Surveillance and Interference: Israel’s Covert War on the ICC Exposed
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MAY 28, 2024
Yuval Abraham and Meron Rapoport
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen with Yossi Cohen, then-head of the national security council, at a press conference at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, October 15, 2015. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen with Yossi Cohen, then-head of the national security council, at a press conference at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, October 15, 2015. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Top Israeli government and security officials have overseen a nine-year surveillance operation targeting the ICC and Palestinian rights groups to try to thwart a war crimes probe, a joint investigation reveals.
For nearly a decade, Israel has been surveilling senior International Criminal Court officials and Palestinian human rights workers as part of a secret operation to thwart the ICC’s probe into alleged war crimes, a joint investigation by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and the Guardian can reveal.
The multi-agency operation, which dates back to 2015, has seen Israel’s intelligence community routinely surveil the court’s current chief prosecutor Karim Khan, his predecessor Fatou Bensouda, and dozens of other ICC and UN officials. Israeli intelligence also monitored materials that the Palestinian Authority submitted to the prosecutor’s office, and surveilled employees at four Palestinian human rights organizations whose submissions are central to the probe.
According to sources, the covert operation mobilized the highest branches of Israel’s government, the intelligence community, and both the civilian and military legal systems in order to derail the probe.
The intelligence information obtained via surveillance was passed on to a secret team of top Israeli government lawyers and diplomats, who traveled to The Hague for confidential meetings with ICC officials in an attempt to “feed [the chief prosecutor] information that would make her doubt the basis of her right to be dealing with this question.” The intelligence was also used by the Israeli military to retroactively open investigations into incidents that were of interest to the ICC, to try to prove that Israel’s legal system is capable of holding its own to account.
Additionally, as the Guardian reported earlier today, the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, ran its own parallel operation which sought out compromising information on Bensouda and her close family members in an apparent attempt to sabotage the ICC’s investigation. The agency’s former head, Yossi Cohen, personally attempted to “enlist” Bensouda and manipulate her into complying with Israel’s wishes, according to sources familiar with his activities, causing the then-prosecutor to fear for her personal safety.
Our investigation draws on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli intelligence officers and government officials, ex-ICC officials, diplomats, and lawyers familiar with the ICC case and Israel’s efforts to undermine it. According to these sources, initially, the Israeli operation attempted to prevent the court from opening a full criminal investigation; after a full probe was set in motion in 2021, Israel sought to ensure that it would come to nothing.
Moreover, according to several sources, Israel’s underhanded efforts to interfere with the investigation — which could amount to offenses against the administration of justice, punishable by a prison sentence — have been managed from the very top. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to have taken a keen interest in the operation, even sending intelligence teams “instructions” and “areas of interest” regarding their monitoring of ICC officials. One source stressed that Netanyahu was “obsessed, obsessed, obsessed” with finding out what materials the ICC was receiving.
The prime minister had good reason to be concerned: last week, Khan announced that his office is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three leaders in Hamas’ political and military wings, in relation to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on or since October 7. The announcement made clear that additional warrants — which expose prosecuted individuals to arrest should they visit any of the ICC’s 124 member states — may yet be pursued.
For Israel’s top brass, Khan’s announcement was no surprise. In recent months, the surveillance campaign targeting the chief prosecutor “climbed to the top of the agenda,” according to one source, thus giving the government advance knowledge of his intentions.
Tellingly, Khan issued a cryptic warning in his remarks: “I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate, or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately.” Now, we can reveal details of part of what he was warning against: Israel’s nine-year “war” on the ICC.
‘The generals had a big personal interest in the operation’
Unlike the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which deals with the legality of states’ actions — and which last week issued a ruling seen as calling on Israel to halt its offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, in the context of South Africa’s petition accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Strip — the ICC deals with specific individuals suspected of having committed war crimes.
Israel has long held that the ICC has no jurisdiction to prosecute Israeli leaders because, like the United States, Russia, and China, Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute which established the court, and Palestine is not a full UN member state. But Palestine was nevertheless recognized as an ICC member upon signing the convention in 2015, having been admitted to the UN General Assembly as a non-member observer state three years prior.
Palestinians gather to watch the speech by President Mahmoud Abbas in the bid for Palestine’s “non-member observer state” status at the United Nations, projected on the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, November 29, 2012. (Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills)
Palestine’s entry into the ICC was condemned by Israeli leaders as a form of “diplomatic terrorism.” “It was perceived as the crossing of a red line, and perhaps the most aggressive thing the Palestinian Authority has ever done to Israel in the international arena,” an Israeli official explained. “To be recognized as a state in the UN is nice, but the ICC is a mechanism with teeth.”
Immediately after becoming a member of the court, the PA asked the prosecutor’s office to investigate crimes committed in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, starting from the date on which the State of Palestine accepted the court’s jurisdiction: July 13, 2014. Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor at the time, opened a preliminary examination to determine whether the criteria for a full investigation could be met.
Fearing the legal and political consequences of potential prosecutions, Israel raced to prepare intelligence teams in the army, the Shin Bet (domestic intelligence), and the Mossad (foreign intelligence), alongside a covert team of military and civilian lawyers, to lead the effort to forestall a full ICC investigation. All this was coordinated under Israel’s National Security Council (NSC), whose authority is derived from the Prime Minister’s Office.
“Everyone, the entire military and political establishment, was looking for ways to damage the PA’s case,” said one intelligence source. “Everyone pitched in: the Justice Ministry, the Military International Law Department [part of the Military Advocate General’s Office], the Shin Bet, the NSC. [Everyone] saw the ICC as something very important, as a war that had to be waged, and one that Israel had to be defended against. It was described in military terms.”
The military was not an obvious candidate for joining the Shin Bet’s intelligence-gathering efforts, but it had a strong motivation: preventing its commanders from being forced to stand trial. “The ones who really wanted to [join the effort] were the IDF generals themselves — they had a very big personal interest,” one source explained. “We were told that senior officers are afraid to accept positions in the West Bank because they are afraid of being prosecuted in The Hague,” another recalled.
According to numerous sources, Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, whose stated goal at the time was to fight against the “delegitimization” of Israel, was involved in the surveilling of Palestinian human rights organizations that were submitting reports to the ICC. Gilad Erdan, head of the ministry at the time and now Israel’s representative to the UN, recently described the ICC’s pursuit of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders as “a witch-hunt driven by pure Jew-hatred.”
A ceremony for incoming Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi at HaKirya base in Tel Aviv, January 16, 2023. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)
‘The army dealt with things that were completely non-military’
Israel’s covert war on the ICC has relied centrally on surveillance, and the chief prosecutors have been prime targets.
Four sources confirmed Bensouda’s private exchanges with Palestinian officials about the PA’s case in The Hague were routinely monitored and shared widely within Israel’s intelligence community. “The conversations were usually about the progress of the prosecution: submitting documents, testimonies, or talking about an event that happened — ‘Did you see how Israel massacred Palestinians at the last demonstration?’ — things like that,” one source explained.
The former prosecutor was far from the only target. Dozens of other international officials related to the probe were similarly surveilled. One of the sources said there was a large whiteboard with the names of around 60 people who were under surveillance — half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, including UN officials and ICC personnel in The Hague.
Another source recalled surveillance on the person who wrote the ICC’s report on Israel’s 2014 Gaza war. A third source said Israeli intelligence monitored a UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry into the occupied territories, in order to identify what materials it was receiving from the Palestinians, “because the findings of commissions of inquiry of this kind are usually used by the ICC.”
In The Hague, Bensouda and her senior staff were alerted by security advisers and via diplomatic channels that Israel was monitoring their work. Care was taken not to discuss certain matters in the vicinity of phones. “We were made aware they were trying to get information on where we were with the preliminary examination,” a former senior ICC official said.
According to sources, some in the Israeli army found it controversial that military intelligence was dealing with matters that were political and not directly related to security threats. “IDF resources were used to surveil Fatou Bensouda — this isn’t something legitimate to do as military intelligence,” one source stated. “This task [was] really unusual in the sense that it was inside the army, but dealt with things that were completely non-military,” said another source.
But others had fewer hesitations. “Bensouda was very, very one-sided,” one source who surveilled the former prosecutor claimed. “She was really a personal friend of the Palestinians. Public prosecutors don’t usually behave that way. They stay very distant.”
Official Opening of the Permanent Premises of the International Criminal Court, April 19, 2016. (UN Photo/Rick Bajornas)
‘If you don’t want me to use the law, what do you want me to use?’
Because Palestinian human rights groups were frequently providing the prosecutor’s office with materials about Israel’s attacks on Palestinians, detailing incidents they wanted the prosecutor to consider as part of the probe, these organizations themselves became key targets of Israel’s surveillance operation. Here, the Shin Bet took the lead.
In addition to monitoring materials that the PA submitted to the ICC, Israeli intelligence also monitored appeals and reports from the human rights groups that included testimonies of Palestinians who had suffered attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers; Israel then surveilled these testifiers, too.
“One of the [priorities] was to see who [in the human rights groups] is involved in collecting testimonies, and who were the specific people — the Palestinian victims — being convinced to give testimony to the ICC,” one intelligence source explained.
According to the sources, the primary surveillance targets were four Palestinian human rights organizations: Al-Haq, Addameer, Al Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). Addameer sent appeals to to the ICC about torture practices against prisoners and detainees, while the other three groups sent multiple appeals over the years regarding Israel’s settlement enterprise in the West Bank, punitive house demolitions, bombing campaigns in Gaza, and specific senior Israeli political and military leaders.
One intelligence source said the motive for surveilling the organizations was stated openly: they harm Israel’s standing in the international arena. “We were told that these are organizations that operate in the international arena, participate in BDS, and want to harm Israel legally, so they’re being monitored too,” the source said. “That’s why we’re engaging with this. Because it can hurt people in Israel — officers, politicians.”
Another goal of surveilling the Palestinian groups was to try to delegitimize them, and, by extension, the entire ICC investigation.
In October 2021, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz — who himself was named in several of the appeals that Palestinian organizations sent to the ICC, due to his role as chief of staff during the 2014 Gaza war and defense minister during the May 2021 war — declared Al-Haq, Addameer, and four other Palestinian human rights groups to be “terrorist organizations.”
Benny Gantz, war cabinet minister and head of the National Unity Party, holds a press conference in Ramat Gan, May 18, 2024. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
A +972 and Local Call investigation, released a few weeks later, found that Gantz’s order was issued without any serious evidence to back up its allegations; a Shin Bet dossier claiming to provide proof of its charges, and another follow-up dossier a few months later, left even Israel’s staunchest allies unconvinced. At the time, it was widely speculated — including by the organizations themselves — that these groups were targeted at least in part because of their activities relating to the ICC probe.
According to an intelligence source, the Shin Bet — which gave the initial recommendation to outlaw the six groups — surveilled the organizations’ employees, and the information gathered was used by Gantz when he declared them terrorist organizations. An investigation by Citizen Lab at the time identified Pegasus spyware, produced by the Israeli firm NSO Group, on the phones of several Palestinians working in those NGOs. (The Shin Bet did not respond to our request for comment.)
