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Tag: Palestinian civilians

  • UN’s top court says Israel obliged to allow UN aid into Gaza

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    The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said Israel has a legal obligation to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip by the UN and its entities to ensure the basic needs of Palestinian civilians there are met.

    An advisory opinion from the UN’s top court also said Israel had not substantiated its allegations that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) lacked neutrality or that a significant number of its staff were members of Hamas or other armed groups.

    The UN’s chief said he hoped Israel would abide by the “very important decision”.

    But Israel rejected the ICJ’s opinion as “political” and insisted it would not co-operate with Unrwa, which it has banned.

    The opinion is non-binding, but it carries significant moral and diplomatic weight.

    In December, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ for an opinion on Israel’s obligations, as an occupying power and a member of the UN, towards UN agencies and other international organisations operating in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

    It came after the Israeli parliament passed laws banning any activity by Unrwa on Israeli territory and contact with Israeli officials.

    The ICJ was asked to also cover in its opinion Israel’s duty to allow the unhindered delivery of essential supplies to Palestinian civilians.

    Israel tightened its blockade on Gaza after the start of its war with Hamas two years ago and has since restricted – and at times completely stopped – the entry of food and other aid for the 2.1 million population.

    Before this month’s ceasefire deal took effect, UN-backed global experts had warned that more than 640,000 people were facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity and that there was an “entirely man-made” famine in Gaza City.

    Israel rejected the famine declaration, insisting it was allowing in sufficient food.

    The ICJ’s President Yuji Iwasawa read out its advisory opinion at The Hague on Wednesday.

    He said the panel of 11 international judges agreed that Israel, as an occupying power, was required to fulfil its obligations under international humanitarian law.

    The first obligation was to “ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies and services”, according to the judge.

    The second was to “agree to and facilitate by all means at its disposal relief schemes on behalf of the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory so long as that population is inadequately supplied, as has been the case in the Gaza Strip”.

    The other obligations listed included respecting the prohibitions on forcible transfer from an occupied territory and on the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.

    Judge Iwasawa said the panel were also of the opinion that Israel had “an obligation to co-operate in good faith with the United Nations by providing every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, including [Unrwa]”.

    Israel was also obliged to ensure “full respect for the privileges and immunities accorded to the United Nations” and its officials, as well as for the “inviolability of the premises of the United Nations… and for the immunity of the property and assets of the organisation from any form of interference”, he added.

    Yuji Iwasawa, the president of the International Court of Justice, read out the advisory opinion [Reuters]

    When asked about the advisory opinion in Geneva, UN Secretary General António Guterres said: “This is a very important decision. And I hope that Israel will abide by it.”

    He added that the advisory opinion came at a moment in which the UN was doing everything it could to boost aid deliveries to Gaza and deal with the “tragic situation” there.

    Israel’s foreign ministry said it categorically rejected the advisory opinion, describing it as “entirely predictable from the outset regarding Unrwa”.

    “This is yet another political attempt to impose political measures against Israel under the guise of ‘international law’,” it added.

    The ministry also said Israel was fully upholding its obligations under international law and that it would “not co-operate with an organisation that is infested with terror activities”.

    Unrwa – the largest humanitarian organisation in Gaza, with 12,000 Palestinian staff based there – has repeatedly denied Israel’s allegation that it is deeply infiltrated by Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, UK and other countries.

    Israel has said that Unrwa staff took part in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken to Gaza as hostages, and claimed that the agency still employs more than 1,400 “Hamas operatives”.

    The UN said last year that it had fired nine of Unrwa’s staff in Gaza after investigators found evidence that they might have been involved in the 7 October attack. Another 10 staff were cleared because of insufficient evidence.

    Judge Iwasawa said the information the ICJ received was “not sufficient to establish Unrwa’s lack of neutrality”, and that Israel had “not substantiated its allegations that a significant part of Unrwa employees ‘are members of Hamas… or other terrorist factions’”.

    A lorry carrying aid waits at the Israeli side of the Kerem Shalom crossing with Gaza (20 October 2025)

    The UN’s World Food Programme said on Tuesday that around 750 tonnes of supplies a day were crossing into Gaza under the ceasefire deal [Reuters]

    Since the Israeli laws banning Unrwa took effect in January, the agency says its Palestinian staff have continued providing assistance and education, health and other services to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

    However, the agency says Israel has banned it from bringing aid into Gaza and stopped issuing visas to Unrwa’s international staff.

    Unrwa says at least 309 of its staff and 72 people supporting the agency’s activities have been killed since the start of the war in Gaza. The territory’s Hamas-run health ministry says Israeli attacks during the conflict have killed at least 68,229 people in total.

    Unrwa’s acting Gaza director, Sam Rose, told the BBC that the agency welcomed the advisory opinion because it “underscores the obligations of Israel under international law”.

