other aspects of the investigation have been “deprioritised”, an implicit reference to the US and its allies.
Soon after taking office, the Biden administration lifted the sanctions against the ICC officials, returning to a seemingly more collaborative period in US-ICC relations.
These relations became closer following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the adoption of new laws that broadened the possibilities of US cooperation with the court. The goals of the US and ICC had seemingly aligned again, at least for the time being.
But this week’s request for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders demonstrates yet another shift in the US approach to the court. It continues the pattern of the US supporting the court when it suits it, prioritising its own foreign policy goals over wider international criminal justice efforts.
Andrea Furger, Graduate Researcher and Teaching Fellow in International Law, The University of Melbourne
Biden and Congress are destroying International Law for Israel
The current American threats to sanction the ICC could spell the death of International Law. Whatever little hope people had for a just international system will disappear.
BY MITCHELL PLITNICK
“Let me be clear, we reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders,” U.S. President Joe Biden told his audience at a Jewish American Heritage Month event at the White House on Monday.
Biden criticized the request for arrest warrants as creating a “false equivalence” between Israel and Hamas. By making that statement, Biden took a clear stance against the rule of law, under which any party, regardless of any other status, must be dealt with the same way.
He also clarified again, if anyone was still unclear on the point, that the United States rejects accountability for itself and its allies, but holds rigorous standards in that regard for its enemies. Just over a year ago, Biden said that an ICC arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin was “justified” because he had “clearly committed war crimes.”
The hypocrisy is par for the American course. But Biden is now faced with a dilemma. He and other senior officials in his administration have indicated that they will use more than words in response to the ICC Prosecutor’s request. Some in Congress are essentially calling for all-out war on the Court. But Biden is likely to be reluctant to go that far.
Republicans target the ICC
It had been clear for the past several weeks that the International Criminal Court (ICC) was preparing a case against Israeli leaders, and on Monday, the Chief Prosecutor of the Court, Karim Khan, requested arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders and two Israelis. The Israelis were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Predictably, both Israeli and American leadership lapsed into hysterics. As usual, Netanyahu immediately labeled the request for the warrants “the new antisemitism.” He also claimed that the Prosecutor “should be worried about his status,” a thinly veiled threat of violence, and that Khan was “turning the ICC into a pariah institution” and was “pouring gasoline on the fires of antisemitism spreading around the world.”
That kind of reaction reflects a profound concern about the charges potentially being brought against him — and it should not be overlooked that his statement did not include a denial of those charges. Netanyahu ran through the entire tired propaganda playbook, yet in doing so, he only highlighted the legitimacy of Khan’s request. But this was far from the beginning of the war on the Court.
Last week, before the warrants had been requested, a group of twelve Republican senators threatened Khan directly in a letter against bringing charges against Netanyahu. The letter was signed by some of the most prominent Republicans in the Senate, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Tim Scott.
The letter threatened sanctions against the ICC and Khan himself, saying “Target Israel and we will target you.” This is language that should be more characteristic of the Mafia than of government officials, though increasingly, it is hard to tell the difference. It closed by stating flatly, “You’ve been warned.”
Khan also told CNNﾒs Christiane Amanpour that a “senior elected official” had told him ‘This court (the ICC) is built for Africa and for thugs like Putin.” It seems likely that such a blunt and racist bit of bullying came from an American leader.
One might believe that this is all just Republicans putting on their usual show, but that isn’t the case this time. In his testimony at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Republican Senator Lindsey Graham that he welcomed the opportunity to work with him on what Graham called a “bipartisan effort to sanction the ICC, not only for the outrage against Israel but to protect in the future our own interests.”
In fairness, Blinken left the administration a lot of wiggle room in his comments. He later said he wanted to work with Congress on “an appropriate response” to the ICC’s “wrong-headed decision.” He also explicitly defended the decision in the early days of the Biden administration to cancel sanctions that had been enacted by Donald Trump against the ICC Chief Prosecutor at the time, Fatou Bensouda, who initiated an investigation of Israel and Palestine for actions since 2014, as well as of the United States for possible war crimes in Afghanistan.