Omar Awadallah and Ammar Hijazi, who are in charge of the ICC case within the PA’s Justice Ministry, also discovered that Pegasus had been installed on their phones. According to intelligence sources, the two were simultaneously targets of different Israeli intelligence organizations, which created “confusion.” “They’re both super impressive PhDs who deal with this subject all day, from morning to night — that’s why there was intelligence to be gained [from tracking them],” said one source.
Hijazi isn’t surprised that he was surveilled. “We don’t care if Israel sees the evidence we submitted to the court,” he said. “I invite them: Come, open your eyes, see what we presented.”
Shawan Jabarin, the director general of Al-Haq, was also surveilled by Israeli intelligence. He said there had been indications that the organization’s internal systems had been hacked, and that Gantz’s declaration came just days before Al-Haq planned to reveal that it had discovered Pegasus spyware on the phones of its employees. “They say I’m using the law as a weapon of war,” Jabarin said. “If you don’t want me to use the law, what do you want me to use, bombs?”
However, the human rights groups expressed deep concern for the privacy of the Palestinians who submitted testimonies to the court. One of the groups, for example, included only the initials of the testifiers in its submissions to the ICC, out of fear that Israel might identify them.
“People are afraid to file a complaint [to the ICC], or to mention their real names, because they fear being persecuted by the military, of losing their entry permits,” Hamdi Shakura, a lawyer at PCHR, explained. “A man in Gaza who has a relative sick with cancer is scared the army will take his entry permit and prevent his treatment — this sort of thing happens.”
Heads of Palestinian NGOs speak to the media outside of Al-Haq’s offices after the Israeli army raided their offices, Ramallah, West Bank, August 18, 2022. (Oren Ziv)
‘The lawyers had a big thirst for intelligence’
According to intelligence sources, a further use of the intelligence obtained via surveillance was to help lawyers involved in secret back-channel conversations with representatives of the prosecutor’s office in The Hague.
Soon after Bensouda announced that her office was opening a preliminary examination, Netanyahu ordered the formation of a covert team of lawyers from the Justice Ministry, Foreign Ministry, and Military Advocate General’s Office (the Israeli army’s highest legal authority), which regularly traveled to The Hague for secret meetings with ICC officials between 2017 and 2019. (Israel’s Justice Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.)
Although the team was comprised of individuals who were not part of Israel’s intelligence community — it was led by Tal Becker, legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry — the Justice Ministry was nonetheless privy to the intelligence obtained via surveillance, and had access to reports from the PA and Palestinian NGOs detailing specific cases of settler and military violence.
“The lawyers who dealt with the issue at the Justice Ministry had a big thirst for intelligence,” one intelligence source stated. “They got it from both military intelligence and the Shin Bet. They were building the case for the Israeli messengers who secretly went and communicated with the ICC.”
In their private meetings with ICC officials, which were confirmed by six sources familiar with the meetings, the lawyers set out to prove that Israel had robust and effective procedures for holding soldiers to account, despite the Israeli military’s dire record of investigating alleged wrongdoing within its ranks. The lawyers also sought to make the case that the ICC has no jurisdiction to investigate Israel’s actions, since Israel is not a member state of the court and Palestine is not a fully-fledged member of the UN.
According to a former ICC official familiar with the contents of the meetings, ICC personnel presented the Israeli lawyers with details of incidents in which Palestinians were attacked or killed, and the lawyers would respond with their own information. “In the beginning it was tense,” recalled the official.
At this stage, Bensouda was still engaged in a preliminary examination prior to the decision to open a formal investigation. An intelligence source said that the purpose of the information obtained through surveillance was “to make Bensouda feel that her legal data is unreliable.”
ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda meets with Palestine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad al-Maliki on the margins of the 18th session of the ASP, December 2, 2019. (ICC-CPI)
According to the source, the goal was to “feed [Bensouda] information that would make her doubt the basis of her right to be dealing with this question. When Al-Haq collects information on how many Palestinians have been killed in the occupied territories in the past year and passes it on to Bensouda, it’s in Israel’s interest and policy to pass her counterintel, and to try to undermine this information.”
Given that Israel refuses to recognize the court’s authority and legitimacy, however, it was crucial for the delegation that these meetings be kept secret. A source familiar with the meetings said the Israeli officials repeatedly stressed to the ICC that “we can never make it public that we’re communicating with you.”
Israel’s backchannel meetings with the ICC ended in December 2019, when Bensouda’s five-year preliminary examination concluded that there was a reasonable basis to believe that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes. Rather than immediately launching a full investigation, however, the prosecutor asked the court’s judges to rule on whether it had jurisdiction to hear the allegations due to “unique and highly contested legal and factual issues” — which some viewed as a direct outcome of Israel’s activity.
“I wouldn’t say that the legal argument had no effect,” Roy Schondorf, a member of the Israeli delegation as the head of a Justice Ministry department responsible for handling international legal proceedings against Israel, said at an event at the Institute for National Security Studies in July 2022. “There are also people there who can be persuaded, and I think that to a considerable extent, the State of Israel managed to convince at least the previous prosecutor [Bensouda], that there would be enough doubt about the question of jurisdiction for her to turn to the judges of the court.”
‘The claim of complementarity was very, very significant’
In 2021, the court’s judges ruled that the ICC does have jurisdiction over all war crimes committed by Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as crimes committed by Palestinians on Israeli territory. Despite six years of Israeli efforts to forestall it, Bensouda announced the opening of a formal criminal investigation.
