Ramallah – A Spanish court has issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as other senior and former Israeli government officials, according to media reports.
The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights said the warrants also called for the arrest of former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman, former defence minister Ehud Barak, ex-deputy prime ministers Moshe Ya’alon (currently defence minister) and Eli Yishai, former state minister Benny Begin, and navy commander Eliezer Marom.
They are wanted for their role in an Israeli commando attack on the 2010 international Freedom Flotilla which tried to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.
Nine Turkish activists were shot dead when Israeli commandos intercepted the vessels in international waters in the Mediterranean.
Barak is also being sued in a federal court in Los Angeles by the parents of 19-year-old Furkan Dogan, one of the Turkish activists killed in the raid.
The issue of the arrest warrants follows an investigation which was launched by Spanish activists on board the Turkish-registered Mavi Marmara who filed a criminal complaint against the Israeli officials.
The Mavi Marmara, the main vessel of the flotilla, was carrying humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip which has endured a crippling Israeli siege since 2007.
Earlier in June a Spanish court dropped a five-year investigation into the raid with the investigation coming under continuous pressure from Israel.
However, the judge left open the possibility of the case being reopened if these Israeli officials visited Spain.
The judge also sent a list of the defendants to the Spanish police, ordering the start of legal proceedings to issue a red notice for the Israelis’ arrest.
Al Jazeera reported last week that a Turkish court had also issued arrest warrants against four Israeli officers and asked Interpol to issue international arrest warrants for them.
The South African Police Service also confirmed to Independent Media that it planned to enforce the Turkish arrest warrants against the four military commanders - Marom, Chief of General Staff Rau Ashkenazi, Head of Airforce Intelligence Brigadier-General Avishay Levi and Major-General Chief of IDF Military Intelligence Amos Yadlin - if they set foot in South Africa.
South African journalist Gadija Davids was on board the Mavi Marmara with a group of journalists when it was attacked in 2010.
Meanwhile, The American Anthropological Association passed a resolution on Friday to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
The organisation’s 12 000 members overwhelmingly voted in favour of the resolution at its annual conference held in Denver, Colorado, stating the resolution was historic and would probably encourage other organisations to support an academic boycott of Israel.
The resolution, which followed three years of internal debate, calls for boycotts of Israeli academic institutions but not with individual scholars.
“As heirs to a long tradition of scholarship on colonialism, anthropologists affirm, through this resolution, that the core problem is Israel’s maintenance of a settler colonial regime based on Jewish supremacy and Palestinian dispossession,” said a statement released by those supporting the boycott.
“By supporting the boycott, anthropologists are taking a stand for justice through action in solidarity with Palestinians.”
In another related development Europe's largest department store, the Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, will no longer be selling Israeli settlement products from the occupied West Bank and the Golan Heights until they are correctly labelled as settlement goods.
Independent Foreign Service