How Israel controls $188m of Palestinian money every month Palestinian tax revenue destined for Gaza has been frozen by Israel since November – here’s what’s happening now. Israeli soldiers operate in the Gaza Strip on January 21, 2024 [Israeli Army/Handout via Reuters] On Sunday, Israel approved a plan to send taxes earmarked for Gaza to Norway instead of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Since November, taxes that would ordinarily be sent to Gaza have been frozen by the Israeli government. Under the terms of a deal reached in the 1990s, Israel collects tax on behalf of the Palestinians and makes monthly transfers to the PA pending the approval of the Ministry of Finance. While the PA was ousted from the Gaza Strip in 2007, many of its public sector employees in the enclave kept their jobs and continued to be paid with transferred tax revenues. Weeks after the Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7, Israel took the decision to withhold payments earmarked for those employees in the Gaza Strip on the grounds that they could fall into the hands of Hamas. Now, Israel says it will instead send the frozen funds to Norway. “The frozen funds will not be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, but will remain in the hands of a third country,” the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement released on Sunday. Why does Israel control Palestinian tax revenue? The system by which taxes and customs duties are collected by Israel on behalf of the PA and transferred to the authority on a monthly basis was agreed in a 1994 accord. Known as the Paris Protocol, the accord was meant to manage the economic relationship between Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupied until a final peace settlement was reached between the two states. Approved in the wake of the optimism generated by the Oslo Accords, which were publicly ratified by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the White House in September 1993, this protocol was supposed to end within five years. However, 30 years later, the financial settlement continues to give the Israeli state what the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has called “a disproportionate influence on the collection of Palestinian fiscal revenue, leading to deficiencies in the structure and collection of customs duties resulting from direct and indirect importing into Palestine”. Sign up for Al Jazeera Weekly Newsletter protected by reCAPTCHA How much money is Israel withholding? The tax revenues collected by Israel on behalf of the PA amount to around $188m each month, and account for 64 percent of the authority’s total revenue. A large portion of this is used to pay the salaries of the estimated 150,000 PA employees working in the West Bank and Gaza, despite it having no jurisdiction over the Strip. On November 3, the Israel security cabinet voted to withhold a total of $275m in Palestinian tax revenues, including cash collected for prior months that was still with Tel Aviv. “The PA is not clear about how much of the tax revenues go to Gaza – it’s a black box,” Rabeh Morrar, director of research at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute-MAS, told Al Jazeera. “Sometimes they say 30 percent, sometimes 40, sometimes 50.” Under terms set by Israel’s cabinet on Sunday, the monthly tax revenue previously allocated to PA staff in Gaza will instead be transferred to a Norwegian-based trust account. However, that money cannot be released by the fund to pay workers in Gaza without permission from Israel. The only member of the Israeli government to oppose plans to send the funds to Norway was far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who insisted that the initiative “does not guarantee that the money will not reach the Nazis from Gaza”. How does Israel exercise ‘disproportionate influence’ over the PA? The Israeli state has often used its control of the PA’s tax revenues as a means to blackmail and punish the authority. In January 2023, for instance, the newly-formed Israeli government – seen as the most far-right coalition government in the country’s history – decided to withhold $39m in tax revenues from the PA following the authority’s decision to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of Israel’s decades-long occupation. “Israeli blackmailing of our tax revenues will not stop us from continuing our political and diplomatic struggle,” said Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh at the time after Israel’s security cabinet had earlier described the PA’s ICJ move as a “decision to wage political and legal war against the State of Israel”. What effect has Israel’s withdrawal of public money had on Palestine? “The PA owes billions in internal debt to local banks, hospitals, medical companies and the private sector,” said Morrar. “There are also debts [owed], for example, for privately owned buildings rented out by the government. They have not been able to pay those back.” In 2021, the PA’s financial crisis, exacerbated by Israel’s periodic refusal to pay the PA its total tax revenue share pre-October 7, prompted it to reduce all salaries by 25 percent. Since November, when Israel decided to freeze funds earmarked for Gaza, the PA has refused to accept any money at all in protest. Against the backdrop of Israel’s continued bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians since October 7, and as a result of its decision to refuse Israel’s terms, the PA has not been able to pay employee salaries for a month and a half. While some reports have emerged that the PA may be about to relent and agree to receive partial payments from Israel, which would release some much-needed funds to many of its cash-strapped staff, the occupied West Bank remains at the mercy of Israeli diktats. Indeed, Israel suspended the work permits of some 130,000 day workers from the occupied West Bank after the war began. And a total of 355 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, including in occupied East Jerusalem, by Israeli forces and Israeli settlers since October 7. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/23/why-is-israel-sending-palestinian-taxes-to-norway

Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Tehran where he had been attending the president’s inauguration. Head and shoulders photo of Ismail Haniyeh Hamas’s political chief Ismail Haniyeh has been assassinated in Iran’s capital, Tehran, according to a statement from the group that governs Gaza, which blamed Israel for his death. Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed after the building where they were staying was struck, the statement said, adding that Haniyeh was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Tuesday. “The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas mourns to our great Palestinian people, to the Arab and Islamic nation, and to all the free people of the world: brother, leader, martyr, Mujahid Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the movement, who was killed in a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran,” Hamas said. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also announced Haniyeh’s death. “Early this morning, the residence of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was struck, resulting in his and one of his bodyguards’ martyrdom. The cause is under investigation and will be announced soon,” the IRGC said in a statement, adding that the attack was under investigation. According to media reports, the Hamas leader was killed when an “airborne guided projectile” hit a special residence for military veterans in the north of Tehran, at which he was staying, at about 2am local time (22:30 GMT on Tuesday). Israel remained silent on Haniyeh’s death, with media there reporting that the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered cabinet ministers not to comment. Far-right Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, however, celebrated the Hamas leader’s death on social media platform X. The killing “makes the world a little better,” he wrote in Hebrew. Israel launched a war in Gaza, promising to eliminate Hamas and kill its leaders after the group attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 others captive. At least 39,400 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war, with 90,996 injured. Sign up for Al Jazeera Weekly Newsletter protected by reCAPTCHA Haniyeh left the Gaza Strip in 2019 and lived in Qatar. The top Hamas leader in Gaza is Yahya Sinwar. Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, who is in Deir el-Balah in Gaza, said the killing was “significant” for the people of Gaza because he was leading negotiations that they hoped would lead to a ceasefire. “Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank also view Ismail Haniyeh as a moderate leader who is much more pragmatic compared to other leaders who head the military side of the movement,” Mahmoud said. “He is very popular here. He grew up in a refugee camp. He represents the vast majority of the people who are the descendants of the refugee families who were displaced from the Palestinian territories in 1948.” Many worry that Haniyeh’s killing could now lead to a further escalation of the conflict, he added. Tensions were already high after Israel said it targeted a senior Hezbollah commander in a “precision strike” on Beirut on Tuesday. “This is a huge escalation – what happened yesterday in Lebanon, what’s happening today in Tehran. It’s an escalation by [Israel] and that’s going to have significant ramifications,” Sami al-Arian, the director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University, told Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/31/hamass-political-chief-ismail-haniyeh-assassinated-in-iran-state-media

Global IT outage causes chaos, disrupting airlines, banks, media, telecoms Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says outage caused by ‘defect’ in software update, rules out ‘cyber incident’. People wait for their flights following a global IT outage, at BER airport in Berlin A massive technology outage has disrupted businesses and institutions in multiple countries, throwing airports, airlines, rail companies, government services, banks, stock exchanges, supermarkets, telecoms, health systems and media outlets into chaos. The disruption was caused by an update to a product offered by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which had caused machines running the Microsoft Windows operating system to crash. Reporting from London, Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull said, “CrowdStrike seems to have had some sort of mandatory update to its software that went horribly wrong.” The company had reported that the issue was related to its Falcon sensor product, engineers identifying a “content deployment problem”, said Hull. “Essentially it happens as you’re sitting in front of your terminal. If your terminal is a Microsoft Windows terminal, it suddenly goes to a blank blue screen. It’s called the ‘blue screen of death’ error. You are locked out of your operating system,” Hull said. CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said on Friday that the outage was not a “security or cyber incident”. “We understand the gravity of the situation and are deeply sorry for the inconvenience and disruption. We are working with all impacted customers to ensure that systems are back up and they can deliver the services their customers are counting on,” he wrote on X. “As noted earlier, the issue has been identified and a fix has been deployed.” Microsoft said on Friday that the “underlying cause” of the global outage had been “fixed”, but the “residual impact” was continuing to affect some Office 365 apps and services. A blue error screen on a register is seen at a departmental store affected by a cyber outage in Brisbane, Australia A blue error screen on a register is seen at a departmental store affected by a cyber outage in Brisbane, Australia [Jono Searle/AAP Image via Reuters] The outages rippled far and wide, forcing some broadcasters off air and leaving customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking. Transport systems around the world among the hardest hit. Sign up for Al Jazeera Weekly Newsletter protected by reCAPTCHA In the United States, major airlines Delta, United and American Airlines were grounded on Friday morning due to a communication issue, according to an update by the Federal Aviation Administration. In Australia, flight information screens at Sydney airport went blank. The airport said that flights were arriving and departing but that travellers should expect delays. Melbourne airport said that check-in procedures for some airlines had been affected. Airports in the United Kingdom, Germany, India, Malaysia and the Philippines also reported disruptions to services. Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, one of Europe’s busiest hubs, was also hit, with a spokesperson saying: “The outage has an impact on flights flying from and to Schiphol,” adding that it was not yet clear how many flights were affected. All airports in Spain were experiencing “disruptions”, the airport operator Aena said. Air France said its operations were also affected, but that flights already en route were not affected. Hong Kong Airport Authority said airlines affected by the outage have switched to manual check-in and flight operations have not been affected. Kenya Airways’s booking system was impacted, the airline said, warning customers to expect slower service than usual. A cash register shows a blue screen at a grocery store affected by a cyber outage in Sydney, Australia A cash register shows a blue screen at a grocery store in Sydney, Australia [Stella Qiu/Reuters] Multiple other sectors were also affected. Banks and other financial institutions from Australia to India and South Africa warned clients about disruptions to their services. Australia’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank (CBA.AX), said some customers had been unable to transfer money due to the service outage. In the UK, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) was hit by a technical glitch that affected its news service and delayed its display of opening trades. Media companies also saw their broadcasts severely disrupted. Australia’s national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Network Ten confirmed that their systems had been affected. Sky News, one of the UK’s major news broadcasters went off air, apologising for being unable to transmit live. Government services were also hit. In the UK, booking systems used by doctors were offline, multiple reports from medical officials on X said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates said some of its systems were impacted, including its “attestation service”, in a post on X. “We advise users to refrain from conducting any transactions until this issue is resolved,” it said. In Australia, Victoria’s state police said some internal systems had been hit by the outage but emergency services were operating normally. New Zealand’s parliamentary computer systems were affected, according to Rafael Gonzalez-Montero, head of the parliamentary service. Amazon’s AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it was “investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS”. At the time of reporting, some of the malfunctioning business, companies and computer app systems were beginning to return to normal service, including Sky News in the United Kingdom, which was down for an hour in the morning. Services of South African lenders Capitec Bank CPIJ.J and Absa ABGJ.J and airline Airlink have also been fully restored after the outage. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq said markets also worked normally as of midday Friday. Major US banks, including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, also said they had not seen any major impact on their systems or operations. A sign notifies customers of a temporary closure due to IT issues at a Liquorland store in Canberra, Australia A sign notifies customers of a temporary closure due to IT issues at a Liquorland store in Canberra, Australia, July 19 [Lukas Coch/AAP Image via Reuters] Not a ‘malicious act’ Australia’s National Cyber Security Coordinator said on Friday that it was aware of a “large-scale technical outage” affecting numerous business and services across the country. “Our current information is this outage relates to a technical issue with a third-party software platform employed by affected companies,” the agency said in a statement. “There is no information to suggest it is a cyber security incident. We continue to engage across key stakeholders.” France’s cybersecurity agency said Friday that there was no evidence that the global IT outage was “the result of a cyberattack.” “The teams are fully mobilised to identify and support the affected entities in France and to understand… the origin of this outage,” ANSSI, the national cybersecurity agency said. A UK government security source told the Reuters news agency that the outage was not being treated as “a malicious act”. Hong Kong Express Airways passengers queue at counters in Hong Kong International Airport amid system outages disrupting the airline's operations Hong Kong Express Airways passengers queue at counters in Hong Kong International Airport amid system outages disrupting the airline’s operations [Tyrone Siu/Reuters] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/7/19/australia-struck-by-major-it-outage-hitting-banks-media-telecoms

