Just Peace Advocates is pleased to share this summary prepared for the Mid East Working Group of Bathurst/Bloor/Trinity St. Paul’s by Rev. Frances Combs.
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Art: Taqi Spateen
Bethlehem, Palestine ·
If there’s no justice there’s no peace.
Week of September 19, 2022
Haaretz, Sep 13, 2022 An Israeli settler sustained serious head injuries on Monday evening in a scuffle which broke out between settlers from the farm outpost and Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills.
In the fall of 1987, U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz urged then-President Ronald Reagan to bypass Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir and go with a Shimon Peres-King Hussein peace initiative. ‘Can’t,’ Reagan replied. This thwarted peace plan let to the first intifada.
Sep 14, 2022, As of Monday, 81 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians or as a result of the army’s increasing arrest operations in the West Bank in 2022, making it the deadliest in seven years.
An Israeli army officer was shot and killed on Wednesday morning during an exchange of gunfire with Palestinian militants, according to the military. The two militants, one of which worked in the Palestinian security services, were also killed. The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades has taken responsibility for the shooting.
Sep 15, 2022, A video that captured a violent brawl between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank earlier this week shows that the settlers arrived at Palestinians property armed with bats and firearms, seemingly corroborating the Palestinian account of events, flying in the face of original claims by an Israeli security official.
Palestinian children miss school for the past two days. Since 2004, the children of Tuba have been escorted to and from school by Israeli soldiers to guard against settler violence, but for the past two days, the army has refused — and residents believe it is punishment for hurting a settler.
Israel’s ambassador to Chile publicly touted the signing of a new agricultural agreement between Santiago and Ramallah, tweeting a screenshot of a technical cooperation agreement acknowledging the Palestinian Authority as the “State of Palestine.” Israel’s ambassador to Chile tweeted his approval of a new agricultural agreement between Santiago and Ramallah from an official account, but the Foreign Ministry responds: ‘There is absolutely no endorsement of the state of Palestine or anything of the kind’
Haaretz, September 16, 2022, Gideon Levy and Alex Levac, Two Palestinian boys, aged 11 and 15, each lost an eye after being shot by Israeli soldiers. The younger one has been denied entry into Israel to receive medical care because he is a ‘security risk.’ The older boy traveled to Jordan to try to save his eye. They live a kilometer apart, have never met and probably never will. One is from a family of refugees and he lives in one of the grimmest, poorest and most crowded camps in the West Bank. The other, a few years older, lives with his mother and siblings in a relatively spacious home in an adjacent town. The father of the former is the camp imam. The father of the older boy has been living in Houston, Texas, for the past four and a half years, in the hopes of improving his life and obtaining U.S. citizenship for himself and his family, and securing a future for his children. For the boy from the refugee camp, however, there is neither a present nor a future.
Chile’s ambassador to Israel was reprimanded by the Foreign Ministry on Friday after Chile’s new left-wing president, a vocal critic of Israel, refused to accept the credentials of new Israeli Ambassador Gil Artzyeli on Wednesday, reportedly due to Israel’s escalation of military activities in the West Bank.
The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in the Gaza Strip announced on Friday “a major archeological finding”—the discovery of a stunning Byzantine mosaic. Hamas says it will issue an official statement providing additional details in the next few days. The mosaic floor, dating from between the 5th-7th centuries, was discovered a few months ago inside the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, approximately 1km from the Israeli border. Earlier today, the Associated Press shared photos of the site and reported that a local farmer uncovered the mosaic whilst planting an olive tree, when his spade hit a hard surface. The farmer and his son started digging. Three months later, they uncovered the mosaic.
Around two months ago, the director of the Palestinian Authority’s Central Bureau of Statistics issued an unusual statement, one that in more normal times would have resonated on both sides of the Green Line. Dr. Ula Awad announced that for the first time, according to the bureau’s findings, parity exists in terms of the number of Jews and Arabs living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Each group numbers approximately 7 million people, she maintains. Among the Palestinians, some 3.2 million live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 2.1 million in the Gaza Strip, and within Israel there are 1.7 million Arab citizens.
Haaretz, September 19, 2022, The online travel reservation service Booking.com is planning on adding a warning to all properties in the West Bank owned by Israelis within a few days, stating that “visiting the area may be accompanied by an increased risk to safety and human rights, or other risks to the local community and visitors.”
Times of Gaza, lsraeli occupation forces detain a number of Palestinians in several predawn raids targeting different places in the West Bank.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, September 19, 2022, Anglican priest and songwriter, Garth Hewitt, has released two new songs ‘Cry for Hope’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogwDr-orP5k) and ‘Standing Against Apartheid’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfmm7u2Arg0).
On Saturday, 1st October 2022, Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) will hold an online conference entitled “Christian Support for the State of Israel: Is it Biblical?” The conference will “hear from clergy in Bethlehem about the impact of this theology on the ground in the Holy Land and particularly how it affects the lives of the Christian community in Israel and Palestine.”
On September 23rd, Sabeel, with a coalition of Christian organizations and activists, will hold a one-day trip to the Old City of Jerusalem, the emphasis of the visit will be the Church of the Resurrection (Holy Sepulcher), a holy place for Christians. People will come from different cities and villages from the Holy Land. A time of fellowship will be held in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City.
The Catholic Youth in Palestine held their annual conference in Nativity Square, Bethlehem from 16th – 19th September 2022. The well-attended and enjoyable festival was centered around the Bible and the prophets in the homeland of Jesus.
Calls are growing for Israel to immediately release a Palestinian prisoner suffering from cancer who is in a critical condition and believed to be facing death. Nasser abu Hmaid who has been in prison since 2002 was transferred to Assaf Harofeh hospital near Tel Aviv where it is reported that he is near death.
Israeli occupation authorities have so far issued more than 9500 administrative detention orders since 2015 until now, according to the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS). Administrative detention, the process of holding people in prison with no charge and no trial, is illegal under international law.
This week’s Kumi Now initiative focuses on the bloackade of Gaza. On Tuesday, 20th September, we will hear from George Antone from Caritas in Gaza who works to respond to the healthcare crisis in the blockaded area.
Week of September 12, 2022
September 6, 2022,
Haaretz, The U.S. Embassy in Israel has been asked to prepare an internal report on the Israeli army’s ultra-Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion, which has been mired in controversies relating to the abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank. At the State Department’s request, staff at the American embassy in Israel have been conducting interviews with Israelis and Palestinians on the battalion’s conduct in the West Bank following reports of abuse of Palestinians.
The Jerusalem municipal planning and building committee has approved the construction of the Givat HaShaked neighborhood, which lies over the Green Line. The neighborhood, which is intended for the Jewish public, will be built next to the Palestinian quarter of Beit Safafa. The new Jewish neighborhood of Givat HaShaked will encroach on the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa
A 29-year-old Palestinian was shot dead in the West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday during a live TikTok video he was filming of clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians. About 15,000 people had been watching Sabaaneh’s live video of the Israeli army’s demolition of the home of a terrorist who killed three people at a Tel Aviv bar.
“I’m aware of the growing crime in the Arab society, and how easy it is to pull the trigger,” independent Arab journalist Nidal Agbaria said in an interview with Haaretz a year ago. On Sunday, after a year of constant threats, Agbaria was shot and killed near his home in the northern Israeli-Arab city of Umm al-Fahm. Previously, some 30 bullets were fired at his house in one incident, and in another his brother’s home was shot at. ‘No one is safe in the Arab community,’ said a relative of independent Arab-Israeli journalist Nidal Agbaria, who was shot to death in Umm al-Fahm on Sunday.
OnlinePalEng, Breaking|| Israeli occupation shot directly and injured two Palestinian young men while riding their motorcycle during the ongoing isrseli military raid into Jenin.
Times of Gaza, lsraeli occupation forces targeted a Palestinian paramedic while attending to the injured in Jenin this dawn.
Adalah Justice Preject, Just today Ben & Jerry’s independent board filed a second lawsuit against parent company Unilever. Unilever has been attempting to override Ben & Jerry’s decision to end sales of its ice cream in Israeli settlements, all of which are illegal and constitute a war crime under international law. Unilever has sold the Ben & Jerry’s license to an Israeli licensee who is determined to sell ice cream in illegal settlements against the wishes of Ben & Jerry’s.
| Reported by Stop the Wall Campaign, September 7, Apartheid Israel continues to escalate its ethnic cleansing measures against Palestinians living in eight villages in Masafer Yatta. Students and teachers in Masafer Yatta are particularly threatened and are sounding the alarm. On August 18, as students prepared to return to class, the schools of Jinba and Al-Fakheet, two major schools in Masafer Yatta, received demolition orders from the Israeli occupation authorities. They have also prevented both students and teachers from reaching their schools. They’ve confiscated cars transporting teachers to school, violently intimidated students and teachers, and stopped classes for hours every day. |
Haaretz, Sep 7, 2022 Israel loosened the restrictions on foreign entry to the West Bank following international criticism over its latest requirement that foreigners inform Israel if they have a romantic relation with someone in the Palestinian territories and other travel restrictions on foreign students. Foreign visitors to the West Bank will no longer have to declare their romantic relationships with Palestinians and the quota on entry of outstanding students and lecturers was lifted. The U.S. has held ‘quiet and consistent’ talks with Israel in recent months, a U.S. embassy official said.
Israel’s military chief Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi criticized Palestinian security forces on Monday, saying that the increase in the number of terrorist incidents in the West Bank is due to their lack of resources. Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi says the Palestinian security forces’ lack of governance in parts of the West bank is fertile ground for terrorism, leading the IDF to step in. But some in the security establishment criticized the military’s recent operations
Times of Gaza, Sept. 7, lsraeli occupation forces block the road between Bidu and Al Jib towns, northwest of occupied Jerusalem, preventing students from going back to their homes.
Sept 8, The West Bank has seen a tensed night as several places, including Qalandiya camp, were invaded by the lsraeli occupation forces.
Haaretz, Sept. 8, A Palestinian man was shot dead after assaulting an Israeli soldier with a hammer early Thursday morning. The soldier, who was taking part in operations in the village of Beitin, near Ramallah, was lightly wounded. The attack took place amongst a series of clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians during raids to arrest suspects in this week’s attack against an Israeli bus.
Special police forces arrested a 19-year-old Palestinian in possession of an assault rifle and two magazines in Jaffa, who has subsequently confessed to plotting to carry out a terror attack, according to Tel Aviv police. The 19-year-old man from the West Bank city of Nablus, who did not have an entry permit to Israel, was detained near the Jaffa Clock Tower after he aroused the suspicions of special forces in the busy area, according to sources in the police. In the preliminary investigation, he said that he “wanted to kill as many people as possible,” motivated by the death of a relative killed by the Israeli forces, the sources added. In May, he was sentenced to four months in prison after he was caught in possession of a knife and resisted arrest near the Temple Mount in the Old City. He told the police during the interrogation that “my ambition is to be a martyr,” and that his desire to carry out an attack was “because I hate Jews.”
Israel and the Palestinians have “reached a dead end with regard to everything related to the two-state solution,” and the Jordanian government must adjust its approach from solely promoting a Palestinian state to advocating for Palestinian rights within a unified country, one of the architects of the Israeli-Jordanian peace deal declared this week.
Sep 9, 2022, Israel is focusing its efforts on calming the security situation in the northern West Bank by putting pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a government official told Haaretz on Thursday. An Israeli man was lightly wounded in a shooting early Friday, while the Israeli army conducted several overnight raids in the West Bank.
Times of Gaza, The Palestinian, Hamad Abu Jildeh, succumbed to his wounds today. He was shot by the lsraeli occupation forces and left bleeding during a military raid in Jenin camp last Tuesday.
Haaretz, Sep 11, 2022, A 22-year-old Arab-Israeli man was shot by the army on Friday near the separation barrier in the city of Baka al-Garbiyeh. The Israeli army suspects the man was attempting to smuggle Palestinian workers into Israel. The shooting occurred during an attempt to smuggle Palestinians into Israel, according to the army, yet the incident was not initially reported by the soldiers at the scene.
A Palestinian man who is seen in an amateur video lying face down, bloody and motionless, as an Israeli policeman kneels on his neck, said Sunday that Israeli forces beat and detained him without provocation as he headed to pray at Jerusalem’s chief Muslim shrine. Yousef Adi, 36, said that he suffered a broken nose and required four stitches on his forehead after last Thursday’s beating nearby the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The incident is the latest in a series of violent acts by Israeli police against Palestinians. Israeli police said the video distorted the facts, and they had used “reasonable force.” Adi, a West Bank resident who works as a technician at Palestine TV, said he had all the necessary Israeli permits to enter Jerusalem. Inside the Old City, he said officers arbitrarily detained him and dragged him against a wall and began to beat him.
Haaretz, Sep 12, 2022, Israel is promoting a plan to double the size of Har Gilo, a settlement just south of Jerusalem. The new satellite neighborhood is not slated to connect to the current settlement, and opponents of the plan argue the new neighborhood is in fact an entirely new settlement.
The chairman of the board of the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, was arrested on Sunday by Israeli forces while crossing through a military checkpoint in the West Bank, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported. The Israeli security establishment confirmed that Bilal al-Saadi was in fact arrested, “but we cannot elaborate on additional details at this time.” According to a statement issued by the theater’s spokespeople, al-Saadi had driven through the Za’atara military checkpoint between Ramallah and Nablus along with the theater’s producer, Mustafa Sheta. “They were both returning from a meeting with the culture minister in Ramallah. The Freedom Theatre is in contact with human rights groups who have been alerted of the situation. We are seeking further information and advice and will then inform people how they can campaign for Bilal’s release.”
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, September 12, 2022, A long-lost Banksy mural called ‘Slingshot Rat’ originally painted in protest at the nine-metre-high separation wall in Bethlehem, has turned up in an expensive Tel Aviv art gallery. The artwork had been spray-painted on a concrete block that was part of an abandoned Israeli army position. It was later defaced with acrylic paint and then secretly removed. Banksy has worked in the West Bank and Gaza since 2005 to draw attention to the sufferings of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
Next week Kumi Now will commemorate the International Day of Peace on Wednesday, the 21st of September by focusing on the need for peace in Gaza. Israel implemented a blockade on Gaza to punish Hamas for the 2006 election victory. In reality it is the children and families in Gaza who have been punished, suffering from increasing levels of poverty and deprivation.
Week September 7, 2022
Haaretz, August 29, 2022, A few days after the Israeli military forced their way into the West Bank offices of Al-Haq, several people worked to fix its doors. The human rights group was one of seven NGOs raided on August 18, more than six months after Israel declared them terrorist organizations. The forces confiscated documents, printers and scanners from some of the organizations, but this did not happen at Al-Haq, which was relatively fortunate in this respect. Since the raid, many people have come to Al-Haq’s Ramallah office to show solidarity: ‘We’re concerned, but we’re keeping on with our work,’ says director Shawan Jabarin. ‘They want to silence us and control us’
Aug 30, An Israeli court on Tuesday sentenced the Gaza director of a major international charity to 12 years in prison after he was found guilty of terrorism charges, despite independent investigations that found no proof of wrongdoing. Mohammed el-Halabi, the Gaza director for the international Christian charity World Vision, was arrested in 2016 and accused of diverting tens of millions of dollars to the Islamic militant group Hamas that rules the territory. The trial and his prolonged detention have further strained relations between Israel and humanitarian organizations that provide aid to Palestinians. The sentence is likely to continue to affect those ties. The trial sheds light on the way Israel’s legal system handles sensitive security cases, with the defense team given only limited access to evidence, which was also not made public. Critics say the courts too often side with the evidence brought forward by Israel’s security establishment.
