Violent fighting pitted the Israeli army and Hamas on Monday, May 20, in the Gaza Strip, at a time when arrest warrants were requested by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) against leaders of the two enemy camps for alleged war crimes.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which is in its eighth month, has led to the further displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the health minister of the Hamas-administered Gaza Strip has recorded 35,562 deaths.
Israel tells US envoy Israel’s ‘obligation’ to expand Rafah offensive
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told a visiting US envoy on Monday that his country had an “obligation” to expand its ground military offensive in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip. .
During a meeting in Tel Aviv with White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, “I stressed to him Israel’s obligation to expand the ground operation in Rafah, to dismantle Hamas and bring back the hostages,” the minister communicated in a message on X.
Karim Khan on Monday requested the issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza Strip . They are accused of crimes such as “deliberately starving civilians,” “intentional homicide,” and “extermination and/or murder as a crime against humanity.”
Three Hamas leaders are also affected by the request: Ismaïl Haniyeh (head of the Hamas political bureau), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, better known as Mohammed Deif, commander of the Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and Yahya Sinouar (leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip). Charges against the Palestinian organization’s leaders include “extermination,” “rape and other forms of sexual violence,” “hostage-taking as a war crime,” and “directing intentionally attacks against the civilian population as a war crime.” Israel and Hamas denounced this decision.
In the northern Gaza Strip, military aircraft carried out pre-dawn strikes on the Zeitoun and Sabra neighborhoods of Gaza City, and one of them hit a house, according to correspondents of Agence France-Presse and doctors. Helicopters bombed the Jabaliya refugee camp, where fighting continues after the army said Hamas had regained a foothold.
In the center of the small, overpopulated Palestinian territory, the camps of Al-Boureij and Deir Al-Balah were the target of air raids. And, in the South, a strike hit a house in the Tell Al-Sultan neighborhood, west of Rafah, killing three and wounding eight, according to hospital sources. Rafah was also targeted by Israeli naval fire, witnesses said. According to the army, soldiers are carrying out “targeted raids against terrorist infrastructure in eastern Rafah, eliminating the enemy and locating tunnel openings.”
A source close to Lebanese Hezbollah said that at least four fighters from the pro-Iranian formation were killed Monday in Israeli strikes on two towns in southern Lebanon, the scene of daily exchanges of fire with the Israeli army. These were “strikes on Naqoura and Meïss El-Jabal”, two border localities, he told Agence France-Presse. The official National News Agency (ANI) reported that the Israeli strike on Naqoura targeted an area where rescue workers affiliated with Hezbollah were located.
The Israeli army announced, for its part, that it had targeted “a Hezbollah terrorist cell” in the Meïss El-Jabal region, and had hit “a weapons storage site and a Hezbollah military complex.” The Lebanese formation announced that it had targeted Israeli military positions on the other side of the border, in response to “Israeli aggression, particularly on Naqoura”.