Britain to make legal arguments over jurisdiction in case of alleged war crimes by the Israeli PM
An intervention by the UK government at the international criminal court is expected to delay a decision over whether an arrest warrant can be issued against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Judges at the ICC ruled on Thursday they would allow the UK to make legal arguments in the case as they consider whether to approve requests made by the ICC’s chief prosecutor for warrants against Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
University sought order after students slept in building for more than a month in response to report about LSE’s Gaza-linked investments
The London School of Economics has been granted a court order indefinitely barring encampments in one of its buildings after students slept in its atrium for more than a month in support of Palestine.
Several students set up the camp in the atrium of the ground floor of the Marshall Building in central London on 14 May, vowing to remain there until LSE met its demands.
Fifty left homeless in remote hamlet of mainly shepherds, as beatings and demolitions in occupied territory increase
Israeli soldiers have destroyed 11 homes and other structures in an isolated community in the occupied West Bank, leaving 50 people homeless, amid a reported uptick in house demolitions and spiralling violence in the Palestinian territory.
Contractors with bulldozers accompanied by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops arrived in Umm al-Kheir, a village mostly home to shepherds, on Wednesday morning and demolished six houses, tent residences, an electricity generator, solar cells and water tanks, according to residents and Israeli activists who documented the proceedings. Agricultural land and fences were also damaged and trees uprooted.
Protest is in response to a recent supreme court decision ordering young religious men to enlist for military service
A ship’s captain reported that five missiles had landed close to his vessel in the Red Sea, 150 nautical miles (172 miles) northwest of the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) monitor said on Friday.
After posting earlier that it had received the report and that authorities were investigating (9.32am BST), the UKMTO said the ship had reported no damage and was heading northward. It gave no information on the ship or its cargo, reports Reuters.
The election comes at a time of high regional tensions between Iran and Israel and the United States
More than 61.5 million Iranians aged over 18 have been given a chance to vote for a new president and send a message to the regime about the state of the economy. However, millions are expected to boycott the election on Friday, the outcome of which they believe will be manipulated by the regime to ensure a loyalist victory.
Iran’s leaders want to renew their legitimacy after a steady decline in turnout reached crisis point last year with fewer than 41% voting in parliamentary elections, and fewer than 10% in the capital, Tehran.
Nineteen minors, five with cancer, allowed to enter Israel before travelling to Egypt and elsewhere for treatment
A group of critically ill children have been allowed to leave Gaza, the first such medical evacuation since early May when Israel seized control of Rafah, the territory’s sole border crossing with the outside world.
Nineteen minors, including five who have cancer, were allowed to travel through the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel on Thursday accompanied by relatives, and were to travel to Egypt and further abroad for medical treatment. The Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs said the evacuation was carried out in coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) and officials from the US and Egypt.
Notable Israelis add their voices to oppose invite extended by Mike Johnson, which Democrats plan to boycott
A group of prominent Israelis – including a former prime minister and an ex-head of Mossad, the foreign intelligence service – have added their voices to the growing domestic calls in the US for Congress to withdraw its invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address it next month, calling the move “a terrible mistake”.
The plea, in an op-ed article in the New York Times, argues that the invitation rewards Netanyahu, Israel’s current prime minister, for “scandalous and destructive conduct”, including intelligence failures that led to last October’s deadly Hamas attack and the ensuing bloody war in Gaza which shows no sign of ending.
The numbers that have been coming out of Gaza have been almost too shocking to comprehend
Dead or dismembered Palestinians don’t seem to shock anyone any more. A couple of hundred killed over here, dozens burned to death over there, a bunch of children dead from malnutrition: every day there seems to be another massacre that barely makes a blip on public consciousness. After eight months of intense bombing, the most abject civilian suffering has been dangerously normalized.
Still, as steeled as people may have become to the horrors in Gaza, you’d have to be completely broken not to be devastated by Save the Children’s new report on the missing children of Gaza. While more than 15,000 children are estimated to have been killed by Israel’s relentless assault on the strip, Save the Children has estimated that up to 21,000 children are missing.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist and the author of Strong Female Lead
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Here are some of the latest images from Israel, where an anti-government demonstration has again attempted to block highways while demanding that Benjamin Netanyahu strike a deal to return Israeli hostages held by Hamas, and to call elections in Israel.
Haaretz reporter Bar Peleg has posted this video, which shows protesters blocking a road by setting a fire.
Conventional wisdom suggested he would resist triggering full-scale war, but the ground appears to be shifting
Twenty-four years ago, on 26 May 2000, Hezbollah’s general secretary, Hassan Nasrallah, arrived in the small Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil a few kilometres from the Israeli border.
The day before, Israel had withdrawn its forces from southern Lebanon after a years-long occupation in which it was harried by Hezbollah and other groups. Thousands of supporters gathered there under Hezbollah’s yellow banners.
Putting his own interests above his country’s is nothing new for the Israeli prime minister, but it is increasingly blatant
While Benjamin Netanyahu picks fights at home and abroad, he is more closely tied than ever to the worst parts of the domestic political realm. Last week, Israel’s prime minister laid into its chief ally, the US, which has reproved him but done little to stop the war in Gaza, or avert the looming and surely disastrous conflict with Hezbollah. On Monday, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, labelled António Guterres an “accomplice to terror” and alleged his sole aim had been “to help Hamas survive this war”, after the secretary-general accused Israel (without directly naming it) of spreading misinformation about him.
Yet Mr Netanyahu will go to any lengths to keep his far-right coalition partners in the fold. He granted political legitimacy to the Otzma Yehudit party of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and to the Religious Zionist party of the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, when he invited them into power. He clings to them increasingly desperately. Without them, he faces not only the loss of his position but trial on the corruption charges that have hung over his head for so long. The far right saw off US attempts to reach a ceasefire and hostage deal, laying bare the growing rift between the Israel Defense Forces and the government.
South Africa's case against Israel over allegations of genocide before the international court of justice has raised a central question of international law: what is genocide and how do you prove it? It is one of three genocide cases being considered by the UN's world court, but since the genocide convention was approved in 1948, only three instances have been legally recognised as genocide. Josh Toussaint-Strauss looks back on these historical cases to find out why the crime is so much harder to prove than other atrocities, and what bearing this has on South Africa's case against Israel and future cases