Blinken travels to UAE, Saudi Arabia for next leg of Mideast tour

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will hold talks in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia later today (Monday) before heading to Israel, as he continues his Mideast tour to discuss postwar Gaza and head off a wider regional conflagration amid intensifying skirmishes between Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Israel.

Blinken was in Jordan and Qatar Sunday at the start of a five-day diplomatic effort in the Middle East seeking to avert a wider war in the region. He is also due to visit the West Bank and Egypt this week.

“This is a moment of profound tension for the region. This is a conflict that could easily metastasize, causing even more insecurity and suffering,” Blinken told a press conference in Doha before heading to Abu Dhabi.

Blinken said he would tell Israeli officials that it is imperative they do more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza and that Palestinian civilians must be allowed to return home and not be pressed to leave Gaza.

The trip comes after an alleged Israeli drone strike in Beirut killed deputy Hamas chief Saleh al-Arouri and Israel exchanged fire with Hezbollah across its northern border with Lebanon. Washington is also rallying allies to deter attacks on Red Sea shipping by Houthi rebels who control most of Yemen.

Washington wants Israel’s Arab neighbors to play a role in reconstruction, governance, and security in Gaza in the expectation that Israel’s assault will remove Hamas, which has run the territory since 2007, officials have said.

The US delegation aims to gather Arab states’ views on the future of Gaza before taking those positions to Israel, the US official said, acknowledging that stances would be far apart.

Israeli lawmaker signs petition supporting Hague genocide hearings on Gaza war

A lawmaker from the Arab-majority Hadas-Ta’al party, MK Ofer Cassif, expresses his support for the upcoming hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague this week to consider South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

“My constitutional duty is to Israeli society and all its residents, not to a government whose members and its coalition are calling for ethnic cleansing and even actual genocide. They are the ones who harm the country and the people, they are the ones who led to South Africa’s appeal to The Hague, not me and my friends,” he writes on X.

Cassif is one of some 200 Israelis who are signing onto a petition of support for South Africa’s case, Ynet reports. In the petition, they say they wish to “add our voice as citizens of Israel to the claims…that South Africa submitted to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in the hope that our voice will help reach a decision that will bring an immediate end to the war.”

Israel declared war on Hamas after the terror group burst across its southern border from Gaza on October 7, slaughtering some 1,200 people — mostly civilians who were massacred amid horrific acts of brutality — and kidnapping more than 240 others.

It rejects any assertion that it is targeting civilians or engaged in anything other than a campaign for its security. Israel says it is making an effort to avoid harm to civilians while fighting a terror group embedded within the civilian population. It has also long accused Gaza-based terror groups of using Palestinians in the Strip as human shields, operating from sites, including schools and hospitals, which are supposed to be protected.

In his X post, Cassif wrote: “When the government acts against society, the state, and its citizens, especially when it sacrifices them and commits crimes in their name on the altar of maintaining its existence, it is my right and even my duty to warn about this and do everything I can within the law to stop it.”

“I will not give up the fight for our existence as a moral society. This is true patriotism…not unnecessary bloodshed, and not sacrificing kidnapped citizens and soldiers in senseless wars,” he goes on.

In its application filed last week, South Africa accused Israel of actions during its war against Hamas in Gaza that are “genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent… to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group.”

Israel responded to the petition, accusing South Africa of a “blood libel,” while confirming that it will send a representative to defend the country against the charges. The US, too, denounced the motion as “meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

Earlier Sunday, Israel said retired Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, 87, will be Israel’s appointee to the 15-judge panel.

Beyond the permanent panel of the ICJ, both parties to a case may themselves nominate a judge to join the deliberations. Decisions are made by a simple majority of the presiding judges.

South Africa will present its case at The Hague on Thursday, followed by Israel on Friday.

Israel is reportedly seeking to screen before the court a compilation of harrowing scenes of murder, torture and decapitation from the October 7 onslaught, including raw videos from the terrorists’ bodycams that it has shown, among others, to journalists, international leaders and diplomats in the weeks since the Hamas invasion.

2 medical groups say they are pulling teams from central Gaza hospital due to IDF operations

Two medical organizations announced that they were withdrawing from a central Gaza hospital due to IDF operations in the area, CNN reports.

CNN cited a statement by the the International Rescue Committee and UK-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) that says the organizations are withdrawing their emergency medical teams from Al Aqsa Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza after the IDF dropped flyers in the area telling Palestinian civilians to evacuate.

MAP and the IRC said they are “deeply appalled that our EMT has been effectively forced to stop working at a hospital where they have been saving lives.”

They said the IDF “dropped leaflets designating areas surrounding the hospital as a ‘red zone.'”

Security forces said to arrest 3 suspects in earlier West Bank terror shooting

Israeli security forces have reportedly nabbed three Palestinian suspects in this morning’s West Bank terror attack north of Ramallah in which an East Jerusalem man was killed.

According to Hebrew media, forces made the three arrests tonight.

Ynet reports that the suspects are two physicians and a nurse from the West Bank.