Public letter signed by senior diplomats calls for urgent action over Israel’s war on Gaza
Emma Graham-Harrison
A public letter signed by 209 former EU ambassadors, senior diplomatic staff and ambassadors from EU nation states has been published today, calling for urgent action over Israel’s war in Gaza and unlawful actions in the West Bank.
If the EU will not act collectively, member states must take steps individually or in smaller groups to support human rights and uphold international law, the letter says, laying out nine possible approaches.
They include suspending arms export licenses, barring trade in goods and services with illegal settlements and barring European datacentres from receiving, storing or processing data from Israeli government or commercial sources if it relates to Israel’s “presence and activities in Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied territories”.
Signatories include 110 former ambassadors, 25 former director general and two of the most senior diplomats in the EU – Alain Le Roy, former secretary general of the European External Affairs service and Carlo Trojan, former secretary general of the European Commission.
“This struck a chord,” said Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, former EU representative to the Palestinian territory and part of a steering group of 6 former diplomats coordinating the initiative which began in mid-July.
This letter was the third public call for action, and the first calling for nations to act individually if the EU does not take collective action. A proposal to partly suspend Israel from the Horizon research fund over Gaza failed in late July.
“There is such dismay now within the institutions, people are saying enough is enough,” Kühn von Burgsdorff said.
“We can’t stay paralysed if the 27 (member states) can’t take action, that betrays our values. So we have proposed nine actions that can be taken at the state level or by groups of states.”
“European governments are losing credibility not just in the global south but with our own citizens, in every member state.” He cited polling from his native Germany, traditionally a staunch supporter of Israel, that showed 80 percent of the population disagree with Israel’s actions in Gaza and two-thirds want the government to take action.
Key events
Dutch airline KLM will resume flight services to and from Israel on 28 September, after suspending flights in June over security concerns. It will bring back the Tel Aviv to Amsterdam route once daily with a Boeing 737-900, which seats 188 passengers.
The carrier took a one-year absence from flying to Israel, and only just reopened the route before shutting it down again on 13 June due to the closure of Israel’s airspace following Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure.
The flight time is expected to bee extended by an hour to allow for a stop in Larnaca, Cyprus. This is to switch out crew members who are concerned about being in Israel during an ongoing war – The Times of Israel reports.
Public letter signed by senior diplomats calls for urgent action over Israel’s war on Gaza
Emma Graham-Harrison
A public letter signed by 209 former EU ambassadors, senior diplomatic staff and ambassadors from EU nation states has been published today, calling for urgent action over Israel’s war in Gaza and unlawful actions in the West Bank.
If the EU will not act collectively, member states must take steps individually or in smaller groups to support human rights and uphold international law, the letter says, laying out nine possible approaches.
They include suspending arms export licenses, barring trade in goods and services with illegal settlements and barring European datacentres from receiving, storing or processing data from Israeli government or commercial sources if it relates to Israel’s “presence and activities in Gaza and elsewhere in the occupied territories”.
Signatories include 110 former ambassadors, 25 former director general and two of the most senior diplomats in the EU – Alain Le Roy, former secretary general of the European External Affairs service and Carlo Trojan, former secretary general of the European Commission.
“This struck a chord,” said Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, former EU representative to the Palestinian territory and part of a steering group of 6 former diplomats coordinating the initiative which began in mid-July.
This letter was the third public call for action, and the first calling for nations to act individually if the EU does not take collective action. A proposal to partly suspend Israel from the Horizon research fund over Gaza failed in late July.
“There is such dismay now within the institutions, people are saying enough is enough,” Kühn von Burgsdorff said.
“We can’t stay paralysed if the 27 (member states) can’t take action, that betrays our values. So we have proposed nine actions that can be taken at the state level or by groups of states.”
“European governments are losing credibility not just in the global south but with our own citizens, in every member state.” He cited polling from his native Germany, traditionally a staunch supporter of Israel, that showed 80 percent of the population disagree with Israel’s actions in Gaza and two-thirds want the government to take action.
Mark Sweney
A Norwegian wealth fund has sold Caterpillar, the construction equipment manufacturer, over Israel’s use of its bulldozers to destroy Palestinian property in Gaza and the West Bank.
The fund said it excluded Caterpillar and five Israeli banking groups on ethics grounds. “There is no doubt that Caterpillar’s products are being used to commit extensive and systemic violations of international humanitarian law,” said the fund’s independent council on ethics.
