Israel’s State Prosecutor on Sunday charged the sister of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh with incitement and showing solidarity with a terrorist group after she allegedly praised the October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the six-party war. months in Gaza.
Sabah al-Salem Haniyeh, 57, lives in the southern Israeli city of Tel Sheva. His sister is based in Qatar, as are other officials of Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip.
Body camera footage taken by armed police shows two unmarked vans full of officers pulling up to his home in the run-up to the arrest.
They were seen talking to someone in a hallway, before arresting her. She can be seen calmly submitting to her arrest while the police put handcuffs on her.
Haniyeh has been detained since her arrest on April 1, Israel’s Justice Ministry said. There was no immediate comment from her attorney.
Sabah al-Salem Haniyeh, 57, as pictured, lives in the southern Israeli city of Tel Sheva.
His brother Ismail Haniyeh (pictured) is based in Qatar, as are other Hamas officials.
According to the indictment, in the days after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel, Haniyeh sent messages to dozens of contacts, including his brother, praising the cross-border assault and calling for more “killings.”
One of his messages mentioned in the indictment includes the phrase: ‘O God, count them and kill them and leave none, O God.’
Hamas killed about 1,200 Israelis and foreigners in the Oct. 7 attack, sparking the war, in which Gaza’s health authority says more than 34,000 Palestinians have died.
Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said Sunday.
Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge from the fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from the United States.
The first Israeli strike in Rafah killed a man, his wife and their three-year-old son, according to the nearby Kuwaiti hospital, which received the bodies. The woman was pregnant and doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said.
Body camera footage taken by armed police shows two unmarked vans full of officers pulling up to his home in the run-up to the arrest.
She can be seen calmly submitting to arrest while police put handcuffs on her.
Haniyeh has been detained since her arrest on April 1, Israel’s Justice Ministry said.
The second attack killed 17 children and two women, all of them from an extended family, according to hospital records. Mohammed al-Beheiri said his daughter, Rasha, and his six children, the youngest 18 months old, were among those killed. Her husband’s second wife and her three children were still under the rubble, al-Beheiri said.
Around 80% of the territory’s population has fled to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave.
The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest pitting Israel and the United States against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East. Israel and Iran exchanged fire directly this month, raising fears of an all-out war between the long-standing enemies.
Tensions have also increased in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli troops killed two Palestinians who the military said attacked a checkpoint with a knife and a gun near the southern West Bank city of Hebron early Sunday.
The Palestinian Health Ministry said the two dead were aged 18 and 19 and belonged to the same family. No Israeli forces were injured, the army said.