Gaza live: Gaza death toll rises to 35,80
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At least three Palestinians were killed by an Israeli strike in central Rafah, as Israel moves to expand its offensive on the southern Gaza border city despite an international outcry against the move.
The Israeli strike hit a home in a central area of the city, killing three people, according to Wafa, the Palestinian news agency.
At least 810,000 people have been discplaced from Rafah in two weeks as a result of Israel's offensive, according to the UN.
US human rights groups are urging the US to suspend arms transfers to Israel after the International Criminal Court (ICC) said it seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three leaders of Hamas.
“The US should immediately suspend all arms transfers to Israel, given the ICC’s conclusion that Israeli officials at the highest levels are engaging in war crimes for which the court is seeking their arrest,” Raed Jarrar, Advocacy Director for Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said.
“US officials involved in approving and sending additional weapons to Israel may find themselves next in line facing ICC arrest warrants.”
A spokesperson for UK Prime minister Rishi Sunak has dismissed the ICC prosecutor's arrest warrant request against Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as "unhelpful."
"This action is not helpful in relation to reaching a pause in the fighting, getting hostages out or getting humanitarian aid in," the spokesperson said.
A spectre is haunting Columbia University and other American campuses from coast to coast: that of Edward Said.
The powers of old and new genocidal Zionism have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump, European governments, New York Times columnists and Fox News presenters.
They are all barking up the wrong tree.
Which party in this global anti-Zionist uprising has not been decried as “antisemitic” by its opponents in power?
For more than half a century, US political and public discourse has been violently dominated by pro-Israel rhetoric. It is not accidental that a university affiliated with the name of Said, who taught at Columbia for the entirety of his academic life, is now changing that hegemony and putting Zionism, the Jewish supremacist ideology of a garrison state, on the defensive.
READ MORE: US campus protests: Edward Said would have treasured this moment, Opinion by Hamid Dabashi
Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, welcomed the ICC chief prosector's decision to seek arrest warrants against senior Hamas and Israeli leaders.
In a statement, Jarrah said that the move "opens the door to those responsible for the atrocities committed in recent months to answer for their actions at a fair trial".
“ICC member countries should stand ready to resolutely protect the ICC’s independence as hostile pressure is likely to increase while the ICC judges consider Khan’s request," he added.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that they have delivered their first baby at their field hospital in Rafah.
“The mother’s journey was full of anxiety and fear throughout multiple displacements, constantly looking for safety. Sanad means ‘support’, what she says she hopes he’ll grow to become for others around him,” the ICRC said in a post on X.
According to UN Women, over 150,00 pregnant and breastfeeding women are facing dire sanitary conditions and health hazards.
Unrwa has warned that due to malnutrition, babies in Gaza are being born too small.
👶Baby Sanad is the first baby born in the ICRC’s field hospital in #Rafah
— ICRC in Israel & OT (@ICRC_ilot) May 20, 2024
The mother's journey was full of anxiety & fear throughout multiple displacements, constantly looking for safety.
Sanad means "support", what she says she hopes he'll grow to become for others around him. pic.twitter.com/79j412xxjA
The UN special rapporteur on the right to housing has welcomed the ICC arrest warrant requests.
In a post on X, Balakrishnan Rajagopal said that all charges against Israeli leaders "were likely to stick", but added that some charges were "missing" including "attacks against various civilian objects including homes”.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has compared the announcement by the chief ICC prosecutor that they are seeking arrest warrants for Hamas and Israeli leaders to "Nazi propaganda".
“We haven’t seen such a show of hypocrisy and hatred of Jews like that of the Hague Tribunal since Nazi propaganda,” Smotrich said in a post on X.
כזה מופע של צביעות ושנאת יהודים כמו של בית הדין בהאג לא ראינו מאז הפרופגנדה הנאצית. גם הנאצים דיברו בשם ה״מוסר״ גם אז לא היה שם כלום מלבד אנטישמיות טובה וישנה כמו שחווינו בכל הדורות. שונאי ישראל באים והולכים, נצח ישראל לא ישקר.
— בצלאל סמוטריץ' (@bezalelsm) May 20, 2024
צווי המעצר הללו יהיו המסמר האחרון בפירוקו של בית… pic.twitter.com/WfzggRDJ4D
Israel's President Isaac Herzog has condemned the ICC chief prosecutor's decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, calling it "beyond outrageous".
"Any attempt to draw parallels between these atrocious terrorists and a democratically elected government of Israel - working to fulfill its duty to defend and protect its citizens entirely in adherence to the principles of international law – is outrageous and cannot be accepted by anyone," Herzog said.
Reporting by Reuters
Hamas has demanded that the ICC chief prosector's request for arrest warrants for three of its leaders be cancelled.
The group added in a statement that the ICC's request for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders had come "seven months too late."
Reporting by Reuters
Andrew Parsons, the president of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), has said in a statement that Israel should not be suspended from the 2024 Games.
Parsons told Reuters that Russian and Belrussian Paralympic Commitees were suspended because "they used the Olympic movement to promote the war and the invasion of Ukraine".
He said that, in the case of Israel, "the Paralympic Committee and even the Palestine Paralympic Committee have not done anything of that nature, so we don’t have any process in place when it comes to suspending those national Paralympic committees".
Israel's Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Monday that the ICC's decision to seek arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister and defence minister was "scandalous".
Katz said that he had opened a special war room to deal with the ICC's move, and added that "no force in the world" would prevent Israel from bringing back its hostages and deafeating Hamas.
Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib has said the request submitted by the ICC chief prosecutor for the arrest warrants for senior Hamas and Israeli leaders on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity is an "important step in the investigation of the situation in Palestine".
"Crimes committed in Gaza must be prosecuted at the highest level, regardless of the perpetrators," Lahbib said in a post on X.
Hamas reacting to the the decision by the ICC prosecutor to seek arrest warrants for three of its leaders said that it effecitvely “equates the victim with the executioner”, reported the Reuters news agency.
Sharp words Benny Gantz.
“Placing the leaders of a country that went into battle to protect its citizens, in the same line with bloodthirsty terrorists - is moral blindness,” wrote the former Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz in a post on X. “Accepting the position of the prosecutor would be a historical crime,” he added.
The Israeli opposition leader, Yair Lapid, condemned the nnouncement of the ICC a as a “disaster”, Reuters reported.
Lapid voiced hope that the US Congress would intervent and condemn the ICC measures.
