Earlier in the day, Defence Minister Israel Katz said that “Gaza is burning” as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio left Israel for Qatar, where he planned to meet with officials there still incensed over Israel’s strike last week that killed five Hamas members and a local security official.
While Arab and Muslim nations denounced the strike at a summit on Monday, they stopped short of any major action targeting Israel, highlighting the challenge of diplomatically pressuring any change in Israel’s conduct in the grinding Israel-Hamas war.
Rubio, speaking to journalists while leaving Israel for Qatar, suggested the offensive had begun.
“Well, as you saw, the Israelis have begun to take operations there. So we think we have a very short window of time in which a [peace] deal can happen,” Rubio said. “We don’t have months any more, and we probably have days and maybe a few weeks, so it’s a key moment – an important moment.
“Our preference, our No.1 choice, is that this ends through a negotiated settlement,” he added, while acknowledging the dangers an intensified military campaign posed to Gaza.
“The only thing worse than a war is a protracted one that goes on forever and ever,” Rubio said. “At some point, this has to end. At some point, Hamas has to be defanged, and we hope it can happen through a negotiation. But I think time, unfortunately, is running out.”
After weeks of threatening an expansion of the Israeli military operation in Gaza City, Katz signalled it had begun.
“Gaza is burning,” he wrote. “The [Israel military] is striking with an iron fist at the terrorist infrastructure and [Israeli] soldiers are fighting heroically to create the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas. We will not relent and we will not go back – until the completion of the mission.”
Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Rubio said on Monday the only way to end the conflict in Gaza was through the elimination of Hamas and the release of the remaining 48 hostages – about 20 of them believed to be alive – setting aside calls for an interim ceasefire in favour of an immediate end to the conflict.
Hamas has said it will only free the remaining hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Displaced Palestinians carry their belongings as they flee northern Gaza.Credit: AP
Israel is fighting a genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It rejects such accusations, citing its right to self-defence following the deadly October 7, 2023, Hamas attack that killed 1200 people and resulted in 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
The subsequent war in Gaza has killed more than 64,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, while a global hunger monitor says that part of it is suffering from famine.
The 1948 UN Genocide Convention, adopted following the mass murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, defines genocide as crimes committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such”. To count as genocide, at least one of five acts must have occurred.
Smoke rises following an Israeli military strike in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.Credit: AP
The UN commission found that Israel had committed four of them: killing; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
It cited as evidence interviews with victims, witnesses, doctors, verified open-source documents and satellite imagery analysis compiled since the war began.
The commission urged other countries to halt weapons transfers to Israel and block individuals or companies from actions that could contribute to genocide in Gaza.
“The international community cannot stay silent on the genocidal campaign launched by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” said Pillay, who is a South African jurist. “When clear signs and evidence of genocide emerge, the absence of action to stop it amounts to complicity.”
Reuters, AP
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