Gideon Levy says, “Either El Halabi is one of Israel’s greatest and most dangerous enemies ever, as the indictment against him indicates – or he’s the victim of a cynical, cruel propaganda system that is exploiting him to stop the influx of international humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.”
Some 84 percent of all crime victims in Israel are Arabs, but updates from prosecutors on the progress of criminal cases and the online forms to apply to get them are available only in Hebrew.
Haaretz Opinion, Tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens who are eligible voters are unable to exercise their democratic right because their polling station is simply too far away. The message Israel is sending the Bedouin is clear – as far as we’re concerned, don’t vote.
Haaretz, August 30, Israel’s High Court rejected a petition demanding the release of Khalil Awawdeh on Tuesday, a Palestinian hunger striker protesting his administrative detention, which was frozen in light of his deteriorating condition but not ultimately cancelled. Khalil Awawdeh’s lawyer warns that 171 days into his hunger strike, he could die at any moment.
The police prosecution intends to sign a plea deal with an Israeli man who assaulted left-wing activists near the settlement of Bat Ayin. Young people threw stones at activists assisting Palestinian olive harvesters, and two attacked them with clubs.
Tuesday’s incidents in the West Bank, which will apparently merit at best a fleeting mention in most morning papers, , offer a glimpse into an increasingly high-intensity campaign that’s almost hidden from the public’s eyes, since it receives only a limited amount of media attention.
Aug 31, 2022, The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club announced Wednesday that one thousand security prisoners will go on hunger strike on Thursday in protest of what they say are measures the Israel Prison Service is preparing to take against them. The director of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said they believe Israel’s prison service is trying to suppress their political movement in an organized crackdown, following recommendations by the state probe into the Gilboa prison break.
Times of Gaza, For the second day in a row, lsraeli occupation forces prevent a group of Palestinian students and teachers from commuting to their school in Masafer Yatta, Hebron.
Yazan Afaneh was killed by the lsraeli occupation forces earlier today.
Haaretz, September 1, 2022,
Two Palestinians were shot and killed early Thursday in separate incidents during clashes with the Israeli army in the West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The Palestinian Health Ministry reports one man killed near Ramallah, and another by Palestinian fire near Nablus, during confrontations with the Israeli army.
The Supreme Court rejected an appeal Thursday by an Israeli convicted in the 2015 firebombing attack that killed three members of a Palestinian family in the West Bank, including a baby. The judges rejected Amiram Ben Uliel’s claim that he was interrogated under torture. The Israeli was convicted of firebombing the Dawabsheh family’s home in the West Bank in 2015, killing a baby and his parents and severely wounding a 4-year-old boy
A Jewish Google employee who helped lead internal opposition against the company’s ties with Israel has resigned due to what she described as “retaliation, a hostile environment, and illegal actions by the company.” “I have consistently witnessed that instead of supporting diverse employees looking to make Google a more ethical company, Google systematically silences Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, and Muslim voices concerned about Google’s complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights – to the point of formally retaliating against workers and creating an environment of fear,” she alleged.
Khalil Awawdeh, whose images shocked the world amid his more than 170-day strike, has ended his strike after striking a deal to be released October 2.
A Palestinian human rights organization has blamed Israel for the death of a young Gazan boy, after he was blocked from leaving the Strip to access medical treatment in Jerusalem. Farouk Abu Naja, 6, died last week after being prevented from attending two medical appointments in Jerusalem. Al Mezan says he is the third Gazan child to die this year after being denied access to medical treatment in Israel.Gideon Levy, Alex Levac. Haaretz, Sep 2, 2022 During a protest near Hebron, Israeli troops fired rubber-coated bullets and then live ammunition at Mustafa al-Hasis, 16. Wounded, he was left to lie on the road before being allowed to receive medical care. Not long afterward, Momen Jaber, 15, was killed in the same spot. Mustafa was cuffed and detained by Israeli troops- then released. Mustafa al-Hasis slowly enters the room. A youth of 16 and a half, with a walker. His family hurry to bring him cushions so he’ll be more comfortable on the sofa; others scurry to bring fans. Tall and pale – his scarred and stitched-up left leg full of screws and platinum implants – he lies down slowly. He’s been ordered to keep his weight off the foot for three months.
Times of Gaza, September 3, lsraeli settlers, escorted by the lsraeli occupation forces, organise a provocative march and assault the Palestinian families of Nabi Samuel village, north of occupied Jerusalem.
Haaretz, Analysis, Sep 4, 2022, The West Bank is about to erupt, and Israel is doing little to stop it. Most of Israel’s frequent security briefings focus on the new nuclear deal between the world powers and Iran. The maritime border dispute between Israel and Lebanon is still raging, accompanied by fierce threats from Hezbollah. But in every conversation with defense officials in the past several weeks, it is the Palestinian arena that tops the list of potential areas of escalation, particularly the West Bank.
Haaretz, September 4, New regulations on the entry of foreigners into the West Bank are expected to take effect on Monday, including a requirement that foreigners inform Israel if they have a romantic relation with someone in the Palestinian territories, as well as limitations on spousal visits and the entry of foreign students and lecturers.
Two suspects were arrested after six Israeli soldiers and one other passenger aboard a bus were injured in a shooting attack in the northern reaches of the West Bank on Sunday, according to an Israeli military spokesperson. The shooting took place in the Jordan Valley, near the Israeli settlement of Hamra. Israeli soldiers raided the Palestinian village of Khirbet ‘Atuf near the site of the attack in search of suspects soon after the attack, Palestinian eyewitnesses confirmed.
A Hamas spokesperson praised the shooting, describing it as a “natural response to the occupation’s crime and its continued attack on the al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Two Palestinians in the Gaza Strip accused of spying for Israel have been executed, the Palestinian Interior Ministry in the Gaza Strip announced on Sunday. The Gaza Strip’s Interior Ministry alleged that both men had been in contact with Israeli authorities for years, if not decades. According to local rights groups, at least 15 death sentences have already been issued this year.
Times of Gaza, September 4, 2022, A Palestinian child suffers a heatstroke as the lsraeli occupation forces detained a group of teachers and students in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron.
Haaretz, September 5, 2022, The Israeli army admitted on Monday that it is “highly probable” Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by an Israeli soldier. An Israeli soldier under fire likely erroneously targeted Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, misidentifying her as an armed militant, according to an army probe ■ The IDF said it would not open an investigation into any soldiers. It took almost four months, but on Monday the Israel Defense Forces issued its conclusions about the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which appear to be as reasonable as they would have been were they published the day after the tragedy.
Israeli authorities refrain from enforcing demolition orders issued against the farm outposts, which are extremely common across the West Bank and take over large swaths of land. Israel’s civil administration is pushing forward with a plan that would allow the legalization of dozens of “farm outposts” across the West Bank using a new regulation
Times of Gaza, Filled with grief, Palestinians in Qabatiya bid farewell to slain Taher Zakarneh who was killed by the lsraeli occupation forces this morning.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, September 5, 2022, Palestinian prisoner, Khalil Awawdeh, has ended a hunger strike which lasted more than 170 days, after the Israeli authorities agreed to his release in October. He is weak and frail and will have to remain in hospital until he has recovered some strength. He began his hunger strike after his arrest in December 2021 in protest at being held in Israel without charge or trial, on ‘administrative detention’. On this charge prisoners can be arrested on ‘secret evidence’ and cannot defend themselves in court. They are often held for renewable six-month periods that can lead to years of detention.
Last week the Beersheba District Court ruled against the appeal for the early release of Ahmed Manasra on the grounds of his deteriorating mental health. He was arrested at the age of 13 years in horrifying circumstances, interrogated and sentenced to nine years in prison. Despite his diagnosis of schizophrenia he has recently been kept in solitary confinement for ten months.
The UN Human Rights’ Commissioner, Michelle Bachelot has deplored Israel’s refusal over the past two years to grant visas for international staff to return to the UN Human Rights’ Office. She reminded the Israeli authorities of their obligations as a UN Member State to process UN visa applications as speedily as possible. She stated, ‘Israel’s treatment of our staff is part of a wider and worrying trend to block human rights’ access to the occupied Palestinian territory. This raises the question of what exactly the Israeli authorities are trying to hide.’
Sabeel, in partnership with Jussor from Nablus, are organising a special event on Friday, the 9th of September. The event will be an opportunity for the community of Nablus, including Samaritans, Muslims and Christians to come together to show their gratitude and respect for the devoted service of Father Ioustinos, who is recovering from a recent attack by Palestinian criminals who broke into the Greek Orthodox Jacob’s Well Church.
More than 1.3 million Palestinian schoolchildren living in the occupied territories are at risk as they start back at school, according to the UN. Since the beginning of the year twenty children have been killed in the West Bank, while seventeen children died in Gaza during the Israeli offensive in July. Many schools are overcrowded and 6,400 children attend schools which have been targeted for demolition by the Israeli authorities.
Next week Kumi Now will focus on the West Bank city of Bethlehem and how the Israeli occupation has ravaged its economy. At the north end of Bethlehem lies Rachel’s Tomb, which is a site sacred to Christians, Muslims and Jews alike. However in 2002 Israel annexed the tomb, built high walls around it and prohibited Palestinians from visiting the site. Thriving Palestinian businesses in the area have now all closed down.
Week of August 29, 2022
Haaretz, August 22, 2022, Following American pressure to ease Palestinian travel, Israel declared it would arrange special flights departing from the country’s south, Ramon Airport, near the Red Sea resort city of Eilat. This plan has been postponed without providing an adequate justification or timeline with no new date for its implementation given.
August 23, Young Gazans are being disconnected from the outside world. Two young women in Gaza describe what it’s like to live under a blockade that just entered its 15th year. ‘I would love to get out,’ says one, ‘but there’s no such thing for young people’ The latest round of fighting between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip came shortly after a grim milestone was marked in the coastal enclave: 15 years since the beginning of the blockade.
Haaretz, Opinion, August 24, 2022, Israel is currently holding 723 detainees without trial. All of them are Arabs; 11 are Israeli citizens. This number, reported by Haaretz’s Hagar Shezaf on Monday, should shock every law-abiding citizen, judge and attorney – and anyone who still believes in human rights. The figure is only a partial one and reflects a picture that is true to one particular moment, one day, and does not include the dark history of the use of administrative detention against thousands of people throughout the years of the occupation.
Haaretz, Aug 24, 2022,. The Central Elections Committee has rejected a demand to place polling stations on Election Day in Bedouin communities in southern Israel that are not recognized by the state. Ruling means some residents must travel up to 40 miles to reach their polling stations, driving down voting rates in these villages.
The Israeli Army suspended four soldiers on Wednesday who were recorded on video beating Palestinians near Ramallah. An investigation of the incident found that the soldiers had ‘behaved violently and used unnecessary force’
At least three vehicles with punctured tires were found on Wednesday morning in the West Bank village of Marda, north of the Jewish settlement of Ariel. Over the past year, Marda has become a frequent target of so-called “price tag attacks” – various acts of vandalism committed by Jewish settlers. In March, four cars were pelted with rocks, leading to the arrest of three Jewish suspects. In addition to puncturing tires, the suspects sprayed anti-Arab sentiments and a Star of David on a wall in the West Bank village.
Times of Gaza, August 24, Palestinians in Nablus bid final farewell to Muhammad Araysheh who succumbed today to his wounds sustained two weeks ago in an lsraeli gunfire.
August 25, lsraeli occupation forces confiscate a Palestinian-owned vehicle during a military raid in Silwad, northeast of Ramallah city this morning.
New security camera records document how the lsraeli occupation forces kidnapped the body of the Palestinian Mohammad Shaham after murdering him about a week ago in his own house in Kafr Aqab, occupied Jerusalem.
Haaretz, Gideon Levy, Aug 26, 2022, Salah Sawafta, 58, left the mosque and was walking home when a bullet to the head killed him. The shot was most likely fired by one of the IDF snipers on the fourth floor of an office building, who were spraying the street below with live ammunition. Now the army is trying to shirk responsibility. The wedding of Sawafta’s daughter Dunya, 22, was set for today, Friday. Invitations had gone out to about 1,000 guests for the celebration at the Al-Kalah wedding hall in Nablus. His new suit was also ready. Last Friday, at the conclusion of morning prayers in the mosque in Tubas, he told his friends that he was hurrying home because he had to go to Nablus: There were still arrangements to make for the wedding.
Palestine Online, August 28, Palestinian children were stuck in traffic due to the Israeli military checkpoints and cried as the Israeli occupation forces were firing gas canisters at Palestinian cars for no reason.
Haaretz, August 28, 2022, A security guard at Israel Railways allegedly assaulted activists from an anti-occupation organization and prevented them from entering a train station in Tel Aviv on Thursday. The activists said the guard argued that the shirt one of them was wearing, bearing the name of the organization, Looking the Occupation in the Eye, was liable “to trigger a provocation.”
Three Palestinians, Islamic Jihad operatives according to Haaretz, were seriously injured during one of Israel’s nightly raids in Jenin in an exchange of fire with IDF soldiers.
Israel Police on Sunday played down reports by Jewish worshippers about their ascent to the Temple Mount under the supervision of an officer through a gate reserved for Muslims, in violation of the status quo at the disputed holy site. Hamas referred to the entrance of Jewish worshippers through the Gate of the Tribes, which is reserved for Muslim entrance only, a ‘serious escalation.’ While the incident does not signal a change in government policy, Jewish groups are taking the opportunity to call for additional Jewish entry.
This week, kids from all over Israel will start a new school year. They’ll be learning all the usual subjects: history, literature, math, English. But there’s one subject the Education Ministry insists will not be in this year’s curriculum: the truth. The truth about living in this country. When Israel’s education ministry ordered the removal of maps showing the 1967 borders from classrooms, it was the just the most recent blatant, dangerous, absurd attempt to erase the occupation – and the Palestinians.
Aug 29, 2022
A new tourist attraction made its debut in Jerusalem this summer: Farm in the Valley. The pro-settler Elad Association, which operates the attraction, promises on its website to offer “a special agricultural experience, where you can feel with your hands the work of ancient farmers, in keeping with the season, just as in ancient times.” After striking down roots in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, the right-wing association Elad has marked the Hinnom Valley for its next expansion project.
At least eight Palestinians were wounded on Monday, one of them seriously, during an exchange of fire with Israeli forces in the town of Kabatia near Jenin, Palestinian reports say. All of the eight injured were transferred to nearby hospitals. Israel’s military spokesperson’s unit said in a statement that it had arrest nine Palestinians suspected of terror activity in the West Bank throughout the night.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, August 29, 2022, Wadi Rabah is an area in the occupied West Bank which is extremely important for the conservation of wild animals and delicate biodiversity. It also needs protection as it forms a corridor for millions of migratory birds flying across the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Experts and activists are concerned that plans to build the Nahal Rabah cemetery for settlers in this sensitive area have been passed without an environmental survey.
Last week Father Ioustinos, the 81-year-old Archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Church of Jacob’s Well was injured by some Palestinians who broke into the church. Father Ioustinos is much respected in his Nablus community and has worked for years to restore the church and monastery after they were damaged in the 1927 earthquake. This is one of many attacks he has had to endure and the Palestinian Authority have been criticised for not providing sufficient levels of security in this area which is under their supervision.
