International Criminal Court: "Active investigations" into alleged war crimes committed in Israel, Gaza and West Bank International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan has visited the Rafah border crossing this weekend and said that the ICC has “active investigations ongoing in relation to the crimes, allegedly committed in Israel on the 7th of October and also in relation to Gaza and the West Bank”. Khan said: It’s a moment of objectivity, a moment of quiet reflection and it needs to be a moment in which the international community and the international architecture built on the rubble of the second world war … ensure never again … abominations. He also said: We are independently looking at the situation in Palestine. We are looking at the events in Israel … We need cooperation. We need assistance. But we’re going to have the determination, the stamina and the professionalism to make sure we separate allegation from facts. The prosecutor added: There should not be any impediment to humanitarian relief supplies goin to children, to women and men, civilians. They are innocent. They have rights under international humanitarian law. Russian authorities closed an airport in the city of Makhachkala in the northern Caucasus region and diverted flights, including one from Israel, after media reports showed demonstrators denouncing Israeli actions in Gaza had gathered at the facility. Reuters reports: The Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsia said security forces had by 10:20 p.m. Moscow time (1920 GMT) removed the group from Makhchkala airport in Dagestan – one of several areas in the north Caucasus region that is home to large Muslim communities. The authority said the airport would remain closed pending “normalisation” of the situation. Russia’s Investigative Committee ordered a criminal probe into the incident. Israel urged Russian authorities to protect Israelis and Jews in their jurisdictions following the reports. A statement by the foreign ministry in Jerusalem said the Israeli ambassador in Moscow was working with Russian authorities. “The state of Israel views gravely attempts to harm Israelis citizens and Jews anywhere,” the statement said. Here are some images coming through the newswires of Gaza, where the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli strikes have surpassed 8,000, the Gaza health ministry reports: Angelina Jolie has spoken out about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, as well as the ongoing humanitarian crisis currently faced by thousands of Gazans as a result of Israel’s deadly strikes and seige across the strip. In a statement on Instagram, the former UN special envoy said: What happened in Israel is an act of terror. But that cannot justify the innocent lives lost in bombing a civilian population in Gaza that has nowhere to go, no access to food or water, no possibility of evacuation, and not even the basic human right to cross a border to see refuge … The denial of aid, fuel and water is collectively punishing a people. Humanity demands an immediate ceasefire. Palestinian and Israeli lives – and the lives of all people globally – matter equally. She added that she has donated to medical relief efforts and that she has “chosen to support the work of Doctors Without Borders”. US secretary of state Antony Blinken said that he spoke with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan to discuss the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas and the need for humanitarian aid into Gaza. Blinken’s call follows Israel’s announcement on Saturday that it was recalling its diplomats due to “increasingly harsh statements” coming out of Ankara. Earlier Saturday, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a pro-Palestinian protest that Israel is “an occupier”. Hundreds of people on Sunday stormed into the main airport in Makhachkala, Russia’s Dagestan region, to protest the arrival of a flight from Tel Aviv, Russian news agencies and social media said. The Associated Press reports: Authorities closed the airport in Makhachkala, capital of the predominantly Muslim region, and police converged on the facility. There were no immediate reports of injuries or arrests. Russian news reports said people in the crowd were shouting antisemitic slogans and tried to storm the airliner belonging to Russian carrier Red Wings that had landed from Tel Aviv. Video on social media showed some in the crowd on the landing field waving Palestinian flags. In a statement released Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel “expects the Russian law enforcement authorities to protect the safety of all Israeli citizens and Jews wherever they may be and to act resolutely against the rioters and against the wild incitement directed against Jews and Israelis.” Netanyahu’s office added that the Israeli ambassador to Russia was working with Russia to keep Israelis and Jews safe. Biden and Sisi discuss peace, Palestine In a fascinating juxtaposition, the White House put out press releases emailed three minutes apart about the phone calls Joe Biden had earlier today, one with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and another with Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The press and the public don’t get a transcript; we get what the White House calls a readout, meaning what they present as their summary of the call. The previous post brought you every point that was in the readout of the Biden-Netanyahu call. Neither the word Palestine nor even Palestinian was mentioned in the readout of that call from a president to a prime minister at war. The call with Sisi was very different, per the readout, and packed with some ominous points. The White House noted that “the two leaders committed to the significant acceleration and increase of assistance flowing into Gaza beginning today and then continuously.” The White House said: “They also discussed the importance of protecting civilian lives, respect for international humanitarian law, and ensuring that Palestinians in Gaza are not displaced to Egypt or any other nation.” Biden briefed Sisi on efforts “to ensure that regional actors not expand the conflict in Gaza and also on continuing efforts to secure the release of hostages” – see previous posts on hostages. Then the last line of the readout, from the White House: “President Biden and President Sisi affirmed their commitment to work together to set the conditions for a durable and sustainable peace in the Middle East to include the establishment of a Palestinian state.” That’s what the US president discusses with the president who is not at war with anyone but, apparently, not with the prime minister who is at war. The United Nations General Assembly voted in 2012 to recognize the state of Palestine. Israel and the United States were among the significant votes against. The UNGA voted in 2015 to fly the Palestinian flag at the UN, with Palestine as a non-member observer of the global body. Biden presses Netanyahu to respect international humanitarian law Joe Biden spoke by phone with Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning, the White House said. The US president and the Israeli prime minister discussed the situation in Gaza. “The president reiterated that Israel has every right and responsibility to defend its citizens from terrorism and underscored the need to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law that prioritizes the protection of civilians,” the White House said in a press