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US nonprofit submits list of 40 Israeli officers suspected of war crimes to ICC in Hague

"While Israel has done its best to conceal the identities of many of its officers, they should be put on notice that they face individual criminal liability for the crimes underway in Gaza," Sarah Leah Whitson noted

DUBAI, December 21. /TASS/. Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a US-based nonprofit organization, has submitted to a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, a list of 40 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) military commanders who are suspected of taking part in war crimes in the Gaza Strip, Qatar’s Al Jazeera TV channel reported.

"These 40 IDF commanders who have been responsible for planning, ordering, and executing Israel's indiscriminate bombardment, wanton destruction, and mass killing of civilians in Gaza should be prime suspects in any ICC investigation," the news outlet quoted DAWN Executive Director Sarah Leah Whitson as saying.

"While Israel has done its best to conceal the identities of many of its officers, they should be put on notice that they face individual criminal liability for the crimes underway in Gaza," she added.

The TV channel noted that on November 17, the ICC prosecutor urged all sides to provide him with information necessary for investigating violations of the ICC’s founding Rome Statute, which covers genocide and war crimes, among other crimes, committed both in Palestine and during the IDF’s military operation in Gaza.

On December 16, Al Jazeera said that it would refer the killing of one of its own employees in the southern Gaza Strip to the ICC. According to the TV channel, reporter Wael Dahdouh and cameraman Samer Abudaqa were reporting from a school in Khan Younis when Israeli forces delivered a strike on the Gaza Strip city. In the attack, the cameraman was killed and the journalist was wounded.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 when militants from the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian radical group Hamas staged a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from Gaza, killing civilians and taking hundreds as hostages. Hamas described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. In response, Israel has declared a state of war readiness; announced a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians; and began delivering air strikes on the enclave and certain parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are underway in the West Bank as well.