The officials are generals and military legal experts who have visited military bases and humanitarian sites in Israel and Gaza.
By Shula Rosen, United with Israel
US and European military officials have issued a legal brief urging the ICC to reject requests by prosecutor Karim Khan for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on alleged war crimes.
The officials are members of The Higher Level Military Group and consist of generals and military legal experts who have visited military bases and humanitarian sites in Israel and Gaza.
The brief addressed the two central allegations that Israel intentionally starved Gazan civilians and that its military ordered the killing of Palestinian civilians.
The result of the military group’s findings was that Israel’s delivery of humanitarian aid was delayed after the October 7th attack while the IDF was fighting off terrorists and deploying over 100,000 soldiers.
They found the delay was not intentional but the result of having to provide for troops first and that it was not a war crime to take care of one’s military before providing aid to the civilian population.
In addition, the delay between the beginning of the war and the initial delivery of aid was not so significant as to have caused starvation among the Gazan population.
The group also countered the claim by Khan that Israel closed off the Erez and the Rafah crossings to humanitarian aid when Hamas destroyed the Erez crossing and the jurisdiction of the Rafah crossing is shared with Egypt.
Although questions may remain of why the Kerem Shalom crossing wasn’t opened earlier, the group’s findings didn’t show evidence of Israel intentionally keeping it closed to starve Gazan civilians.
In addition, there is evidence that Hamas was stealing aid and keeping it from civilians, something that the IDF was striving to prevent.
The group argued that Israel had developed innovative methods of evacuating the civilian population from dangerous areas, and when civilians were killed, it was usually accidental.
The group also made the case that Khan was premature in issuing the warrants before allowing Israel to conduct internal investigations into departures from protocol, and currently, the IDF is probing 300 such breaches.
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