March 29, 2024 - Israel-Hamas war

Israel's government responded to additional provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Thursday in the genocide case brought against it by South Africa. The provisional measures call on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into the Gaza strip in light of famine “setting in."

Hamas “is to blame for the situation in the Gaza Strip and is responsible for the war” because it launched “an unprecedented terrorist attack on the State of Israel and its citizens while committing atrocities, war crimes, and crimes against humanity,” he added. The statement said Israel “goes to great lengths in order to mitigate the harm to the civilian population while fighting Hamas.”

Israel said it is committed to “its legal obligations” with respect to “allowing and facilitating” the transfer of aid, and “places no limitations on the amount of essential humanitarian aid that enters the Gaza Strip, including in particular food, water, shelter equipment and medicines."

It will continue to “promote new initiatives, and to expand existing ones, in order to enable and facilitate the flow of aid to the Gaza Strip in a continuous and extensive manner, by land, air, and sea, together with UN bodies and other partners in the international community.”

Israel accused Hamas of “using the civilian population of Gaza as human shields. Hamas displays utter disdain for international law and the lives of civilians, Israelis and Palestinians alike, and deliberately harms the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the population of Gaza.”

CNN's Niamh Kennedy, Amy Cassidy and Sugam Pokharel in London contributed to this report.

Israel will “copy and paste Gaza onto Lebanon” if militant group Hezbollah escalates tensions, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said Wednesday. 

With “increased activity” on Israel’s border with Lebanon, Israel was “returning fire to the source of fire,” Hyman added.

The spokesperson alleged that Iranian proxies were seeking to attack Israel on multiple fronts and that Israel would “take them out one by one when the time is right and at the time of [its] choosing.”

At least 16 people were killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon on Wednesday, according to Lebanese state media.

At least one person was killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack on the city of Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel on Wednesday, according to Israel’s national emergency medical service.

Hezbollah said it had launched “dozens of rockets” targeting the northern Israeli city in response to an attack on a medical facility in the town of Habariyeh in southern Lebanon.

There are “reasonable grounds” to believe Israel is “committing the crime of genocide against the Palestinians as a group in Gaza,” the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories has said.

Francesca Albanese made the remarks Wednesday following the submission of her latest report called “Anatomy of a Genocide” to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday.

Israel said it “utterly rejects” the report, which it said “brings shame” on the Human Rights Council.

It is “no surprise, that the premise of this report is that the creation of the Jewish State in 1948 was an act of ‘settler colonialism,’ and genocide is an ‘inherent part’ of that act,” the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations in Geneva said in a statement on X on Monday.

The statement also blamed the UN expert for “delegitimising the very creation and existence of the State of Israel.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has agreed to reschedule a planned meeting with US and Israeli officials to discuss a planned ground offensive in Rafah, the White House confirmed Wednesday, just days after Netanyahu canceled the delegation.

“The Prime Minister’s Office has agreed to reschedule the meeting dedicated to Rafah,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.

During Wednesday’s briefing, the press secretary declined to say when the administration is hoping to reschedule the meeting, but emphasized it’s an “urgent” priority.

The meetings come after Netanyahu canceled the delegation's planned trip this week, following the US abstaining from a UN Security Council vote calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of US members of Congress that he is confident his country will defeat Hamas in Gaza within the next few weeks.

Hosting a congressional delegation organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — a prominent pro-Israel lobby — in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said it was “very important to maintain bipartisan support" but “especially in these trying times.”

He said that Israel has "no choice" but to move into Rafah as the country's “very existence is on the line.”

The prime minister said that since the October 7 Hamas attack, Israel has had a “remarkable alignment” with US President Joe Biden's administration but has fundamentally different views on an Israeli move into Rafah.

Israel has faced criticism internationally ahead of its planned offensive on the city of Rafah, in which more than 1 million displaced people are currently sheltering.

Netanyahu had earlier told the delegation that displaced Palestinians in Gaza could “move with their tents” out of Rafah.

Talks over a hostage deal and a ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas have reached another stalemate but are not over, according to three people familiar with the negotiations.

A diplomat described the talks as “stuck but ongoing,” saying that there continue to be “proposals going back and forth.” A second source confirmed the parties are still engaged but said the negotiations are in a “pause.”

There was no breakthrough after CIA Director Bill Burns traveled to Doha late last week to meet with Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari counterparts. Burns put forward a proposal that was accepted by Israel and sent back to Hamas, the second source and an Israeli official told CNN.

Major discussion points – for just the first phase – are still being fiercely debated: the ability of Gazans in the south to return home to the north, a surge of humanitarian aid for Gaza, and the locations of Israeli troops.

Hamas has regularly taken a more maximalist approach to what is expected to be a three-phase deal: demanding eventual discussions on an end to the war and the full withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza. Israel has refused to engage on either point, insisting on the need to continue efforts to dismantle Hamas.

What the US State Department says: Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on Wednesday pushed back on the idea that talks are at an impasse, despite the difficulty of resolving the remaining issues. He added that the US is still pushing to “bridge the differences” between Hamas and Israel.

CNN’s Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.

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The Israeli Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the government to stop funding religious schools whose students defy the country’s mandatory military service on April 1, posing one of the most serious threats to date for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Netanyahu relies on two Ultra-Orthodox parties — Shas and United Torah Judaism — to maintain a governing coalition. His wartime cabinet partners, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, of the National Unity Party, have been heavily critical of Netanyahu’s approach to the issue of Ultra-Orthodox conscription.

"The judges of the High Court of Justice want to saw off the branch of existence of the Jewish people," Ariyeh Deri, leader of the Shas party, said in a statement on X. "The people of Israel are engaged in a war of existence on several fronts and the High Court of Justice judges did everything tonight to create a fratricidal war as well." 

More background: Young men studying in yeshivas have since the country’s founding been exempt from mandatory military service — in practice, exempting all Ultra-Orthodox Israelis. But the exemption has never been enshrined in a law that the Supreme Court views as equitable, and for years has been carried out by patch-work government mandates. Netanyahu this week attempted to delay the Supreme Court’s deadline to pass a law that would make official the exemption.

After decades of rulings on the subject, the Supreme Court told the government that it was illegal for the government to both fund yeshivas and exempt their students from conscription. In a ruling late Thursday, the Supreme Court said that starting on April 1, the government could no longer transfer funds to yeshivas whose students did not receive legitimate deferments.

Yitzhak Goldknopf, leader of the United Torah Judaism party, called the ruling "a sign of disgrace and contempt."

Ultra-Orthodox Jews view religious study as fundamental to the preservation of Judaism. For many of those who live in Israel, that means study is just as important to Israel’s defense as the military.