The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif) deplores, Tuesday May 21, a “put in equivalence” of France between Hamas and Israel after the reaction of the Quai d’Orsay, which supported the request for arrest warrants for “crimes” in the Gaza Strip and Israel against leaders of Hamas and the Israeli government, presented by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. “The French position lacks coherence and courage. How can we both have underlined after October 7 Israel’s right to defend itself and tolerate the equating between Israel and Hamas by the ICC?” questions on the Crif. Follow our live stream.
Israel and Hamas denounce the arrest warrants requested from the ICC. Directly targeted, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, thus “rejected with disgust the Hague prosecutor’s comparison between Israel”country “democratic”And “Hamas mass murderers”. For its part, the Palestinian movement denounced “the prosecutor’s attempts (…) to assimilate the victim to the executioner”.
The United States is outraged, France supports. American President Joe Biden, Israel’s main ally, judged “scandalous” the arrest warrant requested against Benyamin Netanyahu, considering that“there is no equivalence” between Israel and Hamas. France, she “supports” the ICC and its “independence”according to the Quai d’Orsay, which condemns “anti-Semitic massacres perpetrated by Hamas” and denounces “the unacceptable nature of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip”.
New strikes on Gaza. Israeli military planes and helicopters carried out new strikes on Monday on the Gaza Strip, where ground fighting is also taking place between Palestinian soldiers and armed groups. In the north of the Palestinian territory, the air force bombed Gaza City and the Jabaliya refugee camp, where the army reported fighting “perhaps the most fierce” since October. In the south, a strike hit a house in the Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, west of the city of Rafah, killing three and wounding eight, according to hospital sources.
Bodies of hostages found in tunnels. The Israeli army said the bodies of four hostages found in the Gaza Strip on Friday were in tunnels in Jabalia, where intense fighting had taken place in the previous days. These four people were reportedly killed during the October 7 attack, notably while trying to flee the Nova festival.