Israel seeks to rewrite the laws of war If the world accepts the way Israel now interprets the principle of proportionality, then genocide will become justified. Neve Gordon Palestinians look at the debris of tents following an Israeli military strike on the al-Mawasi camp for internally displaced people (IDP), near the city of Khan Yunis Palestinians survey the debris of tents following an Israeli bombardment of al-Mawasi camp that killed more than 90 people, in the Gaza Strip on July 13, 2024 [Bashar Taleb/AFP] Most people probably don’t know this, but Wikipedia has a page called “List of Israeli assassinations”. It begins in July 1956 and stretches over 68 years until today. The majority on the list are Palestinians; among them are famous Palestinian leaders including Ghassan Kanafani of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; Fatah’s Khalil Ibrahim al-Wazir – also known as Abu Jihad; Hamas’s Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Fathi Shaqaqi. When looking at the long list, it is impossible not to notice that the number of assassinations and assassination attempts Israel has carried out over the years has increased exponentially: from 14 in the 1970s to well over 150 in the first decade of the new millennium and 24 since January 2020. I was reminded of this list when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a news conference on July 13 to celebrate Israel’s attempt to kill Hamas’s military commander Mohammed Deif in Gaza. Israeli fighter jets and drones had just hammered al-Mawasi camp, which now houses an estimated 80,000 displaced Palestinians living in densely populated tents. Within just a few minutes of the fusillade, the pilots had massacred at least 90 Palestinians, including scores of women and children, while injuring an additional 300 people. All of this occurred in an area Israel had previously designated a “safe zone”. As gruesome images of dead bodies charred and shredded to pieces filled social media, reports surfaced that Israel had used several United States-made guided half-tonne bombs. In his news conference at the Ministry of Defence headquarters in Tel Aviv just a few hours after this bloodbath, Netanyahu admitted that he was “not absolutely certain” that Deif had been killed but maintained that “just the attempt to assassinate Hamas commanders delivers a message to the world, a message that Hamas’s days are numbered”. Yet even a quick perusal of the “List of Israeli assassinations” makes clear that Netanyahu was speaking with a forked tongue. He knows all too well that Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political leaders Sheik Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi or military leaders Yahya Ayyash and Salah Shehade have done very little to weaken the movement and may well have increased its following. If anything, years and years of Israeli assassinations demonstrate that they are primarily used by Israeli leaders to pander to and rally their constituencies. Netanyahu’s recent news conference is no exception. But as macabre as the Wikipedia list is, the names on it only tell a partial story. That is because it fails to include the number of civilians killed during each and every successful and failed assassination attempt. For example, the July 13 strike was the eighth known attempt on Deif’s life, and it is difficult to calculate the total number of civilians Israel has killed in its scramble to assassinate him. The Wikipedia list fails to capture how the increase in assassinations has led to an exponential increase in civilian deaths. This becomes clear when we compare Israel’s current assassination policy with its policy during the second Palestinian Intifada. When Israel assassinated the head of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, Salah Shehade, in 2002, 15 people were killed, including Shehade, his wife, 15-year-old daughter, and eight other children. Sign up for Al Jazeera Weekly Newsletter protected by reCAPTCHA After the strike, there was a public uproar in Israel at the loss of civilian lives, with 27 Israeli pilots signing a letter refusing to fly assassination sorties over Gaza. Almost a decade later, an Israeli commission of inquiry found that due to an “intelligence gathering failure”, commanders had not known that there were civilians present in the adjacent buildings at the time, and had they known they would have called off the attack. The commission’s findings are in line with the laws of armed conflict, which allow, or at least tolerate, the killing of civilians not directly participating in hostilities so long as these killings are not “excessive” in relation to the “concrete and direct” military advantage that the belligerent expects to gain from the attack. This rule, known as the principle of proportionality, is designed to ensure that the ends of a military operation justify the means by weighing the anticipated military advantage against the expected civilian harm. Today, however, we are light years away from the commission’s conclusions both with respect to the repertoires of violence Israel has adopted and the legal justifications it now provides. First, Israel’s forms of war-making have changed dramatically since 2002. According to the Israeli organisation Breaking the Silence, which is made up of military veterans, two doctrines have guided the Israeli assaults on Gaza since 2008. The first is the “no casualties doctrine”, which stipulates that, for the sake of protecting Israeli soldiers, Palestinian civilians can be killed with impunity; the second doctrine recommends intentionally attacking civilian sites in order to deter Hamas. These doctrines have unsurprisingly led to mass-casualty attacks, which, according to the laws of armed conflict, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a consequence, Israel’s military lawyers have had to modify the way they interpret the laws of armed conflict so that they align with the new warfare strategies. If two decades ago killing 14 civilians when assassinating a Hamas leader was considered disproportionate and thus a war crime by the Israeli commission of inquiry, in the first weeks after October 7, the military decided that for every junior Hamas operative, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians. If the target was a senior Hamas official, the military “authorised the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander”. This might seem egregious, but an officer in the International Law Department of the Israeli army was very candid about such changes in a 2009 interview for the