SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
west bank
Israel's Smotrich Responds to ICC Arrest Warrant by Announcing More War Crimes
The far-right finance minister announced that he'd respond to an arrest warrant request for his forced expulsion of Palestinians by ordering the evacuation of another West Bank village.
May 19, 2026
Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Tuesday that the International Criminal Court prosecutor had requested an arrest warrant against him, reportedly in response to his illegal forced expulsion of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank.
He said he planned to "fight back" by issuing an order to forcibly evict hundreds more Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank.
During a news conference, Smotrich said he'd been informed Monday evening that the ICC prosecutor had secretly requested a warrant for his arrest in April. A formal warrant has not been announced by the court, and the official charges have not yet been publicized.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the prosecutor had been considering seeking an arrest warrant against Smotrich for his role in expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in July 2024 was a violation of the Geneva Conventions because it entailed the forced removal of residents in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The ICC prosecutor was also preparing to issue an arrest warrant against fellow far-right settler politician, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, though there is not yet any reporting to suggest that this warrant has been issued.
Already, the ICC has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
In response to the reported warrant request for what the ICC considers a war crime, Smotrich celebrated the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank. He boasted of creating “over 100 new settlements” in the occupied territory and “160 farming outposts,” which he said helped Israel to control 247,000 acres of land in the territory.
The United Nations reported in March that over the previous year, more than 36,000 Palestinians in the West Bank had been forcibly displaced by settlement expansion and by violence committed by Israeli settlers.
Smotrich said the court's issuing of arrest warrants against him and other Israeli leaders was a "declaration of war" and said that "we will respond with war."
"From today, every economic or other target within my authority to strike—whether as Finance Minister or as a minister in the Defense Ministry—will be attacked. Not with words or gimmicks, but with actions," he said.
"I announce here and now the first target that will be attacked: immediately after my remarks, we will sign an order for the evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar," he added.
He was referring to a Palestinian Bedouin village of about 200 people on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem, which has fought a yearslong legal battle against the Israeli government following orders by Ben-Gvir for it to be demolished to make room for a settlement.
The territory is especially significant because it would link two major settlements in East Jerusalem with the Jordan Valley as part of Israel's ongoing E1 settlement project, which is aimed at constructing settlements so that they cut the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank in two.
Smotrich, who has led the E1 project, declared last year that the proposal “buries the idea of a Palestinian state because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize."
On Tuesday, Smotrich said his order for Palestinians to leave Khan al-Ahmar would be "only the beginning" of his response to the reported warrant request.
Jasper Nathaniel, an American journalist who reports from the West Bank, explained that "Smotrich just announced the official ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian village in response to the ICC warrant for his arrest."
Observers pointed out the brazenness of Smotrich's declaration in the face of an international tribunal.
Adil Haque, a professor of law at Rutgers University and the executive editor of Just Security, noted the remarkable irony: "The ICC office of the prosecutor reportedly requested an arrest warrant for his war crimes, so he announces a new one."
Along with Ben-Gvir, Smotrich was sanctioned last year by five countries—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom—which subjected them to travel bans and asset freezes.
Ori Goldberg, an Israeli expert on Middle Eastern studies, said international punishments against Smotrich needed to be even stronger after he announced "as stark a violation of international law as possible."
"Make the warrants public. Sanction this man and everybody else who foots the bill. EU Leadership—stop making fools of yourselves as the world is torn asunder," he said. "Show Israelis... the jig is up."
Keep ReadingShow Less
UNICEF Decries 'Intolerable' Israeli Killing of Lebanese, Palestinian Children
Despite promised ceasefires, ongoing Israeli attacks "are killing and injuring children, deepening their exposure to trauma, and leaving devastating consequences that could last a lifetime."
May 14, 2026
Officials at the United Nations Children's Fund this week condemned Israel's killing, maiming, and traumatization of children in Lebanon—where there is ostensibly a ceasefire in effect—the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine, and Gaza.
UNICEF said Wednesday that at least 59 children in Lebanon have reportedly been killed or wounded by Israeli forces over the past week, despite a nearly monthlong truce between Israel and the militant resistance group Hezbollah.
“Children are being killed and injured when they should be returning to classrooms, playing with friends, and recovering from months of fear and upheaval,” UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa Edouard Beigbeder said in a statement.
“Nearly a month ago, an agreement was reached to silence the weapons and stop the violence," Beigbeder added. "Reality is proving to be very different. Continued attacks are killing and injuring children, deepening their exposure to trauma, and leaving devastating consequences that could last a lifetime.”
According to Lebanon's Ministry of Public Health, at least 23 children have been killed and 93 wounded during the ceasefire. Since March 2—when Israel renewed attacks on its northern neighbor amid the nascent US-Israeli war on Iran—at least 200 children have been killed and over 800 others injured.
The ministry said six people—including two women and a child—were killed and 12 people wounded Wednesday evening when Israel bombed the village of Arab Salim in Nabatieh district. Separately on Wednesday, Israeli strikes on the village of Harouf killed one child, while two children were among three people killed by an Israeli strike on Roumine.
Lebanese officials say at least 2,896 people have been killed and 8,824 others wounded by Israeli attacks in Lebanon since March 2.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said Monday in Geneva that “children are paying an intolerable price for escalating militarized operations and settler attacks across the occupied West Bank of Palestine, including East Jerusalem," as part of Israel's accelerating ethnic cleansing and colonization of the Palestinian territory.
“We're seeing attacks become increasingly coordinated,” Elder noted. "Documented incidents include children shot, stabbed, children beaten, and children pepper-sprayed.”
