Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has revived a push to close down Al Jazeera in Israel. The Israeli leader demanded on Monday that his coalition government pass legislation in the Knesset that would allow senior ministers to shut down foreign news networks deemed a security risk.
Israel’s war on Gaza — now in its 148th day — has killed at least 30,228 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and wounded 71,377 others.
Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, announce their intention to pursue “unity of action” in confronting Israel following talks hosted by Russia.
Israel’s war on Gaza — now in its 140th day — has killed at least 29,514 Palestinians, mostly children and women, and wounded 69,616 others.
Israel has unleashed unlawful lethal force against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings and displaying “a chilling disregard for Palestinian lives”, Amnesty International says.
It was easy to miss, amid the horrors, what answered them. In the blood-soaked weeks that started on Oct. 7, the most consequential acts in Israel and in Gaza may also have been the least noticed, carried out not by those who claimed leadership but by those whom leaders had failed. The people who pulled others out of rubble, or out of hiding, who sheltered strangers, who bent to heal wounds seen and unseen, they all answered unspeakable violence with a shared humanity. But their selflessness did more than save lives. It illuminated the connection at the heart of a contest that has preoccupied the world for most of a century, the fellow feeling that defines a community and, more broadly, a nation. Amid the negation of war, and in the absence of a state, two nations were affirmed.
The UN’s international court of justice has ordered Israel to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, in a historic decision. In an interim judgment delivered on Friday, the president of the court, Joan Donoghue, said Israel must “take all measures within its power” to prevent acts that fall within the scope of the genocide convention and must ensure “with immediate effect” that its forces do not commit any of the acts covered by the convention.
It’s not often that a columnist is obliged to make reference to pizza in the midst of a rogue-nation-made famine. But the times and decency demand it given that, as a defining aspect of its iron-clad siege of Gaza, Israel, by its own admission, has intended all along to bar food and water from reaching the devastated enclave and the children, women and men who, for the moment, populate it.
The ICJ seeks to settle disputes between countries, if they voluntarily participate in the proceeding, and then are bound to follow with the decision of the court.
Israel faces formidable external threats and major internal problems. It has yet to figure out how to govern Gaza after the war with Hamas is over. Governing Gaza will require help from the US, European and Arab states. To rope in international help, Israel will have to answer difficult questions about the two-state solution that Benjamin Netanyahu has bitterly opposed.