newspaper Haaretz: “Our goal of military is not to fetter the army, but to give it the tools to win in a lawful manner.” The former head of the department, Colonel Daniel Reisner, also publicly stated this strategy was pursued through “a revision of international law”. “If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it,” he said, “The whole of international law is now based on the notion that an act that is forbidden today becomes permissible if executed by enough countries.” In other words, the way we calculate proportionality is not determined by some a priori moral edict but rather the norms and customs created by militaries as they adopt new and most often more lethal forms of war-making. Again, Netanyahu knows this all too well. He has stated that he personally approved the al-Mawasi strike after receiving satisfactory information on the potential “collateral damage” and the type of ammunition to be used. What is clear is that as Israel decimates Gaza and kills tens of thousands of people, it is also attempting to recreate the norms of war-making and significantly transform interpretations of the laws of armed conflict. If Netanyahu and his government succeed in rendering Israel’s version of proportionality acceptable among other state actors, then the laws of armed conflict will end up justifying rather than preventing genocidal violence. Indeed, the very architecture of the entire international legal order is now in the balance. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Israel seeks to rewrite the laws of war https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/7/15/israel-seeks-to-rewrite-the-laws-of-war

Australia challenged on ‘moral failure’ of weapons trade with Israel Regular protests have been taking place outside Australian firms making crucial components for the F-35 fighter jet. Ali MC Protesters sitting outside the HTA factory in the Melbourne suburbs,. There is a large placard reading 'Stop arming Israel" Weekly protests have been taking place for months [Ali MC/Al Jazeera] Melbourne, Australia – Israel’s continued assault on Gaza has highlighted a hidden yet crucial component of the world’s weapons manufacturing industry – suburban Australia. Tucked away in Melbourne’s industrial north, Heat Treatment Australia (HTA) is an Australian company that plays a vital role in the production of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters; the same model that Israel is using to bomb Gaza. Weekly protests of about 200 people have been taking place for months outside the nondescript factory, where heat treatment is applied to strengthen components for the fighter jet a product of US military giant Lockheed Martin. While protesters have sometimes brought production to a halt with their pickets, they remain concerned about what’s going on inside factories like HTA. “We decided to hold the community picket to disrupt workers, and we were successful in stopping work for the day,” Nathalie Farah, protest organiser with local group Hume for Palestine, told Al Jazeera. “We consider this to be a win.” “Australia is absolutely complicit in the genocide that is happening,” said 26-year-old Farah, who is of Syrian and Palestinian origin. “Which is contrary to what the government might have us believe.” More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its war in Gaza six months ago after Hamas killed more than 1,000 people in a surprise attack on Israel. The war, being investigated as a genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), has left hundreds of thousands on the brink of starvation, according to the United Nations. HTA – which did not respond to Al Jazeera for comment – is just one of an increasing number of companies in Australia engaged in the weapons manufacturing industry. Community organiser Nathalie Farah. She's wearing a Palestinian scarf and a black T-shirt saying Australia. Nathalie Farah has been organising regular protests outside HTA’s factory [Ali MC/Al Jazeera] According to Lockheed Martin, “Every F-35 built contains some Australian parts and components,” with more than 70 Australian companies having export contracts valued at a total 4.13 billion Australian dollars ($2.69bn). Protesters have also picketed Rosebank Engineering, in Melbourne’s southeast, the world’s only producer of the F-35’s “uplock actuator system”, a crucial component of the aircraft’s bomb bay doors. Sign up for Al Jazeera Weekly Newsletter protected by reCAPTCHA Defence industry push In recent years, the Australian government has sought to increase defence exports to boost the country’s flagging manufacturing industry. In 2018, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced Australia aimed to become one of the world’s top 10 defence exporters within a decade. It is currently 30th in global arms production, according to the Stockholm International Peace Institute. It is an aspiration that appears set to continue under the government of Anthony Albanese after it concluded a more than one-billion-Australian-dollar deal with Germany to supply more than 100 Boxer Heavy Weapon Carrier vehicles in 2023 – Australia’s single biggest defence industry deal. Since the Gaza war began, the industry and its business relationship with Israel have come increasingly under the spotlight. Last month, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles insisted that there were “no exports of weapons from Australia to Israel and there haven’t been for many, many years”. However, between 2016 and 2023 the Australian government approved some 322 export permits for military and dual-use equipment to Israel. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s own data – available to the public online – shows that Australian exports of “arms and ammunition” to Israel totalled $15.5 million Australian dollars ($10.1m) over the same period of time. Officials now appear to be slowing the export of military equipment to Israel. In a recent interview with Australia’s national broadcaster ABC, the Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy insisted the country was “not exporting military equipment to Israel” and clarified this meant “military weapons, things like bombs”. However, defence exports from Australia fall into two categories, items specifically for military use – such as Boxer Heavy Weapons vehicles for Germany – and so-called ‘dual use’ products, such as radar or communications systems, that can have both civilian and military uses. Australia’s Department of Defence did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests about whether the halt to defence exports to Israel also included dual-use items. What is certain is that companies such as HTA and Rosebank Engineering are continuing to manufacture components for the F-35, despite the risk of deployment in what South Africa told the International Court of Justice in December amounted to “genocidal acts“. In the Netherlands – where parts for the jet are also manufactured – an appeal court last month ordered the Dutch government to block such exports to Israel citing the risk of breaching international law. The Australian government has also come under scrutiny for its lax “end-use controls” on the weapons and components it exports. As such, while the F-35 components are exported to US parent company Lockheed Martin, their ultimate use is largely outside Australia’s legal purview. Lauren Sanders, senior research fellow on law and the future of war at the University of Queensland, told Al Jazeera that the “on-selling of components and military equipment through third party states is a challenge to global export controls. “Once something is out of a state’s control, it becomes more difficult to trace, and to prevent it being passed on to another country,” she said. Sanders said Australia’s “end use controls” were deficient in comparison with other exporters such as the United States. “The US has hundreds of dedicated staff – with appropriate legal authority to investigate – to chase down potential end-use breaches,” she said. “Australia does not have the same kind of end-use controls in place in its legislation, nor does it have the same enforcement resources that the US does.” A protester carrying a Palestinian flag at a picket outside an Australian arms company. They have wrapped a Palesinian scarf around their face so only their eyes are visible, Other protesters are behind them. They have placards. Some are sitting on the ground. The protesters say they will continue their action until manufacturing of F-35 components is stopped [Ali MC/Al Jazeera] In fact, under legislation passed in November 2023, permits for defence goods are no longer required for exports to the United Kingdom and the US under the AUKUS security agreement. In a statement, the government argued the exemption would “deliver 614 million [Australian dollars; $401m] in value to the Australian economy over 10 years, by reducing costs to local businesses and unlocking investment opportunities with our AUKUS partners”. International law This new legislation may provide more opportunities for Australian weapons manufacturers, such as NIOA, a privately owned munitions company that makes bullets at a factory in Benalla, a small rural town in Australia’s southeast. The largest supplier of munitions to the Australian Defence Force, NIOA – which did not respond to Al Jazeera for comment – also has aspirations to break into the US weapons market. At a recent business conference, CEO Robert Nioa said that “the goal is to establish greater production capabilities in both countries so that Australia can be an alternative source of supply of weapons in times of conflict for the Australian and US militaries”. Greens Senator David Shoebridge told Al Jazeera that the government needed to “publicly and immediately refute the plan to become a top 10 global arms dealer and then to provide full transparency on all Australian arms exports including end users. “While governments in the Netherlands and the UK are facing legal challenges because of their role in the global supply chain, the Australian Labor government just keeps handing over weapons parts as though no genocide was happening,” he said. “It’s an appalling moral failure, and it is almost certainly a gross breach of international law.” The Australian government also recently announced a 917 million Australian dollar ($598m) deal with controversial Israeli company Elbit Systems. A court in the Netherlands hearing a case brought in relation to military exports. The room is wood panelled and there is a portrait on the wall. The Dutch government has faced legal action over the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel [File: Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters] Elbit has come under fire for its sale of defence equipment to the Myanmar military regime, continuing sales even after the military, which seized power in a 2021 coup, was accused of gross human rights violations – including attacks on civilians – by the United Nations and others. Despite a recent joint announcement between the Australian and UK governments for an “immediate cessation of fighting” in Gaza, some say Australia needs to go further and cut defence ties with Israel altogether. “The Australian government must listen to the growing public calls for peace and end Australia’s two-way arms trade with Israel,” Shoebridge said. “The Albanese government is rewarding and financing the Israeli arms industry just at the moment they are arming a genocide.” Protests have continued both at the HTA factory in Melbourne and their premises in Brisbane, with organisers pledging to continue until the company stops manufacturing components for the F-35. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/28/australia-challenged-on-moral-failure-of-weapons-trade-with-israel

