The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, Yoav Gallant, as well as a Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
Israeli strikes killed at least 47 people in eastern Lebanon on Thursday, said a Lebanese official, pressing the campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group as a US mediator sought to advance ceasefire talks in Israel.
An Israeli state attorney on Thursday indicted an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of passing on classified documents with an intent to harm the state in a case that has rattled the country as it wages war on multiple fronts.
ICC issues arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leader
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence chief, as well as a Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
In their decision, the ICC judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza”.
Judges said there were also reasonable grounds to believe the blockade on Gaza and lack of food, water, electricity, fuel and medical supplies “created conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population in Gaza, which resulted in the death of civilians, including children, due to malnutrition and dehydration”.
The decision was met with outrage in Israel, which called it shameful and absurd. Gaza residents expressed hope it would help end the violence and bring those responsible for war crimes to justice. Hamas welcomed the warrants against the Israelis, and a senior official told Reuters it was a first step towards justice.
The warrant for Masri lists charges of mass killings during the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel that triggered the Gaza war, and also charges of rape and the taking of hostages.
Israel has said it killed Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, in an airstrike in July, but Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied this. The prosecution indicated it would continue to gather information about his reported death.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
The US, Israel’s main diplomatic supporter, is also not a member of the ICC. It said it “fundamentally rejects” the move.
“We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” said a White House National Security Council spokesperson, adding that the US was discussing the next steps with its partners.
Global powers Russia, China and India have also not signed on to the ICC, the world’s permanent war crimes court, which is backed by all of the European Union, Australia, Canada, Britain, Brazil, Japan and dozens of African and Latin American countries.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan had announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the Israeli military response in Gaza. Israeli and Hamas leaders have dismissed allegations that they committed war crimes.
The court does not have its own police force to carry out arrests and relies on its 124 member states for that, with only limited diplomatic means to force them if they do not want to.
Khan called on signatories of the court’s founding treaty “to live up to their commitment to the Rome Statute by respecting and complying with these judicial orders”.
He said, “We count on their cooperation in this situation, as with all other situations... We also welcome collaboration with non-state parties in working towards accountability and upholding international law.”
Netanyahu’s office said the ICC decision was “anti-Semitic” and he would “not yield to pressure, will not be deterred” until Israel’s war objectives were met.
Benny Gantz, who joined Netanyahu’s war cabinet in the wake of the Hamas attack but quit in June, slammed what he called the “moral blindness” of the ICC, calling the ruling a “shameful stain of historic proportion that will never be forgotten”.
Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who heads a small ultra-nationalist party in Netanyahu’s coalition, said Israel should respond by annexing the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians want to build an independent state.
In a statement, Hamas welcomed the warrants against Gallant and Netanyahu and urged the court to expand accountability to all Israeli leaders.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim told Reuters the warrants against the Israelis were an important step towards bringing justice for the victims and that all countries should back them.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said the decision was not political but made by a court and thus should be respected and implemented.
“The tragedy in Gaza has to stop,” he said.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, also said the ICC’s decision must be implemented, adding that Palestinians deserved justice after what he termed Israel’s “war crimes” in Gaza.
The Netherlands’ foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp said his country acted on arrest warrants for people on its territory and would not engage in “non-essential” contacts.
Veldkamp’s trip to Israel had been postponed, the ministry said on Thursday.
“Under the current circumstances it has been decided not to go to Israel now,” it said in a statement.
Israel’s 13-month campaign in Gaza has killed about 44,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all the enclave’s population while creating a humanitarian crisis, say Gaza officials.
It launched the campaign in response to the October 2023, Hamas-led attack which killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, with more than 250 others taken hostage, Israel has said.
Israeli strikes kill 47 people in eastern Lebanon
Israeli strikes killed at least 47 people in eastern Lebanon on Thursday, said a Lebanese official, pressing the campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group as a US mediator sought to advance ceasefire talks in Israel.
Bachir Khodr, the governor of Lebanon’s Baalbek-Hermel province, said at least 47 were killed and 22 wounded in Israeli strikes in the Baalbek region. Posting on X, he said rescue operations were under way. The region bordering Syria is an area of Lebanon where Shi’ite Islamist Hezbollah holds sway.
Beirut shook as Israeli airstrikes hit the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs about a dozen times, sending up clouds of debris, in some of the most intense airstrikes yet.
Residents have largely fled the area since Israel went on the offensive against Hezbollah in September.
The Israeli army said its strikes were against Hezbollah’s infrastructure and that it had mitigated civilian harm through advance warnings and other steps.
In Israel, a 30-year-old man was killed when shrapnel from a rocket struck a playground in the northern town of Nahariya, said Israel’s MDA medical service.
The Israeli military said about 10 rockets were launched from Lebanon towards Nahariya. “Most of the projectiles were intercepted and fallen projectiles were identified,” said the military.
Channel 12 said three rockets hit the coastal town.
Hezbollah’s al-Manar television station, citing its correspondent, confirmed rocket fire towards Nahariya and the surrounding area.
Israel says it aims to secure the return home of tens of thousands of people evacuated from its north due to rocket attacks by Hezbollah, which opened fire in support of Hamas at the start of the Gaza war in October 2023.
