The United States has called on Israel to provide "details" on the "justification" for the strike that destroyed a building in Gaza on Saturday that houses international media, the US foreign minister said on Monday (May 17th). Antony Blinken.

The Secretary of State reiterated Washington's "concern" over media protection, without going so far as to condemn the strike on the Hebrew state.

Very cautious, he claimed not to have personally seen any information shared by the Israeli authorities, and therefore did not comment on the legitimacy of the strike.

“More generally, though, and this is really crucial, Israel has a special responsibility for the protection of civilians while it is defending itself, and that absolutely includes journalists,” he said during the speech. a visit to Copenhagen.

RSF seizes the ICC

On Sunday, the organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had decided to seize for its part the International Criminal Court (ICC), considering that the strikes against premises housing media can constitute "war crimes".

"In the past week, the offices of 23 local and international media have been destroyed by targeted Israeli airstrikes," RSF said in its referral, the bombings targeting Palestinian and foreign media offices.

"RSF considers the deliberate targeting of media and the total and intentional destruction of their equipment to be a war crime under article 8 of the Rome Statute", according to the letter dated May 16 to the Attorney General. of the ICC, Fatou Bensouda.

“The IDF not only inflicted massive material damage on newsrooms whose journalists, equipment and facilities are persons and property protected under the protection due to the civilian population. It also hampered coverage. media coverage of a conflict which directly and seriously affects the civilian population, "RSF continues.

We consider that the army of Israel committed a war crime by bombing the building of Associated Press and Al Jazeera.

It also violated resolution 2222 on the protection of journalists adopted in May 2015 by the UN Security Council https://t.co/VfOizFwR33.

pic.twitter.com/6NRz1HzDdL

- Christophe Deloire (@cdeloire) May 17, 2021

In Gaza, the 13-storey building which housed the teams of the Qatari news channel Al-Jazeera and the American news agency Associated Press (AP) was pulverized on Saturday by several missiles.

The Israeli army had previously requested the evacuation of the building. 

For Benjamin Netanyahu, this building was "a perfectly legitimate target".

The Israeli Prime Minister claimed to be based on information from the intelligence services.

RSF recalled that it had already seized the ICC for "the intentional targeting by the Israeli army of several dozen Palestinian journalists covering the so-called 'return march' protests in the spring of 2018".

RSF therefore calls on the Attorney General to include the events of the past few days in the investigation opened in March into alleged crimes in the Palestinian Territories, an initiative rejected by Israel but welcomed by the Palestinians.

With AFP

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