An Israeli official was interrupted by a heckler as she spoke at the International Court of Justice, before the Court cut the video feed. Israel has rejected accusations of genocide and South Africa’s plea to judges to order a halt to the attack on Rafah.
Published On 17 May 2024
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Israel has told the International Court of Justice it rejects South Africa’s attempt to stop the assault on Rafah in Gaza, telling judges that South Africa has a “clear ulterior motive” in pushing its genocide case.
Published On 17 May 2024
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A $320m floating pier built for delivering aid has been attached to Gaza’s shore and began being used to deliver aid on Friday, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) says.
Aid groups have criticised the pier as a costly and ineffective distraction from the fact that land deliveries are the most efficient way to help Gaza.
What was initially proposed as a way to supplement aid to a starving population as Israel’s punishing war on them continues may become the only source after Israel seized and closed the Rafah land crossing with Egypt. Israelis have also begun attacking aid trucks heading to Gaza through Israeli crossings.
CENTCOM said aid trucks are “expected to begin moving ashore in the coming days” via the pier. Shipping data shows the MV Sagamore cargo ship carrying the aid is near Cyprus after waiting in Ashdod, Israel, for a few days due to bad weather.
The US has long used Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS) to land troops and equipment in areas where they have no access to a fixed pier.
It is using the same capability to build the Trident Pier for Gaza.
The project has two components, a floating offshore barge that is a first point of arrival for aid deliveries and a 550-metre (1,800ft) causeway anchored to the shore.
Aid is assembled and inspected in Cyprus, in the presence of Israeli officials so it requires no further checks on arrival, then departs by cargo ship – the Sagamore, so far.
When it arrives after a journey of about 15 hours, aid is unloaded onto the floating pier and then loaded on trucks driven by aid workers that board smaller US Army boats to be transported to the Gaza shore.
When the operation reaches full capacity, 150 trucks are expected to make their way into Gaza daily.
International aid organisations say a minimum of 500 trucks are needed each day.
The project stops on bad weather days as rough seas slow down the ships while the pier is unusable in waves higher than 90cm (three feet) or winds faster than 24km/hour (15mph), according to a 2006 US Naval War College paper on safe cargo handling.
Earlier this month, CENTCOM had to pause offshore assembly of the pier due to high winds and high sea swells, moving everything near Ashdod.
The project also needs complicated logistics and security with many moving parts and details yet to be finalised.
Every step added to aid delivery increases both cost and risk, Sarah Schiffling, deputy director of Finland’s HUMLOG Institute which researches humanitarian logistics and supply chain management, said.
“We’ve got this quite complex structure of what needs to happen – and then the aid still needs to be distributed in Gaza,” Schiffling said. “If you haven’t got fuel, then the whole thing doesn’t work.”
It is also unclear who will be responsible for each stage and who guarantees the safety of aid workers unloading and distributing aid. On Thursday, CENTCOM said: “The United Nations will receive the aid and coordinate its distribution into Gaza,” but did not specify whether this would be the arrangement throughout.
International and local organisations are painfully aware that past aid distributions in Gaza have ended in tragedy.
Israel’s military has attacked aid workers’ convoys and premises in Gaza at least eight times since October, with Human Rights Watch saying none of the aid organisations were warned before the attacks.
On Monday, a foreign United Nations staff member was killed in an attack in eastern Rafah when the vehicle they were travelling was shot at. Last month, Israel struck a convoy belonging to World Central Kitchen, killing seven aid workers.
The pier has been criticised as a complicated and costly alternative that tries to deflect attention from demanding a more appropriate and much simpler solution – for Israel to open land crossings to Gaza and to secure aid trucks going in.
Israel has been ordered to open more land crossings by the International Court of Justice as part of a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
The court order in March was followed by a modest increase but aid remained nowhere near enough to meet the overwhelming need, according to UN and nongovernmental aid agencies.