statement. The two leaders discussed continuing efforts to locate and secure the release of the 200+ hostages taken by Hamas during their attack on southern Israel on 7 October. The hostages are chiefly Israeli civilians. Meanwhile: “The president underscored the need to immediately and significantly increase the flow of humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of civilians in Gaza,” the White House said. The two leaders agreed to continue dialogue. Here are more comments from UNRWA’s communications director Juliette Touma on the worsening humantarian crisis in Gaza amid Israel’s deadly seige. Speaking to Al Jazeera following Gazans breaking into UN aid warehouses in a desperate attempt to obtain aid, Touma said: “It is a worrying sign of the beginning of the fall of civil order in Gaza, but it’s equally the highest level of despair among the people.” The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that its teams in Gaza received 24 trucks from the Egyptian Red Crescent through the Rafah crossing this evening: The total number of the received trucks has reached 118 so far, while the entry of fuel has not been allowed till this moment. Thousands of Gaza residents broke into UN warehouses on Sunday, grabbing flour and other essential items in a sign they had reached “breaking point”, said the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA), Reuters reports. Reuters adds: “This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, said in a statement. Speaking to Reuters from Amman in Jordan, Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s director of communications, said the scenes at the warehouses and distribution centres showed people’s despair. “This is an indication that people in Gaza have reached a breaking point,” she said. “The levels of frustration and despair are really very high, and people are hitting rock bottom when it comes to their patience, their ability to take more.” Touma said UNRWA had been forced to reduce the scale of its humanitarian operation in the densely populated enclave because it could not distribute fuel to some medical facilities. She said UNRWA had not received any additional supplies on Sunday. “Those supplies are very, very little and they don’t correspond to the huge needs on the ground,” she said. “We are asking for a standard and regular flow of humanitarian supplies, including fuel, and an increase in the number of trucks on these convoys.” Gaza resident Mansour Shouman has expressed his gratitude to the hundreds of thousands of protestors that marched in pro-Palestine rallies around the world in recent weeks. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Shouman said: Whenever people have access to social media and they see the demonstrations all around the world, trying to support the cause of the Palestinian people here in Gaza, trying to put pressure on their governments to ease the pressure on us here, their spirits get lifted. On behalf of the 2.3 million people living in Gaza, I want to thank each and every one of you who go to these demonstrations, who write letters to their government officials. In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of protestors have taken to the streets across the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East in shows of solidarity with Palestinians. The rallies come as Israel intensifies its deadly strikes against Gaza which have already killed over 8,000 Palestinians, left the narrow strip in a tight siege and thousands of residents with extremely limited access to food, water, medical aid and shelter. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, as well as a handful of human rights and civil society NGOs in Israel, are calling for the end to the “state-backed wave of settler violence”. The statement said: We, the undersigned human rights and civil society NGOs in Israel, call on the international community to act urgently to stop the state-backed wave of settler violence which has led, and is leading to, the forcible transfer of Palestinian communities in the West Bank. For the past three weeks, since Hamas’s atrocities of October 7th, settlers have been exploiting the lack of public attention to the West Bank, as well as the general atmosphere of rage against Palestinians, to escalate their campaign of violent attacks in an attempt to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities. During this period, no fewer than thirteen herding communities have been displaced. Many more are in danger of being forced to flee in the coming days if immediate action is not taken … Unfortunately, the Israeli government is supportive of these attacks and does nothing to stop this violence. On the contrary: government ministers and other officials are backing the violence and in many cases the military is present or even participates in the violence, including in incidents where settlers have killed Palestinians. Moreover, since the war has begun there has been a growing number of incidents in which violent settlers have been documented attacking nearby Palestinian communities while wearing military uniform and using government-issued weapons. “We are going to move a standalone Israeli funding bill,” the US’s new House speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview on Fox News. In a response to a question on separating Israeli aid from Ukrainian aid, Johnson said: “Our Republican colleagues in the Senate have a similar measure. We believe that that is a pressing and urgent need. There are lots of things going on around the world that we have to address and we will but right now, what’s happening in Israel takes the immediate attention … We’ve got to separate that and get it through. Médecins Sans Frontières has sent 26 tons of medical supplies on a World Health Organization plane to Egypt, the global humanitarian organization said on Sunday. The group said: The medical supplies can cover the needs for 800 surgical interventions and are destined for healthcare facilities in Gaza in collaboration with the local health authorities. We have long-standing partnerships with various hospitals in the Strip. We need this delivery to happen as soon as possible, as healthcare facilities in Gaza are overwhelmed with patients and are running very low on medical supplies, following more than three weeks of complete siege by the Israeli forces. International Criminal Court: "Active investigations" into alleged war crimes committed in Israel, Gaza and West Bank International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan has visited the Rafah border crossing this weekend and said that the ICC has “active investigations ongoing in relation to the crimes, allegedly committed in Israel on the 7th of October and also in relation to Gaza and the West Bank”. Khan said: It’s a moment of objectivity, a moment of quiet reflection and it needs to be a moment in which the international community and the international architecture built on the rubble of the second world war … ensure never again … abominations. He also said: We are independently looking at the situation in Palestine. We are looking at the events in Israel … We need cooperation. We need assistance. But we’re going to have the determination, the stamina and the professionalism to make sure we separate allegation from facts. The prosecutor added: There should not be any impediment to humanitarian relief supplies goin to children, to women and men, civilians. They are innocent. They have rights under international humanitarian law.