Palestinians in Rafah and across Gaza grapple with ongoing Israeli violence, starvation; UN experts call for embargo, sanctions; another expert identifies genocide at Israel’s hands – while a nurse in US gets fired for doing the same; Israel’s covert war on the ICC, Mossad threatened prosecutor; EU rejects Israel’s designation of UNRWA as a terrorist org; Biden admin won’t sanction ICC; US appears to scold Israel at UN; more.
2 paramedics killed in Israeli airstrike on ambulance in Rafah:
Andalou Agency reports: In a statement, the ministry said that two members of the ambulance teams affiliated with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) were killed as their ambulance was targeted while heading to evacuate the wounded and deceased people in the Abu al-Sa’id roundabout area in Tel al-Sultan.
The society said on X: “The PRCS paramedics Haitham Tubasi and Suhail Hassouna were killed as a result of the Israeli occupation’s direct bombing of a Palestine Red Crescent ambulance in the Tal Sultan area, west of #Rafah, while they were performing their humanitarian duty.”
Palestine Red Crescent mourns 30th worker killed in Israeli attacks:
The humanitarian group said Issam Rouhi Mohammed Aqel, a member of its staff who worked at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, was killed in an Israeli air raid that hit his home in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza.
“This brings the total number of martyrs among the PRCS’s staff to 30, of whom 17 were killed while performing their humanitarian duty,” the group said in a post on X.
Another one of my sons was KILLED in #Israeli_bombing near the refugee shelter where we are staying in Al Zaytoun neighbourhood of #Gaza_City! pic.twitter.com/lzaY52eC6n
— Motasem A Dalloul (@AbujomaaGaza) May 30, 2024
At least 66 people including children have been killed in 4 days of attacks in #Rafah⚠️
The attacks come less than a week after the @CIJ_ICJ ordered Israel to "immediately" halt its military offensive in Rafah.
Clearly, the orders are being categorically ignored. #CeasefireNow pic.twitter.com/OlpVl7ScTy
— Save the Children International (@save_children) May 29, 2024
Displaced families trapped in central Rafah as Israeli artillery fire rages:
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud reported midday on Thursday:, there seems to be a surge in attacks in the southern part of Rafah city, very close to the Egyptian border. The Israeli military is pushing deeper along the Philadelphi Corridor, slowly getting closer to the western part of the city.
In the central part of Rafah city, there is a confirmed report of families trapped inside their residential homes, caught in the line of artillery fire. Israeli quadcopters chase people there, preventing them from evacuating to safer areas.
Relief Web reports: “Israel’s army has increased its use of electronic-controlled quadcopters—which were previously restricted to use for intelligence purposes—for killing and injuring Palestinians.”
“Israeli sniping operations, killings, and executions primarily target unarmed civilians in shelter centres, hospitals, streets, and populated residential areas; these civilians pose no threat or danger to anyone, as they are not participants in any hostilities.”
From the northeast to the northwest of Rafah, where tent camps have been attacked in recent days, the situation is getting worse by the hour because of the expansive military operations. At the same time, nearly all health and public facilities are pushed out of service right now.
UN experts call for sanctions and arms embargo on Israel:
From press release: United Nations experts have called for “decisive international action” following the “barbaric” Israeli attack that killed at least 45 Palestinians in camps in Rafah on Sunday.
“Harrowing images of destruction, displacement and death have emerged from Rafah, including infants torn apart and people burnt alive,” the UN experts said.
“Reports emerging from the ground indicate that the strikes were indiscriminate and disproportionate, with people trapped inside burning plastic tents, leading to a horrific casualty toll,” the statement said.
“The attacks are a flagrant violation of international law. They are also an attack on human decency and our collective humanity,” the experts said.
“Even if Israeli leaders claim now that the strikes were a ‘mistake’, they bear international legal responsibility. Calling it a mistake will not make the strikes legal, bring back those killed in Rafah or give comfort to grieving survivors,” the UN experts said.
“The agony of Gaza’s people must end now.”
Israel denies latest strike on civilian camp near Rafah that killed 21 people:
Al Jazeera reports: The Israeli military has denied carrying out attacks on a tent camp housing displaced families in al-Mawasi, near Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, which have killed at least 21 people.
“Contrary to the reports from the last few hours, the [Israeli military] did not strike in the Humanitarian Area in al-Mawasi,” it said in a statement.
At least 12 of those killed in Tuesday’s attacks were women, medical officials in Gaza have said, while 64 people were wounded in the attacks, with 10 in critical condition. Israel previously designated al-Mawasi, in western Rafah as a humanitarian area to which Palestinians should evacuate for their safety.
The attack came just two days after a strike on a tent camp in the Tal as-Sultan area near Rafah killed 45 Palestinians. The strike sparked a fire that spread rapidly, razing the encampment to the ground.
