Israel's Gaza invasion - Day 411

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused the International Criminal Court of anti-Semitism after it issued arrest warrants against himself and his former defence minister, calling it “a modern-day Dreyfus trial”, AFP reports.

“The anti-Semitic decision of the International Criminal Court is comparable to the modern-day Dreyfus trial — and it will end in the same way,” Netanyahu said in a statement, referring to the 19th-century Alfred Dreyfus affair in which a Jewish army captain was wrongly convicted of treason in France.

Hamas has welcomed the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its former defence minister Yoav Gallant, Reuters reports.

“We call on the International Criminal Court to expand the scope of accountability to all criminal occupation leaders,” the group said in a statement.

France’s foreign ministry spokesman has said that the country’s reaction to the International Criminal Court(ICC) issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be in line with the court’s statutes, Reuters reports.

The Netherlands has said it is prepared to act upon the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if needed, Dutch news agency ANP reported, citing the country’s foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp as its source, Reuters reports.

Judges at the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence chief Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, commonly known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir took to X to criticise the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and the former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

The national security minister slammed the decision, calling it an “unprecedented disgrace, but not at all surprising”.

“The International Criminal Court in The Hague shows once again that it is anti-Semitic through and through,” Ben-Gvir wrote. “This is complete system madness. I support the Prime Minister in the just war.”

He added that the ideal response to the court’s decision is “applying sovereignty over all the territories of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), settlement in all parts of the country and severing ties with the terrorist authority (the Palestinian Authority), including sanctions”.

The International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, is a “mark of shame” for the ICC, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said, Reuters reports.

Israel’s main opposition leader Yair Lapid also denounced the move by the Hague-based court, calling it “a reward for terrorism”.

There was no immediate comment from Netanyahu or Gallant.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, Al Jazeera reports.

In a separate statement, the court also said that Deif, full name Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, is subject to international arrest and it “unanimously” decided to issue the warrant against him “for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed on the territory of the State of Israel and the State of Palestine from at least 7 October 2023”.

The alleged crimes include firing rockets at Israeli territory and the October 7 attack that saw over 1,000 Israelis killed.

Israel claims to have killed Deif, the longtime leader of Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, in an air strike this past July. That attack had struck tents housing displaced Palestinians and a water distillation plant, killing at least 90 people and wounding 300 others.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued a statement regarding the arrest warrants issued for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, alleging that they “oversaw attacks on civilians” and used “starvation as a weapon of war”, Reuters reports.

The ICC also said that Israel’s acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction was not required.

According to the statement, the court said it has “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.

According to Reuters, the court said it revealed the warrants “in interest of the victims and their families”.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, Reuters reports.

Dozens of Palestinians are still trapped under the rubble in the two northern areas targeted overnight, Sheikh Radwan and Beit Lahiya, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary reports.

“There are no Civil Defence crew or paramedics working in Beit Lahiya, adding to the misery there,” she reports.

According to Khoudary, those who have reached hospitals in the north are not able to get adequate treatment. “The hospitals are only operating as first-aid hospitals because they lack medical supplies and do not have intensive care units,” she adds.

“In the middle area, where we are right now, there has been intensive artillery shelling. We can hear this in the background,” Khoudary reports.

Israeli forces have rounded up 12 Palestinians across the occupied West Bank since last night, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, Al Jazeera reports.

The arrests took place in the governorates of Nablus, Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Qalqliya, said the group.

During the arrests, Israeli forces threatened some of the detainees and their families, while damaging their homes, the group added.

Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch has regretted the UN Security Council’s inability to reach a consensus on a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Radio Pakistan reports.

It comes after during last night’s vote, the United States was the only one out of the UNSC’s 15 members to use its veto powers to vote against the ceasefire resolution.

Baloch reiterated Pakistan’s call for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire, unhindered access to humanitarian assistance for Gaza and full support to the UNRWA and its mandated humanitarian activities.

The Israeli military has bombed at least five crowded homes in northern Gaza earlier today with many casualties buried beneath the rubble, Palestinian health officials said, as troops deepened an incursion along the territory’s northern edge, Reuters reports.