South Africa files case at ICJ accusing Israel of ‘genocidal acts’ in Gaza Israel, which has been accused of meting out collective punishment on Palestinians, has rejected the case at the UN court. Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli strikes on houses, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at the Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip, December 25, 2023. [Reuters/Shadi Tabatibi/File] Palestinians gather at the site of Israeli attacks on houses, amid the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, at the Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip, December 25, 2023 [File: Shadi Tabatibi/Reuters] South Africa has filed a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing it of crimes of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza after nearly three months of relentless Israeli bombardment has killed more than 21,500 people and caused widespread destruction in the besieged enclave. In an application to the court on Friday, South Africa described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”. “The acts in question include killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction,” the application said. People look on as the shrouded bodies of Palestinians killed in nothern Gaza, that were taken and later released by Israel, are burried in a mass grave in Rafah, on the southern Gaza Strip on December 26, 2023, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (Photo by Mahmud HAMS / AFP) People look on as the shrouded bodies of Palestinians killed in nothern Gaza, that were taken and later released by Israel, are burried in a mass grave in Rafah, Dec. 26 [Mahmud Hams/AFP] The ICJ, also called the World Court, is a UN civil court that adjudicates disputes between countries. It is distinct from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which prosecutes individuals for war crimes. As members of the UN, both South Africa and Israel are bound by the court. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank with his country’s past apartheid regime of racial segregation imposed by the white-minority rule that ended in 1994. Several human rights organisations have said that Israeli policies towards Palestinians amount to apartheid. Sign up for Al Jazeera Week in the Middle East protected by reCAPTCHA Global condemnation South Africa said Israel’s conduct, particularly since the war began on October 7, violates the UN’s Genocide Convention, and called for an expedited hearing. The application also requests the court to indicate provisional measures to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people” under the Convention. “South Africa is gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants,” a statement from South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) said, adding that the country has “repeatedly stated that it condemns all violence and attacks against all civilians, including Israelis.” “South Africa has continuously called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and the resumption of talks that will end the violence arising from the continued belligerent occupation of Palestine,” the statement added. Israel has rejected global calls for a ceasefire saying the war would not stop until the Hamas group, whose October 7 attack triggered the current phase of the conflict, was destroyed. Some 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas attack in Israel. The Palestinian group has said its attack was against Israel’s 16-year-old blockade of Gaza and expansion of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Settlement expansions pose the biggest hurdle in the realisation of a future Palestinian state comprising Gaza, occupied West Banka and East Jerusalem. In the latest development in Israel’s war on Gaza, tens of thousands of newly displaced Palestinians in the centre of the Palestinian enclave on Friday were forced to flee further south as Israel expanded its ground and air offensive in the centre of the enclave. Israel has faced global condemnation for the mounting toll and destruction and is accused of meting out collective punishment on the Palestinian people. ‘A very important step’ The court application is the latest move by South Africa, a vociferous critic of Israel’s war, to ratchet up pressure after its lawmakers last month voted in favour of closing down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria and suspending all diplomatic relations until a ceasefire was agreed. Al Jazeera’s Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from the United Nations headquarters in New York, said the move was “clearly a very important step to try to hold some accountability to Israel.” “Now that South Africa is pushing this to the ICJ, it will be on [the UN’s] agenda to try to make a ruling on this very important question,” he added. On November 16, a group of 36 UN experts called on the international community to “prevent genocide against the Palestinian people”, calling Israel’s actions since October 7 a “genocide in the making”. Palestinians inspect the rubble of a building of the Al Nawasrah family destroyed in an Israeli strike in Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) Palestinians inspect the rubble of a building of the Al Nawasrah family destroyed in an Israeli strike in Maghazi refugee camp, Dec. 25 [Adel Hana/AP Photo] “We are deeply disturbed by the failure of governments to heed our call and to achieve an immediate ceasefire. We are also profoundly concerned about the support of certain governments for Israel’s strategy of warfare against the besieged population of Gaza, and the failure of the international system to mobilise to prevent genocide,” the experts said in a statement. Israel rejects South Africa’s accusations Israel has rejected South Africa’s move as “baseless”, calling it “blood libel.” “South Africa’s claim lacks both a factual and a legal basis, and constitutes despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the Court,” Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, Lior Haiat, said in a statement posted on X. “Israel has made it clear that the residents of the Gaza Strip are not the enemy, and is making every effort to limit harm to the non-involved and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the Gaza Strip,” the statement