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‘Netanyahu is dangerous to Israel, must not remain in power’
Yair Golan, head of Israel’s opposition Democrats party, has slammed PM Benjamin Netanyahu as a “threat to Israel” and called for him to be immediately replaced.
In a post on X, Golan said Netanyahu was “a serial saboteur of every deal to return the hostages”, who “rejects every initiative to end the fighting, to lift the country out of the state of emergency”.
“There is no security strategy here. The war to annex Gaza is designed to preserve his rule and allow him to complete the regime coup under its cover,” he said.
“Netanyahu is dangerous to Israel and must not remain in power for even one more day. We will replace him, save our kidnapped brothers, end the war, and restore security to Israel.”
Opposition figure slams Israeli defence minister’s threats for Gaza
Leading Israeli opposition politician Yair Golan says the latest threat by Defence Minister Israel Katz against Hamas that we reported on earlier is ineffective. He described the online post by Katz as “unnecessary arrogance” that might work among members of Netanyahu’s Likud party, but contains “zero understanding of security”.
“Hamas is not affected by tweets of hubris. Hamas fully understands the importance of the hostages in its hands, and the longer the war continues, the more brutally it will use them,” Golan wrote in a post on X.
“Israel deserves a defence minister who understands, knows and acts on security, not a clown whose main responsibility is to pass a draft-dodging law,” he said in reference to exemptions of military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Israel depriving Palestinian prisoners of food, its Supreme Court rules
Israel’s Supreme Court has said in a rare ruling that the Israeli government is intentionally depriving thousands of Palestinian prisoners of even a minimum amount of food for daily subsistence amid the genocidal war on Gaza.
The three-judge panel, which has so far mostly refrained from taking any action against the government or military during 23 months of war on besieged and relentlessly bombarded Gaza, deliberated on the issue based on a request from two Israeli rights groups.
It ruled unanimously on Sunday that the Israeli government had a legal duty to provide Palestinian prisoners with three meals a day to ensure “a basic level of existence” and ordered authorities to fulfil that obligation.
In a two-to-one decision, the court furthermore accepted the petition filed last year by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Gisha, siding with their allegations that the government’s deliberate restriction of prisoners’ food in Israeli detention facilities has caused Palestinians to suffer malnutrition and starvation.
Palestinians in Gaza are meanwhile suffering an Israeli-induced famine, with daily deaths from malnutrition.
“We are not speaking here of comfortable living or luxury, but of the basic conditions of survival as required by law,” the ruling said. “Let us not share in the ways of our worst enemies.”
Israeli court ruling on prisoners ‘important but convoluted’: Professor
Israel is currently holding 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners in its jails, says Neve Gordon, professor of human rights and international humanitarian law at Queen Mary University of London.
Among them are 3,500 people held under administrative detention without trial, about 2,500 “unlawful combatants” who are in limbo, 400 children and 50 women, he told Al Jazeera.
Gordon said many prisoners have recounted being starved and abused in Israeli detention. “Israel has been using against these prisoners a policy of starvation and torture,” Gordon said, adding that since the start of the war on Gaza, Israel has also banned prisoners from buying or cooking their own food.
A ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court that the Israeli government is intentionally depriving thousands of Palestinian prisoners of even a minimum amount of food for daily subsistence is important but also “convoluted” because the judges did not say there was a policy of starvation despite clear statements by Israeli officials, Gordon said.
“It did not come out with clear guidelines to the prison authority on how to change its policy,” he said. “And it did not say anything about the discrimination between Palestinian political prisoners and criminal prisoners because the policy is not directed against criminals, who have been receiving adequate food, while Palestinian political prisoners have been basically starved.”
