Law, Power, and Justice

282828 MARCH

28 march 2024

The United States welcomes the Palestinian Authority’s establishment of a new cabinet and says it will look to this government to implement much-needed reforms.
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller notes that several members of the new cabinet are from Gaza, in line with Washington’s desire to see a PA government that is more representative of the Palestinian people.

COURT AMD YASHIVA STUDENTS

In a dramatic step, the High Court of Justice issues an interim order barring the government from funding the monthly stipends of at least some ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students after April 1, as the legal framework for deferring their military service will no longer exist.
Yeshiva students who did not get a military service deferral after July 1, 2023, and who have not presented themselves for conscription will now be ineligible for the monthly stipends, the court rules.
Those who received exemptions before that date will still be eligible, although their stipends will also likely be shortly cut off if the government does not pass a new legislative framework for them to obtain military service exemptions.
Tens of thousands of haredi yeshiva students receive monthly stipends for their yeshiva studies, and these payments are of critical importance to the ultra-Orthodox political parties.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu writes to the High Court of Justice requesting a 30-day extension to the deadline for presenting the court with a plan to increase ultra-Orthodox conscription.
This is the fourth extension the government has requested in the last 24 hours to the court’s deadline for the state to file its response to petitions demanding the immediate conscription of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.
Earlier today, the state requested a two-hour extension to tell the High Court how it will resolve the issue, after requesting a half-day extension at close to midnight on Wednesday night. The original deadline for the state to file its response was March 24, but the state then requested a three-day extension, which the court agreed to.
Having blown past these deadlines, Netanyahu personally pens a letter to the court today saying that “considerable progress” had been made on finding a formula to resolve the decades-long legal and societal quandary but that the government needs just another 30 days to draw up this plan.
The prime minister says that because of the ongoing war, his government has been unable to dedicate the necessary time to finding a solution to the longstanding problem.
Netanyahu adds that the arrangement being formulated would establish “tracks and frameworks which would allow those enlisting to preserve their lifestyle throughout their service,” adding notably that it would also “ensure that those for whom ‘their Torah is their trade’ will be able to study Torah.”
“For these reasons I request from the honorable court that it not make a decision on the issue of enlistment and all the questions connected to it for the next 30 days, in order to allow us to finally formulate the agreements and complete the professional staff work and regulate the necessary tracks and frameworks,” Netanyahu tells the High Court.

SEXUAL ASSAULT BY HAMAS

The IDF has released new interrogation footage of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist who appears to confess to raping an Israeli woman in a kibbutz in southern Israel during the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught.
The terrorist, Manar Qassem, who was captured by the IDF earlier this month in Khan Younis, says he is a member of Islamic Jihad’s naval forces.
In the interrogation carried out by the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504, Qassem is asked what he did on October 7, to which he provides a detailed response.
Qassem says he entered Israel through a breach in the Gaza border fence between the Khan Younis area towns of al-Fukhkhari and Khuza’a, armed with a handgun and two grenades.He says that as he reached the unnamed kibbutz, he entered the closest home, where he encountered a woman who was startled.
“I took her and threw her on the couch,” Qassem tells the interrogators, recalling in detail what she looked like and what she was wearing.
“The devil took over me, I laid her down, started undressing her, and did what I did,” he says.
Pressed by the interrogator as to what he did, Qassem responds by saying: “I slept with her.”
Asked again, Qassem says “I raped her,” according to the IDF. The audio in the footage is unintelligible at some points, due to the military censoring the voice of the interrogator.
“She pushed me, it didn’t last long… Two minutes. Maybe a minute and a half,” he says.
At that point, according to Qassem, two members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades entered the home and put the woman together with her mother for a short while, before taking both out of the house. It was not immediately clear if the woman is alive.
Qassem says he was left alone and decided to head back to the Gaza Strip. He says he heard gunshots, and then shot one Israeli man near him, before throwing one of his grenades and fleeing the kibbutz.
The IDF says the footage is “further proof of the onslaught of murder and sexual violence by the terrorist organizations on October 7th, in an attempt to make the voices of those who can no longer tell be heard.”