It also said the machinery was “being used by Israeli authorities in the widespread unlawful destruction of Palestinian property”.
“As deliveries of the relevant machinery to Israel are now set to resume, the council considers there to be an unacceptable risk that Caterpillar is contributing to serious violations of individuals’ rights in war or conflict situations,” it said.
The wealth fund has now removed more than 20 Israeli companies this year, but Caterpillar is the first big US company to be removed through the wealth fund’s ongoing review to ensure its investments do not contribute to violations of international law.
Israel’s inquiry into hospital attack must yield actual results – UN official
The UN says that Israel must not only investigate alleged unlawful killings in Gaza like the hospital strike that killed 20 people, including journalists, the previous day, but also ensure those probes yield results.
“There needs to be justice,” United Nations rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told AFP in Geneva, adding that the large number of media workers killed in the Gaza war “raises many, many questions about the targeting of journalists”.
His comments came after an Israeli strike on the Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis on Monday killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, sparking an international outcry.
Reuters, the Associated Press and Al Jazeera all issued statements mourning their slain contributors, while the Israeli military said it would investigate the incident.
Kheetan added:
The Israeli authorities have, in the past, announced investigations in such killings.
It’s of course the responsibility of Israel, as the occupying power, to investigate – but these investigations need to yield results.
We haven’t seen results or accountability measures yet. We have yet to see the results of these investigations, and we call for accountability and justice.
He said at least 247 Palestinian journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war was triggered by militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Peter Beaumont
In case you missed it yesterday, my colleague Peter Beaumont has this analysis on why Israel’s attack on a hospital in Gaza may constitute a war crime on many fronts:
Israel’s twin strike on the Nasser hospital in Gaza, which killed five journalists including staff working for the Associated Press, Reuters, NBC and Al Jazeera, is a potential violation of international law writ large.
The attack targeted a civilian building, specifically a hospital, in a reckless double-tap strike that killed civilians, with rescue workers and journalists among them. All categories that should be protected under international law.
While the Israel Defense Forces, which have killed about 200 journalists already in the Gaza war, immediately attempted to suggest the killing of civilians had been in error, the reality is that it appears to be policy and not a mistake.
What is striking about this incident is that each individual element – the targeting of a working hospital, of journalists and rescue workers, of civilian injured already under treatment – would be expected to draw accusations of a war crime in its own right.
Taken together it points to something far darker, a “horrific” incident in the words of the British foreign secretary, David Lammy.
Read on here:
The death toll in Gaza has risen, with least 75 Palestinians, including 17 aid seekers, being killed in the last 24 hours according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
It said that the total death toll since 7 October 2023 has now risen to 62,819, with 158,629 people wounded.
This comes after international condemnation of the killing of at least 20 people, including five journalists, after Israel struck Nasser hospital in Gaza on Monday (25 August).
Israeli security cabinet set to discuss hostage release deal and Gaza
Israel’s prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu will convene his security cabinet at 4pm to discuss the situation in Gaza and potential plans to reach a hostage release deal.
Netanyahu’s office told The Times of Israel that the meeting will take place, but it did not clarify whether raise the ceasefire and phased hostage-release proposal that Hamas said it accepted last week. However, local Hebrew media reports that it is not on the agenda.
This comes as Israeli defence minister Israel Katz has vowed to press on with the offensive against Gaza City, according to The Independent. He said be razed unless Hamas agrees to end the war on Israel’s terms and release all hostages.
Hamas said in a statement on Sunday that Israel’s plans to take over Gaza City showed it wasn’t serious about a ceasefire. It said a ceasefire would be the “only way” hostages would be released.
A human rights group says US military personnel could face legal liability for assisting Israeli forces who commit war crimes in Gaza.
According to Human Rights Watch, direct participation by US forces since October 2023, including providing intelligence and involvement in coordination and planning makes the United States party to the conflict between Israel and Palestinian armed groups.
The group argue that US forces could be “jointly responsible for participating in laws-of-war violations by Israeli forces, and US personnel implicated could be held individually responsible for war crimes.”
“International law holds a country legally complicit when it knowingly assists another nation to commit serious laws-of-war violations and other abuses,” said Sarah Yager, Washington director at Human Rights Watch.
