Israel-Hamas live updates: Israel braces for International Criminal Court arrest warrants for PM Benjamin Netanyahu
Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu have held talks on a hostage release plan as the International Criminal Court looks at issuing arrest warrants against the Israeli leader and other officials.
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US President Joe Biden has spoken with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as diplomatic efforts intensify to reach a long-sought truce in the war-battered region.
The two allies “reviewed ongoing talks to secure the release of hostages together with an immediate ceasefire in Gaza,” the White House said.
The Israeli government has come under intense pressure from its global allies to reach a ceasefire, as well as from protesters within Israel demanding the release of hostages seized by the Palestinian militant group during the October 7 attack.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to mediate a new truce for months.
Mr Biden and Mr Netanyahu “also discussed increases in the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza including through preparations to open new northern crossings starting this week,” the statement said.
“The President stressed the need for this progress to be sustained and enhanced in full co-ordination with humanitarian organisations,” the White House said.
Mr Biden also “reiterated his clear position” on any Israeli assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the statement said.
The phone call between the two leaders comes as the International Criminal Court (ICC) looks at issuing arrest warrants against Mr Netanyahu and other officials, Israeli media has reported.
Quoting the news site Walla, The Times of Israel reported that Mr Netanyahu is “under unusual stress” over the prospect of an arrest warrant against him and other Israelis by the UN tribunal in The Hague.
As part of his bid to avoid an arrest, the Israeli prime minister has reportedly reached out to the Biden administration for support.
Israeli newspaper Maariv also reported that Mr Netanyahu is “frightened and unusually stressed” by the possibility of an ICC arrest warrant.
The ICC is currently investigating Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
According to a report by Israel’s Channel 12, these investigations could also lead to arrest warrants being issued for Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.
The ICC case is separate from several ongoing cases against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), including one brought by South Africa that alleges that Israel is committing the crime of genocide in its continuing war on Gaza.
The ICJ was created to resolve conflicts between states while the ICC prosecutes individuals for crimes.
Some 250 people were abducted by Palestinian militants when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1170 people, Israeli and foreigners, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 34,454 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
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RED CROSS DOES NOT HAVE MANDATE TO REPLACE UNRWA
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) does not have a mandate to replace the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, its director general said in comments published on Monday.
UNRWA was swept into controversy in January when Israel accused 12 of its 30,000 employees of being involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks which led to the deaths of around 1,160 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed nearly 35,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
The UN immediately fired the implicated staff members and launched an internal investigation to assess the agency’s neutrality.
“We have completely different mandates,” ICRC director general Pierre Krahenbuhl told Swiss daily Le Temps in an interview.
UNWRA’s mandate “comes from the UN General Assembly, the ICRC’s from the Geneva Convention. The ICRC cannot take over UNRWA’s mandate,” he said.
“We already have enough to do without replacing other organisations,” said Krahenbuhl, who himself had headed UNRWA between 2014 and 2019.
Last week, a report by an independent group led by French former foreign minister Catherine Colonna concluded that Israel had failed to furnish proof that some UNRWA employees had links to “terrorist organisations” such as Hamas.
BLINKEN ARRIVES IN SAUDI ARABIA
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived Monday in Riyadh at the start of a new crisis tour aimed at pushing an elusive Israel-Hamas ceasefire and increasing humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
The top US diplomat will also visit Jordan and Israel on his seventh visit to the region since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel which set off a relentless Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
In Saudi Arabia, Blinken is expected to hold new talks with the Saudi leadership on potential normalisation of relations with Israel, a State Department official said.
Saudi Arabia was considering the step, which would carry massive significance as the kingdom is guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites, before October 7.
The United States has sought to keep up momentum, dangling the prospect of normalisation to encourage moderation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime opponent of Palestinian statehood.
HAMAS TO RESPOND TO TRUCE PLANS
A senior Hamas official told AFP that the group would deliver its response to Israel’s latest counter-proposal for a Gaza ceasefire on Monday in Egypt local time.
“A Hamas delegation headed by Khalil al-Hayya will arrive in Egypt tomorrow … and deliver the movement’s response” to the Israeli proposal during a meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials, said the official who declined to be named.