    “The ruling of today says that Israel’s laws against Unrwa have gone against those obligations, as have its actions on the ground,” he said.

    The Palestinian foreign ministry said the advisory opinion made “very clear that Israel must cease these illegal policies and that states have an obligation to bring Israel into compliance with its obligations in this regard”.

    “Israel must immediately lift the unlawful ban on Unrwa and allow all other international organisations invited by Palestine to operate freely and safely,” it added.

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  • Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its data centers for mass surveillance of Palestinians

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    Microsoft has ended access to its data centers for a unit of the Israeli military that helped power a massive surveillance operation against Palestinian civilians, according to a report by The Guardian. The company says that the country’s spy agency has violated its terms of service.

    This surveillance system collected every day in Gaza and the West Bank. The massive trove of data has been stored via Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, but the company just informed Israel’s spy agency that this practice will no longer be acceptable.

    Microsoft’s vice-chair and president, Brad Smith, alerted staff of the move in an email, writing that the company had “ceased and disabled a set of services to a unit within the Israel ministry of defense.” He went to suggest that this included cutting off access to cloud storage and some AI services.

    “We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians,” he continued. “We have applied this principle in every country around the world, and we have insisted on it repeatedly for more than two decades.”

    Microsoft came to this decision after conducting an external inquiry to review the spy agency’s use of its Azure cloud platform. It also comes amid pressure from both employees and investors for the company to examine its relationship with Israel as it relates to the military offensive in Gaza.

    This reportedly started back in 2021, when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella allegedly okayed the storage effort personally after meeting with a commander from Israel’s elite military surveillance corps, Unit 8200. Nadella reportedly gave the country a customized and segregated area within the Azure platform to store these phone calls, all without knowledge or consent from Palestinians.

    While conflict has existed between Israel and Palestinian groups for decades, these platforms were built out a full two years before the the most recent escalation in violence, beginning October 7, 2023. The mantra when building out the project was to record “a million calls an hour.”

    Leaked Microsoft files suggested that the lion’s share of this data was being stored in Azure facilities in the Netherlands, but Israel allegedly moved it after Microsoft started its initial investigation. The Guardian has reported that Unit 8200 planned on transferring the data to the Amazon Web Services cloud platform. We have contacted Amazon to ask if it has accepted this gigantic trove of personal data.

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    Lawrence Bonk

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  • As Netanyahu decides between war and a deal, IDF prepares for Gaza City invasion

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    It is still far from clear when and if Netanyahu will finally give the order to move the operation forward on a large scale.

    It seems as if for weeks now, the world has been waiting for an imminent hostage exchange and ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas or an imminent invasion by the IDF of Gaza City (after multiple prior invasions).

    But neither has happened.

    So what is happening?

    First of all, the IDF has been attacking and clearing Hamas and Palestinian civilians from portions of northern Gaza bordering on Gaza City, such as Zeitun.

    The military first attacked and cleared Zeitun of Hamas terrorists in the fall of 2023 and has returned there multiple times since.

    What is different in Israel’s next Gaza takeover?

    What would be different this time – if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu eventually greenlights the invasion plans as leaked to the media – would be Israel taking control over Gaza City itself to try to hold it.

    People are seen outside the area of Al-Ahli hospital where hundreds of Palestinians were killed in a blast that Israeli and Palestinian officials blamed on each other, and where Palestinians who fled their homes were sheltering amid the ongoing conflict with Israel, in Gaza City, October 18, 2023 (credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMED AL-MASRI)

    The air force has also increased strikes against Hamas in recent weeks, whether in the Gaza City area or other areas.

    The IDF has been in touch with hospitals and other central civilian authorities in Gaza to prepare and coordinate a mass evacuation of around a million Gazan civilians from the area.

    According to Hamas’s Health Ministry, dozens of Gazans were killed over the weekend, though as usual the ministry does not distinguish between Hamas terrorists and innocent civilians.

    Still, recent percentages for the IDF have been likely the worst since the start of the war in the ratio of civilians to terrorists harmed.

    For much of the war, various military officials said off-record that a rate of 60% civilians harmed to 40% terrorists harmed seemed broadly accurate and would have put Israel in a good place compared to other countries that had to fight terrorists in urban areas with the systematic use of human shields.

    But this was at the stage when the IDF was sometimes killing thousands of Hamas terrorists per month or even per week.

    In contrast, in the last half year, the army has said it had killed just over 2,000 Hamas terrorists. This during a time in which the Hamas Health Ministry has alleged that there have been around 11,000 Gazans killed, which would be about an 85% to 15% civilian-to-terrorist ratio.

    On the flip side, Israel is hard at work setting up new tent areas and makeshift medical intake areas to handle the planned mass movement of Palestinian civilians out of Gaza City.