Israeli air raids rain down on Palestinians returning home near Jabalia:
Al Jazeera reports: Following reports of an Israeli military withdrawal from the al-Faluja area in the west of the Jabalia refugee camp, residents who began to return faced air attacks and artillery fire resulting in dozens killed and injured.
Medical crews and volunteers have been tirelessly extracting bodies from under the rubble amid dire conditions, with Israeli forces continuing a 17-day bombing campaign of the area in northern Gaza. The devastation is immense, particularly after Israeli ground forces entered.
Witnesses report ongoing attacks on civilians and rescue teams, hindering evacuation efforts and documentation of the destruction.
World Health Organization makes risky mission to northern Gaza:
Statement: Amid ongoing intense hostilities, WHO and partners still managed to reach Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. First mission to the north of the Strip since 13 May. We delivered 15,000L of fuel, 14 hospital beds, medicines and trauma supplies to cover the needs of 1,500 people.
PCRS ambulances to the north to expand the service. Al-Ahli hospital is serving twice the number of people it is designed for, lacking essential surgical supplies, and salaries for the staff.
No lifesaving surgery can be performed in the evening due to the lack of specialized staff. We are hoping to support the deployment of an emergency medical team there.
Due to delays at a checkpoint, the mission was not able to access the nearby Public Aid Hospital. Road destruction, lack of safe access and fuel for missions is continuing to impede movement to the north. The city is full of debris and solid waste. We repeat our appeal for a ceasefire.
Israeli military chief of staff visits Rafah, vows to ‘completely dismantle’ Hamas:
Herzi Halevi toured the “Rafah area”, according to the Israeli military, as the ground offensive in the southernmost city continues.
He told Israeli troops they’re continuing the operation despite appeals to stop from the US and other key allies, for several reasons. Hamas fighters in Rafah are the “last division left with full capabilities” in Gaza, said Halevi.
He told soldiers they’re “making progress” in the city, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been ordered to evacuate to “humanitarian zones”.
NOTE: US intelligence indicates that it may be impossible to destroy Hamas; the Biden administration is doubtful that it is a realistic goal.
RECOMMENDED READING (Vox): Why Israel can’t destroy Hamas
Two Israeli soldiers killed in West Bank, one in Gaza fighting:
The Israeli military said that two Israeli soldiers were killed in a car-ramming attack in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday and that another soldier was killed in northern Gaza.
The assailant in the car-ramming, who escaped into Nablus, turned himself in to the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday night, but has yet to have been handed over to Israel.
An initial probe into Wednesday’s car ramming incident near the West Bank city of Nablus shows the two soldiers who were killed in the attack were run over while examining cars in the checkpoint. The driver turned his vehicle around immediately after hitting them and escaped back towards the city without the troops opening fire at him, a security source said.
The IDF reported that three Nahal soldiers who were killed on Wednesday in Gaza were hit by an explosive device that went off inside a civilian clinic in Rafah.
The army said forces were searching a medical clinic, when they came across a booby-trapped shaft that exploded, resulting in the deaths of the three.
HRW founder agrees that Israel is committing genocide:
Middle East Monitor reports: The co-founder of Human Rights Watch, whose German Jewish parents had to flee Nazi Germany, told CNN he now believes Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Aryeh Neier, who was also head of the American Civil Liberties Union, previously didn’t believe Israel’s military actions on Gaza could be considered genocide, but he changed his mind after witnessing how Israel has systematically deprived Gaza’s civilian population of food and water.
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Surveillance and interference: Israel’s covert war on the ICC exposed
+972 Magazine reports: For nearly a decade, Israel has been surveilling senior International Criminal Court officials and Palestinian human rights workers as part of a secret operation to thwart the ICC’s probe into alleged war crimes, a joint investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal.
The multi-agency operation, which dates back to 2015, has seen Israel’s intelligence community routinely surveil the court’s current chief prosecutor Karim Khan, his predecessor Fatou Bensouda, and dozens of other ICC and UN officials. Israeli intelligence also monitored materials that the Palestinian Authority submitted to the prosecutor’s office, and surveilled employees at four Palestinian human rights organizations whose submissions are central to the probe.
According to sources, the covert operation mobilized the highest branches of Israel’s government, the intelligence community, and both the civilian and military legal systems in order to derail the probe.
The intelligence information obtained via surveillance was passed on to a secret team of top Israeli government lawyers and diplomats, who traveled to The Hague for confidential meetings with ICC officials in an attempt to “feed [the chief prosecutor] information that would make her doubt the basis of her right to be dealing with this question.” The intelligence was also used by the Israeli military to retroactively open investigations into incidents that were of interest to the ICC, to try to prove that Israel’s legal system is capable of holding its own to account. (Read the full article here.)