But it was far from a foregone conclusion. A few months earlier, the prosecutor had decided to abandon an examination into British war crimes in Iraq because she was convinced that Britain had taken “genuine” action to investigate them. According to senior Israeli jurists, Israel clung to this precedent, and initiated a close collaboration between the intelligence-gathering operation and the military justice system.
According to the sources, a central goal of Israel’s surveillance operation was to enable the military to “open investigations retroactively” into cases of violence against Palestinians that reach the prosecutor’s office in The Hague. In doing so, Israel aimed to exploit the “principle of complementarity,” which asserts that a case is inadmissible before the ICC if it is already being thoroughly investigated by a state with jurisdiction over it.
Palestinians return to inspect their homes in Khan Younis after the Israeli army withdrew from the area, southern Gaza Strip, April 8, 2024. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)
“If materials were transferred to the ICC, it had to be understood exactly what they were, to ensure that the IDF investigated them independently and sufficiently so that they could claim complementarity,” one of the sources explained. “The claim of complementarity was very, very significant.”
Legal experts within the Joint Chief of Staff’s Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism (FFAM) — the military body that investigates alleged war crimes by Israeli soldiers — were also privy to intelligence information, sources said.
Among the dozens of incidents currently under investigation by the FFAM are the bombings that killed dozens of Palestinians in the Jabaliya refugee camp last October; the “flour massacre” in which more than 110 Palestinians were killed in northern Gaza upon the arrival of an aid convoy in March; the drone strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen employees in April; and an airstrike in a tent encampment in Rafah that ignited a fire and killed dozens last week.
For the Palestinian NGOs filing reports with the ICC, however, Israel’s internal military accountability mechanisms are a farce. Echoed by Israeli and international experts and human rights groups, Palestinians have long argued that these systems — from police and army investigators to the Supreme Court — routinely serve as a “fig leaf” for the Israeli state and its security apparatus, helping to “whitewash” crimes while effectively granting soldiers and commanders a license to continue criminal acts with impunity.
Issam Younis, who was a target of Israeli surveillance because of his role as director of Al Mezan, spent much of his career in Gaza, in the organization’s now partially bombed offices, collecting and filing “hundreds” of complaints from Palestinians to the Israeli Military Advocate General’s Office. The vast majority of these complaints were closed with no indictments, convincing him that “victims cannot pursue justice through that system.”
This is what led his organization to engage with the ICC. “In this war, the nature and scope of crimes committed are unprecedented,” said Younis, who escaped Gaza with his family in December, and is today a refugee in Cairo. “And it’s simply because accountability was not there.”
‘October 7 changed that reality’
In June 2021, Khan replaced Bensouda as chief prosecutor, and many in the Israeli judicial system hoped this would turn over a new leaf. Khan was perceived as more cautious than his predecessor, and there was speculation that he would choose not to prioritize the explosive investigation he inherited from Bensouda.
In an interview in September 2022, in which he also revealed some details about Israel’s “informal dialogue” with the ICC, Schondorf of Israel’s Justice Ministry praised Khan for having “shifted the trajectory of the ship,” adding that it seemed like the prosecutor would focus on more “mainstream issues” because the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict became a less pressing issue for the international community.”
Meanwhile, Khan’s personal judgment became the main research target of Israel’s surveillance operation: the goal was to “understand what Khan was thinking,” as one intelligence source put it. And while initially the prosecutor’s team does not appear to have shown much enthusiasm for the Palestine case, according to a senior Israeli official, “October 7 changed that reality.”
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan visiting kibbutzim in Israel that were among the sites of the October 7 attack, December 2023. (ICC-CPI)
By the end of the third week of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which followed the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel, Khan was already on the ground at the Rafah Crossing. He subsequently made visits to both the West Bank and southern Israel in December, where he met with Palestinian officials as well as Israeli survivors of the October 7 attack and the relatives of people who had been killed.
Israeli intelligence closely followed Khan’s visit to try “to understand what materials the Palestinians were giving him,” as one Israeli source said. “Khan is the most boring man to gather intelligence about in the world, because he’s as straight as a ruler,” the source added.
In February, Khan issued a strongly-worded statement on X effectively urging Israel not to launch an assault on Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians were already seeking refuge. He also warned: “Those who do not comply with the law should not complain later when my office takes action.”
Just as with his predecessor, Israeli intelligence also surveilled Khan’s activities with Palestinians and other officials in his office. Surveillance of two Palestinians familiar with Khan’s intentions tipped off Israeli leaders to the fact that the prosecutor was considering an imminent request for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, but was “under tremendous pressure from the United States” not to do so.
Eventually, on May 20, Khan followed through on his threat. He announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, after finding that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the two leaders bear responsibility for crimes including extermination, starvation, and deliberate attacks on civilians.
For the Palestinian human rights groups that Israel surveilled, Netanyahu and Gallant are just the tip of the iceberg. Three days before Khan’s announcement, the heads of Al-Haq, Al Mezan, and PCHR sent Khan a joint letter calling explicitly for arrest warrants against all members of Israel’s war cabinet, which includes Benny Gantz, as well as commanders and soldiers from the units currently involved in the Rafah offensive.
Khan now must also assess whether any Israelis behind operations aimed at undermining the ICC have committed offenses against the administration of justice. He warned in his May 20 announcement that his office “will not hesitate to act” against ongoing threats against the court and its investigation. Such offenses, for which Israeli leaders can be prosecuted regardless of the fact that Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, could potentially carry a prison sentence.
An ICC spokesperson told the Guardian that it was aware of “proactive intelligence-gathering activities being undertaken by a number of national agencies hostile towards the court,” but stressed that “none of the recent attacks against it by national intelligence agencies” had penetrated the court’s core evidence holdings, which had remained secure. The spokesperson added that Khan’s office has been subjected to “several forms of threats and communications that could be viewed as attempts to unduly influence its activities.”
In response to a request for comment, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office stated only that our report is “replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the State of Israel.” The Israeli army also responded in brief: “Intelligence bodies in the IDF perform surveillance and other intelligence operations only against hostile elements and contrary to what is claimed, not against the ICC in The Hague or other international elements.”
Harry Davies and Bethan McKernan of the Guardian contributed to this report.
Yuval Abraham is a journalist and filmmaker based in Jerusalem.
Meron Rapoport is an editor at Local Call.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/05/ ... c-exposed/
Yemen: A Summer of Fury
MAY 28, 2024
Mawadda Iskandar
Aden faces a severe electricity crisis due to political instability, corruption, and deliberate sabotage by the Saudi–Emirati coalition, causing power outages, extreme heat, and public unrest. But the rival Sanaa government may hold the key to resolving this urgent Yemeni crisis.
Though cast as the interim capital of the “internationally-recognized,” Saudi–Emirati-propped Yemeni government, Aden is grappling with escalating economic instability, rising inflation, violent clashes, abductions, and targeted killings.
These challenges, compounded by the ongoing struggle for legitimacy, add to the annual woes of the electricity crisis in the southern governorate, particularly during the scorching summer months.
With power outages lasting up to 22 consecutive hours and temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius, Aden has been plunged into complete darkness, sparking widespread public unrest. The unbearable heat now has the city teetering on the edge, highlighting the failure of its invaders to resolve a basic service issue worsened by their ongoing war’s impact on regular Yemenis.
The protests have spread to the provinces of Hadhramaut, Lahij, and Abyan despite attempts by the UAE-backed South Transitional Council (STC) to suppress the crowds through force and gunfire.
The protesters, who have blocked several roads and set tires on fire, blame the foreign coalition forces for this “collective punishment.” Public outrage over the performance of the pro-coalition government reached the Maashiq Palace, besieged by protesters demanding that the building’s water and electricity be cut off in solidarity with the suffering of the “southerners.”
Reasons for the crisis
The electricity crisis in Aden stems from several factors, primarily corruption, poor management, and lack of maintenance in a deteriorating sector. Today, the demand for electricity far exceeds the generation capacity of its power plants.
That demand in Aden has reached 700 megawatts annually, while the current plants can only produce up to 500 megawatts. Most of its power facilities still operate on extortionately expensive diesel fuel, which consumes 60 percent of the government’s financial subsidies.
The management of electrical projects is flawed, and the maintenance of the crumbling sector has been neglected for years. Corruption is rampant in this sector, making it a profitable commodity for influential figures, generating millions of dollars annually.
Additionally, investment and development projects in the sector, such as the construction of power plants using modern technology, are being obstructed.
Speaking to The Cradle, Yemeni journalist Mohammed al-Qaadi emphasizes that mismanagement, corruption, lack of maintenance of power plants and transmission lines, and the misappropriation of petroleum derivatives allocated for power generation are the main reasons for the crisis.
However, he says the core of the crisis lies in Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s mutual desire to keep this service issue unresolved for political investment purposes. Qaadi believes that the crisis has become a bargaining chip between the two countries, represented by their proxies in Aden.
The STC tries to portray the Saudi-appointed government as failing to provide services in Aden, while the latter points the finger at the STC for obstructing its efforts.
Despite its oil wealth, Yemen needlessly suffers from an electricity crisis, particularly in its southern regions, which are abundant with oil and natural resources. Ironically, this crisis is far more pronounced in those southern provinces under the control of the Saudi–Emirati coalition than in the northern ones governed by the Ansarallah-backed Sanaa government. It begs the question, how can oil-rich regions controlled by two of the wealthiest countries in West Asia be engulfed in flames of heat without basic electricity services?
A manufactured crisis
In brief, this is a “manufactured crisis” orchestrated by a Saudi–Emirati political decision aimed at sabotaging services in the provinces under their control to hinder the possibility of progress in these areas.
Counterintuitively, this deliberate decision seeks to maintain their political dominance and safeguard their interests in the country’s south. Yemeni journalist Ahmed al-Hasni explains to The Cradle that Aden’s electricity issue has transitioned from being a service matter to a political tool wielded by the coalition to coerce and subjugate the population.
The electricity crisis is just one component of a larger constellation of issues, including security instability, currency devaluation, salary disruptions – among others – that have galvanized the Yemeni populace to rise against the coalition.
The crises are intertwined: the currency collapse and the Central Bank crisis have deprived Yemen of the funds needed for diesel fuel to run power plants, which require a substantial budget of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Consequently, the electricity crisis transcends a mere decline in generation capacity and is linked to fuel shortages and financial constraints, transforming the electricity dossier into a sinkhole consuming major fiscal resources.
Further evidence of the obstruction includes false promises to turn Aden into a second Dubai through the marketing of imaginary projects. Hasni presents evidence indicating that the electricity reform is a red line.
This includes the STC accusation against Saudi Arabia years ago for allegedly halting electricity generators bound for Aden at Jeddah port. Incredibly, the Saudi Reconstruction Program for Yemen seized the generators it had allocated to rehabilitate Aden International Airport under the pretext that they were incompatible with the airport’s electricity system.
