(November 21, 2025)
Massive strikes against Hezbollah and Hamas in southern Lebanon, deadly bombings in Gaza, and Israeli army raids in the occupied West Bank: In recent days, Israel has intensified its military operations, causing more than 50 total deaths in Lebanon and Gaza, and arresting hundreds of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
This has been the darkest year for the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it opened its doors in The Hague in 2002. Never before had the institution faced such strong headwinds. The US imposed sanctions on four judges and the chief prosecutor, the British national Karim Khan, while threats, intrigue, and pressure from Washington mounted on state parties. The objective: to annul and prevent any arrest warrants against Israelis, including those targeting Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, issued on November 21, 2024, and to close the ongoing investigation into crimes committed on Palestinian territory.
(August 2, 2025)
British lawyer Andrew Cayley, who was tasked with leading the ICC’s file on Palestine (ICC-01/18), said the months he spent working on the case in The Hague were the most difficult of his life.
“I went through the worst months of my life in The Hague,” Cayley told Le Monde.
He described receiving direct threats, including being told he was “an enemy of Israel” and warned to “watch his back.” He resigned in March 2024.
Le Monde also cited a July 17, 2024, intelligence memo from Dutch authorities warning that the ICC had become a “prime target for espionage and subversive influence” by states whose officials were at risk of prosecution.
There was something painful about watching Jordanian King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday, February 11, his eyes nervously twitching as he tried not to upset his host, Donald Trump. Journalists asked him, several times over: Was his country, Jordan, ready to receive a part of the Gazan population on its soil, as the American president wants to remove them from Palestinian territory?
The king refused to answer. In his impeccable English, he cautiously took refuge behind Egypt‘s broader international stature.
A well-informed source in The Hague confirmed to Le Monde on Sunday that an „event is imminent,“ but did not specify the nature of the charges or the names of those involved.
The International Court of Justice issued two new measures in the genocide case South Africa brought against Israel for its military actions, ordering ‚unhindered‘ supply of ‚urgently needed basic services‘ to Gaza as ‚famine is setting in.‘
(01.12.2023)
Israeli officials had obtained Hamas‘s plan for an unprecedented attack on Israel over a year in advance, but had deemed the scenario to be aspirational, reports The New York Times in an investigation based on secret documents, published on Thursday, November 30. Israeli military intelligence had gotten hold of a 40-page Hamas document detailing, point by point, a large-scale attack matching the one perpetrated by commandos on October 7 – which left some 1,200 people dead in Israel – according to the American newspaper.
Dethrone the dollar, the symbol of Western hegemony. As ambitious as it is complex, this objective will be one of those addressed at the summit of BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) from Tuesday, August 22 to Thursday, August 24 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The heads of state in attendance (South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, his Chinese and Brazilian counterparts Xi Jinping and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov) will also be discussing the expansion of their bloc to include other countries, particularly African ones.
Macron, who is eager to represent the European continent, will be accompanied in one of the meetings with Xi by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. A speech she made on Thursday, March 30, reflected the current hardening of the European Union (EU) vis-à-vis Beijing: „How China interacts with Putin‘s war will be a determining factor for EU-China relations,“ she said.
French media stirs up a controversy and blames Israel for trying to enforce censorship.
Die französische Tageszeitung Le Monde bemerkte, dass niemand in der israelischen Botschaft den Bericht überhaupt gesehen hatte, bevor man dagegen protestierte, dass er ausgestrahlt würde, und dass bin Noun sich beschwerte, dass Israel keine Gelegenheit hatte, eine Stellungnahme abzugeben, obwohl der israelische Militärsprecher in dem Bericht befragt wurde.
But then came that curious denial that he was not Benalla’s lover.