Foreign affairs update

Israel-Gaza cease-fire breaks:

Foreign affairs update

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• Israel-Gaza cease-fire breaks: Israeli warplanes bombed Gaza in the early hours on 16th June in response to what Israeli officials described as “incendiary devices” attached to balloons were floated into Israeli territory from the Palestinian enclave. No casualties were reported. Hamas had threatened retaliation over a provocative march by far-right Israelis through Jerusalem’s Old City where hundreds chanted “Death to Arabs.” The renewed Israeli bombings come as support for Hamas has undergone a “dramatic” shift. 53 percent of Palestinians now see Hamas as the “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people,” while only 14 percent of those surveyed held Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party in the same esteem.
• ICC update: Karim Khan begins his nine-year term as the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor today, replacing the outgoing Fatou Bensouda. Khan, a British citizen, inherits a host of ongoing cases—from a war crimes investigation into actions by the Israeli military and Hamas to probing U.S. and Taliban activities in the Afghan war. Bensouda’s final act was to open an investigation into extrajudicial killings during the Philippines war on drugs.
• LGBT rights in Hungary: Rights groups have condemned a new law banning content portraying or “promoting” homosexuality or sex reassignment which was passed by the Hungarian parliament on Tuesday. All but one of Hungary’s opposition parties boycotted the vote. The ruling Fidesz party defended the legislation as a means of protecting children from pedophilia, a strategy rights groups emphatically rejected. “Associating paedophilia with LGBT people, banning comprehensive sexuality education and stifling free speech is despicable and unworthy of an EU member state,” Lydia Gall of Human Rights Watch wrote.
• Taiwan tensions: China’s air force flew 28 military planes into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on 15th June, in the largest daily incursion since the island’s defence ministry started regularly reporting on such activities last year. The mission comes amid increased Chinese military activity around the island in recent months and surpassed the previous record of 25 aircraft reported on April 12. In the past, Beijing has said such operations are needed to combat what it’s called “collusion” between Taipei and Washington. This particular incursion came after China accused the G7 of “political manipulation” following the release of a a G7 communiqué on Sunday—the first that’s ever discussed Taiwan—that stressed “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.
• IKEA fined: Furniture giant IKEA has been forced to pay roughly $1.3 million in damages and fines after a French court found the company guilty of spying on employees from 2009-2012. The company and its managers were accused of enlisting the police and private investigators to illegally access confidential information on job applicants as well as any criminal history. The company’s head of risk is reported to have launched investigations into why one staffer could afford a new BMW, and why another had “suddenly become a protester.” IKEA’s parent company Ingka group said it had “implemented a major action plan to prevent this from happening again.”

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