Mediator Egypt had sent its own delegation to Israel this week to jump-start stalled negotiations even as fighting in the Gaza Strip rages.
Talks “are taking place in Cairo today”, said Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services, though it was not immediately clear whether the Hamas delegation had already arrived.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been unsuccessfully trying to broker a new Gaza truce deal ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Diplomatic efforts have been stepped up in recent days to reach a truce and hostage-release deal.
US news website Axios, citing two Israeli officials, reported that Israel’s latest proposal includes a willingness to discuss the “restoration of sustainable calm” in Gaza after hostages are released.
It is the first time in the nearly seven-month war that Israeli leaders have suggested they are open to discussing an end to the war, Axios said.
“Hamas is open to discussing the new proposal positively,” another Hamas source close to the negotiations told AFP.
The source added that the group is “keen to reach an agreement that guarantees a permanent ceasefire, the free return of displaced people, an acceptable deal for (prisoner) exchange and ensuring an end to the (Gaza) siege”.
The delegation would also discuss an Egyptian proposal concerning a ceasefire and prisoner exchange as part of the overall deal to stop the fighting in Gaza, the source said.
Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services, reported “noticeable progress in bringing the views of the Egyptian and Israeli delegations closer”.
PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS PRAY ON ORTHODOX PALM SUNDAY
Orthodox Christians in Palestine have celebrated Palm Sunday despite the war in Gaza.
Adorned with Palm trees, the St Porphyrius church stood as a symbol of hope, as the parishioners recalled Christ’s entry into the Holy City of Jerusalem.
Worshippers gathered in a modest procession within the confines of the Church, offering their prayers and pleas for an end to the relentless war.
Their moving message of resilience and determination echoed beyond the besieged Gaza.
Meanwhile, Palestinian Christians in the occupied West Bank found themselves deprived of practising their religious traditions, due to Israeli policies and constraint which stopped them from reaching Jerusalem to celebrate Palm Sunday.
GAZA AID PIER NEARS COMPLETION
The White House said that a US-made pier meant to boost aid to Gaza will become operational in a few weeks but cannot replace land routes with trucks as the best way to feed people in the territory.
Israel’s more than six-month war against Hamas in Gaza has triggered a humanitarian crisis, and it faces growing pressure to enable more aid deliveries as the UN warns famine is imminent.
“It will take probably two to three weeks before we can really see an operation,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Sunday on ABC News.
Kirby said the floating platform to bring more food and other essentials into Gaza will help, but has its limits.
“Quite frankly, nothing can replace the ground routes and the trucks that are getting in,” Kirby said.
After the killing of seven aid workers in an Israel strike on April 1, which drew international outrage, US President Joe Biden bluntly told Israel to change the way it is waging the war.
He said it was imperative that Israel let in more aid and take more pains to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties.
Biden said continued US aid to Israel would depend on such changes being made. Kirby said Israel is now in fact letting in more trucks, including in the particularly hard-hit north of Gaza.
“The Israelis have started to meet the commitments that President Biden asked them to meet,” he said.
The United States, Israel’s main ally and weapons supplier, has expressed growing public frustration with Israel over its conduct of the Gaza war.
HUNDREDS ARRESTED IN PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTS
On Sunday, the White House insisted that pro-Palestinian protests that have rocked US universities in recent weeks must remain peaceful, after police arrested around 275 people on four separate campuses over the weekend.
“We certainly respect the right of peaceful protests,” Kirby told ABC. But, he added, “we absolutely condemn the anti-Semitism language that we’ve heard of late and certainly condemn all the hate speech and the threats of violence out there.”
The wave of demonstrations began at Columbia University in New York but they have since spread rapidly across the country, and in some cases the world, with similar encampments springing up at the University of Sydney.
While peace has prevailed in many campuses, the number of protesters detained – at times by police in riot gear using chemical irritants and tasers – is rising fast.
They include 100 at Northeastern University in Boston, 80 at Washington University in St Louis, 72 at Arizona State University and 23 at Indiana University.