Hezbollah, which has suffered major blows since Israel began its offensive in September, has kept up rocket fire into Israel, attacking Tel Aviv this week. Its fighters are battling Israeli troops on the ground in the south.
The casualty toll since October 2023 stands at 3,583 people killed in Lebanon, says the Lebanese health ministry, most of them during the Israeli offensive since September. The figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. The ministry said 25 fatalities were reported on Wednesday.
Hezbollah strikes have killed more than 100 people in northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. They include more than 70 soldiers killed in strikes in northern Israel and the Golan Heights and in combat in southern Lebanon, according to Israel.
Netanyahu aide, soldier accused in leak case that shook Israel
An Israeli state attorney on Thursday indicted an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of passing on classified documents with an intent to harm the state in a case that has rattled the country as it wages war on multiple fronts.
Eli Feldstein was accused of illegally obtaining and releasing sensitive military information, hoping to sway public opinion and alleviate pressure on Netanyahu to make major concessions to secure the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
An Israeli soldier was separately charged with handing Feldstein the documents, which were allegedly retrieved from Gaza and suggested that Hamas militants wanted to sow discord in Israeli society to help it win a favourable hostage deal.
Both men deny the charges, which carry lengthy prison terms.
Netanyahu himself has not been charged but his supporters have accused prosecutors of leading a politically motivated witch hunt against the backdrop of a national emergency.
“They’re trying to keep people’s mouths shut. And we are not accepting it. Enough is enough,” said Shoshana Edasis, one of dozens of pro-government protesters who demonstrated in front of the court on Thursday.
“People have started to rise up and understand that we are losing our democracy.”
A copy of the indictment seen by Reuters said the two suspects had created a mechanism for passing on information that bypassed accepted protocols for sharing such documents.
“The two charged suspects acted in order to extract information that was classified to the most confidential level, while taking the concrete risk of causing serious harm to critical national security interests,” it said.
Rather than leak the information to Israeli media, Feldstein is accused of handing it to German magazine Bild to bypass local censors who would have banned its publication.
The magazine published its article in September, quoting the document, allegedly written by a Hamas official, which called for the group to exert “psychological pressure” on the hostages’ families to squeeze concessions from Netanyahu.
Netanyahu later pointed to the article, saying it vindicated his hardline position on a hostage deal.
Lebanon seeks faster Israeli pull-out, right to self-defence in truce
Lebanon was seeking changes to a US ceasefire proposal to ensure a speedier withdrawal of Israeli troops from south Lebanon and to give both parties the right to self-defence, said a senior Lebanese official on Thursday.
Lebanese officials requested the changes during meetings in Beirut this week with US mediator Amos Hochstein, who is working to strike a deal in the waning months of the Biden administration to end the war between Lebanese group Hezbollah and Israel.
The amendments sought by Lebanon, details of which have not previously been reported, indicate Hochstein still has work to do to seal a ceasefire agreement which he said was “within our grasp” during a visit to Beirut on Tuesday.
The Lebanese official told Reuters that Lebanon wanted to see Israeli troops “withdraw immediately after the ceasefire is declared so the Lebanese army can deploy in all areas” and so displaced people could return to their homes.
The official said the Israeli position was a withdrawal within 60 days of the truce being announced.
The official said the current draft deal referred to a pull-out from “Lebanese borders” while Lebanon wanted a specific referral to “the Lebanese border” to ensure that Israeli troops would withdraw from the frontier in full, not in part.
Lebanon has also sought language in the proposal that would preserve the right of both sides “to self-defence”, the Lebanese official said, without elaborating.
Israel has insisted that, even if a truce is agreed, it will have the right to keep striking Hezbollah. Israel’s foreign minister said on Wednesday his country wanted to “enforce” that Hezbollah would stay out of southern Lebanon and not bring weapons into Lebanon by land or through sea and airports.
US Senate rejects bids to block military sales to Israel
The US Senate on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to block three resolutions that would have halted the transfer of some US weapons to Israel, introduced by progressives concerned about the human rights catastrophe faced by Palestinians in Gaza.
All of the votes in favour came from the Democratic caucus, while “no” votes came from both Democrats and Republicans, underscoring the divide within President Biden’s Democratic party over policy toward Netanyahu’s government.
Seventy-nine of the 100 senators voted against advancing a resolution that would have blocked sales of tank rounds to Israel, while 18 approved it and one voted present. Seventy-eight opposed a second measure, which would have stopped the shipment of mortar rounds, while 19 supported it and one voted present.
Eighty voted against a third measure that would have stopped shipments of joint direct attack munitions kits, with 17 in favour and one voting present. The kits, which convert a standard unguided bomb using fins and a GPS guidance system into a guided weapon, are made by Boeing
The “resolutions of disapproval” were filed by Senator Bernie Sanders, a progressive independent who caucuses with Democrats, and co-sponsored by a handful of Democrats who also have been critics of the treatment of civilians in the war.
A decadeslong tradition of strong bipartisan support for Israel in Congress meant the resolutions were never likely to pass, but backers hoped significant support in the Senate would encourage Israel’s government and Biden’s administration to do more to protect Palestinian civilians. DM
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