Middle East updates: WHO sending polio vaccines to Gaza

Right-wing protesters disrupted an Israeli Supreme Court hearing on the alleged abuse of Palestinian detainees at a military facility on Wednesday. 

They interrupted proceedings for a period of around 30 minutes, according to the Times of Israel newspaper, shouting "disgrace" and calling for the case to be halted.

The hearing is investigating allegations of severe abuse of Palestinian detainees at the Sde Teiman facility. 

The IDF military said late last month that it was detaining nine soldiers for questioning following allegations of "substantial abuse" at the facility in southern Israel. Attempts to detain the soldiers had already been met with an outcry from more nationalist politicians and partly violent public resistance.

The court's acting president, Uzi Vogelmann, criticized the demonstrators. 

"This was an attempt to stop a court hearing. We respect the right to protest, but protests are not done in court, especially not when they are designed to thwart hearings," Vogelmann said.

He said Israeli courts "act in accordance with the law during a time of war as well, and will continue to do so."

Some rights groups are calling for the facility to be shut down. But the military has argued that the situation at the facility has improved in recent months, with a major reduction in the number of detainees held there.

Israel's military chief of general staff and foreign minister have both said that Hamas appointing Yahya Sinwar as the head of the group's Political Bureau, following the death of Ismail Haniyeh, provided a further incentive to target him. 

Sinwar was already seen as Hamas' most senior official, but now he will also take over duties as its most senior political official. Israel sees him as a key orchestrator of the October 7 terror attacks. 

"The change in his title not only doesn't prevent us from pursuing him, it motivates us, and we will make the effort to find him, to target him, and for them [Hamas] to replace the head of the Political Bureau once again," said military Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi while visiting the Tel Nof Air Force Base on Wednesday. 

"We have carried out very important operations in recent weeks, eliminating the most senior commanders of our most problematic enemies, and we are not stopping," he told troops. 

Foreign Minister Israel Katz issued similar comments late on Tuesday after the move to have Sinwar replace Haniyeh was first announced by Hamas.

Katz called Sinwar's appointment "yet another compelling reason to swiftly eliminate him and wipe this vile organization off the face of the Earth." 

Germany's foreign and defense ministries again appealed to German citizens in Lebanon to leave by commercial routes while it remains possible, following a series of similar calls in recent weeks. 

Officials warned people not to rely on the government's capacity to arrange some kind of evacuation or airlift in the event of the conflict escalating. 

"An evacuation operation is not some kind of holiday package complete with travel insurance," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Berlin. "An evacuation operation is tied to dangers and uncertainties and is by no means without its problems. And against this backdrop, we continue to call on Germans who are staying in Lebanon to leave urgently." 

A Defense Ministry spokesman, meanwhile, said that refusing to leave on the basis that the Bundeswehr military could help was fundamentally flawed and irresponsible — and unfair on German soldiers.

Both officials complained that media reports about potential preparations for an emergency airlift had given a false impression that had led some Germans in Lebanon to think it was not yet necessary to leave. 

The German recommendations that all civilians in Lebanon leave as soon as possible have been in effect for months now. But the cause for concern of an escalation has arguably intensified since the killings of a Hezbollah commander on the outskirts of Beirut and of Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran late last month. 

Most Western countries have issued similar orders and warnings about their likely limited capacity to assist, should the situation deteriorate. 

French President Emmanuel Macron urged his Iranian counterpart "to do everything to avoid a new military escalation" in the Middle East in a call on Wednesday, the French presidency said. 

"A new military escalation would be in no one's interest, including Iran, and would lastingly harm regional stability," Macron told Masoud Pezeshkian, according to the Elysee Palace. 

His office said Macron called for an end to the "logic of reprisals" and for more to be done for the "protection of civilian populations." 

Iran has blamed Israel for the attack last week that killed the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. It has threatened retaliation, albeit in vague terms. 

Haniyeh was in Iran to attend Pezeshkian's inauguration ceremony, after he took power following the death of his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash earlier this year. 

Macron also called on Iran's relatively new president to try to ensure that its other proxies in the region, most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, also exercise restraint. 

"Iran should also commit to calling the destabilizing actors that it supports to the greatest restraint to avoid a conflagration," Macron's office quoted him as saying.