Similarly, the Emiratis brought in dysfunctional, dilapidated, outdated generators to service the sector. Moreover, when Abu Dhabi promised a solar power station with a capacity of 120 megawatts, it failed to deliver on its commitment.
Deliberate destruction
The electricity crisis in Aden is characterized by dual challenges: the deliberate destruction of the sector since the onset of the war on Yemen in March 2015, and the systematic plundering of the country’s oil resources by the Saudi–Emirati coalition.
Since 2015, over 13 power stations across Aden, Lahij, Shabwa, and Abyan in southern Yemen have been damaged. The deliberate targeting of oil refineries has worsened the crisis, necessitating contracts with private companies (aligned with the STC) for electricity generation. This has led to a reliance on private electricity generation, further straining the already fragile infrastructure.
On the other hand, the Saudi-Emirati coalition’s systematic plundering of oil resources in the south has compelled the government to import fuel to operate power stations, which has collided with financial constraints. According to estimates by Sanaa authorities, losses in the oil and mineral sector during six years of aggression have surpassed $45 billion.
Furthermore, the coalition has obstructed the flow of fuel and oil derivatives, leading to a severe shortage in energy supplies and a surge in fuel and electricity prices, and has plundered Yemen’s oil through organized smuggling operations, looting over $9 billion since the war began.
After seizing control of oil fields in southern and eastern Yemeni provinces, Riyadh took several steps to loot Yemen’s oil: The Saudis acquired agreements for the Black Triangle sectors in Marib, Shabwa, and Al-Jawf, halted exploration operations in Hodeidah and Al-Jawf, and restricted oil and gas exports to minimal quantities to secure remnants for their mercenaries.
Plundering Yemen’s resources
In numbers: 120,000 barrels of oil are looted daily, equivalent to 12,500,000 barrels annually. Revenues from just two days of oil production could cover the salaries of state employees for an entire month, yet these funds are diverted to the Saudi National Bank.
The coalition controls the oil and gas ports, preventing the Presidential Leadership Council government from exporting resources and benefiting from their revenues. Tribal groups and armed militias funded by the STC hold fuel supply trucks destined for power stations in Aden in the provinces of Shabwa and Marib.
Consequently, the southern regions are deprived of extracting crude oil from fields in Marib, Hadramout, and Shabwa and refining it in Aden and Safir in Marib. This would produce the necessary diesel and fuel oil for power stations, avoiding the need to import at inflated costs and inferior quality.
As political analyst Talib al-Hasni describes the situation to The Cradle:
The main reason for the electricity crisis is an American–Gulf decision, specifically Saudi, since the 1990s, to prevent the discovery of more oil wells in Yemen. Yemen exports around 400,000 barrels daily despite its capacity to produce two million barrels daily. This ban, in collusion with the previous regime, led to the deterioration of infrastructure and the service system in Yemen. The second reason is linked to the Emirati–Saudi power struggle. The South Transitional Council, under Abu Dhabi’s directives, works to keep Aden without services to shift responsibility to the Saudi-backed government.
Hasni notes that the opposition Sanaa government overcame the crisis by strengthening the coastal Hodeidah power station. Despite the difference in size and population density between the two cities, Sanaa solved the electricity problem for more than 80 percent of Yemen’s population.
Establishing deterrence
In October 2022, Yemen’s Ansarallah-allied armed forces imposed a new deterrence equation to halt the plundering of the country’s wealth. They threatened to target oil tankers approaching ports under the control of the coalition and its allied factions, warning foreign oil and shipping companies of the dangers of continuing to loot oil, which used to fund 80 percent of Yemen’s public resources before the war.
Furthermore, the Sanaa government has taken steps to alleviate the crisis, allowing power stations in the rival city of Aden to be supplied with fuel from the oil sectors in the provinces of Shabwa and Marib. It has also provided Aden with dozens of imported petroleum gas tanks, expressing its readiness to supply its opponents in the south with fuel.
Hasni suggests that Sanaa could help repair and rehabilitate Aden’s power station and provide it with petroleum products, similar to what was done with the Hodeidah power station. There is also pressure on Marib to provide diesel fuel and activate the private sector to regulate electricity bills.
Efforts to mitigate Yemen’s electricity crisis involve a combination of deterrence, fuel supply initiatives, and infrastructural rehabilitation. The de-facto government in Sanaa’s proactive measures and strategic deterrence are crucial to addressing the crisis and restoring stability in the affected regions. However, resolving this issue will require sustained political will and coordinated actions to ensure long-term solutions for Yemen’s energy sector.
https://thecradle.co/articles/a-summer- ... ity-crisis
Around one million evacuate Rafah in three weeks: UNRWA
The southernmost city was a refuge to more than 1.5 million displaced Palestinians fleeing Israeli bombardment
News Desk
MAY 28, 2024
(Photo Credit: Reuters)
In the last three weeks, approximately one million individuals have evacuated Rafah, a city in Gaza, as reported by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) on 28 May.
Rafah, a small city located on the southern border of Gaza, had provided refuge to over a million Palestinians escaping Israeli attacks across the enclave.
On the evening of 26 May, the Israeli army bombed makeshift tents at UNRWA warehouses in Rafah, which had been designated as a safe zone.
As reported by the Government Media Office, the Israeli occupation forces targeted a center established for displaced individuals within UNRWA premises in the northwest of Rafah. The center sustained multiple strikes from over seven missiles and large bombs, each weighing more than 900 kilograms.