On Thursday, the 25th of August, hundreds of Palestinian detainees throughout the Israeli prison system began a sit-in protest in prison courtyards. They are protesting against the harsh measures taken by Israeli prison authorities to constantly transfer Palestinian prisoners with longer sentences and to keep them in solitary confinement.
Last week Human Rights’ Watch wrote an open letter to the Biden Administration about the Israeli governments’ targeting of seven notable Palestinian Civil Societies. They have been designated as ‘terror’ organisations by the Israeli Defence Minister. The UN and nine European Foreign Ministries have stated that there is no substantial information to support this designation and that the organisations should continue to receive funding. However the letter states that the Biden Administration has not voiced concern over the lack of evidence and is ‘effectively acquiescing’ to repressive attacks on Palestinian civil society.
It is the start of the new academic year in Palestine and Israel and students will be returning to classes which are funded quite differently. Next week Kumi Now will consider the unjust discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel when it comes to educational funding from the Israeli authorities.
Week of August 16, 2022
ON THE GREOUND IN PALESTINE
Haaretz, Aug 10, 2022. Archaeologists at Bar-Ilan University have been conducting an archeological excavation for the past few weeks in a location called Khirbet Tibnah, close to the West Bank village of Nabi Salih. Villagers claim that the excavation is happening on privately owned land, but the university says that they are digging on state lands in accordance with the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria. Bassem Tamimi says he has Jordanian documents proving his ownership over the land.
A Palestinian boy from East Jerusalem was severely beaten by police officers during his arrest and while in custody, an Israeli judge has found. After being held for three days, a medical exam following the boy’s release found clotted blood in his ear and a swollen upper lip. Police, however, insist his rights were protected throughout the process.
August 11, The Israel Prison Service’s director of medicine said that Awawdeh – one of the imprisoned Palestinians who Islamic Jihad claimed would be released as part of its cease-fire conditions – should be transferred to a public hospital immediately. Khalil Awawdeh, a Palestinian held by Israel who has been on a hunger strike for 147 days, is now at risk of permanent neurological damage, doctors said Thursday, warning that his health is rapidly deteriorating.
Aljazeera, August 11, 2022, Almost 40 Palestinian children have been killed so far this year in the occupied territories and in many incidents, Israeli forces appear to use lethal force in a manner that violates international human rights law, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said. The United Nations rights chief issued a statement on Thursday expressing “alarm” at the large numbers of Palestinians – particularly children – who have been killed and injured by Israeli forces in occupied Palestinian territory so far this year.
Haaretz, August 11, A large army force raided the village of Palestinian human rights activist Nasser Nawajah. He was taken handcuffed and blindfolded into detention for 14 hours – all for a 15-minute talk with a Shin Bet agent who advised him to moderate his behavior.
August 12, Gaza’s death toll rises to 49 as 22-year-old Anas Khaled Anshasi, wounded in an Israeli air strike east of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza strip, succumbs to his wounds.
Aug 12, 2022. According to unofficial estimates, more than a hundred houses were destroyed after Israel launched an operation against Islamic Jihad targets across Gaza. Qatar has agreed to finance the restoration of the houses destroyed during the latest conflict in Gaza, the head of Hamas’ political wing Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement on Friday.
Reported by B’tselem. August 16, Israel: sends soldiers to confiscate solar panels from Palestinians living in the heart of the desert. Yesterday in Khirbet Qawawis, 13 solar panels were confiscated from 6 families numbering 40 people. By B’tselem.
Haaretz, August 16, 2022, Israeli defense officials have confirmed that Israel was responsible for the deaths of five minors killed on the last day of the recent hostilities with Islamic Jihad this month. Immediately after their deaths on the final day of the recent Israel-Gaza flare-up, Israeli senior officers had said the five were likely killed by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, a day after what was initially seen as a similar incident.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, August 17, 2022, The Israeli District Court in Jerusalem has just ordered the immediate demolition of a school for the village of Ein Samiya and neighbouring nomadic communities, near Ramallah. The school opened in January 2022, after being funded by countries from the European Union. The court order requires the petitioners to demolish the school themselves or else to pay for Israeli bulldozers to come and destroy it.
An Israeli bus company, Tnufa has had to issue an apology after it was revealed that fifty Palestinian workers were forced to get off one of its buses. Last week three Jewish passengers had boarded the bus in a suburb of Tel Aviv and then complained that they would not travel with the Palestinians and that the driver must demand that they disembark. More than 100,000 Palestinians in the West Bank have permits to cross into Israel and West Bank settlements, where most of them are employed as construction workers and gardeners.
Israeli forces entered the Silwan neighbourhood of East Jerusalem to demolish the home of Hazem Abu Sneineh on Wednesday, the 4th of August. Israeli police and a crew of municipal workers with a bulldozer came to flatten his home on the pretext that he had no building permit. While extensive programmes of settler homes are built in the occupied Palestinian territories, hardly any building permits are ever granted to Palestinians.
Shireen Abu Akleh’s memory has been honoured with a monument set up on the street in Ramallah which now bears her name. The Palestinian American journalist is depicted on the monument carrying out her work covering an Israeli military operation outside a refugee camp in Jenin. Despite the fact that she was wearing a vest clearly marked ‘Press’ and a helmet, she was shot and killed. Investigations carried out by the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations have established that the Al Jazeera journalist was shot by Israeli forces.
Next Tuesday Kumi Now will remember the Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism which was made on the 22nd of August, 2006. Palestinian Christians wrote this declaration to address the threat of Christian Zionism. Palestinians are seen as alien residents in Israel and Arab Christians are dismissed by Christian Zionists, who believe in the sovereignty of the Jews over the whole land.
Week ending August 9, 2022
Haaretz, Jul 25, 2022, About a month ago, the technology giant Apple made a surprising announcement: not only does it currently employ about 60 engineers in the Palestinian city of Rawabi in the West Bank, it also plans to further increase its workforce there. Although these numbers pale in comparison to Israel, where the number of Apple employees is estimated at 2,000 people, this is still encouraging news for the Palestinians, with the potential to become a pillar of the Palestinian economy.
Jul 26, 2022 The Israeli military on Tuesday demolished the homes of two Palestinians who were behind the shooting in the settlement of Ariel in back in April which left one Israeli dead. The Israeli military claims that hundreds of Palestinians threw rocks, blazing tires, fireworks and explosives at the troops operating to destroy the attackers’ residence.
Jul 28, 2022 The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s grand experiment venturing into the campaign space via a political action committee will face its biggest test next week, when Reps. Andy Levin and Haley Stevens will face off in the Democratic congressional primary for Michigan’s 11th district. The United Democracy Project has spent nearly millions to support Congresswoman Haley Stevens against Rep. Andy Levin ahead of next Tuesday’s Democratic primary. J Street, meanwhile, is backing the Jewish incumbent.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev summoned Watan Madi, a student and left-wing activist affiliated with the Hadash party’s campus chapter, to disciplinary proceedings on Monday over a Mahmoud Darwish quote she read at a Nakba Day rally — the university claims that reading the call by the famed Palestinian poet to “not forget the martyrs” constitutes support for terrorism.
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against the evacuation of settlers living in the Mitzpeh Kramim outpost near Ramallah on Wednesday, reversing a previous ruling that ordered their removal. Two years ago the court ruled that the Mitzpeh Kramim outpost could not be recognized because the sale of its lands to settlers was not made in ‘good faith,’ but an expanded panel now reversed that ruling.
After a wave of violence between Jews and Arabs across Israel last May, the government is paying millions of shekels in compensation to mixed Jewish-Arab cities for damage caused duri ng Operation Guardian of the Walls, but is not compensating Arab cities and local authorities that also suffered damage.
Jul 29, 2022, Three Jewish men were charged Thursday with terrorism and related offenses for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at an Arab man. The three suspects went to a beach in northern Israel with the express purpose of attacking Arabs, the indictment claims.
Muatasem Abbasi and Khalaf Huwarin, two Palestinian construction workers, left home for work but never returned. Both of them were killed in horrific accidents – Abbasi was hit by a concrete container that detached from a crane, and Khalaf was crushed when a wall collapsed on him – leaving behind emotionally and financially devastated families. Those responsible got off lightly.
The state has filed just 90 indictments in the 379 cases of work-related deaths in Israel in the last five years, with offenders often receiving mild punishments.
A mentally ill Palestinian is held in isolation in an Israeli prison, with no release in sight. At the age of 13 he participated in a terrorist attack in which his cousin stabbed and seriously wounded two Israelis. He himself was sentenced to 9 and a half years in prison, but his mental situation deteriorated. The UN and hundreds of thousands of people around the world are calling for his release.
A group of Palestinians opened fire on an Israeli military outpost near Nablus on Thursday overnight, instigating a gun fight which left at least three Palestinians wounded.
Reported by Palestine Electronic Forces, Israeli occupation forces opened fire on a car, wounding three Palestinians, near Hawara Checkpoint, south of Nablus. One of them was detained.
[My question: Is this the same incident?]
A Palestinian child Amjad Abu Alia was shot to death by the Israeli occupation forces in Al-Mughayyir village, northeast of Ramallah.
Reported by DCIP, August 10, 2022, Israeli forces agreed to a ceasefire late Sunday night, after 16 Palestinian children in Gaza had been killed. Then, Israeli forces shot and killed two 16-year-old Palestinian boys in the occupied West Bank barely more than a day later. Hussein Jamal Hussein Taha, 16, was shot and killed by Israeli forces while shopping for groceries with his father and younger brother in Nablus on Tuesday morning. A few hours later in Hebron, 16-year-old Momen Yasin Mohammad Joude Jaber was shot dead with a live round to the chest with by an Israeli soldier.
Times of Gaza, August 9, Israeli occupation forces raided Shu’afat camp in Jerusalem and demolish three Palestinian-owned houses.
Haaretz, Aug 9, 2022, Three Jewish passengers who boarded a bus on its way to the West Bank forced the removal of dozens of Palestinians. The bus operator claims that one of the passengers pretended to be a Transportation Ministry official and threatened the driver.
A 17-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire in Hebron on Tuesday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, as clashes erupt across the West Bank hours after a military raid in Nablus left at least three Palestinians dead, including a 16-year-old.
Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank demolished a Palestinian family’s home in the South Hebron Hills despite a court order barring it from being torn down. Israel’s Civil Administration claims the property was mistaken for another. The owner of the house said inspectors ignored him when he said a court order barred the demolition. He now lives in a tent with his children.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, August 11, 2022, Next week, on Friday the 19th of August, Kumi Now will mark World Humanitarian Day.
On this day we advocate for humanitarian aid workers and for all those affected by crises around the world. At the same time we call to mind the massive cuts in US humanitarian aid to Palestinians and for the suffering of refugees living in Gaza, Syria and the Lebanon now living in dire need.
Palestinian students have succeeded well in their Tawjihi high school general certificate examinations this summer. More than 85,300 students took the exam in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza and there was an overall pass rate of over 68 per cent.
After three days of fighting, Israel and Islamic Jihad have agreed to a ceasefire negotiated by Egypt. The death toll in Gaza reached 44, including 15 children, and 360 injured due to Israeli airstrikes.
Nineteen families have left the herding community of Ras a Tin in Area C in the West Bank, with many of them relocating to Area B. The community was formerly made up of 35 households, comprising 250 people. It has been subjected to continual harassment from Israeli forces with frequent damage to their homes and livestock structures, as well as violent assaults from settlers, including a recent arson attack.
Nuzhah ‘Afanah, a young Palestinian woman with a Palestinian Authority identity card was arrested on Wednesday, the 29th of June, when her husband was driving her and their two baby daughters in East Jerusalem. Under the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, (2003) Nuzhah is required to have a temporary permit to allow her to enter East Jerusalem, but these permits are rarely, if ever, granted. She was taken to the police station to be interrogated and then driven to Checkpoint 300 in southern Jerusalem and left there alone in the middle of the night. Relatives had to go and collect the young children and later go and rescue her.
Nabil Ghanum,(53), lived in Sara, a village near Nablus. On Sunday, the 19th of June, Nabil tried to cross through one of the gaps in the separation barrier near Qalqiliyah Checkpoint to enter Israel to work. As soon as he crossed the fence with some other Palestinian workers, Israeli soldiers fired at them. Nabil was shot and injured and later died of his wounds in an Israeli hospital. The B’Tselem report of this incident states that, ‘the opening of live fire against Palestinians seeking to work in Israel is unlawful and cannot be justified’.
Musicians Michele Cantoni and his wife Mathilde decided to move to Palestine and have dedicated their lives to supporting young Palestinians. They set up the Amwaj Choir in 2015, an Arabic name meaning waves. There are sixty choir members between the ages of 7-21 years. They come from cities, refugee camps and rural areas in the Bethlehem and Hebron area. Standards are high and the choir members are expected to rehearse for 6-8 hours each week.
The Ramallah-based Lawyers for Justice group have reported that 94 activists have been arrested by the Palestinian Authority over the past two months. This is one of the widest political arrest campaigns in years. Students and journalists have been among those arrested, but none have been charged with offences. Many were released after ten days in prison, but twenty remain in detention.
Week Ending July 25, 2022
Palestine Electronic Forces, July 19, 2022,
For the 204th time in a row, Israeli occupation authorities have demolished Al-Araqib village in the Al-Naqab desert, leaving its residents homeless, today morning.
Reported by DCIP, July 19, In October last year, the Israeli government effectively outlawed our work documenting human rights violations against Palestinian children by designating Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) and five other Palestinian civil society organizations as “terrorist organizations.” Last week, nine EU countries—Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden—rejected that designation. And yesterday, 22 members of the U.S. Congress, led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, rejected the designation and sent a letter demanding the Biden administration do the same.
Haaretz, July 19, The Nachala settlement movement is planning to erect three unauthorized outposts throughout the West Bank on Wednesday, despite Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s warning that security forces have been instructed to prevent their establishment.
Israeli military aircraft attacked the Gaza Strip on Tuesday in retaliation for gunfire from the strip that hit an industrial building in an Israeli town near the border earlier in the day, Palestinian media reported.
Jul 20, 2022, WASHINGTON – State Prosecutor Glenn Ivey is projected to defeat former Rep. Donna Edwards in a Maryland Democratic primary for the House of Representatives, undoubtedly buoyed to victory by AIPAC’s $6 million investment in the race, more than AIPAC has spent in any race to date.
Jul 22, 2022 Israel’s High Court of Justice partially granted a petition by a Palestinian family in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on Thursday to postpone their eviction until a further hearing. The verdict, along with a similar one on Sheikh Jarrah, complicates settler groups’ strategy of getting Palestinian families in East Jerusalem evicted.
Jul 21, NEW YORK – Although there are plenty of Middle Eastern eateries in New York City, it’s stil rare to find ones that are branded as Palestinian. As you enter the Ayat Palestinian bistro in Brooklyn, it’s hard to miss the political context that accompanies your meal. The walls are covered with paintings of olive branch-bearing doves and writings calling to end the occupation and live in peace. A large mural shows a Palestinian woman crying while looking at an Israeli soldier aiming his gun at an imprisoned Palestinian underneath Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. The message is very clear at this restaurant that promises “honest, authentic Palestinian food made with love.”
July 22, Israel is to build a new wall along the borderlines of Hebron to restrict Palestinians.
Israeli settlers cut down dozens of olive trees in Palestinian lands in the village of Turmus Ayya, east of Ramallah.