Revealed: Israeli spy chief ‘threatened’ ICC prosecutor over war crimes inquiry – The Guardian
Mossad director Yossi Cohen was personally involved in secret plot to pressure Fatou Bensouda to drop Palestine investigation
The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation.
He told her: “You should help us and let us take care of you. You don’t want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family.”
Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories…… sought out compromising information on Bensouda and her close family members…”
Read more here.
EU rejects attempts to label UNRWA a ‘terrorist organization’:
Middle East Monitor reports: The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, has said the European Union rejects any attempts to label the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as a terrorist organization, and stressed that it will remain an indispensable lifeline for Palestinians.
This came following his meeting with UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini in Brussels yesterday.
Borrell has reiterated the EU’s support for UNRWA, praising its work and team, and said the Union’s member states have resumed their financial support for the agency, with “the next batch of European Union funding being on its way”.
He said that there are “no more words to describe the situation in Gaza. Day after day, the death follows the cortège. People are not only losing their lives: hope & social fabric are being destroyed.”
What we are witnessing, he added, offends the world’s “conscience & humanity.”
Biden administration makes U-turn, decides not to sanction the ICC:
Middle East Eye reports: The Biden administration made a sharp U-turn on sanctioning the International Criminal Court, amid warnings from lawmakers and human rights groups against the move.
At a Senate hearing last week, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed a desire to work together on a bipartisan effort to sanction the ICC, in response to its prosecutor’s call for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Then on Tuesday, the White House walked back those comments, with White House spokesperson John Kirby telling reporters, “We don’t believe that sanctions against the ICC is the right approach here”.
The move happened so suddenly that it caught Israel off guard.
Analysts say the flip-flop underlines the Biden administration’s tangled policy on Gaza, as it struggles to reconcile support for its “closest Middle East ally” (sic) – as well as the US’s growing isolation on the world stage. Besides trying to push Israel for a ceasefire, the White House is caught between a sharp divide in the Democratic Party over the war on Gaza.
Experts noted that the Biden administration’s suggestion that it would back sanctions on the ICC sounded particularly hollow after Biden welcomed the court’s decision in March 2023 to issue an arrest warrant for Putin.
Last week, 121 human rights and civil society groups warned President Biden in a letter against the move, which they said “would do grave harm to the interests of all victims globally and to the US government’s ability to champion human rights.”
US issues toothless rebuke against Israel at UN:
Reuters reports: Israel must do more to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza and should “remove all barriers to the flow of aid at scale through all crossings and routes” into the enclave, the United States told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday.
“The continued pattern of significant civilian harm resulting from incidents like Sunday’s airstrikes undermines Israel’s strategic goals in Gaza,” deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the 15-member council.
Algeria on Tuesday put forward a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that essentially orders Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive” in Rafah. On Wednesday, Wood told reporters that Washington was reviewing it, but U.N. action was unlikely to be helpful or change the situation on the ground.
The draft text also cites a ruling by the International Court of Justice on May 24 that ordered Israel to immediately halt its military assault on Rafah, in a landmark emergency ruling in South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide.
Wood said the ruling echoed the U.S. position that Israel must avoid a major military operation in Rafah that would put huge numbers of civilians at risk. The U.S. said on Tuesday that Israel’s actions in Rafah did not amount to a major ground operation that could change U.S. policy toward Israel.
Award-winning ‘compassionate’ nurse is fired after calling Israeli actions a ‘genocide’ in acceptance speech:
New York TImes reports: Earlier this month, NYU Langone Health bestowed an award on a labor and delivery nurse for providing compassionate care to mothers who had lost babies. But shortly after, the nurse said, the hospital fired her over the speech she gave when she accepted the award.
In it, she spoke of the suffering of Palestinian women amid the Israel-Hamas war, which she called a “genocide.” In her speech, according to a video she posted on social media, the nurse, Ms. Hesen Jabr, drew a connection between her work with grieving mothers in New York and the war in Gaza.
“It pains me to see the women from my country going through unimaginable losses themselves during the current genocide in Gaza,” said Ms. Jabr, who is Palestinian-American. “This award is deeply personal to me for those reasons.”
She added, “Even though I can’t hold their hands and comfort them as they grieve their unborn children and the children they have lost during this genocide, I hope to keep making them proud as I keep representing them here at NYU.”
Ms. Jabr said that these remarks led to her firing on May 22 after she returned to work following the ceremony. “As soon as I walked into the unit, I was dragged into an impromptu meeting with the President and Vice President of Nursing at NYU Langone to discuss how I ‘put others at risk’ and ‘ruined the ceremony’ and ‘offended people’ because a small part of my speech was a tribute towards the grieving mothers in my country,” she wrote in a post on Instagram.