Blinken is leaving that wiggle room because he knows that the Republican attempt to bully the ICC, like Trump’s in 2020, is itself a crime — as is always the case when an attempt is made to intimidate a legal official in any jurisdiction. The mobster-style bullying is too blatant for Biden, and risks alienating many of the U.S.’s closest allies. But it is clear that Biden and Blinken fully intend to find a more creative way to press the ICC to deny Khan’s request for arrest warrants or, failing that, to withdraw them.
Divergent American views on the ICC
For Republicans, the thuggery is suitable because they don’t want to work with, much less within, international institutions of any kind in pursuit of American objectives. That holds even if the partnership is advantageous for the United States. Democrats, and certainly Biden, see it differently.
Biden, whose foreign policy thinking was developed at the height of the Cold War and never evolved as times changed, has a stronger desire to maintain international institutions like the ICC. In the more traditional worldview, before the Republican party became what it is today, there was a bipartisan consensus that supported the existence and functioning of the ICC, while keeping the U.S. and its allies outside the Court’s purview. This is what that anonymous leader meant by the ICC being only for Africa.
The idea is to use the Court and similar institutions for American purposes while denying its authority over the U.S. and its allies. Thus, the Biden administration and most in the Washington foreign policy bubble loved the Court when it issued its arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin two years ago.
In fact, that love remained constant. Just weeks ago, in mid-March, Congress included funding for the ICC in the State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS) bill. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat and one of Biden’s closest congressional allies, said, “I’m pleased that (the SFOPS bill) includes funding for the International Criminal Court as it continues to pursue charges against senior Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, for committing war crimes in Ukraine.”
So, for Biden and Blinken, the question is how to block the ICC when it comes to Israel but give it power when it comes to Russia. The funding itself is one way that could happen. Another is to argue against issuing the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant at the Court itself. Both Israel and the U.S. could do that, despite not being state parties to the ICC. They could also make their case in public, in the hope of swaying the panel of judges that will decide, likely in the coming weeks, whether to issue the warrants or not.
Destroying international law
As with the case in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide, the outcome of the ICC process is not going to have any effect on the ground in Gaza. But this drama could have a profound impact on the fledgling structure of international justice.
The entire system of international law, as well as the essential building blocks of some kind of orderly international system, have been under relentless assault for decades. The United States and Israel have been the two most prominent leaders of that assault, which began almost as soon as the end of the Nuremberg trials, which inspired and began the modern form of these structures.
Israel, of course, can no more abide international justice than more blatant authoritarian regimes or other segregated or apartheid states can. Its status as an ethnocracy cannot withstand an impartial and balanced international system. Naturally, its brutal treatment of the Palestinians over the last 76 years and the massive violence it has unleashed on the civilian population of Gaza since October 7 cannot bear the scrutiny of law.
So, it was entirely predictable that the U.S. and Israel would unleash a barrage of rage at the ICC warrant requests. It is also why the warrants and subsequent processes absolutely must proceed in an unhindered and proper manner.
The international system, especially the legal system, is terribly weak. Much work will be needed for it to become a force for justice in the world. Yet that work cannot be successful if people do not have faith in the system.
Few do, and there is little reason they should. Khan may have been offended by the characterization of the Court having been built for Africa and Putin, but that is how it has functioned in reality to date. This is the moment that can start to change.
If Netanyahu and Gallant face trial at the ICC some of that desperately needed faith could be restored, although there would still be a long way to go.
But if not, if the Court is intimidated by American threats and sanctions, as it has appeared to be in the past, that might mean the last scraps of hope people have for an international system of justice could disappear. There is a real risk that if the ICC is seen as impotent or unwilling to follow through on the process their own Prosecutor has begun, the entire international system will be left with no hope for legitimacy at all.
Whether it is through more subtle means, as Biden prefers, or the all-out and blatant assault on the rule of law preferred by Republicans, the end result will be the same. This is a moment of truth for the ICC and for international law in general. The world has already failed Gaza, as it has failed Palestine for a century. If there can at least be some justice after the fact, there might at least be something to build a better world on.
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The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