Haaretz, Jul 22, 2022, Gideon Levy, Seventeen families, 120 souls, in search of a home. This week they were joined by other families, and the number of homeless among them will rise to 140. Their children’s school, which they built with much toil, is now shuttered and unlikely to reopen. Their 3,000 sheep also remained behind – there is no place to move them to from their present pastures. Their owners may thus have no choice but to sell them and thereby eliminate their one source of income, which is also their way of life. On six occasions Israel has expelled the Ka’abneh tribe from the lands it has lived on since it was first expelled in 1948. Last week, it was forced to uproot again, this time after being terrorized by settlers. Shepherd families without homes, without flocks.
Jul 23, 2022, Israeli researchers put American cops through an intensive course of respectful communication, then examined the effects in the field. Not only did the number of arrests plummet – so did crime. Researchers, led by Prof. David Weisburd, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem criminologist, conducted an intensive course for police officers in three cities in the United States (Houston, Tucson, and Cambridge, Massachusetts) based on a model known as “procedural justice.” Addressing the encounter between police and the citizenry, this concept focuses on making the interaction between them fair and dignified: Has the citizen been given the opportunity to voice his or her side, do the police show respect and project neutrality?
A Palestinian infant got suffocated last night due to tear gas inhalation following an Israeli raid in Silwan during which a considerable number of Palestinians sustained injuries, including children.
Haaretz, July 24, 2022 . Two Palestinians were killed early Sunday morning in an exchange of fire with Israeli forces in Nablus, Israeli and Palestinians officials said. The two killed were members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, according to the group, and police say they shot at members of an elite anti-terrorism force as part of a larger firefight. (A wanted militant showed up at the funeral.)
Israel’s navy destroyed a Palestinian boat overnight into Sunday off the coast of the southern Gaza Strip, in what Israel described as a thwarted weapons smuggling attempt, and what Palestinians dubbed harassment of local fishermen.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, July 25, 2022, Churches for Middle East Peace, a coalition of thirty US churches, released a statement on Tuesday, the 19th of July, expressing disappointment with President Biden’s visit to Israel and Palestine. It stated, ‘while affirming the US/Israel relationship and the billions of dollars of US assistance that go with it, the President said almost nothing about the abuses committed by Israel with that assistance against Palestinians’.
The US Presbyterian Church has declared that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people constitutes apartheid. The General Assembly voted decisively for the resolution on Friday, the 8th of July.
The Palestinian composer, Ahmed Abu Abed won first place at the USA Music Composition International Competition in June 2022. Abu Abed is a music teacher at the Modern American School in Amman, Jordan. He will travel to New York in early 2023 to perform his prize-winning piece before a live audience.
Young Palestinian musicians were invited to perform concerts in Ankara and Istanbul this July. Palestinians from the diaspora joined together with musicians from the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Ramallah to perform with Turkish musicians from the Presidential Symphony Orchestra. The young musicians wanted to send a message of peace through their concert performances.
On Tuesday the 2nd of August the Kumi Now community looks at the Geneva Convention, adopted in 1949. Article 33 of the fourth Geneva Convention outlaws the use of collective punishment. And yet, Israel has used collective punishment as one of the key components in its policies towards Palestine, apparently without drawing down international condemnation.
Week ending July 17, 2022
Haaretz, Jul 12, 2022, Amira Hass
At 7:30 PM, the assailants arrived at the tent where Hajar and Mustafa Ka’abneh live in the family encampment at Ras al-Tin, northeast of Ramallah. “We were sitting in the tent, and suddenly, four civilian cars and a military one showed up,” Ka’abneh said. “Around 15 Settlers got out of them and another four or five soldiers. I stood at the entrance to the tent. More than one settler attacked me. One of them beat me with a club and someone sprayed pepper spray into my eyes. My wife came out, and one of them attacked her with a club. Not one strike. Five. She passed out.” With clubs and threats, residents of 10 Israeli shepherd outposts north of Ramallah are chasing Palestinians off their land. The pattern repeats itself: attacking Palestinians and then claiming they were attacked first.
Jul 12, 2022, Defense Minister Benny Gantz approved Tuesday several confidence-building measures for Palestinians in the West Bank, a day before U.S. President Joe Biden’s arrival in Israel, including West Bank construction for Palestinians. Defense Minister Gantz also approves registering 5,500 Palestinians with no legal status, as well as raising the number of Gazans allowed to cross into Israel.
Jul 13, Palestinians from the West Bank village of Masafer Yatta have asked High Court of Justice to issue an interim injunction barring the Israeli military from continuing the training exercises that have been underway the past three weeks after a village home was struck by a bullet last Wednesday.
Nine European countries issued a joint statement on Tuesday saying they will continue working with six Palestinian organizations that Israel outlawed last year because Israel had failed to prove its claim that they should be considered terrorist organizations.
Reported by OFIP (Ottawa Forum Israel Palestine), A recent report by the Norwegian Refugee Council calculates that Israel has displaced a total of 1,657 people as a result of the demolishing of 1,269 structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since Joe Biden was elected in November 2020. That is an average of 3 people per day. Since the Canadian federal election on 21 September 2021, 628 structures have been demolished and 735 Palestinians in the West Bank including East Jerusalem.
This works out to an average of 2.5 Palestinians displaced per day (18 per week) since Trudeau took office. So far, neither Trudeau nor the Foreign Minister Mme Joly have made any public comment about the actions of Israel which Canada describes as a “friend and ally”.
Haaretz, July 13, Hours before President Joe Biden landed in Israel on Wednesday, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has erected billboards in the West Bank addressing the U.S. president in English and accusing Israel of running an apartheid regime.
Sixty Palestinians were killed in incidents involving the Israeli security forces in the West Bank over the first six months of 2022, compared to 70 such deaths in the whole of 2021. So far, Israeli Military Police investigators have opened investigations into just over a quarter of the incidents. The number of deadly incidents was significantly lower in previous years: 19 in 2020 and 20 in 2019.
Jul 14, 2022. U.S. President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Thursday will sign a landmark strategic declaration on the U.S.-Israel alliance, detailing America’s commitment to Israel’s security, regional integration and combatting antisemitism. It also makes a cursory reference to a two-state solution, fails to mention Russia in the context of Ukraine and firmly rejects the BDS movement.
OFIP, July 15, A Canadian first: University of Waterloo launches a “Foundation for Palestinian Studies”, initiated with start-up funding by Shawky Falel, a Palestinian Canadian business man, who is an impressive and enthusiastic spokesperson for Palestine.
Palestine, Online, An announcement of US$100M for the East Jerusalem Lutheran hospital network provides a much-needed injection of support to Palestinian health care
Aljazeera, July 16, Palestinian universities are under attack once again. Later this month, the Israeli authorities are expected to put into effect a 97-page ordinance, called Procedure for Entry and Residence for Foreigners in Judea and Samaria Area (PDF), which would grant the Israeli Ministry of Defence and thus, the military, absolute power to determine how many and which foreign academics and students can visit, study or work at all 15 Palestinian universities and colleges in the West Bank. The “procedure” limits the number of staff allowed to work for any of these 15 universities and colleges to no more than 100 “distinguished lecturers and researchers,” noting that “applications for a permit under this section will be approved if it is demonstrated, to the satisfaction of the authorised [military] official, that the lecturer contributes significantly to academic learning, to the area’s economy, or to advancing regional cooperation and peace”. Moreover, under the new ordinance, the Israeli authorities will not only determine who can or cannot teach in Palestinian universities but will also restrict the time foreign academics can reside in the West Bank to one semester, which ensures that foreign professors will no longer be able to become permanent members of the academic staff at any of West Bank’s institutions of higher education. Finally, the procedure will only allow up to 150 foreign students to study in the West Bank at any given moment, while restricting their stay to one semester as well.
Haaretz, Jul 15, 2022, JEDDAH – U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday publicly committed to a two-state solution based on 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps — a return to the Obama administration’s positions after Donald Trump all but abandoned these principles.
Israeli warplanes target a site in central Gaza this morning.
July 17, Israeli warplanes target several sites in Gaza Strip at dawn.
Haaretz, July 17 Analysis, Rockets fired from Gaza mere hours after Biden left for Saudi Arabia show that the Gaza factions know that the current government – just like the ones before it – seeks to avoid a military confrontation
Haaretz, July 16, Saudi Arabia will not fully normalize ties with Israel until a two-state solution with the Palestinians is reached, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Friday. Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as the capital is Saudi Arabia’s requirement for peace with Israel, Saudi Foreign Minister tells CNN.Gideon Levy
Jul 16, 2022, At Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem, of all places, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a death certificate. The two-state solution died a long time ago, and now so has the Palestinians’ strategic choice of relying on the West in their struggle for their national rights.
Jul 17, 2022 The northern Israel city of Afula is set to ban driving lessons on Shabbat, in what appears to be a bid to deter Arabs from the neighboring communities from entering the city. ‘Whoever enters this city needs to understand that this is a Jewish city,’ Afula council member argues.
July 18, Israel’s Defense Ministry ordered representatives of three of the six organizations designated as terror groups to obtain a special permit to represent them or face a penalty of seven years in prison. One attorney says this is an unprecedented ‘government threat’
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, July 18, 2022, At the same time as President Biden arrived in Israel on Wednesday, the 13th of July, the Israeli military seized a large area of Palestinian land between Ramallah and Nablus. The land was owned by Palestinian farmers who cultivated olive and almond trees there and are residents of four neighbouring villages. Their appeals for the land went unheeded by the authorities and the land has been declared a security zone set up to protect nearby Israeli settlements and outposts.
Four out of five children living in Gaza suffer from depression, sadness and fear caused by fifteen years of the Israeli blockade, according to the latest report, entitled ‘Trapped’, by the Save the Children Fund. More than 800,000 children in Gaza have only known life under the blockade and have lived through five escalations of violence and a pandemic. These experiences have left many suffering from anxiety, leading to nightmares and bedwetting and many experience difficulties in concentrating and communicating.
Kumi Now will consider the topic of Family Unification on Tuesday, the 26th of July. Under international law most countries permit the immigration of a citizen’s close relatives and offer them legal status within the state. Israel does not recognise the right of Palestinians to family unification. The Nationality and Entry into Israel Law, (31.7.2003), has left thousands of Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian territories who are married to Israeli citizens without residency status and living under constant threat of expulsion.
Nora Arsenian-Carmi was invited to speak on the July webinar for Friends of Sabeel Australia on Saturday, the 16th of July. Nora was born in Jerusalem, Palestine, a few months before the establishment of Israel in 1948. Since 1967, she has been a permanent resident of East Jerusalem. Conflict is something she is familiar with considering her Armenian heritage. Her family survived the genocide of 1915. Nora has served as a community builder in various religious and civil society circles. She has worked with the YWCA, Sabeel Liberation Theology Center and Kairos Palestine for more than 37 years. She remains closely connected with the World Council of Churches assemblies and events and participates in several global church involvements.
A recording of the session can be found on the following link: https://youtu.be/5WqNBVWsKCY
Week of July 11, 2022
| Reported by Haaretz, July 5, 2022, The announcement by the U.S. State Department that it’s impossible to conclusively determine which gun fired the bullet that killed Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh made clear something that Palestinians have always known: Whenever the United States has to decide between an Israeli position and a Palestinian one, Israel always enjoys a clear advantage. July 6, WASHINGTON – Ben & Jerry’s sued its parent company, Unilever, on Tuesday to block the sale of the ice cream maker’s business interests in Israel to an Israeli company. A 20-year-old man was killed on Wednesday during an Israeli military raid in his West Bank village of Jaba, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported. Rafiq Ghannam was killed as Israel’s military conducts near-daily raids focusing largely on Jenin and nearby villages. His was the second death in that same town within just a few days. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met on Tuesday with the head of Hamas’ political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, in Algeria, the first such meeting between the two in 15 years. After years of unofficial segregation, Tel Aviv University is offering prospective dorm students the opportunity to sign up for a pilot program in which Jews and Arabs are placed together in on-campus housing. The pilot program was developed ‘out of a sense that it’s what the students want,’ the university’s commissioner of equality and diversity explained. Haaretz opinion: Biden is making a big mistake with the Abraham Accords. The Abraham Accords of 2020, normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab countries, was a triumph for Israel but represented bitter lemons for Palestinians. The deals ripped up any residual solidarity that Arab nations once sought to convey for the plight of Palestinians. Any incentives for Israel’s leadership to advance a future peace, or even slow its expanding control over Palestinians, appeared to vanish. Reported by DCIP (Defense of Children International Palestine), July 7, 11-year-old Safi Ahmad Mohammad Jawabra was walking home to Al-Arroub refugee camp near Hebron from school after his math final exam when Israeli forces shot him in the head with a rubber-coated metal bullet unexpectedly and without warning. Now, his left eye only has 10% of its original function. Haaretz, July 7, Supreme Court Justice Khaled Kabub has come out in opposition of Israel’s policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinians accused of terrorism, arguing that it goes against the country’s values. Khaled Kabub, Israel’s first Muslim justice, argued in a dissenting opinion that the state shouldn’t punish the family of a Palestinian man who killed three people in a May attack. But the majority justices upheld the demolition. Haaretz Opinion, While the overturning of Roe v. Wade made waves, two no less monumental cases decided in the past few weeks mark an unprecedented reversal in the Supreme Court’s stance on separation of church and state. Marching hand-in-hand with right-wing lobbyists, state legislators and media figures, the US highest court is now not dispensing justice but leading a crusade for Christian supremacy in America. From abortion to school prayer, the ‘religious freedom’ touted by Supreme Court judges backed by Evangelical Christian and their Catholic allies will never be accessible to American Jews and Muslims. Haaretz, July 8, Two pages of issue No. 60 of the Kibbutz Nahshon bulletin, distributed to members at the end of the 1967 Six-Day War, were glued together. After the bulletins had been mimeographed, an unknown person decided to silence the reservations members had in connection with the lands of neighboring Palestinian villages whose inhabitants had recently fled or been expelled, and whose houses had been razed to the ground. “It was decided,” says a note attached to a surviving, uncensored copy of the bulletin, “not to make our deliberations public.” During the 1967 war, an elite Egyptian army unit sustained heavy losses west of Jerusalem. The bodies were interred in a mass grave, in fields tended but not owned by Kibbutz Nahshon. The story was hushed up and the fields became part of the Mini Israel park. One of the people involved in burying some of the bodies wonders why no one has asked him about it until now. July 9, Sa’dieh Matar, a Palestinian woman with eight children and 28 grandchildren, was arrested in December for allegedly trying to stab a settler and had been jailed ever since, in deteriorating health. She died in prison, and no one know why.· Jun 26, Times of Gaza Israeli settlers aggressively assault the Jerusalemite Arafat Saleem At-Tahan and torch his car near Ramallah. July 6, The Palestine Chronicle, Palestinian attorneys Thursday foiled an attempt by Israeli settlers to “evict” Palestinian families from their houses in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, July 11, Israel’s Supreme Court gave its ruling on the case of the Israeli military shooting and serious injury of 15-year-old Palestinian Attiya Nabaheen in November 2014. Attiya was shot on his family’s property near Al Bureij, 500 metres from the fence between Israel and Gaza. He has been left with quadriplegia and will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. The court ruled that the Israeli government is not liable to compensate Attiya for the Israeli military’s unlawful assault because he is a resident of Gaza, which is deemed ‘enemy territory’. During the month of July there will be a whole series of events at the Saot Festival which will be hosted by Palestinian filmmakers, artists, chefs and activists to celebrate Palestinian culture in the Neuhoelln neighbourhood of Berlin. It is estimated that there are over 25,000 people of Palestinian descent living in Berlin. On Wednesday, the 6th of July Israeli military forces destroyed water pipelines in the village of Duma, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. Israeli soldiers escorted a bulldozer to the local spring and demolished the main water supply used by local Palestinians for their cattle. The family of Ahmad Harb Ayyad from the Zaitoun neighbourhood of Gaza City have accused Israeli soldiers of beating their son to death. The Israeli military captured the 32-year-old man as he tried to cross the separation barrier in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarm to reach his work in Israel. Next Tuesday Kumi Now will remember the 20th of July, 2004 as the day when the International Court of Justice gave its advisory opinion that the Israeli Apartheid Wall violates international law. It stated that the wall has led to the destruction and confiscation of Palestinian lands and property and has imposed unlawful restrictions on the movement of Palestinians. On Wednesday, the 13th of July, the Friends of Sabeel North America, (FOSNA), will hold a webinar conversation on liberation theology in the context of Palestine/Israel. This event was held in honor of the memory of Rosemary Radford Ruetter, a pioneering theologian, who died on the 21st of May 2022 after suffering a long illness. To register please click on this link. |
Week of July 4, 2022
Reported by The Palestine Chronicle, June 28, 2022, The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, Mohammad Hussein, warned on Monday that the ongoing excavations carried out by the 28, 2022, Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Elad settlement group near and under the foundations of Al-Aqsa Mosque could lead to its collapse, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
Haaretz, June 28, Three relatives of the Palestinian man allegedly stabbed to death by an Israeli in the West Bank say that they were arrested and interrogated by the Shin Bet security service over their claims that the Israeli police and military were present at the scene of the attack.