added. “It does rally public opinion to the reality of what’s going on in Palestine, not just in Gaza but also in the West Bank,” said Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara. According to Article 2 of the Genocide Convention, genocide involves acts committed with the “intent to destroy, either in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” “Where the disagreement lies is whether there is intent or no intent,” Bishara said. “The three leading Israeli officials have declared the intent, starting with Israeli President Herzog when he said there are ‘no innocents’ in Gaza, the defence minister who said Israel will impose collective punishment on the people of Gaza because they are ‘human animals’,” Bishara said, adding that prime minister Netanyahu also used a biblical analogy in a statement widely interpreted as a genocidal call. The Palestinian ministry of foreign affairs welcomed South Africa’s move, and called on the ICJ to take immediate action to “prevent further harm to the Palestinian people”. “Israel’s stated policy, acts and omissions are genocidal in character are committed with the requisite specific intent to the destruction of the Palestinian people under its colonial occupation and apartheid regime in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention,” a statement by the ministry said. “The State of Palestine appeals to the international community and the Contracting Parties to the Convention to uphold their obligations and support the Court in the proceedings.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/29/south-africa-files-case-at-icj-accusing-israel-of-genocidal-acts-in-gaza

Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims Rights group says Facebook and Instagram routinely engage in ‘six key patterns of undue censorship’ of content supporting Palestine Richard Luscombe Protesters unfurl the Palestinian flag in front of a sign with the Meta name, symbol and address. Meta has engaged in a “systemic and global” censorship of pro-Palestinian content since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war on 7 October, according to a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW). In a scathing 51-page report, the organization documented and reviewed more than a thousand reported instances of Meta removing content and suspending or permanently banning accounts on Facebook and Instagram. The company exhibited “six key patterns of undue censorship” of content in support of Palestine and Palestinians, including the taking down of posts, stories and comments; disabling accounts; restricting users’ ability to interact with others’ posts; and “shadow banning”, where the visibility and reach of a person’s material is significantly reduced, according to HRW. Examples it cites include content originating from more than 60 countries, mostly in English, and all in “peaceful support of Palestine, expressed in diverse ways”. Even HRW’s own posts seeking examples of online censorship were flagged as spam, the report said. “Censorship of content related to Palestine on Instagram and Facebook is systemic and global [and] Meta’s inconsistent enforcement of its own policies led to the erroneous removal of content about Palestine,” the group said in the report, citing “erroneous implementation, overreliance on automated tools to moderate content, and undue government influence over content removals” as the roots of the problem. In a statement to the Guardian, Meta acknowledged it makes errors that are “frustrating” for people, but said that “the implication that we deliberately and systemically suppress a particular voice is false. Claiming that 1,000 examples, out of the enormous amount of content posted about the conflict, are proof of ‘systemic censorship’ may make for a good headline, but that doesn’t make the claim any less misleading. Meta said it was the only company in the world to have publicly released human rights due diligence on issues related to Israel and Palestine . “This report ignores the realities of enforcing our policies globally during a fast-moving, highly polarized and intense conflict, which has led to an increase in content being reported to us. Our policies are designed to give everyone a voice while at the same time keeping our platforms safe,” the company’s statement reads. It is the second time this month that Meta has been challenged over accusations that it routinely silences pro-Palestinian content and voices. Last week Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senator for Massachusetts, wrote to Meta’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, demanding information following hundreds of reports from Instagram users dating back to October that their content was demoted or removed, and their accounts subjected to shadow banning. Alex Hern's weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. On Tuesday, Meta’s oversight board said the company had been wrong to remove two videos of the conflict in particular from Instagram and Facebook. The board said the videos were valuable for “informing the world about human suffering on both sides”. One showed the aftermath of an airstrike near al-Shifa hospital in Gaza via Instagram, the other a woman being taken hostage during the 7 October attack via Facebook. The clips were reinstated. Users of Meta’s products have documented what they say is technological bias in favor of pro-Israel content and against pro-Palestinian posts. Instagram’s translation software replaced “Palestinian” followed by the Arabic phrase “Praise be to Allah” to “Palestinian terrorists” in English. WhatsApp’s AI, when asked to generate images of Palestinian boys and girls, created cartoon children with guns, whereas its images Israeli children did not include firearms. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, according to Human Rights Watch https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/dec/21/meta-facebook-instagram-pro-palestine-censorship-human-rights-watch-report

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