PARIS: The United States will always insist on the need to protect journalists reporting from Gaza during the conflict between Israel and Hamas militants, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a letter to Agence France-Presse on Tuesday.
AFP and other international media groups had written to Blinken in late October urging his help in protecting journalists on the ground in Gaza after several were killed since the outbreak of fighting.
“The United States has and will continue to underscore with Israel, and with all countries, that journalists must be protected from harm,” Blinken wrote.
“We stand unequivocally for the protection of journalists during armed conflict and mourn those who have been killed or injured.”
Since the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas began in October, at least 63 journalists and media workers — 56 Palestinian, four Israeli and three Lebanese — have been killed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
AFP and the other media groups also urged Blinken’s help in evacuating their employees from Gaza as Israeli bombards the territory in retaliation for the attack by Hamas on October 7 that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli figures, and saw around 240 hostages taken.
Israel imposed a total shutdown of the territory’s borders on October 9.
“US citizens’ and foreign nationals’ continued safe passage out of Gaza remains our top priority, and we are working with Egypt, the UN, and Israel to facilitate their ability to exit Gaza safely,” Blinken wrote.
Around 100 French lawmakers mainly from left-wing parties on Monday sent a letter to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne also calling for all possible efforts to secure the exit of AFP journalists stranded in Gaza.
The Hamas-run health ministry on Tuesday updated its death toll since the Gaza war began to 18,412 people, mostly women and children.
In letter to AFP, Blinken says Gaza journalists must be ‘protected from harm’
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In letter to AFP, Blinken says Gaza journalists must be ‘protected from harm’
- At least 63 journalists and media workers have been killed since war broke out after Oct. 7, according to Committee to Protect Journalists
- AFP and other media groups had written to Blinken in October urging help in protecting journalists on the ground in Gaza
Iran Guards chief says Netanyahu ICC warrant ‘political death’ of Israel
- Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami calls the ICC warrant ‘a welcome move’
- Salami adds it is a ‘great victory for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements’
“This means the end and political death of the Zionist regime, a regime that today lives in absolute political isolation in the world and its officials can no longer travel to other countries,” Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami said in the speech aired on state TV.
In the first official reaction by Iran, Salami called the ICC warrant “a welcome move” and a “great victory for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements,” both supported by the Islamic republic.
Israel and its allies criticized the ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant on Thursday for Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif.
The warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were issued in response to accusations of crimes against humanity and war crimes during Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, sparked by the Palestinian militant group’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The move drew angry reactions from Netanyahu, who denounced it as antisemitic and from Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, but was welcomed by rights groups including Amnesty International.
The ICC’s move theoretically limits the movement of Netanyahu, as any of the court’s 124 national members would be obliged to arrest him on their territory.
The court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan urged the body’s members to act on the warrants, and for non-members to work together in “upholding international law.”
Israel armys say ‘eliminated’ five Hamas militants in north Gaza raid
- Israeli military: Slain militants had ‘led the murders and kidnappings in the area of Mefalsim’
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said on Friday it had “eliminated” five Hamas militants, including two commanders, in an overnight raid in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia.
In a statement, the military and the Shin Bet security agency said they had “eliminated five Hamas terrorists, including a Nukhba (commando) company commander and an additional company commander who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre” that sparked the Gaza war last year, adding that the slain militants had “led the murders and kidnappings in the area of Mefalsim,” a kibbutz in southern Israel.
Strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs after Israeli evacuation call
- Latest raids follow intense Israeli attacks on south Beirut as well as other areas in Lebanon’s south and east
BEIRUT: Strikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, a bastion of Hezbollah militants, shortly after an Israeli evacuation warning early on Friday, according to Lebanese official media and AFPTV footage.
The state-run National News Agency said “enemy warplanes” had carried two raids on south Beirut, and that “thick smoke was seen rising from the vicinity of the Lebanese University” in the Hadath neighborhood.
Live AFPTV footage showed plumes of smoke over the area after the Israeli military called for the evacuation of three locations, warning on social media of imminent attacks.
The military later said in a statement its “fighter jets completed a new round of strikes” on Beirut’s southern suburbs.
The latest raids follow intense Israeli attacks on south Beirut as well as other areas in Lebanon’s south and east, where Israel says it has been targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.
More than 11 months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict escalated into all-out war in September, with Israel conducting an extensive bombing campaign, primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, and sending ground troops into southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese health ministry said at least 52 people were killed on Thursday in Israeli strikes, including some 40 dead in Lebanon’s east.
On Friday, the Israeli army also issued evacuation warnings for parts of the coastal city of Tyre and the nearby Burj Al-Shemali Palestinian refugee camp.
The pace of the strikes across Lebanon has increased since US envoy Amos Hochstein ended his visit to Beirut on Wednesday, seeking to broker an end to the Israel-Hezbollah war.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Thursday that at least 3,583 people had been killed in the violence since October 2023. Most of the deaths have been since September this year.
UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN
- UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started
- UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013
UNITED NATIONS: The arrest warrant issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza does not bar UN officials from meeting with him in the course of their work, the UN said Thursday.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started as a result of the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, although there have been contacts with the Israeli leader by UN officials in the region.
Guterres has been declared persona non grata by Israel, which accuses him of being biased in favor of the Palestinians. So talks between him and Netanyahu are very unlikely.
After the warrants issued Thursday by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013.
“The rule is that there should not be any contacts between UN officials and individuals subject to arrest warrants,” Dujarric said.
But limited contacts are allowed “to address fundamental issues, operational issues, and our ability to carry out our mandates,” he added.
In late October, at a summit of the BRICS countries in Russia, Guterres met with President Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the ICP over the war in Ukraine.
That meeting, during which Guterres reiterated his condemnation of the Russian invasion, angered Ukraine.
Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister
- Palestinian Authority calls on UN member states to ensure the warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who are accused of war crimes, are acted upon
- The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, says decision is ‘binding’ on all members of the International Criminal Court
LONDON: Palestinians welcomed the decision by the International Criminal Court on Thursday to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant.
The Palestinian Authority said the court’s decision comes as Israeli forces continue to bomb Gaza in a conflict that has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and it hopes the ruling will help to restore faith in international law, the official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.
Netanyahu and Gallant are the first leading officials from a nation allied with the West against whom the ICC has issued arrest warrants since the court was established in July 2002. It also issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the head of the military wing of Hamas. Israeli authorities said in August he was killed by their forces in an attack the previous month, though Hamas have not confirmed this.
All three men are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their actions during the war in Gaza or the Oct. 7 attacks.
The PA said the decision to issue warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant was important because Palestinians “are being subjected to genocide and war crimes, represented by starvation as a method of warfare,” as well as mass displacement and collective punishment.
The PA, which signed up to the ICC in 2015, called on all UN member states to ensure the warrants are acted upon and to “cut off contact and meetings with the international wanted men, Netanyahu and Gallant.” Israel is not a member of the ICC.
The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, posted a message on social media platform X on Thursday in which he described the court’s decisions as “binding” on all those who have signed up to it.
“These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC), which includes all EU member states,” he wrote.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who has spent 17 years in office during three spells in charge since 1996, denounced the decision by the ICC to issue the warrant as “antisemitic.”
He said it would “have serious consequences for the court and those who will cooperate with it in this matter.”