| Reported by OFIP (Ottawa Forum Israel Palestine), June 29, A recent report by Save The Children has found that “four out of five children in the Gaza Strip suffer from depression, sadness and fear“ as a result of the 15-year blockade imposed by Israel. “The report, entitled ‘Trapped’, interviewed 488 children and 168 parents and caregivers in the Gaza Strip, following up on similar research that was conducted by the organisation in 2018.” Haaretz, June 29, The Palestinian teenager, who crossed into Israel seeking work, was detained for illegal entry after he reported that his employer tried to rape him. The suspect was let off. Jun 30, Mohammed ‘Moha’ Alshawamreh grew up in a small village south of Hebron, without regular supply of electricity, has three degrees from three different countries. He’s happy at his IT job in Tel Aviv, even though it’s about a four-hour trip each way. He is from a small village in the West Bank, one of three at his school who went to college. July 1, 2022, After freezing funding for rights group Al-Haq last year following allegations made by Israel, the European Commission is set to reinstate it after finding no suspicions of fraud or misconduct, and no reason for an investigation. July 2, Nabil Ghanem, a Palestinian laborer, worked in renovations in Israel for 35 years without a permit. He would sleep in fields and return home after a week or two. Last week a soldier shot him dead as he tried to cross the barrier into Israel, where he is declared a ‘terrorist’. A Palestinian security detainee died Saturday in a northern Israel prison. According to Israel’s Prison Service’s spokesperson, 68 – year – old Sa’dieh Matar suffered from a chronic illness and was hospitalized earlier in the week before returning to the prison. The woman has been incarcerated since December 2021 for an attempted stabbing. Fatah calls for an international investigation. July 3, Kamel Abdullah Alawneh, a 17-year-old Palestinian died on Sunday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, a day after he was shot in the stomach and arm by Israeli forces during clashes in in the village of Jaba, in the Nablus area. Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, July 4, 2022, The members of Kairos Palestine and Global Kairos for Justice, have produced a theological study here for Christians and civil society organizations to explain what the Israeli crimes of apartheid are. It explains why Palestinians and a growing number of churches and human rights organizations use this word to describe the oppression of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel, a biblical-theological reflection describing the sin of apartheid; with an urgent call to the global church to hear the pleas of Palestinian Christians as well as a list of recommended actions. Friends of Sabeel France met to consider the work of the French Development Agency,(AFD), on Sunday, the 26th of June. Thirty members heard how the agency is focused on helping to fund sustainable development and water and sanitation projects in the occupied Palestinian territories. A Palestinian teenager was arrested by Israeli police after he had reported to them that he had just managed to flee from a violent sexual assault from a Palestinian employer. He was arrested for illegally entering Israel, but was not admitted to a trauma room to receive medical and psychological attention. His assailant was fined and served a short prison sentence for entering Israel illegally, but he was not charged with sexual assault . The Israeli police representative could not offer any explanation in court for the mishandling of this case and the teenager was released. On Thursday, the 24th of June, a demonstration was held in Ramallah in memory of Nizar Banat, the Palestinian activist who was arrested and beaten to death by Palestinian security officers. Although fourteen officers were arrested for his death in custody, critics say that justice under the Palestinian Authority is moving too slowly. Recent reports from the United Nations Committee Against Torture and from Human Rights Watch state that both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza are systematically mistreating and torturing Palestinians in detention. On Friday, the 24th of June, staff members of the Society of Saint Yves Catholic Centre for Human Rights and their accompanying film crew were detained by Israeli soldiers as they tried to carry out work supporting families living in Masafer Yatta who have been threatened with demolition orders. The soldiers claimed they did not have the proper permits to enter ‘Firing Zone 918’. They were transported to Beersheba in a military vehicle and left without any means of transport back to Jerusalem. On Saturday, the 9th of July, Muslims in Palestine and in other countries will be gathering in mosques to celebrate Eid al-Adha. Afterwards many will meet up with family and friends to celebrate by eating traditional foods and to share their feasts with less fortunate families. Next week Kumi Now will mark the 9th of July, 2005 as the date of the launch of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, BDS seeks to influence faith communities and other organizations and businesses to consider whether their investments in Israel are helping to support the occupation. |
Week of June 27, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Jun. 20, 2022, Three weeks ago, Riyad Sumrin and his son Laith were driving on a dirt road that leads to their home in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem when they encountered a gathering of about 20 Jews, some of them armed. He “got a rock in the face”. No arrests were made after this and a series of attacks on Palestinians in Jerusalem. Joint List lawmaker Ahmed Tibi says the immunity is creating a ‘police-approved jungle’ of violence in Jerusalem.
The Israel Police on Monday indicted a settler who hurled stones at left-wing protesters in the West Bank.. The attack, which injured two, came after a second settler blocked the activists’ car with his own vehicle.
The government said on Sunday that Israel will grant work permits to Palestinians granted asylum in Israel who are LGBT. The policy will also apply to Palestinians fleeing domestic violence, although only 66 people are covered under the new rules as of January.
Jun. 21, During the filming of ‘Jerusalem District’ a weapon was planted in the home of a Palestinian family. The company, Koda Communications .was forced to pay damages to Palestinians for planting weapons in their home while filming the documentary series. The production company is suing its insurance companies to cover the damages and subsequent lost revenue.
Ali Hassan Harb, 27, was stabbed to death near the settlement of Ariel while trying to clear out settlers who were trying to erect an outpost on his family’s land in the West Bank. The Israel Police arrested a Jewish man on Wednesday in connection to the stabbing death of the Palestinian the previous day.
Jun 23, 2022, For a generation of Gazans, the siege is the only reality they know. “I’ve never left Gaza, and I don’t even have a passport. I’m part of a generation that doesn’t know a reality other than that of a closed Gaza. I grew up on reports of opening and closing the checkpoint and on stories of patients who were unable to leave for medical care. I grew up in the shadow of life in a prison, my father and other people from his generation told me how they used to go out to eat and of the sunset in Jaffa.
Jun. 26, The Shin Bet arrested on Sunday three family members of the Palestinian who was stabbed to death by a Jewish Israeli man in the West Bank last week, Israel’s defense establishment confirmed, but refused to say if the three are considered suspects.
The Israel Defense Forces blocked the main entrance to the West Bank village of Aaboud, northwest of Ramallah, for two weeks. The entrance to the village of Aaboud was blocked without any notice, forcing residents and emergency vehicles to take long detours. Despite testimony and a probe by Haaretz, the army spokesperson denies the entrance was blocked for so long. On Wednesday night, about eight hours after a Haaretz submitted a query on the matter, soldiers unlocked the iron gate to the village.
Jun. 27, Israeli forces arrested 17 “wanted” Palestinians across several locations in the West Bank overnight on Sunday, according to the Israeli army spokesperson. Israel’s military has conducted nearly nightly West Bank operations since a ‘wave of terror’ attacks began a few months ago.
Israel moves to register lands near Al-Aqsa using funds earmarked for Palestinians. The registration process – carried out using funds earmarked for narrowing economic disparities and improving the quality of life of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem – could spark protests from the Muslim religious trust that administers the Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
In recent years, we have been witness to the blossoming of a grandiose project – the domestication of the Arab citizens of Israel – to get them to toe the line of establishment policy in several fields. Arab citizens interfered with the project of redeeming the land from their own hands and from the hands of their brethren in the occupied territories, and not only because of their national identity but also because the cry they raised was heard around the world, grating on the ears of racists. The goal of the project was to create the kind of Arab who would express gratitude for being allowed to remain in the land of the forefathers – of the Jews of course – at all.
Israel is refusing to pay the city of Umm al-Fahm for damage caused during last May’s riots, arguing that the damage was not incurred within the context of Jewish-Arab conflict, and that the damage was caused by the city’s own residents. Israel is also refusing to reveal which local authorities did receive such remuneration after last year’s clashes in mixed cities during fighting with Hamas.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, June 27, Hundreds of Palestinians took part in the funeral of Ali Hasan Harb in the West Bank village of Iskaka, near Salfit on Wednesday, the 22nd of June, after he had been stabbed and killed by a settler the day before. Eye witnesses report that Harb was stabbed in his heart by a settler who was part of a group attempting to erect a tent on his family’s land. The stabbing took place while security guards from the nearby Ariel settlement, Israeli police and soldiers looked on and did nothing to prevent the attack.
Communities in Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills are facing increased pressure since the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected their appeals against their eviction orders in May. Dozens of people in Khirbet al Fakhiet and Mirkez have had their homes demolished, in some cases for the third time in less than a year. The area is now designated as a closed military training site, ‘Firing Zone 918’, and military exercises have recently been launched close to residential areas.
Palestinian students are taking their ‘tawjihi’, or matriculation examinations, at this time in the academic year. One student, Ahmed al Naasan, was prevented from sitting this important examination when the Israeli military arrested him in a dawn raid on the village of Al-Mughayer in Ramallah. He was detained on Monday, the 20th of June, with ten other Palestinians in different areas.
On Wednesday, the 22nd of June, the Israeli Parole Committee designated the case of Ahmed Manasra as a case of ‘terrorism’. Ahmed was imprisoned at the age of thirteen and he has developed a serious mental health condition since his arrest as a child, seven years ago. Amnesty International has called for his release stating, ‘he endured ill-treatment during interrogations which were conducted without his parents or lawyers’ presence and was denied the right to a fair trial.’
Week of June 20, 20222
Haaretz, Jun. 16, 2022 The IDF is slated to conduct a live fire military exercise in the rural South Hebron Hills area of the West Bank next week, the first such exercise in over a year on the heels of a High Court of Justice decision that rejected Palestinian residents’ claims to the land in favor of the military’s declaration of the region as a closed military training area. The drills, which have seen tanks roll through and damage several rural villages in the past, have been described by local residents as a scare tactic meant to push them off their land.
Jun. 17, Three Palestinians were killed and eight more wounded by the IDF on Friday during a raid in the eastern neighborhood of the Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian Health Ministry reported. According to witness testimony, the three men – Laith Abu Srur, Baraa Lahlouh and Yousef Salah – were shot while sitting in a car. Following the incident, hundreds gathered outside the Jenin hospital to which the three were taken.
A play based on testimonies by female Israeli soldiers serving in the West Bank was cancelled on Thursday, after a right-wing group protested to the mayor of the southern Israel city of Be’er Sheva. The cancellation came after a right-wing group complained to the southern Israel city’s mayor that the show is linked to a prominent anti-occupation group which ‘slanders and attacks IDF soldiers’.
A week after his wedding, Jewish settlers attacked his home, in the Old City of Hebron, with stones. When he tried to stop the assault, soldiers arrested him. Thus began 72 nightmarish hours, during which the groom, Maher Abu Haya, was aimlessly shunted about before being released unconditionally.
Jun. 18, The Israeli military attacked the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning in response to rocket fire from the coastal enclave, a military spokesperson said, shattering a two-month lull that prevailed along the Gaza-Israel fence in contrast to soaring tensions in the West Bank. Overnight, a Gaza rocket fired into southern Israel was intercepted by aerial defense systems breaking a 2-month lull along the Israel-Gaza border.
Jun. 19, A 53-year-old Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli forces at the West Bank separation barrier Sunday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. According to the military, the man was trying to damage the separation barrier; witnesses say he may have been trying to enter Israel to find work.
Two women at a rally marking the 55th anniversary of the occupation were struck and lightly injured by a man riding an electric scooter on Saturday night in Tel Aviv. Rose Assadi says she was posing for a picture with a Palestinian flag when a man screamed ‘death to Arabs’ and ran into her sibling and her with an electric scooter, eyewitnesses say.
The Israel Land Authority’s exclusion of the Bedouin community from a critical solar energy project might keep it out of the industry for years, government and industry sources told Haaretz. The country’s pilot project will serve as a model for Israel’s future solar energy efforts, so the exclusion of the Bedouin now is critical. Participation by Bedouin villages in the southern Negev region has been approved by the energy and agriculture ministries, but not by the land authority. “The discriminatory criterion in the voltaic energy project is a climatic injustice,” said Joseph Abramovich, a solar energy pioneer in Israel and Africa and a promoter of Project Wadi Attir, a Bedouin solar energy initiative just south of the West Bank in the Negev.
Palestinian Sarah Al-Sakka is the first female surgeon to obtain a Palestinian board certificate in general surgery, and to be a surgeon in the Gaza Strip, after 12 years of efforts.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, June 20, 2022, On Wednesday, the 15th of June, the global Christian charity, World Vision, expressed its disappointment over the decision of the Israeli District Court to convict Mohammed El Halabi .The court stated that El Halabi was guilty of diverting huge sums of charitable funds to armed groups in Gaza. World Vision stated that ‘there have been irregularities in the trial process and a lack of substantive publicly available evidence’.
An Israeli police investigation into officers’ attacks on the mourners at Shireen Abu Aqleh’s funeral concluded that it was a case of police misconduct. However, before the investigation started, it had been agreed that none of the officers involved in the incident would face any disciplinary action.
Matan Kahana, a senior member of Israel’s coalition, caused anger on Tuesday when a recording of a remark he made at a boys school in Efrat on the previous day was broadcast. He said, ‘If there was a button I could press that would take all the Arabs and put them on a train to Switzerland, I would.’ He is the Deputy Religious Affairs Minister in Naftali Bennett’s right-wing Yamina Party.
On Tuesday, the 14th of June, security guards employed by the Palestinian Authority violently dispersed a student rally at An Najah University, Nablus. The students had been protesting over the university administration’s decision to expel ten students. Five members of the Islamic bloc and five members of its rival Shabiba group were expelled after getting involved in a brawl the previous week.
The Palestinian Prisoner Society stated on Wednesday, the 15th of June, that there are now six Palestinians in Israeli prisons who have gone on hunger strike in protest at their conditions of imprisonment. Among the prisoners are Khalil Awawdeh from Dora town in the south of the West Bank, who has been on hunger strike for 105 days and Raed Rayyan from Beit Duqqo near Jerusalem, who has been on hunger strike for 70 days.