Among those arrested at Washington University was US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.
“This is about freedom of speech … on a very critical issue,” she told CNN shortly before her arrest. “And there they are, sending in the riot police and basically creating a riot,” added Stein.
University administrators have struggled to find the best response to the dissent, caught between the need to respect free-speech rights and to contain inflammatory and sometimes violently anti-Semitic calls by protesters.
At the University of Southern California, officials closed the main campus to the public after pro-Palestinian groups again set up an encampment that had been cleared earlier.
SAUDI ARABIA WARNS OF ECONOMIC FALLOUT
Saudi Arabia has called for regional “stability”, warning of the effects of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war on global economic sentiment at the start of a summit attended by a host of Gaza mediators.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Palestinian leaders and high-ranking officials from other countries trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas are on the guest list for the summit in Riyadh, capital of the world’s biggest crude oil exporter.
The Gaza war along with conflicts in Ukraine and elsewhere put “a lot of pressure” on the economic “mood”, Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan said at one of the first panel discussions of the two-day World Economic Forum (WEF) special meeting.
“I think cool-headed countries and leaders and people need to prevail, and you need to make sure that you actually de-escalate,” Jadaan said.
“The region needs stability.”
In the aftermath of the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,388 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas health ministry.
“The world is today walking a tightrope right now, trying to balance security and prosperity,” Saudi planning minister Faisal al-Ibrahim told a press conference ahead of the summit.
“We meet at a moment when one misjudgment or one miscalculation or one miscommunication will further exacerbate our challenges.”
PROTESTS, AIRSTRIKES AS HAMAS STUDIES TRUCE PROPOSAL
Hamas said it was studying the latest Israeli counter-proposal regarding a potential ceasefire in Gaza, a day after media reports said a delegation from mediator Egypt arrived in Israel in a bid to jump-start stalled negotiations.
The signs of fresh truce talks came alongside at least three Israeli air strikes during the night in Rafah, southernmost Gaza, according to an AFP correspondent.
Rafah is crowded with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by nearly seven months of war between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas. Strikes in Rafah and elsewhere killed more than a dozen people overnight, hospital officials said.
“Today, the Hamas movement received the official Zionist occupation response to the movement’s position, which was delivered to the Egyptian and Qatari mediators on April 13,” Khalil al-Hayya, deputy head of Hamas’s political arm in Gaza, said in a statement.
“The movement will study this proposal, and upon completion of its study, it will submit its response.”
Hamas has previously insisted on a permanent ceasefire, something rejected by Israel.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been unsuccessfully trying to seal a new truce deal in Gaza ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
A delegation from Egypt arrived in Israel on Friday hoping to revive the truce negotiations.
IRAN TO RELEASE SEIZED SHIP’S CREW
Iran said Saturday it would release the crew members of a Portuguese-flagged ship that its forces seized this month in The Gulf.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps took over the MSC Aries with 25 crew members on board near the Strait of Hormuz on April 13.
Tehran later said the ship belonged to its arch-foe Israel and was being investigated for alleged violations of international maritime law.
“The humanitarian issue of the release of the ship’s crew is of great concern to us,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a phone call with his Portuguese counterpart Paulo Rangel.
“We have given consular access to their ambassadors in Tehran and announced to the envoys that the crew members will be released and extradition,” he was quoted as saying in a statement from his ministry, without elaborating.
GLOBAL PROTESTS AT UNIVERSITIES SPREAD
Students across the US in New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles and at one of France’s most prestigious universities have called off protests over the Gaza war after street scuffles between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli groups.
Administrators at the Institute of Political Studies, or Sciences Po, university in Paris acted to douse mounting tensions at the Paris establishment as demonstrations spread across American universities over the impact of the Gaza war.
Pro-Palestinian students have staged several days of sit-ins and protests at the 150-year-old university.
IDF KILLS TWO PALESTINIAN MEN IN WEST BANK
Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men at a military post near the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the army and Palestinian media reported.
The incident occurred when several militants arrived in a vehicle and fired at soldiers stationed at the Salem military post at the entrance to Jenin, the army said in a statement.
- with AFP.
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