The city was a refuge to over 1.5 million displaced Palestinians who had fled their neighborhoods throughout the Gaza Strip following the onset of the Israeli assault on 7 October.
In early May, the Israeli military initiated what it claims to be a limited operation to destroy Hamas' final battalion in Rafah. Civilians had been instructed to relocate to an “expanded humanitarian zone” approximately 20 kilometers from the area of military activity.
Thousands of Palestinians have pleaded that they are prone to being attacked by Israeli strikes regardless of their location in Gaza.
Earlier this month, the head chief of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, rejected Israeli claims about “safe zones” in Gaza, adding that these claims were “false and misleading.”
Lazzarini further emphasized that there is no safe place in Gaza. He also noted that the evacuation instructions issued by the Israeli military to Palestinians in Rafah often lack specific destinations and fail to provide viable alternatives.
Israel has killed over 176 UNRWA staff members since the start of its bombing campaign in Gaza. The UN agency has previously said that Israeli bombings have also impacted 130 of its facilities, including schools, across the strip. Over 36,000 civilians have been killed by Israeli bombing, the majority of whom were women and children.
https://thecradle.co/articles/around-on ... eeks-unrwa
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The USA bears joint responsibility for the zionists’ Rafah holocaust
Those who arm and support the zionazis are as culpable as the occupation goons themselves for the heinous crimes being committed in Gaza.
True to its word, and in blatant defiance of the order issued by the International Court of Justice to cease its assault on Rafah immediately, the zionist entity is now bombarding the tent city that surrounds Rafah, home to one and half million refugees who have been forced out of their homes elsewhere in Gaza. Graphic and horrific images are circulating on social media of mutilated children, who had been sheltering in tents next to an Unrwa centre in an officially-designated ‘safe zone’. This has been entirely enabled by the west’s unqualified support for the genocidaires.
PFLP
Tuesday 28 May 2024
This statement is reproduced from Resistance News Network, with thanks.
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This crime is a message to every individual in this world about their personal responsibility in facing an unprecedented escalation of brutality, criminality and terrorism that threatens every meaning of human values and unleashes complete dominance of savagery over this world.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine stated that the occupation army committed one of the most atrocious massacres in human history by bombing tents crowded with displaced people in Rafah, who had set up their tents beside one of the Unrwa centres, trying to shelter from the ongoing war of genocide.
The Front confirmed that this crime comes as a result of the American cover, which war criminal and genocide architect Joseph Biden ensured to provide to the occupation army and its government, and his continuous support for the extermination of our people and his full partnership in all war crimes.
The Popular Front called on everyone who is deluded by the possibility of the occupation listening to international appeals and condemnations to abandon these illusions and lies, which our people pay for with their blood that is shed every hour. All these decisions are meaningless unless war criminals from the zionist entity are punished and direct measures are taken to besiege the occupation and support our people in their confrontation.
The Front clarified in its statement:
The occupation crime expresses its decision to deliberately breach all laws and treaties and directly challenge the decisions of the International Court of Justice issued on 24 May 2024, as the occupation’s planes bombed the area with American bombs, which the occupier classified and announced as a safe zone in the northwest of Rafah city, forcing the displaced to move and crowd there. This area is packed with hundreds of thousands of displaced people who tried to save themselves and their children from the massacres committed by the occupation in all areas of the Strip and took refuge in this area, which is currently home to dozens of international institutions.
The crime represents a clear insistence on committing a war crime and an announced genocide crime. The occupation ensured that all legal specifications of war crimes and genocide apply to it, which invalidates its lies, deception, and the lies of its allies and everyone who seeks to cover up its war crimes.
The American administration, which provided this occupier with its bombs and planes used in committing this massacre and others, is a main partner and accused party that must be tried for all the war crimes and genocides committed by the occupation, especially Joseph Biden and the members of his administration. The responsibility for implementing the decisions of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court falls on every state in this world. Every individual in our world also bears a personal responsibility to work to stop the genocidal crimes.
What was issued by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court is no longer sufficient at all. We call on the concerned parties and friendly countries to file clear and direct complaints against the United States government and its president as partners in the war crimes against our people.
The Palestinian resistance, in the face of this brutal insistence on exterminating our people, is obliged to continue and escalate its defence of the existence of the Palestinian people, with all means and forms of struggle against the genocidal criminals.
The occupation army’s choice to bomb gatherings of displaced people and their tents with tons of incendiary bombs – if this does not shake the entire world and drive every person to the streets in protest, anger and intifada against the zionist entity, then this can only signify a resounding collapse of humanity as a whole.
We call on the Arab nation in the name of the pure, spilled blood of the innocent, the burned bodies of its children, and their suffering souls in steadfast Gaza, to rise and stop idling. There is no meaning to Arabism if it is not in the unity of concern and destiny, and the rejection and explosion of anger in the face of these crimes and their perpetrators and supporters.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
26 May 2024
https://thecommunists.org/2024/05/28/ne ... holocaust/
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Battle for Rafah: IDF advance in the western part of the city
May 28, 2024
Rybar
In Rafah, Israeli troops are developing offensive operations, having managed to advance along the border of Egypt and the southern part of the Gaza Strip , occupying sparsely populated areas with poorly developed infrastructure in the west of the city.
Footage has been published on the Internet in which several units of armored vehicles of the Israel Defense Forces were seen in the Tell Zaarb area near the archaeological park of the same name - M113 Zelda armored personnel carriers with embedded remote control. The Palestinian side confirmed the accuracy of the publications.
