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ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR: THE LATEST

• Israel on Friday rejected as false and “grossly distorted” accusations brought by South Africa at the United Nation’s top court that its military operation in Gaza is a state-led genocide campaign against Palestinians. Arguing it was acting to defend itself and was fighting Hamas, not the Palestinian population, Israel called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to dismiss the case as groundless and reject South Africa’s request to order it to halt the offensive.

  South Africa told the court on Thursday that Israel’s aerial and ground offensive – which has laid waste to much of the enclave and killed almost 24,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities – aimed to bring about “the destruction of the population” of Gaza.

  Israel rejected the accusations, saying it respected international law and had a right to defend itself.

• Turkey is providing documents for a case brought by South Africa against Israel at the United Nation’s top court on a charge of committing genocide against Palestinian civilians, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. Speaking to reporters in Istanbul, Erdogan said that Turkey would continue to provide documents, mostly visuals, on Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

  “I believe Israel will be convicted there. We believe in the justice of the International Court of Justice”, Erdogan said.

  Turkish President Erdogan:

  – We believe that Israel will be convicted of genocide at ICJ
  – Israel has no defence, oppressors have always lost throughout history
  – US & UK strikes against Houthis in Yemen are not proportional pic.twitter.com/iz09XzsSZf
  — TRT World (@trtworld) January 12, 2024

  Meanwhile, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz described Erdogan as the president of “a country with the Armenian genocide in its past”, and that he was targeting Israel with “unfounded claims”.

• The Israeli army said Friday it killed three Palestinians who infiltrated a West Bank settlement and fired upon soldiers. The soldiers were attacked while patrolling the settlement of Adora in the southern West Bank and they returned fire, killing three men, the Associated Press said.

  One 34-year-old Palestinian man involved in the attack was injured with a shot to the leg, Israel’s rescue services said, without providing more information. The attack came amid surging violence in the occupied territory nearly 100 days into Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

• The Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security agency), reportedly submitted a document urgently warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to act in order to prevent an imminent flareup in the West Bank. The document reported by Channel 13 comes several days after Channel 12 reported on similar warnings issued by security chiefs regarding the situation in the West Bank, The Times of Israel reported.

  For months, the security establishment has urged Netanyahu to reverse the cabinet decisions taken after October 7 to withhold hundreds of millions in tax revenues that belong to the Palestinian Authority and block the return of some 150,000 Palestinians from work inside Israel and the settlements. The security establishment has warned that the policies risk collapsing an already cash-strapped PA, which would leave Israel responsible for providing services to millions of Palestinians in the West Bank.