Rescue operations were underway in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, medics said. Local media put the number of fatalities at 66, most of whom it said had not been recovered.

Dozens of people have been killed or unaccounted for after Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, a hospital director and the civil defence agency said.

One strike on a residential area near the Kamal Adwan hospital in the territory left “dozens of people” dead or missing, the facility’s director Hossam Abu Safiya told AFP.

The process of retrieving the bodies and wounded continues, he said, adding: “Bodies arrive at the hospital in pieces.”

Gaza’s Civil Defence has released a statement detailing 87 personnel killed and 304 staff injured in Israeli attacks, while 21 were detained, Al Jazeera reports.

Israeli attacks have hit 17 civil defence centres and headquarters, of which 14 were destroyed, the statement said.

In addition, 56 vehicles were either destroyed or damaged, while critical firefighting, rescue, and ambulance equipment worth $1.3 million has been lost. Fuel shortages have rendered most civil defence vehicles nonoperational for the past 15 days, further crippling emergency response efforts, Al Jazeera said.

Israeli warplanes have hit the building that the army had threatened to bomb in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, according to the country’s National News Agency (NNA).

The building was located on Abu Dheeb Street and the attack caused severe material damage, the agency reported.

There were no reports of injuries, it added.

Al Jazeera reports that at least three were killed when the Israeli army bombed the Miraj area in the north of Rafah. Several others were wounded in this attack, they said.

Elsewhere in the Strip, a number of Palestinians were wounded in an Israeli drone attack in the east of Gaza City.

Sixty-eight pro-Iran militants were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Syrian city of Palmyra, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said according to AFP.

Those killed in yesterday’s strikes included 42 fighters from pro-Iran Syrian groups, 26 foreign fighters, most of them from the Iraqi Al-Nujaba movement, and four from Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighter group, the monitor said.

US envoy Amos Hochstein, seeking to broker a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, will meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the premier’s office said, AFP reports.

The announcement by spokesman Omer Dostri came after Israeli media outlets reported that Hochstein had arrived in Israel on Wednesday evening and held talks with Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said 22 people were killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza City, while medical sources reported dozens of deaths in another overnight air raid, AFP reports.

“We can confirm that 22 martyrs were transferred (to hospital) after a strike targeted a house… in Sheikh Radwan” neighbourhood of Gaza City, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.

Dozens more were killed in another strike at around midnight in northern Gaza, medical sources said. The civil defence has yet to announce a death toll from that strike.

More than 90 Palestinians have been killed in a series of deadly Israeli attacks in Gaza overnight, Al Jazeera reports.

At least 66 were killed and dozens wounded in Beit Lahiya, the outlet said.

In Sheikh Radwan, 10 children were among 22 Palestinians killed, and seven people, including a child, lost their lives in the Al-Mawasi area as Israeli strikes continued.

Al Jazeera‘s Tareq Abu Azzoum called it “an incredibly bloody night”, noting that the morgue at Deir el-Balah’s Al-Aqsa Hospital is overwhelmed.

“The place has turned into a landscape of rubble, no longer recognisable, as human misery compounds.”

Israeli authorities have filed charges against three Palestinians who allegedly planned to assassinate Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Al Jazeera reports, citing Israeli media.

A joint statement by Israel’s police and Shin Bet security service claimed the trio from the occupied West Bank’s Hebron city sought assistance from Hamas and Hezbollah in orchestrating the plot, according to The Times of Israel newspaper.

The accused monitored Ben-Gvir and his sons, who reside in the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, AJ quoted the statement as saying.

In April, Shin Bet said it had thwarted a cell plotting to wage attacks in Israel and the West Bank, including one to assassinate Ben-Gvir.

Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reports that Israeli warplanes bombarded several towns and villages in the Nabatieh region of southern Lebanon overnight.

One person was killed in an attack on the town of Rumin, while a young man was killed in an attack on the village of Kfarchouba, NNA reported.

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee has ordered the residents of the Burj al-Shamali, Mashouq and al-Hawsh villages in southern Lebanon’s Tyre district to flee their homes immediately and move to the north of the Awali River, Al Jazeera reports.

In a statement on X, he said that the Israeli army was planning to hit the areas.