Coordinates : 31.2980935, 34.2378838
Subsequently, video recordings appeared in which the presence of Israeli troops was recorded already in the city itself: on the asphalt there were traces of tracked vehicles that drove along Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Street . It is adjacent to the Tell al-Sultan area, which was recently hit intensively by aircraft.
Coordinates : 31.3038124, 34.2382482
Such a rapid advance and consolidation in the western part of Rafah is due to the fact that IDF units simply bypassed dense urban areas, avoiding clashes with militants - there is no point in Palestinian formations setting up ambushes practically in a wasteland.
By advancing in this way, the Israelis create a picture of a kind of “blitzkrieg” in the eyes of the public. Combined with the bombing, this contributes to an even greater exodus of civilians, who are already fleeing in the thousands towards Khan Yunis . After preparing the necessary ground, the IDF will begin its offensive towards Khirbet al-Adass , effectively taking all of Rafah into a semi-encirclement.
Meanwhile, the press service of the Israel Defense Forces reported that the sixth unit involved in Rafah , the 828th Bislamah Infantry Brigade, was sent to the operation area. Earlier, the 12th Negev Infantry Brigade arrived in Israeli-controlled territory.
Despite the demonstrative dissatisfaction of the international community with the operation in Rafah , the ruling cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu continues to conduct military operations in the south of the Palestinian enclave, which often does not occur without civilian casualties.
The ultra-Orthodox government is not stopped by regular protests by its own population, and the reasons for this are still the same - for the ruling cabinet, the continuation of the war and the final resolution of the issue with the Gaza Strip are a necessity to retain power.
https://rybar.ru/bitva-za-rafah-prodviz ... ti-goroda/
Google Translator
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My name is Khan. I’m from the ICC and you’re under arrest
Martin Jay
May 29, 2024
Karim Khan is the man who could shatter in one blow the credibility of these institutions and put America even farther behind in its declining power, struggling to adapt to the multipolar world.
There’s been nothing like it before. The arrest warrants for both Hamas leaders and Benjamin Netanyahu by the ICC create a new precedent for the so-called rules-based order of the West and its elites. With now countries like Norway, Ireland and Spain already declaring that Palestine could be recognised as a state, with at least 100 Global South countries ready to back such a bold move, the pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden is mounting, as he manages to back himself and his administration into a corner with America increasingly isolated now on the world stage.
What happens when the Global South wakes up and realises that these international courts in the Hague are merely tools for any U.S. administration to arrest and detain any leaders around the world who they can’t assassinate or replace easily and that the ‘rules-based order’ is just an excuse for the U.S. and UK to break their own rules around the world when it suits them to support U.S. hegemony?
Karim Khan is the man who could shatter in one blow the credibility of these institutions and put America even farther behind in its declining power, struggling to adapt to the multipolar world. Khan is the chief ICC prosecutor who issues the warrants which are subject to approval by the ICC’s judges. If they are issued, they would immediately become a much more significant potential constraint on Israel’s leadership than a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case brought by South Africa, which ordered Israel to suspend its military campaign in Rafah.
If granted, it could be a game changer which could set the entire Gaza war and its endeavour to have its own state on a new path, crushing once and for all any hegemony the U.S. thinks it still wields in the Middle East.
Khan’s announcement accused Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and his defence minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders, of crimes against humanity. It was the first time that a sitting western-backed leader had been targeted by the court and it prompted international outrage.
It’s important to note that the ICC is not a court linked to the UN but formed by a treaty signed in Rome in 2002 and was largely backed by poor countries whose regimes were afraid of being victims of coup d’états from neighbouring countries. Broadly speaking, the difference between the ICC and the ICJ is that the former issues arrest warrants for dictators with pressure on the member states themselves to enact them. Neither Israel nor the U.S. are members.
Khan recently gave an exclusive interview to the London Times where he revealed how much he is hated by western leaders, in particular from his own country, like Rishi Sunak, who called the decision “deeply unhelpful”, and President Biden, who called it “outrageous”.
“Our job is not to make friends,” he says. “It’s to do our job whether we are applauded or condemned. We have to underline the equal worth of every child, every woman, every civilian in a world that is increasingly polarised and if we don’t do that, what’s the point of us?”
The two main points which come from the interview are his belief in an international rules-based system which is not dominated by the U.S. and how collective punishment in war is entirely unacceptable.
He is critical of Israel and its mass murders in Gaza and Rafah, saying that Israel should learn the lessons of the UK’s struggle in Northern Ireland where the British army was reluctant to indiscriminately bomb huge areas where it was known IRA terrorists were living.
“There were attempts to kill Margaret Thatcher, Airey Neave was blown up, Lord Mountbatten was blown up, there was the Enniskillen attack, we had kneecappings … But the British didn’t decide to say, ‘Well, on the Falls Road [the heart of Catholic Belfast] there undoubtedly may be some IRA members and Republican sympathisers, so therefore let’s drop a 2,000lb bomb on the Falls Road.’ You can’t do that.
“Law must have some purpose, that’s what separates states that respect the law from criminal groups and terrorists. And that’s all I have been trying to do, apply law based on facts, and that’s what we must do whatever condemnation we get.”
The simple reality of the arrest warrants though is that they are largely symbolic although they serve to isolate the U.S. even more, lending themselves to give more gravitas to the Palestinian state. Probably Netanyahu will not travel to any of the 124 member countries of the ICC which puts further pressure on him to battle his corruption charges at home, unless of course he decides at a certain point to flee Israel for a safe haven – which would probably be a Middle Eastern country, Morocco or the U.S. (the latter depending on who is in the Oval office).
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2024/ ... er-arrest/