Elder continued:
Between January 2025 and today, at least one Palestinian child has been killed, on average, every week. That is, 70 Palestinian children killed in this timeframe. Ninety-three percent of these were killed by Israeli forces. A further 850 children were injured. Most of those children killed or wounded were by live ammunition. All this comes amid historic levels of settler attacks. [The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] said last month that March 2026 saw the highest number of Palestinians injured by settler attacks in the past 20 years.
“These are not isolated incidents—they point to a sustained pattern of the worst kinds of violations of children’s rights, as well as attacks on children’s homes, on their schools, and on the water they rely on," Elder stressed. "What is unfolding is not only an escalation in violence against Palestinian children; it is the steady dismantling of the conditions children need to survive and grow."
On Wednesday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said that Israeli occupation forces fatally shot 16-year-old Youssef Ali Youssef Kaabneh near Jaljulia, north of Ramallah, amid sweeping raids across the West Bank.
Elder said that in Gaza, at least 229 children have been killed and 260 others wounded by Israeli forces since the October 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—which led the October 7, 2023 attack—took effect. Since October 2023, more than 64,000 children and 250,000 Palestinians of all ages have been killed or wounded by Israel's Gaza onslaught, which a panel of UN experts last year called a genocide. UNICEF has called Gaza “the world’s most dangerous place to be a child."
Dr. Reinhilde Van de Weerdt, the UN World Health Organization representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, drew attention this week to the 10,000 Gazan children "with life-changing injuries." Treatment for these wounds is often difficult to impossible due to Israel's ongoing siege of the coastal strip.
"Every day that rehabilitation services in Gaza remain underresourced is a day that preventable disability risks becoming permanent," said Van de Weerdt. "Gaza does not need stopgap measures, it needs sustained investment in the health workforce, in equipment, and in the systems and environment that allow people to recover, rebuild, and return to life."
Thousands of Gazan children have lost at least one limb, tens of thousands have lost their parents, and hundreds of thousands have lost their homes due to mass forced displacement.
All that trauma and more is fueling a mental health crisis among children in Palestine and Lebanon.
“The impact of repeated exposure to conflict on children’s mental health can be profound and long-lasting,” said Beigbeder. “Children in Lebanon have endured waves of violence, displacement, and uncertainty, often with little or no time to recover. Without urgent support, the psychological scars of this compounded crisis may stay with them for years, affecting not only their well-being, but their future and the future of the country.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
EU Imposes New Sanctions on Israeli Settlers After Hungary Drops Opposition
"As a community founded on international law, the EU cannot be bystanders in the face of escalating violence and persistent breaches of international law," said one foreign minister.
May 11, 2026
Weeks after far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was voted out of office following 16 years of increasingly Christian nationalist rule, foreign ministers across the European Union agreed to impose new sanctions against Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians—a move Orbán's government had been vehemently against.
"It was high time we move from deadlock to delivery. Extremism and violence carry consequences," said Kaja Kallas, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs.
Haaretz reported that the sanctions approved by the EU Council of Foreign Ministers will impact the Nachala movement and its leader, Daniela Weiss, who has made numerous statements advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; the Amana and Regavim organizations and their leaders; and the Shomer Yesha group and its former director, Avichai Svisah.
The groups and individuals will reportedly be banned from entering EU countries. They will also face asset freezes and be prohibited from engaging in financial activity in the EU.
Hungary's new prime minister, the socially conservative Peter Magyar, was sworn in to office over the weekend. He has said his government will not block sanctions that a number of other EU countries have been pushing to approve.
The sanctions announced Monday were first proposed in 2024, a year after Israel began its assault on Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack as it also ramped up attacks in the West Bank.
The far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed for further annexation of the West Bank, with the prime minister signing an agreement to develop the E1 settlement last year, clearing the way to link thousands of illegal settlements together and cut off the West Bank from East Jerusalem—making a Palestinian state with the city as its capital impossible.
While the government has taken administrative steps to seize control of the territory, the Israel Defense Forces have increasingly aided settler groups in violent attacks on Palestinian communities. Last year, according to a report by the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now, settlers and the IDF razed more than 1,500 Palestinian structures in the West Bank, double the annual average prior to 2023. More than 4,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes in the territory.
One Israeli journalist last month called settler violence in the West Bank "ethnic cleansing" and spoke out against "intimidation tours" in which teenage settlers attack people in Palestinian villages while IDF soldiers either stand by or join in the attacks.
Tom Berendsen, foreign minister of the Netherlands, told reporters after meeting with the other EU officials that the sanctions targeted individuals "for whom a file has been compiled showing they have committed such violence."
Irish Foreign Minister Helen McEntee said in a post on social media that "extremist violence and persistent breaches of international law cannot go unanswered," and noted that Ireland has long pushed for the approval of the new package of sanctions.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir lobbed the familiar accusation of "antisemitism" at the EU foreign ministers and claimed the bloc had ignored attacks against Israel. Ten Hamas leaders were also named as targets of Monday's sanctions.
"The reflexive response that 'the world is against Israel' grows less credible every time allies impose consequences, like this move by the EU to sanction violent settler groups and extremists," said the US-based lobby group J Street, which calls itself "pro-Israel" and "pro-peace."
"This is not about delegitimizing Israel. It’s about what the Netanyahu government is enabling in the West Bank," said J Street, calling on Congress to pass a law to codify similar sanctions, which were canceled by President Donald Trump last year.
Officials in France and Sweden are calling for the EU go further than sanctions on individuals and groups by imposing restrictions on trade with settlements, and human rights groups in recent weeks have demanded a suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement to hold Israel accountable for its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank and its passage of a law requiring the death penalty for Palestinians found guilty of violent attacks on Israelis.
"We had discussions on the trade issues, limiting trade with the illegal Israeli settlements," Kallas said after the meeting. "There was a call by many member states to take this forward, so we will continue to work with the commission on presenting proposals."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular