Gaza live: Fresh Israeli order forces over 170,000 Palestinians to leave their homes
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Turkey has submitted its formal bid to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to join South Africa's genocide case against Israel, Anadolu news agency is reporting.
According to the report, Turkey's ambassador to the Netherlands, Selcuk Unal, presented a "comprehensive and detailed" application to the UN court in The Hague on Wednesday.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who announced the move on Monday, said that Ankara has prepared a dossier that will likely significantly impact the trial.
Turkey's intervention is expected to be the most impactful in the case, and likely to encourage other countries to join.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Tehran will "never remain silent in the face of aggression against its interests and security," on a call to French president, Emmanuel Macron, state media reported on Wednesday.
The comments come amid ratcheting regional tensions following the Israeli assassination of Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Israeli citizens to "stay calm and composed," and said that the country is “prepared for both defence and offense."
He made the comments during a visit to an army recruitment base in Tel Hashomer, the Times of Israel reported.
He told recruits that they are “the backbone” of the nation.
The comments came after Iran pledged a retaliatory assault on the country following the assassination of Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last week.
אנחנו ערוכים בעוצמה - בהגנה ובהתקפה.
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) August 7, 2024
היום הייתי עם המתגייסים החדשים שלנו בבקו״ם. אתם הגב שלנו ואנחנו מצדיעים לכם ונותנים לכם גיבוי מלא. תמיד. pic.twitter.com/KVwidh0dql
Several Palestinians have been killed in a series of Israeli air strikes on Khan Younis, Al Jazeera Arabic is reporting.
Two were killed in a strike near a mosque in the west of the city, while four were killed in a series of strikes on a home and a market in the same area.
Meanwhile, another strike targeted the town of Abasan, east of Khan Younis. The number of casualties is currently unknown.
An Israeli drone strike killed two people and wounded six others in the southern Lebanese town of Jwaya, the health ministry said.
The American and British ambassadors to Japan have announced they will skip an upcoming ceremony commemorating the victims of the US’s 1945 atomic bombing because the city’s mayor did not invite the Israeli ambassador.
The Russian and Belarusian ambassadors have also been excluded from the event this Friday by Japanese authorities.
The Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony is intended to mark the 79th anniversary of the US atomic bomb attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima that killed tens of thousands of Japanese civilians, with many more later dying from radiation poisoning.
The attacks in August 1945 preceded Japan’s unconditional surrender to the US and the end of the Second World War.
Julia Longbottom, the UK’s ambassador to Japan, told local reporters that Israel is exercising self-defence in Gaza and should not be treated in the same way as Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
The American embassy said that Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador, does not want to politicise the Nagasaki event by attending.
Read more: US and UK to boycott Nagasaki bombing memorial after Israel disinvited
Rumours of a possible evacuation operation from Lebanon have given German citizens there a false sense of security, a German foreign ministry spokesperson said on Wednesday, urging them to leave the country immediately.
"The time now has come to leave Lebanon," the spokesperson said, calling on citizens to organise their own exit even if this means travelling via Turkey or paying high prices for flights.
A spokesperson for the defence ministry declined to give details on preparations for possible evacuations in the event of an escalation in the Middle East conflict.
Reporting by Reuters
German airline giant Lufthansa said on Wednesday that it will avoid using Iranian and Iraqi airspace until 13 August, extending an earlier decision not to fly over the countries, with Middle East tensions high.
It also extended a suspension of services to Tel Aviv, Tehran, Beirut, Amman and Erbil to the same date, the group said in a statement.
Reporting by AFP
Israeli forces have killed at least 24 Palestinians and wounded 110 others in the past 24 hours, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
This brings the death toll since 7 October to 39,677, with more than 91,645 wounded and an estimated 10,000 missing, likely dead and buried under rubble.
Health officials report that around 70 percent of the victims are children and women.
Israeli attacks have killed 620 Palestinians from the occupied West Bank in the past 10 months since 7 October, the Palestinian health ministry said on Wednesday.
The death toll includes 145 children and nine women.
Editor's note: This update was incorrectly titled: "Israelis shout 'we will rape them' at hearing on detention camp for Palestinians" based on an inaccurate translation of the protesters' chanting in Hebrew. The update has been changed to reflect the correct meaning.
Israeli protesters interrupted a high court hearing on the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp where Palestinians are tortured and held in poor conditions, according to Israeli newspaper Maariv.
The hearing was paused for 30 minutes due the commotion created from the protest, which was organised by right-wing groups.
The activists interrupted the hearing when the attorney for the petitioner, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), began speaking. The ACRI is asking for the facility to be closed.