Turkey's foreign minister said Wednesday that Ankara had formally applied to join a South African-led case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, seeking to stop or limit Israel's military activities in Gaza on the grounds of preventing a "genocide" there. 

"The international community must do its part to stop the genocide and exert the necessary pressure on Israel and its supporters," Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan wrote online. "Turkey will make every effort to do so." 

He alleged that Israel had become "emboldened" given the "immunity for its crimes" that it was enjoying.

Turkey's government, and particularly President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has frequently been highly critical of Israel in the last 10 months, often accusing it of genocide for its offensive in Gaza.

Erdogan had already said in January that Ankara was providing some documentation and evidence for the case.

South Africa first brought the case against Israel in December. Although it has not won all the measures it sought, particularly an order to halt all military action in Gaza, the court has supported it in some areas. 

In January, the ICJ ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the genocide convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians. 

Israel, meanwhile, has rejected the case's accusations as baseless, saying its operations in Gaza are in self-defense in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.

Speaking with reporters, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby tried to voice hope about the long-stalled cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. 

He said Washington was still engaged in "intense diplomacy" to prevent further escalation in the region, after Iran threatened retaliation following the killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh during a trip to Tehran. 

"We are as close as we think we have ever been" to a deal for a Gaza cease-fire and the return of the remaining hostages still held by Hamas, said Kirby on Wednesday. 

US officials have said several times that a deal is close, urging both sides to sign up to a current proposal which foresees an initial six-week truce as a first step. 

The White House said Tuesday that negotiations had "reached a final stage," in a readout after talks between President Joe Biden and the leaders of fellow negotiators Qatar and Egypt, but it did not elaborate.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce and hostage-for-prisoner swap deal back in November that lasted roughly one week before breaking down, but no successor deal has since been reached. Both sides have tended to blame each other for the impasse.

Kirby also alluded to wider diplomatic efforts to stop the conflict from spreading or escalating, be that via Lebanon or Iran. 

"We're involved in some pretty intense diplomacy here across the region," he said. But Kirby also said he was "not going to talk about intelligence assessments" of whether Iran or its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, might attack. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that he had appealed both to Iran and to Israel to avoid escalating the conflict. 

Germany's Foreign Ministry issued an unusually critical response on Wednesday to a reported call from Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to halt aid deliveries to Gaza until Hamas returns its remaining hostages.

"These are completely unacceptable and outrageous statements by the Israeli finance minister. We reject them in the strongest possible terms," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Berlin on Wednesday. 

"It is an imperative of humanity and a basic principle of international humanitarian law that civilians must be protected in war and must have access to water and food," he said. 

Israeli media had cited Smotrich as saying that it would be morally acceptable to halt aid deliveries to Gaza until the remaining hostages, taken captive exactly 10 months ago now during Hamas' October 7 attacks, were released. 

Smotrich is one of the more extreme members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's broad coalition. 

The World Health Organization said it would send 1 million polio vaccines to Gaza after the nearly-eradicated disease was detected in sewage in two Gaza governates.

Although no clinical cases have yet been logged, authorities in Gaza declared an epidemic last month, blaming Israel's ongoing military offensive.

The WHO said arranging a cease-fire was crucial to enable it to better distribute and administer the vaccines, and to seek human cases explaining the apparent presence of the viral disease in sewage.

"We need a cease-fire, even a temporary cease-fire, to successfully undertake these campaigns," said Hanan Balkhy, regional WHO director. "Otherwise, we risk the virus spreading further, including across borders."

Young children who may not have been vaccinated are most at risk from the disease, which is mainly spread through the fecal-oral route. 

Problems with overcrowding, overflowing sewage and contaminated water have already led to far higher than usual rates of diarrhea complaints, more than 100,000 cases of scabies and lice and some 70,000 cases of skin rashes in Gaza since fighting began last October.

Polio, which invades the nervous system and can cause paralysis, has almost been eradicated globally. Caseloads are down roughly 99% worldwide since 1988 thanks to mass vaccination campaigns, improving standards of living in the developing world and a bid to eradicate the disease entirely. This bid has faltered in parts of the Muslim world, however, amid skepticism and conspiracy theories about vaccines.

Health experts have warned that conditions in Gaza, especially with the interruption to vaccination drives for the large number of young children, could help polio to start to spread again.

msh/wd (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)