    The IDF has shown numerous examples of Hamas exaggerating or downright inventing non-existent mass civilian casualty incidents, but it has not tossed Hamas’s estimates completely out the window and has declined to provide its own estimated civilian casualty tally – something which it always did in prior conflicts in Gaza.

    Concurrently, tens of thousands of reservists have either already been called up for a new round of duty or will be in the first week of September.

    In this way, Israel so far has been punished globally for daring to move and potentially endanger a large number of Palestinian civilians again, punished domestically for calling up large numbers of reserves as the war wages on into the end of the second year, and receiving none of the concrete benefits of actually eliminating Hamas forces in any large number.

    Netanyahu did pocket a potentially significant benefit over a week ago when Hamas finally agreed to another temporary ceasefire for another partial hostage deal, something it had held off from agreeing to for months, until the Gaza City invasion began to look more real.

    But the prime minister – at press time – had not even seriously discussed accepting the deal, which he desperately wanted in July, such that there has been no bankable achievement to date.

    Meanwhile, there is no ongoing battle between two opposing groups: those Israeli officials who want to rush the invasion of Gaza City to gain some of the benefits of killing more Hamas terrorists and putting more direct pressure on Hamas’s few remaining surviving leaders, and those who want to draw out the pre-invasion phase for weeks or months to reduce any possibility of risk to Israeli soldiers, Israeli hostages, or Palestinian civilians.

    It is still far from clear when, and if, Netanyahu will finally give the order to move the operation forward in a large-scale manner and what benefits will arise from it, compared to the costs.

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  • Images from Gaza show Israeli soldiers detaining dozens of men stripped to underwear

    Images from Gaza show Israeli soldiers detaining dozens of men stripped to underwear

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    Images from Gaza circulating on social media Thursday showed a mass detention by the Israeli military of men who were made to strip to their underwear, kneel on the street, wear blindfolds, and pack into the cargo bed of a military vehicle.

    The exact circumstances and dates of the detentions are unclear, but some of the detainees’ identities were confirmed by colleagues or family members.

    At least some of the men are civilians with no known affiliation to militant groups, according to a conversation CNN had with one of their relatives and a statement by one of their employers, a news network.

    The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor posted an image of one detainment and said in a statement on its website Thursday that “the Israeli army detained and severely abused dozens of Palestinian civilians.”

    “Euro-Med Monitor received reports that Israeli forces launched random and arbitrary arrest campaigns against displaced people, including doctors, academics, journalists, and elderly men,” it said.

    The Israel Defense Forces has not responded to CNN’s request for comment on the images. CNN has geo-located some of the images to Beit Lahia, north of Gaza City.

    The Israeli media, without indicating a source, has portrayed the images as the surrender of Hamas members. A journalist asked IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari about the images during a news conference on Thursday, saying, “We’ve seen images of many captives, Hamas terrorists, that the IDF arrested during the ground maneuvering.”

    Hagari said that, in fighting Hamas, “those left in the area gradually come out.”

    “We investigate and check who has ties to Hamas, and who does not,” he said. “We arrest them all and question them. We will continue dismantling each one of those strongholds until we are done.”

    The men can be seen in the cargo bed of a military vehicle.  - Obtained by CNN

    The men can be seen in the cargo bed of a military vehicle. – Obtained by CNN

    In a statement Thursday, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed said that one of its correspondents and several members of his family were among those detained as part of the incident portrayed in the images.

    “Today, Thursday, the Israeli occupation army arrested the journalist and the director of ‘The New Arab’ office in Gaza, our colleague Diaa Al-Kahlot, from Market Street in Beit Lahia, along with a group of his brothers, relatives, and other civilians,” Al-Araby Al-Jadeed wrote.

    “The occupation deliberately forced Gazans to take off their clothes, searched them, and humiliated them when they were arrested before taking them to an unknown destination, according to what the people there told us. Pictures and video clips spread showing soldiers arresting dozens of Gazans using criminal and humiliating method.”

    Hussam Kanafani, the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed editor-in-chief, said in the statement that Al-Kahlot and his family were still missing.

    “We will make every effort possible, in cooperation with international institutions and organizations concerned with the rights and freedom of journalists in the world, to determine the whereabouts of our colleague Diaa and release him as soon as possible,” Kanafani said.

    CNN spoke with a relative of other detained men, Hani al-Madhoun, from his home in the United States.

    “Israeli forces arrived on the street and called out all the men to come out, and they complied,” al-Madhoun told CNN. “This house was their place of refuge after our two homes were destroyed.”

    Al-Madhoun said he was in contact with his sister, who is in Gaza.

    He said that he recognized his cousin Aboud in one of the photographs and saw his brother Mahmood in a video. He said that Mahmoud is a shopkeeper and Aboud “is not involved in any activities; he helps his father in construction.”

    This is a developing story and will be updated.

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