Washington hints at Israeli unit sanctions

JERUSALEM/GAZA — Benny Gantz, Israeli war cabinet minister, urged US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a phone call to reconsider potential sanctions against an Israeli military unit, as the close allies' ties were further strained by the latest round of Gaza conflict.

The call with Blinken on Sunday came after Israeli media reported that the US State Department might impose sanctions on the Israel Defense Forces, or IDF's Netzah Yehuda Battalion, accusing it of human rights violations in the West Bank.

Gantz, a centrist former armed forces chief, told Blinken the move would "harm Israel's legitimacy in time of war", asserting that "it has no justification because Israel has a strong and independent judicial system".

The IDF said on Sunday the Netzah Yehuda battalion is currently engaged in combat in the Gaza Strip, and the operations are "with full commitment to international law," the military said in a statement.

"The reports regarding sanctions against the Netzah Yehuda battalion are not currently known to the IDF," the military added.

Israeli hard-liners blasted the expected US decision. Israel's ultra-nationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, said the US crossed a "red line", and Tally Gotliv, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, accused the US of antisemitism.

But even the head of the opposition, former prime minister Yair Lapid, rejected the move.

He said the sanctions are "a mistake and we must act to cancel them". He noted that "the source of the problem is not at the military level but at the political level".

Netzah Yehuda, reportedly consisting of ultra-Orthodox Jewish soldiers, has been accused of abusing Palestinians in the West Bank in several cases, some of them captured on video.

In 2022, Netzah Yehuda soldiers tied, gagged, and blindfolded an 80-year-old Palestinian-American man during an arrest. He subsequently died of a heart attack. The battalion commander was reprimanded and two officers were dismissed, however, no criminal charges were filed.

Human rights groups long have argued that Israel rarely holds soldiers accountable for the deaths of Palestinians.

Official resigns

In another move, the head of Israeli military intelligence, who last year accepted responsibility for the failures that allowed the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct 7, has resigned, the military said on Monday.

Major General Aharon Haliva was one of a number of senior Israeli commanders who said they had failed to foresee and prevent the most devastating attack in Israel's history.

"The intelligence division under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with. I have carried that black day with me ever since," he said in a resignation letter released by the military.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to "increase pressure" on Hamas.

He said that in the next few days, Israel "will increase the military and diplomatic pressure on Hamas".

Netanyahu has previously stated that the Israeli military will initiate a ground assault on Rafah, despite international calls to refrain from such action due to the expected toll it would exact on more than 1 million civilians seeking shelter in Gaza's southern city.

Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said on Sunday.

Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive against Hamas to the city on the border with Egypt despite calls for restraint, including from the US.

The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest, pitting Israel and the US against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East.

Tensions have also spiked in the West Bank. Israeli troops killed two Palestinians who the military says attacked a checkpoint with a knife and a gun near the West Bank town of Hebron early on Sunday.

Agencies - Xinhua