Kumi Now focused on the plight of the Palestinian refugees this week. Next Tuesday, Kumi Now will mark the anniversary of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, (NPT),on the 1st of July, by considering Israel’s position on nuclear weapons. Israel built the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Centre near Dimona in the 1950’s, but has not yet openly admitted to owning nuclear weapons and is one of only five other countries in the world which is not party to the NPT treaty.
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Week of June 13, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Jun. 7, 2022 Investigators commissioned by the UN’s top human rights body say tensions between Palestinians and Israelis are underpinned by Israel’s “perpetual occupation” of Palestinian areas with no apparent intention of ending it. Expert panel set up after last year’s Gaza war submits its first report to the UN’s top human rights body, in a move Israel rejected as ‘part and parcel of the witch hunt carried out by the Human Rights Council’ against it.
Canada Talks Israel Palestine, of Ottawa, reported, A pamphlet was used to warn Ontario voters about the rising danger of anti-Semitism in Ontario. Along with the text there is a photo showing angry demonstrators holding a sign saying “Holocaust = Great lie”. But the photo is of a demonstration that took place in Iran… 16 years ago. The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) is using the scare of a rebirth of anti-Semitism in Canada for another reason, to dampen the rising criticism of Israel.
| OFIP (Ottawa Forum on Israel Palestine) reported, “What is happening in Masafer Yatta is not only the largest ethnic cleansing scheme to be carried out by Israel since 1967, but the move should be considered a first step in a much larger scheme of illegal land appropriation, ethnic cleansing and official mass annexation.” (Ramzy Baroud in “Israel’s New Annexation Strategy in Palestine” on June 3) Haaretz, Jun. 8, 2022, The University of Haifa, which has a large Arab student body (41%), awards a scholarship to students who have passed their matriculation exam in subjects related to Judaism – which are mandatory in Jewish schools – effectively excluding Arab students who are not tested in these subjects. The scholarship is in the amount of $2,000 a year. |
Haaretz Editorial The attempt to blame Arab lawmaker for the current political crisis must be utterly rejected. One would need quite a bit of gall to expect that the Arabs of all people would support laws that ensure apartheid in the West Bank, that perpetuates the inferior status of their Palestinian brethren in the Israeli military dictatorship and “regularizes” the privileges of the occupied civilians.
The European Commission’s Anti-Fraud Office is not expected to open a probe into the Palestinian groups Israel declared as terrorist orgs, sources say. Israel has not provided European countries with sufficient evidence about the six civil society organizations in the West Bank it accused of funding and acting on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, European diplomats told Haaretz.
An anti-theft effort is seen as the possible start of a de facto annexation of the West Bank in the realm of antiquities. Anti-theft inspectors from the Israel Antiquities Authority will begin operating in the West Bank, a move pushed by right-wing groups seeking to weaken or even do away with Israel’s main representative in the territory, the Defense Ministry’s Civil Administration.
June 9, The Greek Foreign Ministry called on Israel to take “appropriate action” after a group of’ approximately fifty Israelis allegedly broke into a property belonging to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem on Mount Zion, threatening to kill a guard at the site.
Most of Gaza’s beaches are finally safe after years of pollution, thanks to internationally-funded sewage treatment facilities.
A 27-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed Thursday by Israeli fire after clashes broke out near the West Bank city of Hebron, the Palestinian Health Ministry announced. The Palestinian Health Ministry identified the man as Mahmoud Fayez Abu Ayhour, who was critically wounded by live fire to his upper body
The latest buzz in East Jerusalem is sticky and sweet. Thanks to a community program that teaches beekeeping and honey-harvesting, local Palestinian women are bringing joy to the neighborhood’s rooftops. The art of beekeeping is a course offered by the Sinsila Center, located on the rooftop terraces of East Jerusalem‘s Central Library. The center is a project of the Muslala NGO, which initiates a host of social and artistic projects in Jerusalem. The beating heart and founder of the Sinsila Center, a few minutes’ walk from Jerusalem’s Old City, is Tareq Nassar, 38, an architect and urban planner who grew up in the Old City and the nearby East Jerusalem quarter of Ras al-Amud. When he returned from Europe after completing his studies about six years ago, he began to apply what he had learned to his childhood surroundings.
Times of Gaza, June 10, Yesterday in Nabi Saleh village, two Palestinian brothers were shot by the Israeli occupation forces. It turned out today that they are the Tamimi brothers, one of whom was severely injured in 2018 after being shot at close range by Israeli soldiers.
Israeli forces re-arrested ex-prisoner Mohammad Ferawi after raiding his home in the old city of Jerusalem. Ferawi was released 2 days ago from Israeli prisons after serving a sentence of 8 years.
Reported by the Palestine Chronicle , June 12, A group of Jewish settlers tried to kidnap a Palestinian child on Thursday in the town of Yatta, near Hebron (Al-Khalil), in the occupied West Bank, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported. Ratib al-Jabour, the coordinator of the National Committee for the Resistance of the Apartheid Wall and Settlements in the area, told WAFA that a large group of Jewish settlers gathered near the town, attacked Palestinian citizens and tried to kidnap a child, but were fiercely confronted and thwarted by residents.
Meanwhile, another group of settlers attacked the memorial of martyr Sheikh Suleiman Al-Hathlin, east of the town, according to eyewitnesses. Al-Hathalin died on January 17 from a serious wound he sustained at the entrance to the village of Umm al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta area, after being run over by an Israeli police vehicle on January 5.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, June, 13, 2022, B’tselem has just released its report on the uprooting of olive saplings on Saturday, the 14th of May, in Turmusaya, a Palestinian village in the district of Ramallah. The report reveals that three masked settlers uprooted 190 saplings under the protection of an Israeli military patrol. This is the second crop of olive trees that have been destroyed in these fields by settlers this year, bringing ruinous cost and anguish to the Palestinian farmers.
The United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Sunday, the 5th of June, that a building of twelve housing units is under imminent threat of demolition in the Wadi Qaddum area of the neighbourhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem. If the demolition goes ahead 32 adults and 42 children will be forcibly evicted. The Israeli authorities wish to have the site left as a public garden.
On Wednesday, the 8th of June, the Greek Foreign Ministry expressed deep concern over the desecration of the holy site belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. carried out by members of a Jewish seminary on the Greek Garden on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday, the 8th of June, that the settler group, Ateret Cohanim, purchased property legally from the Greek Orthodox Church. The settler group bought three buildings in East Jerusalem from the church in a controversial secret deal in 2004. This recent court decision means that a proposed takeover by settlers of the Imperial Hotel, run by Palestinian Christians, at Jaffa Gate in the Christian Quarter is looking more likely.
An independent commission of inquiry, set up by the UN Human Rights Council after the 2021 Israeli assault on Gaza, has concluded that Israel must end its occupation. The report was released on Tuesday, the 7th of June. It states that Israel is pursuing “complete control” over the occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem. It gives evidence to show that Israel has been ‘acting to alter the demography through the maintenance of a repressive environment for Palestinians and a favourable environment for Israeli settlers.’
This week Kumi Now considers ethical tourism and pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Next week, Kumi Now will consider the plight of Palestinian refugees as we mark World Refugee Day on Monday, the 20th of June. More than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees were registered with the UN in 2019 and more than 1.5 million of these refugees live in camps run by UNRWA.
Week of June 6, 2022
Palestine On-line, May 31, Israeli occupation forces arrested a Palestinian youth, Abd Samrin, from the Wadi al-Rababa neighborhood in Silwan while colonial settlers settlers attacked his parents and brother.
Haaretz, June 1, 2022, Less than a week has passed since a 14-year-old boy was shot and killed in confrontations between Palestinians and IDF soldiers in the town of al-Khader near Bethlehem. Eyewitnesses said Zaid Abu Mohammed Ghanim was not involved in the riots at all. Relatives said he was on his way to his grandmother’s house when he was shot in the back by soldiers, at a distance of about 150 meters from his house, where his mother and sister waited for him.
The Arab Israeli experience: constant vigilance against prejudice. Facing rude stares on the train, showing your ID everywhere and staying indoors during times of violence. Arab Israelis tell Haaretz about how they cope with the country’s worsening intercommunal relations.
A revolution in Arabic studies is shaking up Israeli universities. From the Negev to the north, universities are changing how Arabic is being taught, challenging both Jewish and Arab students. Could new trends in academia transform Jewish-Arab relations across the country?
June 2, Assaults, vandalism, racist chants, pepper spray and rock-throwing were documented on Jerusalem Day, in some cases in front of the police. Numerous videos and photographs taken on Sunday in Jerusalem appear to show offenses committed by Flag March participants against Palestinians along the route of the march and in areas adjacent to the Old City. The police say more than 60 people were arrested and detained in the city that day, the large majority of them Palestinian. Only two of the people arrested were Jews.
The Israeli government plans to raze Ras Jrabah in order to expand the city of Dimona; the Bedouin villagers fight the resettlement plan, saying “We will die here.” They argue that they should simply be integrated into the city. For decades, the villagers have had close ties to their neighbors from the city across the way. Many of them work in Dimona and the village gets its water, mail and health care services from the city.
June 3, Israeli soldiers shot Harun Abu Aram point-blank when he tried to prevent them from confiscating a generator. The army claims the soldiers’ lives were in danger, and no one was punished. Now Harun languishes on the floor of his family’s cave, paralyzed from the head down, a year and a half later. Reported by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac.
A new documentary, ‘Children of Peace,’ explores Neve Shalom (Wahat-as-Salam), a unique Israeli social experiment that for the past 50-plus years has seen Jews and Arabs coexisting in one village. Established in 1970, Neve Shalom is home to about 70 families – equally divided between Arabs and Jews, as a matter of principle – who are dedicated to promoting peace and equality. Children in the village study together in a mixed elementary school, the first of its kind in Israel, where they take classes in both Hebrew and Arabic and have both Jewish and Arab teachers. Ultimately, has this social experiment been a success or a failure? If the benchmark for success is whether it has fulfilled its mission of bringing peace and equality to Jews and Arabs living in Israeli, then clearly it has failed dismally. But if the benchmark is whether those who grew up in this village still want to live there and raise their own children there – and thereby signal their continued identification with what it represents – then the experiment may have succeeded.
Reported by DCIP (Defence of Children International Palestine), Yesterday, Israeli forces shot dead 16-year-old Odeh Mohammad Odeh Sadaqa in the back with live ammunition. The bullet pierced his heart and exited through his chest. Odeh was walking near his home with two of his friends. Odeh is the sixth Palestinian child killed in the last month, and the 14th this year so far. Israeli forces are repeatedly using live ammunition to shoot-to-kill Palestinian children who do not show a direct threat to life or serious injury—a violation of international law.
Haaretz, An Israeli army officer handcuffed two Palestinian children together in a playground in Hebron on Wednesday, after he suspected that one of them might be wielding a knife.
Whenever another story appears about a crime the Israel Defense Forces has committed in the territories – yesterday it was Hagar Shezaf’s story on the boy who was shot in the back in Al-Khader; tomorrow it will be a story about the shooting of a youth in Al-Rakiz – we are always immediately reassured: It’s not the soldiers. They are not to blame. You can’t fault them. It’s the situation. Gideon Levy
Jun. 4, 2022. Security guards knelt on the neck of a Bedouin bus driver in southern Israel on Thursday. The guards pinned him to the ground for at least half an hour, choking him, before arresting him on suspicion of attempting to steal a gun from one of the guards. ‘It immediately brought to my mind the case of George Floyd, who was choked to death…it could have happened,’ said Ali Suad.
June 6, Some 60 percent of Israeli Jews believe it is best for Jews and Arabs to live apart, according to a survey conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute in March of this year. This is a significant rise compared with the rate that agreed with the same statement in April 2021, which then stood at 45 percent. Among Arab respondents there was almost no change in the rate of support for living apart, which has stood at 20 percent for several years. In other words, most Jews now support segregation, compared with a constant minority among Arabs.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, June 6, 2022, More than one hundred organisations and individuals have endorsed a letter from Friends of Sabeel in North America, (FOSNA), calling on President Biden to help protect and defend the Palestinian Christian presence in Jerusalem and to meet with Christian leaders. It also calls for an investigation into the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh and that all Status Quo agreements over Jerusalem should be observed.
Three sisters from Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, have been diagnosed with conditions that cause irreversible kidney damage. Suzan,(21) Saja,(15) and Sama Khatab(!0) all need to travel to hospitals in the West Bank for specialist treatment.The Israeli authorities are refusing to allow their mother to escort them, even though their serious condition means they cannot travel alone.
The ‘Masahatuna’ or “Our Spaces’ app has been developed by a local computer engineer, Alaa Huthut, to enable women in Gaza to report any domestic abuse they are suffering. The app allows them to register for help and advice from care centres without them having to leave their names or leaving any trace of contact on their phones.
Levels of violence perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians continue to rise. In the course of two days last week four Palestinians were shot in unrelated incidents. A 17-year -old boy, Odeh Mohammed Odeh, was shot in the chest and killed by Israeli forces in al-Midya, a village west of Ramallah. A female Palestinian journalist, Ghufran Warasneh was shot and killed at the entrance to the Arroub refugee camp, north of Hebron, on her third day of a new job at a radio station.
This week Kumi Now looked at the environmental damage being inflicted on the land of Palestine by the Israeli occupation. Next week, on Tuesday, the 7th of June, Kumi Now will look towards the summer season as Palestinian schools and colleges begin their vacation period. Tourists and pilgrims are beginning to return to the Holy Land after the pandemic lockdown. They can make ethical decisions in the travel companies they choose to support by enquiring whether those companies are profiting illegal Israeli settlements.
Week of May 28, 2022
May 25, 2022
New evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in targeted attack by Israeli forces – CNN
Palestinian young man gets shot by Israeli occupation forces in Hebron. Tines of Gaza
Israeli occupation forces assault an American YouTuber for documenting Israeli violations in Hebron.
16-year-old Palestinian teen Ghaith Yamin was shot dead in the head by Israeli occupation forces in Joseph’s Tomb area in Nablus. Palestine Electronic Forces
Hours before his death, 16-year-old Ghaith Yamin expressed to a friend his intention to become a martyr in clashes with IDF and even posted his will on Instagram. These pre-planned clashes near Joseph’s Tomb were meant to deter Jews from praying there (as per the Oslo Accords)
Reported by OFIP (Ottawa Forum on Israel Palestine), In what appears to be an Ottawa first, over 200 Palestinian Canadian students in several Ottawa high schools walked off class publicly demanding that the school boards live up to their claimed values of equality and non-discrimination. The date was chosen to commemorate the Palestinian Nakba (Nakba Day was on the following Sunday) but the lively demonstration reflected some deeper issues with the the school board. The protest was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement of Ottawa (PYM) but included many non-Palestinians as well.
Haaretz, May 26, The Yamam counterterrorism police that raided the Al-Hadaf neighborhood in Jenin on May 13 fired an anti-tank missile at a building in which 19 people, including 11 minors ranging in age from one to 16, were sleeping. A father and daughter say they were also held by the troops for several hours as human shields during the raid and gun battle with armed Palestinians.. The house in question belongs to the Al-Dabai family. Mahmoud al-Dabai, 19, a member of the military arm of Islamic Jihad (Saraya Al-Quds), was arrested after a five-hour siege.
