World
Spain seeks to join South Africa’s case at top UN court accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza
- Spain became the first European country to request permission from the United Nations court to join South Africa’s case against Israel for alleged genocide in Gaza.
- South Africa filed the case with the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of breaching the genocide convention.
- The court has ordered Israel to halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Spain became on Thursday the first European country to ask a United Nations court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
South Africa filed its case with the International Court of Justice late last year. It alleged that Israel was breaching the genocide convention in its military assault that has laid waste to large swaths of Gaza.
The court has ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire for the enclave. Israel has not complied and shows no sign of doing so.
ISRAEL’S NETANYAHU RIPS IRELAND, SPAIN AND NORWAY RECOGNIZING PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD: ‘REWARD FOR TERRORISM’
“We take the decision because of the ongoing military operation in Gaza,” Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said in Madrid. “We want peace to return to Gaza and the Middle East, and for that to happen we must all support the court.”
Spain’s Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares Bueno addresses a media conference prior to talks on the Middle East in Brussels, on May 27, 2024. Spain became on Thursday the first European country to ask a United Nations court for permission to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert, File)
Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Libya and the Palestinians are waiting for the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, to grant approval to their requests to join the case.
Israel denies it is committing genocide in its military operation to crush Hamas triggered by its deadly Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel.
Hamas killed 1,200 people and took 250 more hostages in the surprise attacks. Israel’s air and land attacks have killed 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.
NORWAY, IRELAND, SPAIN RECOGNIZING INDEPENDENT PALESTINIAN STATE AS ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR CONTINUES
Once admitted to the case, Spain would be able to make written submissions and speak at public hearings.
Spain’s request is the latest move by the government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to support peacemaking efforts in Gaza.
Spain, Ireland and Norway formally recognized a Palestinian state on May 28 in a coordinated effort by the three Western European nations. Slovenia, a European Union member along with Spain and Ireland, followed suit and recognized the Palestinian state this week.
Over 140 countries have recognized a Palestinian state — more than two-thirds of the U.N. — but none of the major Western powers, including the United States, has done so.
While Sánchez has condemned the attacks by Hamas and joined demands for the return of the remaining Israeli hostages, he has not shied away from the diplomatic backlash from Israel. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said that by recognizing a Palestinian state, Sánchez’s government was “being complicit in inciting genocide against Jews and war crimes.”
Sánchez’s backing of the Palestinians is generally supported in Spain, where some university students have followed their American counterparts in protesting on campuses. Spaniards will vote in elections for the European Parliament elections on Sunday.
Last year, the International Court of Justice allowed 32 countries, including Spain, to join Ukraine’s case alleging that Russia breached the genocide convention by falsely accusing Ukraine of committing genocide in its eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and using that as a pretext for the invasion.
Preliminary hearings have already been held in the genocide case against Israel, but the court is expected to take years to reach a final decision.
Albares said the decision by his government had the immediate objective of adding pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to follow the court’s interim measures to stop bloodshed in Rafah.
“I insist once again that these interim measures must be complied with,” Albares said. “Whether this is genocide or not, that is for the court to decide, and Spain of course will support its decision.”
Israel sent troops into the southern city of Rafah in early May in what it said was a limited incursion, but those forces are now operating in central parts of the city. Last week, Israeli strikes hit near a U.N. Palestinian refugee agency facility in Rafah, saying they were targeting Hamas militants. An inferno that followed ripped through nearby tents housing displaced families , killing at least 45 people.
More than 1 million people have fled Rafah since the start of the operation, scattering across southern and central Gaza into new tent camps or crowding into schools and homes.
A team of marine mammal experts had spent several days in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia, searching for a sea lion with an orange rope wrapped around its neck. As the sun set on Dec. 8, they were packing up, for good, when a call came in.
The tangled animal, a female Steller sea lion weighing 330 pounds, had been spotted on a dock in front of an inn, leading into the bay in southwestern Canada.
The rope was wrenched four times around her neck, carving a deep gash. Without help, the sea lion would die.
The team had been trying to find the sea lion for a month, and on that day, with daylight running out, the nine members that day knew they needed to work fast. They relaunched their boats and a team member loaded a dart gun and shot her with a sedative.
“Launching the dart is the easiest part of the whole operation,” said Dr. Martin Haulena, executive director of the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Society, which conducted the rescue alongside Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “It’s everything that happens after that, that you just have no control over.”
Steller sea lions, also known as northern sea lions, are the largest such breed. They are found as far south as Northern California and in parts of Russia and Japan. A male Steller sea lion can weigh up to 2,500 pounds.
The Cowichan Tribes Marine Monitoring Team assisted the rescue society, calling it whenever the sea lion was spotted. The tribe named her Stl’eluqum, meaning “fierce” or “exceptional” in Hul’q’umi’num’, an Indigenous language, according to the rescue society.
After Stl’eluqum was sedated, she jumped from the dock into the water. Recent torrential rains and flooding had stirred up debris, making the water brown, and harder to spot the sea lion, Dr. Haulena said.
Several minutes after the sea lion dived into the bay, the drone spotted her and the team moved in.
The rope had multiple strands and it was wrapped so deeply that she most likely wasn’t able to eat, Dr. Haulena said. At first, the team had trouble freeing her.
“You couldn’t see it because it was way dug in underneath the skin and blubber of the animal,” Dr. Haulena said.
After unraveling the rope, the team tagged her flipper, gave her some antibiotics and released her.
Freeing the sea lion was the culmination of weeks of searching and missed moments. The first call about the tangled marine mammal was made to the Fisheries and Oceans Canada hotline on Nov. 7, according to a news release from the rescue society. Then the society logged more calls.
The Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Society, a nonprofit that works in partnership with the Vancouver Aquarium, searched for several days for the sea lion. The day they found her was the last of the rescue effort because bad weather was forecast for the area around the bay. The call that led them to Stl’eluqum came from the Cowichan Tribes, Dr. Haulena said.
The society, Dr. Haulena said, cares for about 150 marine mammals from its rescues every year — sea lions, otters, harbor seals and the occasional sea turtle. The group gives medical care to animals it takes in, such as Luna, an abandoned newborn sea otter who was three pounds when she was found and still had her umbilical cord attached.
Many of the society’s rescues involve animals tangled in garbage or debris, Dr. Haulena said.
Stl’eluqum was tangled in nylon rope commonly used to tie boats or crab traps, he said. When sea lions get something caught around their necks it can grow tighter until it cuts into their organs, sometimes fatally, he said.
“It’s our garbage; it’s our fault,” Dr. Haulena said. “It’s a large amount of animal suffering and not a good outcome unless we can do something.”
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Polish authorities have foiled a suspected ISIS-inspired plot to attack a Christmas market, charging a student accused of preparing a mass casualty bombing, according to officials.
The case comes as Germany and the U.K. also raised security measures around religious and cultural events after the Sydney shooting Sunday in which 16 people were shot dead at a Jewish Hanukkah party on Bondi Beach.
Polish authorities say the suspect, identified as Mateusz W., 19, was detained in late November at an apartment in Lublin by officers from the Internal Security Agency (ABW).
According to Jacek Dobrzyński, a spokesperson for the Minister’s Coordinator of Special Services, investigators believe the teen had been studying how to make explosives and intended to join a terrorist organization to help carry out the attack.
EUROPEAN CHRISTMAS MARKETS FORTIFY SECURITY MEASURES AS TERROR THREATS FORCE MAJOR OPERATIONAL CHANGES
Polish authorities foil an alleged ISIS Christmas market bombing plot targeting holiday shoppers. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“The purpose of the crime was to intimidate many people, as well as to support the Islamic State,” Dobrzyński said in a statement shared on X.
Items linked to Islam and digital storage devices were seized, and the suspect has been remanded for three months as the Szczecin branch of ABW continues its investigation.
At a news conference, Dobrzyński also referenced a June case in which three 19-year-olds were charged over alleged extremist plots, including a reported plan to attack a school in Olsztyn.
MOSSAD–EUROPEAN INTELLIGENCE OPERATION LAUNCHES SWEEPING CRACKDOWN ON HAMAS GLOBAL TERROR NETWORK
Authorities arrested five on suspicion of plotting a terror attack on a Christmas market in Bavaria. (Juergen Sack/Getty Images)
“You are familiar with this issue from Olsztyn; now we have another example of preparing an attack before Christmas,” he told reporters, according to GB News.
In Germany, police in Lower Bavaria also arrested five men on Dec. 12 on suspicion of preparing an attack on a Christmas market, according to reports.
Authorities said an Egyptian national described as an Islamic preacher had allegedly called for an assault during gatherings at a mosque in the Dingolfing-Landau area, per Euronews.
CANADIAN SPY CHIEF WARNS OF ALARMING RISE IN TEEN TERROR SUSPECTS, ‘POTENTIALLY LETHAL’ THREATS BY IRAN
In the U.K., counterterrorism officials have stepped up armed patrols and public alert messaging across London and other major cities. (Matthew Chattle/Future Publishing via Getty Image)
Special operations forces carried out the arrests, and investigators believe the group had begun early-stage preparations.
In the U.K., counterterrorism officials stepped up armed patrols and public alert messaging across London and other major cities on Tuesday.
“Sadly, as shown by the appalling attack on Sydney’s Jewish community during a Hanukkah event, we know they can also be a target for terrorist activity,” Deputy Assistant Commissioner Jon Savell said in a press release.
He cited large festive gatherings, religious services and Christmas markets as potential targets.
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In the release posted Tuesday, he urged the British public to report anything that “doesn’t feel right” as part of the annual winter vigilance campaign.
Meanwhile, U.S. authorities say they separately disrupted a New Year’s Eve plot in Southern California.
Four alleged members of an extremist anti-capitalist, anti-government group suspected of rehearsing coordinated bombings against sites linked to two U.S. companies were arrested on Monday.
Thousands of dinosaur footprints have been found in a national part in northern Italy known as the Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio Branchi.
Experts say they are from enormous herbivores that lived there 210 million years ago in the Triassic period.
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