Netanyahu Says No Change at Al-Aqsa after Ben-Gvir’s Remarks

Palestinians gather on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on the Al-Aqsa compound, also known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City June 16, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians gather on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on the Al-Aqsa compound, also known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City June 16, 2024. (Reuters)
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Netanyahu Says No Change at Al-Aqsa after Ben-Gvir’s Remarks

Palestinians gather on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on the Al-Aqsa compound, also known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City June 16, 2024. (Reuters)
Palestinians gather on the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha on the Al-Aqsa compound, also known to Jews as the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City June 16, 2024. (Reuters)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday there was no change in policy at a sacred Jerusalem site, after a far-right cabinet minister said Jews could now pray there, remarks that another minister said could set the region ablaze.

"Israel's policy of maintaining the status quo on the Temple Mount has not changed and will not change," Netanyahu's office said in a statement from Washington, a few hours before he was due to address the US Congress.

Earlier on Wednesday, the pro-settler right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir told parliament: "I am the political echelon, and the political echelon allows Jewish prayer at Temple Mount."

The compound, in Jerusalem's walled Old City, houses Islam's third-holiest shrine, Al-Aqsa mosque, and is also revered in Judaism as the Temple Mount, a vestige of two ancient temples.

Under a delicate decades-old "status quo" arrangement with Muslim authorities, Israel allows Jews to visit but refrain from prayer. The site is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and suggestions that Israel would alter rules about religious observance there have led to violence in the past.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, responding to Ben-Gvir on X, said: "There's a pyromaniac sitting in the Israeli government and trying to ignite the Middle East."

Since bringing Ben-Gvir into government in 2022, Netanyahu has overruled many of his ideas. Since the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli towns that triggered the war in Gaza, Ben-Gvir has been excluded from Netanyahu's decision-making war cabinet.

Gallant said he objected to giving Ben-Gvir a seat. Ben-Gvir, in response, said Gallant was pushing for an irresponsible deal that would end the Gaza war without vanquishing Hamas.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt are mediating a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas that would include a hostage release.

Over the past few months, Ben-Gvir has voiced objection to a ceasefire, called for Israel to permanently occupy and settle the Palestinian enclave and has issued threats to bring down Netanyahu's government if it ends the war.



Evidence of Ongoing 'Crimes Against Humanity' in Darfur, Says ICC Deputy Prosecutor

A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
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Evidence of Ongoing 'Crimes Against Humanity' in Darfur, Says ICC Deputy Prosecutor

A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo

There are "reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity" are being committed in war-ravaged Sudan's western Darfur region, the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said.

Outlining her office's probe of the devastating conflict which has raged since 2023, Nazhat Shameem Khan told the UN Security Council that it was "difficult to find appropriate words to describe the depth of suffering in Darfur," AFP reported.

"On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity, have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur," she said.

The prosecutor's office focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, Khan said, interviewing victims who fled to neighboring Chad.

She detailed an "intolerable" humanitarian situation, with apparent targeting of hospitals and humanitarian convoys, while warning that "famine is escalating" as aid is unable to reach "those in dire need."

"People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponized," Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become "common practice."

"And yet we should not be under any illusion, things can still get worse."

The Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005, with some 300,000 people killed during conflict in the region in the 2000s.

In 2023, the ICC opened a fresh probe into war crimes in Darfur after a new conflict erupted between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF's predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide two decades ago in the vast western region.

ICC judges are expected to deliver their first decision on crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago in the case of Ali Mohamed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kosheib, after the trial ended in 2024.

"I wish to be clear to those on the ground in Darfur now, to those who are inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population -- they may feel a sense of impunity at this moment, as Ali Kosheib may have felt in the past," said Khan.

"But we are working intensively to ensure that the Ali Kosheib trial represents only the first of many in relation to this situation at the International Criminal Court," she added.