WASHINGTON – Rep. Henry Cuellar declared victory against progressive Jessica Cisneros in the Democratic Texas primary runoff, in a potentially major victory for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in the war between the pro-Israel establishment and critics of U.S. policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. AIPAC invested $1.8 million on behalf of Rep. Henry Cuellar’s campaign,
Haaretz, May 27, WASHINGTON – Eighty-three Democrats from the House and the Senate on Thursday urged U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to actively prevent Israel from evicting more than 1,000 Palestinians from the Masafer Yatta villages in the West Bank, saying it violates international law, and might ‘spark violence’ and ‘further undermine efforts to reach a two-state solution’
May 28, Two 20-year-old students were walking along a West Bank road the day after the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, when they came under heavy fire from Israeli soldiers lurking in ambush. One is now in a wheelchair; the other lost a leg.
Reported by Canada Talks Israel Palestine, May 29, After a half decade long legal battle, David Kattenburg has won his case that wines produced by Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian Territory cannot be labelled as “product of Israel”. While the amount of wine at stake was rather small, he faced huge opposition from the Israeli government, the Israel lobby in Canada and the Canadian government itself.
Haaretz, May 29, Tens of thousands of right-wing Israelis took place in the controversial Jerusalem Day Flag March in the Old City on Sunday.. Palestinian journalists were blocked from entering Al-Aqsa compound, 21 people detained for ‘rioting’. Israel beefed up security presence, primed Iron Dome. About 45 were arrested, chiefly Palestinians, on Sunday in Jerusalem as the right-wing Flag March ended.
The Israeli army in the attack on Gaza hit a warehouse containing many tons of pesticides and other chemicals even though no fighting was going on nearby, the group Al-Haq says. The army wouldn’t say whether the site was considered a target or environmental damage was taken into account. A study shows that hazardous substances were released into the air.
Israel told the High Court of Justice on Sunday that the illegal outpost of Homesh must be evacuated, responding to a petition filed by Palestinian landowners demanding to clear out the former West Bank settlement. The state, however, did not specify when the former settlement would be evacuated.
May 30, Police arrests two Jewish suspects for assaulting a prominent Arabic-language journalist who had arrived in the East Jerusalem neighborhood after covering Jerusalem Day events.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem. May 30. 2022, The Global Day of Parents will be observed by the UN on Wednesday, the 1st of June. On this day many Palestinian parents will be thinking of their children caught up in the Israeli military court system or grieving for those shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. Sabeel will be hosting the Parents’ Circle, an organization which draws together Palestinian and Israeli bereaved families and which recently addressed the UN Security Council, (26.5.22)
Next week Kumi Now will be focusing on the devastation wreaked on Palestinian land by the Israeli occupation, as we mark ‘World Environment Day’ on Sunday, the 5th of June.
The death of Rosemary Radford Ruether was announced on the 21st of May. She was an outspoken theologian whose writings focused on feminist theology, as well as liberation theology, particularly in Latin America and Palestine.
Global Kairos for Asia Pacific Palestinian Solidarity has just published its closing statement summarizing contributions from their recent four day conference, (April 27-30th), based in Taiwan. The group has supporters in more than 21 countries in the Asia/Pacific area and they came together to consider the struggles of different groups of marginalized people and how they could be inspired by the non-violent resistance of the Palestinians living under occupation.
The US State Department has just removed the ultra-nationalist Israeli group known as ‘Kahane Chai’ or ‘Kach’ from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The founder of the group, Meir Kahane used to advocate openly for Palestinians to be expelled from their homeland. His followers continue to carry out violent attacks.
A CNN investigation published on Tuesday, the 24th of May, suggested that Palestinian American journalist Shereen Abu Aqleh was killed by targeted Israeli fire. The investigation was based on eleven videos of the incident and eight eye-witness testimonies. The witnesses have discounted the Israeli military claim that there was ‘widespread and uncontrolled gunfire‘ in the area at the time the reporter was shot.
The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, (ICHAD), continues to monitor and record the number of Palestinian homes, as well as essential structures needed for maintaining livelihood such as barns, cisterns, fencing, which are demolished by the Israeli authorities. There has been an increase in the number of demolitions carried out recently in urban areas, such as in East Jerusalem as well as in more rural areas such as the Jordan Valley and in the Salfit area in Palestine.
Week of May 23, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, May17, 2022, Jerusalem’s call for Arabic-speaking students to apply for a job at the municipality bars about 90 percent of prospective applicants from applying because it requires Israeli citizenship. Only an estimated 20,000 of 360,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War, have Israeli citizenship.
Reported by DCIP (Defence of Children International Palestine): Last week an Israeli soldier shot 16-year-old Thaer Khalil Mohammad Maslat with live ammunition in the chest in the occupied West Bank city of Al-Bireh. Thaer was watching confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinian youth. Thaer arrived and stood next to a building watching the confrontations when an Israeli soldier shot him in the chest with live ammunition. Thaer did not pose any threat to Israeli forces when he was shot, according to information collected by DCIP. A second Palestinian child was killed last week—Motasem Mohammad Taleb Attallah, 17. Motasem was shot and killed inside the Jewish-only Tekoa settlement located near Bethlehem. Motsasem left home in the evening after an argument with his parents, and an hour later his family was informed that he was shot and killed after entering the settlement with a knife. DCIP has been unable to confirm the specific circumstances of Motasem’s killing, including whether he was shot by an Israeli soldier, private security contractor, or an Israeli settler.
Palestine Online: Israeli occupation extended the detention of Palestinian youth Omar Abu Khdair, who prevented the coffin of #ShireenAbuAkleh from falling as the funeral was attacked by Israeli forces, until Sunday. He was arrested from his home at dawn today.
Haaretz, May 18, Israeli police assaulted the family of a Palestinian man at Sha’are Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem on Tuesday, after arriving to arrest the man, who is hospitalized in serious condition. One of the family members needed medical treatment for injuries sustained during the confrontation with the police. The Palestinian man whom the police attempted to arrest is sedated and intubated after being hit in the head by a sponge-tipped bullet. He sustained the injury during the funeral of another Palestinian man who was wounded in clashes with Israeli police at the Temple Mount and later died of his wounds.
Israel carried out eight times as many demolition orders in the West Bank against new structures built by Palestinians compared to settlers between May 2019 and the end of 2021. The demolitions are carried out in accordance with a draconian order that requires residents to present a building permit within 96 hours, and cannot be appealed
WASHINGTON – Progressive Democrat Summer Lee on Tuesday declared victory in her primary race in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, despite extraordinary opposition from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its backed candidate Steve Irwin, who has yet to concede.
Israel will allow the right-wing Flag March to pass through the Muslim Quarter on Jerusalem Day. Last year’s flag march, despite a last-minute change to the contentious route to avoid the Muslim Quarter, devolved into violence. Last year, a barrage of rockets were fired by Hamas at the city during the march, prompting Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Walls in the Gaza Strip which coincided with interethnic riots throughout Israel.
Over 600 people have been indicted for offenses allegedly committed during the May 2021 riots in Israel, and nearly 90 percent of those indicted are Arab, statistics from the State Prosecutor’s Office published on Tuesday showed. In May 2021, a nationwide wave of violence occurred in Israel, particularly in mixed Jewish-Arab cities, throughout the fighting between Israel and Gaza.
Reported by DCIP, May 19, Israeli soldiers forced 16-year-old Ahed Mohammad Rida Mereb, 16, to stand in front of an Israeli military vehicle on last week in the Al Hadaf neighborhood of Jenin as Palestinian gunmen shot heavily toward the Israeli forces’ position. Israeli forces ordered Ahed to stand outside the military vehicle for around two hours while they sat inside. Ahed endured so much stress that she was hospitalized later that day for intense mental stress and a severe lack of oxygen. Using children as human shields is explicitly and absolutely prohibited by international law. Israeli forces later evacuated Ahed’s two-story house then fired rocket-propelled grenades and live ammunition at the house, causing it to catch on fire.
Haaretz, May 20, A few days after the High Court of Justice green-lighted the expulsion of residents of eight villages in the South Hebron Hills, Israeli forces started to demolish their homes: They razed 20 dwellings in three villages, leaving families homeless.
Israeli troops shot and killed a 17-year-old Palestinian as clashes erupted when they entered a volatile town in the West Bank overnight into Saturday. The Palestinian Health Ministry identifies the dead as Amjad al-Fayyed and says another 18-year-old Palestinian is in critical condition after being wounded by Israeli fire.
Meretz lawmaker Ghaida Rinaewei Zoabi will return to Israel’s coalition, just three days after her resignation threatened to send the country into its fifth election in four years. Zoabi said that she was put under massive pressure from local Arab government heads, who approached her and assured her that they “understood the reasons” behind her resignation from the coalition, after which she agreed to meet with Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, May 23, 2022, In the first week of May the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the Israeli authorities can destroy eight villages in the Masafer Yatta area of the South Hebron Hills and expel more than 1,200 Palestinian inhabitants permanently. The area is designated a firing zone, but illegal outposts which have been set up by Israeli settlers in the area will not be destroyed. Sabeel calls on the international community to hold the Israeli government and its judicial system to account for the way it is dismissing international humanitarian law. We pray that pressure from governments around the world will stop the forcible transfer of Palestinians living in the Masafer Yatta area.
The Israeli government and police have agreed to allow the Jerusalem Day march to go ahead on Sunday, the 29th of May. The route will take Israelis through the Muslim Quarter and they will enter the Old City through the Damascus Gate as they proceed to the Western Wall. The day is a celebration of the Israeli conquest of the Old City and East Jerusalem in the 1967 War and it has become a way for nationalists to assert Israeli sovereignty throughout the city. Sabeel prays that this provocative march be cancelled altogether and that International Law be respected in occupied East Jerusalem.
On Sunday, the 16th of May, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected several petitions against a controversial cable car project. Israeli supporters of the project want to connect the western and eastern sides of the city. The cable car is set to pass over the Jewish Karaite cemetery and will reach the City of David park in Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood, whose residents have long faced eviction. The historical skyline of the Old City in occupied East Jerusalem will be dominated by the cable car construction. This project threatens to further diminish the Palestinian presence and to assert Jewish sovereignty in the city of Jerusalem.
Thousands of people gathered in the US city of Paterson, New Jersey to celebrate the renaming of part of the Main Street, as ‘Palestine Way’. Paterson City Council renamed the street in honour of the contribution its Palestinian community has made to civic life. Alaa Abdelaziz, the city’s first Palestinian-American councillor commented, ‘It’s a celebration, but it’s also showing that Palestinians are human. We are Americans and we will never forget where we come from.’ Sabeel prays the Palestinians living abroad will continue to support and advocate fortheir families still living under the grip of the Israeli occupation.
Aida Abu Farha, from the town of al-Jalama, near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, has now received widespread recognition for her mastery of the Palestinian art of ‘zajal’, a traditional form of oral poetry. This ancient form of artistic expression used to be the sole preserve of men, but Aida has persevered and studied to improve her skills at composing ‘zajal’. She is now invited to perform at many different cultural occasions.
The six Palestinian NGO’s designated by Israel as ‘terror organisations’ have called on the international community to take action against Israel’s unfounded harassment of them. Israel claims it has ‘secret evidence’ which condemns them, but has failed to provide any concrete evidence. Last week the Carter Center confirmed it would continue to support the organisations and denounced Israel’s move as a way to ‘silence voices calling for accountability for the Israeli occupation authorities.’
At a news conference at St Joseph’s Hospital in East Jerusalem on Monday, the 16th of May, Christian leaders of 15 denominations condemned the violent intrusion of Israeli police at Shereen Abu Aqleh’s funeral procession. Monsignor Tomasz Grysa, the Vatican’s representative in Jerusalem, accused Israel of brutally violating an agreement to uphold religious freedom. Patriarch Pizzaballa described the disproportionate use of force by the Israeli police as, ‘a severe violation of the international norms and regulations, including the fundamental human right of freedom of religion.’
This week’s Kumi Now online gathering focuses on how Palestinians are working to preserve their culture and history. Next week, on Tuesday, the 31st of May, the topic will be the high number of child fatalities in Palestine. Defence for Children International Palestine monitors these fatalities and records widespread Israeli military violations against Palestinian children living under occupation.
Week of May 16, 2022
Haaretz, May 12, Thousands gathered Thursday to mourn Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed during an Israeli military raid in the Jenin refugee camp on Wednesday.
Diaspora Minister and former Israeli military spokesperson Nachman Shai said on Thursday morning in a radio interview regarding the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh that, “With all due respect to us, let’s say that Israel’s credibility is not very high in such events.” “We know this,” Shai added, “It is based on the past.”
Haaretz opinion: We know in advance what the results of any investigation will be: No one can be held responsible because there isn’t sufficient evidence or because the army acted according to the rules, and actually, it’s the Palestinians’ fault.
Gideon Levy: The relative horror expressed over the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh is justified and necessary. It is also belated and self-righteous. Now you’re appalled? The blood of a famous journalist, no matter how brave and experienced she was – and she was – is no redder than the blood of an anonymous high school student who was traveling home in a taxi full of women in this same Jenin a month ago when she was killed by gunfire from Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli panel that authorizes West Bank settlement construction approved nearly 4,500 new housing units for Jews in the area on Thursday.
Reported by DCIP (Defence of Children International Palestine), A few hours ago, Israeli settlers accompanied by Israeli forces attacked DCIP field researcher Hani Nassar, near the evacuated Israeli settlement Homesh south of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank. Hani’s work is critical to DCIP’s efforts protecting and defending Palestinian human rights. Please keep him in your thoughts for a swift recovery from this violent attack.
Haaretz, May 13, Two Palestinian militants turned themselves in to Israeli forces on Friday, ending an hours-long standoff at the Jenin refugee camp, two days after a Palestinian-American journalist was killed there. The fighting left an Israeli officer seriously wounded and two Palestinian militants in critical condition.
Tareq Abu Hamad is the first Jerusalem Palestinian to reach a senior position in an Israeli government ministry. Now, as director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, he describes the difficulties to function as a Palestinian within the Israeli system, and to promote renewable energy infrastructures in Gaza.
Five left-wing activists are reported wounded in settler attacks as some 200 march to Masafer Yatta, a week after Israel’s top court greenlights eviction. The Israeli military issued an order on Friday preventing buses from going into the West Bank through a crossing that leads to the Palestinian hamlets of Masafer Yatta, blocking Israeli activists from joining a demonstration against their eviction.
Reported by the ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation), The ITUC has condemned the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the wounding of producer Ali al-Samudi in Jenin, occupied Palestine, on 11 May.
Since the beginning of this year 2,140 Palestinians, mainly from occupied Jerusalem and Jenin, have been detained by Israeli security forces, including 815 Palestinian workers of which 91 are accused of employing and transporting workers without special permits.
This week, 27 year-old Palestinian worker Mahmoud Sami Khalil Aram was killed as he passed through an opening in the wall erected by Israel. Like many Palestinians, he had tried to enter Israel without a permit to seek work as an undocumented worker.
The ITUC’s Palestine affiliate, the PGFTU, has highlighted the plight of many Palestinians who have to work in Israel due to high unemployment in Gaza and the West Bank. Low wages and poor working conditions are common and the PGFTU states that 67 Palestinian workers in Israel have died due to poor occupational health and safety in the past year.
May 14, Palestine Online, Israeli occupation authorities forced Palestinian father Faraj Dabish to self-demolish his own house, his only shelter with a wife and 3 children, in Sur Baher neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem under the pretense of building without a permit.
Haaretz, May 14, The Biden administration issued on Friday perhaps its harshest public rebuke of Israel to date over scenes of Israeli police violence at the funeral of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed earlier in the week while covering an Israeli military raid in the West Bank city of Jenin.