Humanitarian aid had been trickling in through the Rafah crossing but came to a halt when the Israeli military seized control of the area in its offensive in the southern city.
According to Schiffling, Ashdod, just north of Gaza, would have been better for aid delivery, but there is no political willingness. “There is sea infrastructure, it’s just not available to get the humanitarian aid in to then get it across the land border into Gaza.”
US authorities say the pier is intended to supplement, not replace, aid deliveries over land and have called for the opening of land routes.
“We’re in a situation where anything going into Gaza is fantastic and we want more of that,” Schiffling said. “[Maritime aid delivery] can be an addition, but it cannot replace road access.”
US President Joe Biden said in his State of the Union address in March that the pier would “receive large shipments carrying food, water, medicine and temporary shelter”, a move largely seen as an attempt to appease his Democratic Party’s base as he runs for re-election in November.
The pier “looks quite spectacular and demonstrates what the US military can do without it being a military intervention”, Schiffling said.
“[W]e can understand why it was great for President Biden to announce it in his State of the Union address.”
Washington has provided billions of dollars in aid as well as weapons that Israel has used in Gaza since October 7.
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The act is not expected to become law, but its passage shows the depth of the election-year divide in the US over Israel.
The Republican-led US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would force President Joe Biden to send weapons to Israel, seeking to rebuke the Democrat for delaying bomb shipments as he urges Israel to do more to protect civilians during its war with Hamas.
The Israel Security Assistance Support Act was approved 224 to 187, largely along party lines. Sixteen Democrats joined most Republicans in voting yes, and three Republicans joined most Democrats in opposing the measure on Thursday.
The act is not expected to become law, but its passage underlined the deep US election-year divide over Israel policy as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government seeks to wipe out Hamas fighters who attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 people captive.
Palestinian authorities say at least 35,272 civilians have been killed during Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Malnutrition is widespread and much of the population of the coastal territory has been left homeless, with infrastructure destroyed.
“This is a catastrophic decision with global implications. It is obviously being done as a political calculation, and we cannot let this stand,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told a news conference with other party leaders on Wednesday.
Democrats also accused their rivals of playing politics, saying Republicans were distorting Biden’s position on Israel.
“It is not a serious effort at legislation, which is why some of the most pro-Israel members of the House Democratic caucus will be voting no,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries told a news conference before the vote.
Biden placed the hold on the transfer of the bombs this month over concerns the weapons could inflict enormous casualties in Rafah and to deter Israel from going ahead with the attack.
Early in May, Biden also told CNN that he would not be “supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah” if Israeli forces go into “population centres”.
Rights advocates, lawmakers and protesters across the US have demanded an end to the transfers, warning the president that the arms were being used for human rights violations and war crimes in Gaza.
Israel, a major recipient of US military assistance for decades, is still due to get billions of dollars of US weaponry, despite the delay of one shipment of 2,000-pound (907kg) and 500-pound bombs, and the Biden administration’s review of other weapons shipments.
As recently as Tuesday, the State Department had moved a $1bn package of weapons aid for Israel into the congressional review process, US officials said.
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WhatsApp leaks reveal group of business leaders discussed ways to pressure officials to clear pro-Palestine protesters.
A handful of powerful businessmen pushed New York City Mayor Eric Adams to use police to crack down on pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University, donating to the politician and offering to pay for private investigators to help break up the demonstrations, the Washington Post has reported, based on leaked WhatsApp conversations.
The story, published on Thursday, says that several billionaires seeking to influence public perception of Israel’s war in Gaza discussed means of pushing the mayor and the university’s president to end the protests, which were eventually cleared last month amid criticism of the police’s heavy-handed response.
“One member of the WhatsApp chat group told The Post he donated $2,100, the maximum legal limit, to Adams that month,” the story reads.
“Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted.” The story states that city authorities denied that private investigators were used to help manage the protests.
The report comes as universities across the country continue to employ force against pro-Palestine activism, raising concerns over the repression of political expression. A number of universities have successfully negotiated with student encampments, which have called for divestment from companies involved in Israel’s war in Gaza and boycotts of Israeli institutions.
The WhatsApp chat cited by the Washington Post included prominent businessmen such as former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, brother of former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser on Middle East issues, Jared Kushner.
Other leaders, such as snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt also said that they held a video meeting with Mayor Adams on April 26.
Sending in the police has done little to dampen the spirits of pro-Palestine protesters, and in some cases, has led to heightened support from faculty and fellow students.
While supporters of the crackdowns say they are necessary to ensure the safety of Jewish students, some of whom say they have felt discomforted by anti-Israel rhetoric at the protests, pro-Palestine students – many of them Jewish – have faced the brunt of the violence at protests across the country, with few expressions of concern from authorities.
Earlier this week, a union representing about 48,000 graduate student workers in California, authorised a strike over the treatment of student protesters at universities such as the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where a pro-Israel mob attacked a pro-Palestine encampment with metal pipes and mace while police stood by. Several pro-Palestine activists were hospitalised.
The following day, police moved in to clear the pro-Palestine encampment.
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Western countries tout support for a two-state solution but exert little pressure over expanding settlements.
The Canadian government has announced it will impose sanctions on four Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank as settler violence against Palestinians surges during Israel’s war in Gaza.
In a press release on Thursday, Canada’s Global Affairs ministry said it was sanctioning Israeli settlers for the first time over “violent and destabilizing” actions against Palestinians.
“Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers – a long-standing source of tension and conflict in the region – have escalated alarmingly in recent months,” the ministry said. “This has undermined the human rights of Palestinians, prospects for a 2-state solution and posed significant risks to regional security.”
The settlers targeted are David Chai Chasdai, Yinon Levi, Zvi Bar Yosef and Moshe Sharvit. The ministry said all four have engaged directly or indirectly in violence against Palestinian civilians and property.
The sanctions were announced as impatience with Israel’s refusal to curb settler attacks grows among Western countries that have long touted their support for a two-state solution but imposed few consequences for the constant expansion of Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land in the West Bank. Those settlements are illegal under international law.
In February, the United States announced that it would sanction a handful of Israeli settlers, including Chasdai and Levi, over attacks on Palestinians.
The move allowed for the possibility of a wider US campaign to exert pressure on the settler movement, but President Joe Biden’s administration has kept the sanctions narrowly focused on a handful of individuals for the time being.
The US has resisted calls to sanction far-right Israeli ministers, such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, but even more limited sanctions against settlers have been met with ire from Israeli officials.
Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, settler attacks against Palestinians have surged to new heights, often under the gaze of Israeli forces who have taken few steps against the perpetrators.
This week, a group of Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian truck driver in the West Bank under the mistaken assumption that he was delivering humanitarian aid to Gaza.
According to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, which has said Israel’s policies in the occupied territory constitute the crime of apartheid, only 3 percent of investigations into attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians – many of which go unreported – have resulted in convictions.
That apathy is unsurprising to Palestinians, who see right-wing settlers and Israeli state policies as two iterations of a shared enterprise of displacing Palestinians and promoting Jewish settlement in the occupied territory.
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“Stop the carnage,” South Africa told the ICJ in their third attempt to seek provisions against Israel in its war on Gaza. At today’s hearing, the UN’s top court was told an end to the hostilities was a matter of extreme urgency and that Israel’s actions clearly indicate “genocidal intent.”
Published On 16 May 2024
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Arab leaders accuse Israel of obstructing Gaza ceasefire efforts and demand an end to its war on Palestinian territory.
The Arab League has called for a United Nations peacekeeping force in the occupied Palestinian territory at a summit dominated by Israel’s continuing deadly assault of the Gaza Strip.
The meeting of Arab heads of state and government convened in Bahrain on Tuesday more than seven months into Israel’s offensive in Gaza that has convulsed the wider region.
The “Manama Declaration” issued by the 22-member bloc called for “international protection and peacekeeping forces of the United Nations in the occupied Palestinian territories” until a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict is implemented.
It called for an immediate end to fighting in the Gaza Strip and blamed Israeli “obstruction” for failed negotiations for a ceasefire.
“We stress the need to stop the Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip immediately, withdraw the Israeli occupation forces from all areas of the Strip [and] lift the siege imposed on it,” the statement said.
The statement blamed Israel for the war continuing.
“We strongly condemn Israel’s obstruction of cease-fire efforts in the Gaza Strip and its continued military escalation by expanding its aggression against the Palestinian city of Rafah, despite international warnings of the disastrous humanitarian consequences,” it said.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, mediating between Hamas and Israel along with Qatar and the United States, also said Israel was evading efforts to reach a ceasefire.
“Those who think that security and military solutions are able to secure interests or achieve security [are] delusional,” el-Sisi told the summit before its conclusion.
In Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, a widely criticised Israeli ground operation is under way. More than a million displaced Palestinians had sought shelter in the area, after they were forced to flee their homes in other parts of Gaza that had come under intense Israeli bombardment since October. Approximately 600,000 people have fled the area since Israel launched its assault earlier this month, according to the UN.
The Arab League statement also reiterated a longstanding call for a two-state solution along Israel’s borders before the 1967 war, with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.
The declaration called on “all Palestinian factions to join under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO),” which is dominated by Hamas’s political rivals, Fatah.
The Arab League said it considered the PLO “the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.
Israel’s assault has killed at least 35,272 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and severe Israeli restrictions on food, water, fuel and humanitarian supplies has caused dire food shortages and the threat of famine to spread from the north to the south.
The Arab League also “strongly condemned the attacks on commercial ships”, referring to dozens of attacks on vital shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The Iran-aligned Houthis say they are attacking ships linked to Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The Arab League said the attacks “threaten freedom of navigation, international trade, and the interests of countries and peoples of the world”.
The declaration added the Arab nations’ commitment to “ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea” and surrounding areas.
The Arab League was founded in 1945 to promote regional cooperation and resolve disputes. However, it is widely seen as toothless and has long struggled to help solve conflicts in the region.
An Arab-Israeli war in 1967 saw Israel seize the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Israel had annexed East Jerusalem, and successive Israeli governments have encouraged the construction of settlements in the Palestinian territories.
Under international law, the Palestinian territories remain occupied, and Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are considered illegal.
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Omani doctor Khalid al-Shamusi refused to be evacuated from Gaza before Israeli forces closed the route out via the Rafah crossing. He told Al Jazeera that he wanted to stay to help his patients.
Published On 16 May 2024
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As Israel devastates Gaza, Egypt has largely had to watch on with rising concern about the developments on its border.
Its border with the Palestinian enclave has been a route for aid going in and people coming out but Israel has had the ultimate say over access to the border, even if it did not have a physical presence there until last week.
And it was that move – to send Israeli troops to the Rafah border crossing – that experts believe has cemented Egypt’s belief that Israel is not taking its security and political concerns seriously, and is instead “disrespecting” them.
Egypt has now taken its own steps – on May 12, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Egypt had joined South Africa’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) genocide case against Israel.
“The significance of this move is that it is sending a signal that Egypt is not happy with what’s happening in Gaza and how Israel is behaving,” said Nancy Okail, an expert on Egypt and the president and CEO of the Center for International Policy, even as she downplayed the effect of Egypt’s decision on the ICJ’s final verdict, labelling it a “symbolic gesture”.
Egypt has grown increasingly alarmed with Israel’s military operations in Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians from all over Gaza had sought refuge.
The takeover of the Philadelphi Corridor, which separates Egypt from Gaza, is particularly worrying for Cairo; the Egyptian parliament has warned that the Israeli military’s presence there was a violation of the Camp David Accords that brought peace between Egypt and Israel.