The protesters shouted "disgrace" and "we are the sovereign" as they demanded the facility remain open.
מהומה בדיון בג"ץ על שדה תימן: קריאות "בושה, בושה", השופטים יצאו להפסקהhttps://t.co/oZIIDopFJs@aviadglickman pic.twitter.com/Uh5FGDQ7pc
— חדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) August 7, 2024
They also decried the alleged mistreatment of Israeli captives by Palestinian groups in Gaza.
"They are being raped now," one protester said.
After being taken out of the court room, they shouted for the death penalty to be enacted against "terrorists".
המוחים בדיון על שדה תימן בקריאות "עונש מוות למחבלים" במבואת בית המשפט@VeredPelman pic.twitter.com/vyRD4EQvoj
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) August 7, 2024
A leaked video showed the alleged gang-rape of a Palestinian detainee by Israeli soldiers at the Sde Teiman detention camp.
The footage, published by Israeli Channel 12 on Tuesday, showed dozens of soldiers entering the facility before moving one blindfolded man aside.
The detainee is then surrounded by a group of soldiers holding shields before they allegedly rape him.
According to Israeli media, the detainee was hospitalised after the assault with a torn rectum among other injuries.
The Israeli military police detained nine soldiers suspected of involvement in the incident for questioning. The soldiers deny wrongdoing.
Footage is released of Israeli soldiers covering themselves with shields, as they rape a Palestinian hostage at the Sde Teiman torture camp.
— Samira Mohyeddin سمیرا (@SMohyeddin) August 6, 2024
The unnamed hostage was hospitalized with a torn rectum, broken ribs, ruptured bowels & damaged lungs. https://t.co/jctKdaZgf0 pic.twitter.com/b9k46crFLY
Ambassadors from western countries including the United States will skip a ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki after Israel was snubbed, officials said on Wednesday.
Nagasaki's mayor said last week that Israel's ambassador Gilad Cohen was not invited to Friday's event in the southern Japanese city because of the risk of possible protests over the Gaza conflict.
The US and British embassies said on Wednesday that their ambassadors would not take part as a result, and that their countries would be represented by lower-ranking diplomats.
Media reports said that Australia, Italy, Canada and the European Union, who together with the United States, Britain and Germany signed a strongly worded joint letter to Nagasaki's mayor last month, would follow suit.
US ambassador Rahm Emanuel will not attend "after the mayor of Nagasaki politicised the event by not inviting the Israeli ambassador", an embassy spokesperson told AFP.
Instead, Emanuel, 64, who was ex-president Barack Obama's chief of staff, will go to a separate event at a temple in Tokyo, the spokesperson said.
The British embassy said that ambassador Julia Longbottom would also not be in Nagasaki, saying that not inviting Israel "creates an unfortunate and misleading equivalency with Russia and Belarus -- the only other countries not invited to this year's ceremony".
A spokesperson for the French embassy said that its number two would attend, telling AFP that the "decision not to invite the representative of Israel is regrettable and questionable".
Nagasaki mayor Shiro Suzuki said last week that the decision not to invite Cohen was "not politically motivated" but based on a desire to "hold the ceremony in a peaceful and sombre atmosphere".
Reporting by AFP
There should be nothing surprising about the revelation that troops at Sde Teiman, a detention camp set up by Israel in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel, are routinely using rape as a weapon of torture against Palestinian inmates.
Last week, nine soldiers from a prison unit, Force 100, were arrested for gang-raping a Palestinian inmate with a sharp object. He was hospitalised because his injuries.
At least 53 prisoners are known to have died in Israeli detention, presumed in most cases to be either through torture or following the denial of access to medical care. No investigations have been carried out by Israel and no arrests have been made.
Why should it be of any surprise that Israel’s self-proclaimed “most moral army in the world” uses torture and rape against Palestinians? It would be truly surprising if this was not happening.
After all, this is the same military that for 10 months has used starvation as a weapon of war against the 2.3 million people of Gaza, half of them children.
It is the same military that since October has laid waste to all of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as destroying almost all of its schools and 70 percent of its homes. It is the same military that is known to have killed over that period at least 40,000 Palestinians, with a further 21,000 children missing.
It is the same military currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in the world.
If there are no red lines for Israel when it comes to brutalising Palestinian civilians trapped inside Gaza, why would there be any red lines for those kidnapped off its streets and dragged into its dungeons?
Read more: Israel is in a death spiral. Who will it take down with it? by Jonathan Cook
An Israeli air strike on a home in Gaza City killed a father, a mother and their child on Wednesday morning, according to Wafa news agency.
Others were wounded in shelling across the central Gaza Strip, the agency added.
