Hostilities frequently flare up along the border separating the northern Gaza Strip, run by Islamist movement Hamas, and Israel.
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The group’s arrival “shortly” will be unprecedented, he told AFP on condition of anonymity, saying the visit was meant to show the ICC team “how the Israeli judicial system works”.
Israeli Jews who openly sympathize with and seek justice for the Palestinians are ostracized by backers of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
Under its statutes, the ICC must be satisfied that the state in question is unable or unwilling to pursue the matter itself before the court opens war crimes proceedings.
Israel continues to carry out attacks on the Palestinian enclave from time to time.
Turkish aid for the Gaza Strip has been sent from the country’s southern coast for the second time since relations were normalized between Israel and Ankara in June, a Turkish official said Saturday. About 2,100 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli air strikes since 2000, a fact never mentioned by US media, even though documented by human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The shipments have been criticized in some quarters in Israel due to the fact that Hamas is holding the bodies of several Israeli soldiers.
The Palestinians formally asked the ICC past year to investigate the Jewish state, which has not signed up to the ICC, for alleged war crimes.
“The Palestinian leadership has provided the ICC with documentation relating to apartheid, illegal settlements in [the] West Bank and East Jerusalem, and crimes associated with the settlement regime”, Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq said in a statement.
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An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that Israeli artillery forces fired at a Hamas site near the border in the northern Gaza Strip, in response to fire coming from the location that was being directed at Israeli troops across the border.