“The US public should know that US weapons provided to Israel are directly enabling atrocities in Gaza, deeply entangling the United States in the laws-of-war violations that Human Rights Watch and others are documenting.”
Israeli hostage families block roads to call for release of relatives
Families are demanding the Israeli government enter an agreement with Hamas to end the war and secure the release of the hostages still held in Gaza. Major roads, including Route 1 and Route 443, both of which connect Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, were closed on Tuesday by the protests.
Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar has accused “left-wing” governments of trying to “force” Palestinian state on to Israel.
During his first official visit to the US since taking office last year, he said at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in New York that the move would amount to “suicide”.
As Times of Israel reports, he said: “Left-wing governments in various countries, including France, Britain, Canada, and Australia, are trying to force a Palestinian state on Israel.”
“Israel cannot allow this. For us, it would be an act of suicide,” he says, then accusing western capitals of “trying to build momentum” through their recently announced plans to recognise a Palestinian state.
Elsewhere in the briefing, Sa’ar also said that Israel stands in a strategically better than it did two years ago, from a military standpoint. He also noted “the Iranian axis that militarily surrounded Israel has been greatly weakened.”
“What was once a military siege is now turning into an attempt at a political siege of the State of Israel, with a clear goal: to force a Palestinian state upon us,” he added.
Here are some of the latest images from Gaza:
All roads across Israel have now reopened after a morning of protests, according to local police.
A statement from police said: “Freedom of protest and expression is not freedom to harm many others’ freedom of movement.
“Blocking roads without permission and in a manner that may endanger road users or harm citizens’ freedom of movement will not be allowed.”
This comes after there was a planned national “day of struggle”, planned by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in hopes of securing a deal to free the captured. The day began at 6.29am, the time Hamas launched its 7 October attack, and saw protesters close down highways and block pavements outside politician’s homes.
Major roads were closed across the country, including sections of Route 1 and Route 443, both of which connect Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Opening summary
Hello, we are restarting our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war and wider Middle East crisis.
The killing of at least 20 people, including five journalists, after Israel struck Nasser hospital in Gaza on Monday (25 August) has sparked international condemnation.
Reuters cameraperson Hussam al-Masri , photographer Mohammed Salama, who worked for Al Jazeera, and NBC’s Moaz Abu Taha were among those killed.
Victims on the fourth floor of the hospital were killed in a double-tap strike with one missile hitting first. Another strike hit as rescuers began to arrive, according to health officials.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office claimed the strike was a “tragic mishap” – and said that the military will investigate the incident.
Meanwhile, Canada said it is “horrified” by the Israeli strikes on Nasser hospital, with the foreign ministry posting on X saying “Israel has the obligation to protect civilians, including journalists and healthcare workers, operating in Gaza.
“Canada urges an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the protection of civilians, the unconditional release of the remaining hostages, and scaled-up UN-led humanitarian aid which can pass freely to those in need.”
This comes as mass protests are being planned in Tel Aviv, as the The Hostages and Missing Families Forum are lead a national “day of struggle” today (26 August) with the aim of securing a hostage release deal.
The Times of Israel reports that protesters have blocked highways, with some pitched outside the homes of government ministers. In Ness Ziona, people are reading out the names of the hostages outside the home of foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar.
Elsewhere, demonstrators block pavement outside the home of economy minister Nir Barkat with long strings of hostage posters.
Relatives of the captured gathered in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv to deliver speeches for the day’s press conference. “We have a wonderful people but no government … The government has abandoned, but the people will bring them back!” said Einav Zangauker, mother of Matan Zangauker, Al Jazeera reports.
In other developments:
-
Amnesty International says the Israeli military destruction of civilian property in southern Lebanon should be investigated as a war crime, AFP reports. “The Israeli military’s extensive and deliberate destruction of civilian property and agricultural land across southern Lebanon must be investigated as war crimes,” Amnesty’s statement reads.
-
Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese has accused Iran of being behind a pair of 2024 antisemitic attacks. At a press conference in Canberra, Albanese said the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) “has now gathered enough credible intelligence to reach a deeply disturbing conclusion that the Iranian government directed” at least two of the recent attacks on Australia’s Jewish community.
-
Australia has now announced it will suspend Tehran’s ambassador and is pulling diplomats from Iran. It also plans to pass legislation to list the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror group.