“The way Israel has acted in the last week and a half has been incredibly troubling for Egyptian officials,” said Erin A Snyder, a scholar of Egypt and a former professor at Texas A&M University. “They have been effectively showing disrespect for the relations that they have [with Egypt].”
The possibility that Israel’s ultimate goal in Gaza is to force out its Palestinian population has worried Egypt since the beginning of the war in October.
Early on, Israel’s intelligence ministry drafted a paper that proposed the transfer of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Although the Israeli government downplayed the report, Israeli politicians, including the far-right duo of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, said they supported the “voluntary” migration of Palestinians from Gaza.
The repeated suggestions have set off alarm bells in Egypt, which views any such transfer of millions of Palestinians into its territory as a red line that cannot be crossed, and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has warned Israel against any such move.
“Egypt has been sounding the alarm on the destabilising prospects of an Israeli military operation in Rafah and on any military action that could result in the alleged resettlement plan that emerged out of Israel last fall,” said Hesham Sallam, a scholar on Egypt and the Middle East at Stanford University.
Israel has seemingly taken measures to assuage Egypt’s concern by instructing Palestinians in Rafah to evacuate to al-Mawasi, a coastal area to the west of Rafah, away from Egypt.
Israel claims that al-Mawasi is a “safe humanitarian zone”, but aid groups say tens of thousands of people are crammed into the area without access to adequate food or water.
Over the last week, 450,000 people have fled Rafah, according to the United Nations, and nearly a million remain.
“The Israelis are intent on wrapping things up in Rafah in a way that looks similar to what they did in Khan Younis, or at least eventually,” said H A Hellyer, an expert on Middle East geopolitics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Royal United Services Institute.
“That is deeply concerning to Cairo because they don’t want more escalation along the border.”
Egypt has hosted ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel, playing a critical role in mediating between the two sides, along with Qatar and the United States.
However, Egypt seems frustrated with Israel’s refusal to end the war in exchange for the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza, according to Timothy Kaldas, an expert on Egypt and deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy think tank.
“The Israelis didn’t seem to take the ceasefire talks that Egypt was hosting seriously … and it’s not clear to anybody what would get Israel to agree to a ceasefire,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Egypt is probably pretty frustrated that this conflict has no end in sight.”
Two days before Israel stormed into eastern Rafah, Egypt, Qatar and the US lobbied Hamas and Israel to sign a deal. Hamas agreed to a modified version of the ceasefire proposal presented at the talks, but Israel rejected it.
Days later, Egyptian military officials cancelled a planned meeting with Israeli counterparts due to their disagreement over the Rafah operation, according to the Israeli press. “We don’t know what the meeting was supposed to be about. But certainly this move – overlapping with [joining the ICJ case] – is an indication that there is a great deal of frustration with Israel from the Egyptian side,” Sallam said.
Another delegation of Israeli intelligence officials is said to have arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for talks with their Egyptian counterparts over Rafah.
Egypt has little leverage left beyond suspending its peace treaty with Israel, a move experts believe is unlikely. That step could jeopardise the $1.6bn in US military assistance Egypt receives annually as part of the peace agreement.
“I generally doubt that there is any serious risk to the Camp David Accords,” said Kaldas. “The Egyptians benefit in a number of ways from maintaining that agreement.”
Snyder said “anything is possible”, noting that everything Israel is doing in Gaza is unprecedented. However, she does not expect Egypt to suspend the treaty either, as it is central to US regional interests.
“I feel that the US is very concerned and is working to ensure that [suspending the treaty] doesn’t happen,” she told Al Jazeera.
Snyder added that Egypt’s decision to join South Africa at the ICJ should also be seen as an attempt to pressure Israel’s strongest ally and largest weapons supplier to take action on regional security.
“This isn’t just about pressuring Israel. It’s also about pressuring the US to use its leverage towards Israel,” she told Al Jazeera.
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