Israel used to be beautiful, Then came Zionism. If the world’s flora and fauna will need millions of years to rebound from the damage humanity has wrought on the planet, recovering from the ecological and aesthetic ravages of Zionism will take twice as long.
Arrested for the first time at age 14, Yahya Adwan spent the rest of his short life in jail for throwing Molotov cocktails and stones at Israeli troops. Last week a soldier shot and killed the 27-year-old Palestinian.
May 15, A Palestinian militant, brother of a prominent Fatah military leader, died on Sunday in an Israeli hospital, two days after being wounded in a shootout with Israeli forces in Jenin.
Daoud Zubeidi was hit in the stomach during an hours-long standoff at the Jenin refugee camp, when Israeli forces surrounded the house of an Islamic Jihad militant, who eventually turned himself in.
At a conference in the West Bank, the Nachala settler movement, which is behind contested illegal West Bank outposts, presents its vision: To establish 10 new illegal outposts at once on July 20.
Jewish Settlers Take Over Hebron Building, Ignoring Palestinian’s Ownership Claim. Settler group says they purchased the building, but have no documented ownership of it. Israeli soldiers are guarding the location anyway.
Israel will reopen its border with the Gaza Strip on Sunday and allow the entry of workers and all Palestinians who hold entry permits, the Israeli army said Saturday. The Erez crossing, which closed since May 3, as well as all border crossing into the West Bank were shut ahead of Israel’s memorial day and Independence Day celebrations.
The decisions of Israeli police at events like journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral display their inability to see the humanity and pain of the Palestinian people. Police, dressed in black, wearing helmets and protective gear, using their batons to assault people carrying a coffin at a funeral procession. They strike their legs until the coffin slips, almost hitting the ground. This is what most of the world saw – and this is what most of the world will remember from the funeral of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, which took place in Jerusalem on Friday.
May 16, A Palestinian man carrying an ax and a suicide note was arrested in the West Bank Sunday night, police said. The 22-year-old suspect, from the West Bank city of Al-Bireh, was searching for victims for about an hour prior to his arrest, scouring for Israelis who were standing alone, an initial police investigation shows.
Declassification of the name and photo of a Druze commander who fell during a covert mission in the Gaza Strip in 2018 sparked calls among Israeli lawmakers to amend the controversial nation-state law that defines the country as the nation state of the Jewish people.
Jerusalem’s police chief gave the order to officers to prevent the waving of Palestinian flags and to confiscate any Palestinian flags they saw during the funeral of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last Friday, police sources told Haaretz. At the time, the district police commander was not present in the Old City, but taking part in a police delegation to Germany.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, May 16, 2922, On Wednesday, the 11th of May, Palestinian residents of Jabal al Tawil, near the city of Al-Bireh were protesting at a nearby illegal settlement, when Israeli soldiers opened fire on them. Thayer Yazouri, 18, was shot directly in the heart and was killed, while another Palestinian teenager was injured in his leg.
The Israeli government is set to put forward plans for 4,000 illegal settler homes to be built in the occupied West Bank. If the plans are approved, this move will mark the largest advancement of illegal settlements since President Biden’s administration took office.
In Gaza Tuesday, the 10th of May marked a grim anniversary of the outbreak of hostilities inflicted on them last year by the Israeli military. According to the records of the United Nations, 260 Palestinians were killed during the Israeli attacks, including 66 children. In Israel 12 civilians were killed as a result of indiscriminate rocket attacks from Gaza. Israeli restrictions on the movement of people and goods across the borders of the enclave remain in place and are leading to further impoverishment.
Week of May 9, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, May 5, 2022, The High Court of Justice approved Wednesday the eviction of some 1,000 Palestinians from eight villages in the southern West Bank, after a two-decade legal dispute over land that has been repurposed by the Israeli army as a firing zone, and where Palestinians have lived for generations. Starting this morning, at any given moment, the Civil Administration, the Israel Defense Forces, the Border Police and the regular police are allowed to send dozens – and if they need to, even more – of soldiers and police officers into eight villages in Masafer Yatta and with their guns trained on them, put on trucks and buses hundreds of their residents – the elderly, the young, women and infants. And this will be done with a seal of approval from Israel’s High Court of Justice.
A director of a Palestinian NGO that Israel declared a terror organization last year was barred from boarding a flight to the United States. Sahar Francis, the director of Addameer – director of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Organization – sought to travel on Saturday to a conference of civil society groups in Mexico, but was informed she was not allowed to board her flight upon her arrival at Ben-Gurion International Airport.
May 6, Thousands marched Thursday to mark the Palestinian Nakba in the Lower Galilee in northern Israel, the area where the village of Miar, depopulated in 1948, once stood. Participants carried Palestinian flags and signs with the names of Arab villages uprooted in Israel’s War of Independence, which Palestinians refer to as the ‘catastrophe.’ Organizers from the Association for the Defense of the Rights for the Internally Displaced Persons in Israel said that the marchers were strict about not carrying the flags of political parties or movements or calling out political slogans.
Three people were murdered and four wounded in a terror attack in the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad in central Israel on Thursday, police said. Manhunt is underway. Security official says attackers influenced by Hamas’ Yahya Sinwar. PM Bennett vows assailants ‘will pay the price’
Reported by Palestine Electronic Media, May 7, Palestinian shepherd Omar al-Hathaleen yesterday got injured after being brutally assaulted and beaten by colonial Israeli settlers near the village of Umm El-Khair in Massafer Yatta, south of Al-Khalil.
Times of Gaza, A funeral of the freed prisoner Yahia Adwan was held after he was cold-bloodily murdered last night by the Israeli occupation forces in Azzun village, Qalqilya.
Haaretz, May 7, Israeli forces demolished on Saturday the home of the one of the Palestinian gunmen who killed an Israeli near the evacuated West Bank outpost of Homesh in December.
Dozens of settlers swooped down on a Palestinian family tending its olive grove, throwing stones and beating them. Three Palestinians were wounded; the eldest remains hospitalized. When the family filed a complaint, they were interrogated for allegedly throwing rocks.
Israel’s Civil Administration will advance nearly 4,000 housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank next week, the Israeli governing body that operates in the West Bank said in a statement on Friday. Biden administration: ‘We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements’
May 8, The High Court of Justice has again proved that it is unmatched as a rubber stamp and whitewasher of the injustices of the occupation. In a ruling issued in the dead of night – ironically, between Memorial Day and Independence Day – the court permitted the expulsion from their homes of about 1,000 Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta, in the southeast West Bank, for the benefit of Israel Defense Forces training. As a result, eight Palestinian villages whose residents have lived in them for generations will be destroyed.
Israeli forces captured the two Palestinians who murdered three Israelis last week after a three-day manhunt. The two were found in a forest in central Israel, close to the ultra-Orthodox city of Elad where the attack took place. The two are identified as As’ad al-Rifa’i, 19, and Subhi Abu Shakir, 20, from the village of Rummaneh, near Jenin. The Defense Ministry said Saturday that following a security assessment, the ongoing closure of the West Bank and crossings at the Gaza border will be extended through Monday, with only approved cases being allowed to pass into or through Israel. Another assessment will be made Sunday, the ministry said. The attack in Elad is the latest in a string of Palestinian terror attacks in Israel and the West Bank have left 19 dead. Meanwhile, at least 27 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, some related to operations to locate suspects in the attacks.
Palestine Electronic Media, After being brutally assaulted and beaten by colonial settlers, a Palestinian taxi driver at the village of Sinjil, north of Ramallah, was detained by Israeli occupation forces.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, May 9, On Thursday, the 5th of May, more than six hundred Israeli settlers resumed their incursions, under police protection, into the Al Aqsa compound, after the ten day pause for the end of Ramadan. Israeli police arrested fifty Palestinians, including elderly men and young boys, and injured sixteen others during clashes at the compound. Tensions have heightened following a series of attacks inside Israel and police raids in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
B’Tselem, the Israel Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has looked into the circumstances under which the Israeli border police shot and killed Nader Rayan in Nablus on the 15th of March this year. Their investigation showed that Nader and his friend were on their scooter behind the police vehicles. When the scooter broke down, they ran down a side alley. As they run, the police shot Nader in the back. Then the police left their vehicles, tracked down the injured Nader, shot him repeatedly and killed him.
Eight Republican and Democrat Congressmen sent a joint letter to the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, at the end of April. They wished to express their deep concern over the disturbing rise in recent Israeli extremist attacks against Jerusalem’s Christian community. The lawmakers stressed that the protection of religious freedom abroad must be a critical element of US foreign policy.
For Palestinians, Sunday, the 15th of May will be the time they commemorate the Nakba, when thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee their homes in 1948.
Palestinian Electronic Media, May 9, Israeli occupation forces attacked and wounded Palestinian journalist Basil al-Adraa in his home village of A-Tuwani in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank this afternoon.
Week of May 2, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, April 25, 2022, The Shin Bet security service announced Monday the arrest of seven West Bank Islamic Jihad operatives suspected of planning to carry out terror attacks against Israelis. According to the Shin Bet, they were recruited and instructed by Jihadists from the Gaza Strip. Among the detainees is a mother of four from the village of Jalamah near Jenin. She was identified as Yasmin Shaaban, an operative in the organization who previously served a prison sentence for being involved in the planning of a suicide attack.
April 26, Israeli police only allowed Muslim worshippers to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque last week if they agreed to hand over their ID cards to police – in violation of the law and the right to freedom of worship. The incident took place hours after the end of clashes between police and Palestinians at the mosque last Thursday. A group of young men, some from East Jerusalem and others from Arab towns in Israel, stood in line to deposit their ID cards with the police as a condition for entering the mosque to pray.
Apr. 26, The number of Palestinians in administrative detention – detention without trial – in Israel reached a five-and-a-half year high over the weekend. According to data supplied by the Israel Prison Service to Haaretz, there are currently 579 Palestinians in administrative detention.
B’Tselem, speaking of administrative detention in its monthly report on April 26, says: Detainees suffer not only incarceration in rough conditions, cut off from their family, friends and daily life, but also unbearable uncertainty regarding why they are there and for how long. Yet Israel uses this measure extensively against Palestinians, with the ongoing approval of legal advisors, military judges, and the Supreme Court.
All these seals of approval do not render Israel’s use of administrative detention lawful or just . As is the case in a myriad of issues concerning Israel’s regime of Jewish supremacy over Palestinians, here too, the Israeli legal system does not serve justice nor seeks to do so. It seeks only to represent the interests of the apartheid regime and to perpetuate it in the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Haaretz, The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court has ordered that the case of a Palestinian family facing immediate eviction in the East Jerusalem Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood be reheard, a process that will delay any possible eviction by at least two months. Police have feared that the eviction of the Salem family from their East Jerusalem home, which has been at the center of tensions in recent months, could reignite the neighborhood along with the rest of the city.
Palestinian Electronic Media, April 27, Four Palestinians were shot and injured, including one in a serious condition after being shot in his head, by Israeli occupation forces during the storming of Jenin camp, this morning.
IMEU Palestinian children played music in solidarity with Athal Al-Azza, a child who is being imprisoned by Israel. Athal was on his way to his grandmother’s house when Israeli soldiers beat him on the side of the road before bringing him to an Israeli prison where he was tortured.
Haaretz, April 27, Three Palestinians were attacked near the West Bank village of Kisan on Tuesday, with one of them, a 62-year-old hospitalized with an injury to his head. According to the victims, they were attacked by dozens of masked Israelis from the nearby settlement of Ma’ale Amos with stones, clubs and pepper spray. Police said they were investigating the case following a complaint filed by the victims. No suspects have been arrested.
Seven Israeli men who participated in the so-called 2015 “wedding of hate,” during which pictures of the murdered Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabshe were waved around and stabbed, were convicted of incitement to violence and terror by the Jerusalem District Court on Wednesday. One of the seven, Daniel Zvi Moshe, was also convicted of incitement to racism, of supporting a terrorist organization and of possession of a weapon.
April 28, Around 200,000 Muslims prayed overnight into Thursday at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Islam’s holy night of Laylat al-Qadr. Despite recent tensions in Jerusalem, the prayer – the biggest religious event in the city – passed in relative quiet. On Wednesday evening, worshipers flocked into the mosque from the West Bank and Israel after the military permitted the entry of Palestinians from the West Bank who were over 40 years old.
April 29, Violent clashes broke out Friday between Palestinians and Israeli police at Al-Aqsa Mosque, in what has become a weekly occurrence ahead of midday prayers for the entire month of Ramadan. Hundreds of young Palestinians fired fireworks and threw rocks within the compound, with some also hurling rocks towards the Western Wall and Mughrabi Bridge. One fell in the Western Wall plaza, though no one was reported injured. In response, police entered the Temple Mount compound for the first time in a week and used riot control methods, which Palestinians said included tear gas and foam-tipped bullets. According to the Red Crescent, 42 people were wounded and transported to the hospital. After the clashes, 160,000 worshippers attended Friday’s prayers, the highest number of attendees since the beginning of Ramadan, according to The Waqf.
Reported by DCIP, The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention adopted an opinion this month finding that Israeli authorities’ imprisonment of Palestinian teen, Mohammad Mansour, 18, amounts to an arbitrary detention and called for Mansour’s immediate release. More than a year ago, Israeli authorities detained Palestinian teen Mohammad Mansour, then 17 years old, without charge. To this day, he is still sitting in administrative detention.
Reported by Palestine Electronic Media, April 30, 27-year-old freed Palestinian prisoner, Yahya Ali Adwan, was shot dead by Israeli gunfire in the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilya.
Haaretz, Apr. 30, A 23-year-old security guard was killed by gunfire on Friday outside the Israeli settlement of Ariel in the West Bank. The military said that two assailants driving a car with an Israeli license plate arrived at Ariel and opened fire at the security guards posted at the settlement’s entrance. The shooters fled the scene after the attack, the military said, as forces were searching for the attackers in the northern West Bank.
When Hanan Khadour was born, Jenin was under Israeli army lockdown due to Operation Defensive Shield, and her father had to carry her to the hospital in his arms. Three weeks ago she boarded a shared taxi in the same city, which was teeming with Israeli soldiers and snipers. A single bullet pierced her body. She has died, aged 19.
IMEU, May1, Sahar Francis, the longtime director of Addameer, human rights defender & lawyer, was just banned from boarding a plane to the US (from the airport in Tel Aviv) while headed to the World Social Forum in Mexico.
Haaretz, May 1, Sheikh Yusuf Albaz, the imam of the Great Mosque of the central Israeli city of Lod, was detained on Saturday morning on suspicion of incitement over his stance on the recent uptick in violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israeli forces raided overnight into Sunday the West Bank village where the two suspects accused of attacking security guards outside the settlement of Ariel live, the military said, arresting 12 suspects. The army “mapped” the homes of the two suspects believed to be responsible for the Friday evening attack, which left one 23-year-old dead. The mapping is likely to precede demolitions.
Israel will shut all its border crossings with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from Tuesday until Friday, while the country marks its memorial and independence days, the army announced.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, May 2, This year the Eid al-Fitr holiday will be celebrated by Muslims in Palestine and Israel on Monday the 2nd of May. The three-day feast marks the end of 30 days of fasting from dawn to dusk during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Many Palestinians will try to cross the Israeli military checkpoints to visit the Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem to worship during this special time. However, the Israeli authorities have imposed a military closure on the Westbank and the Gaza Strip because of the Israeli National holidays.
A new Israeli government policy is set to come into force on Sunday, the 22nd of May which will further restrict the entry and residence of foreigners in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians who hold foreign passports will now be required to provide information to the Israeli authorities about relatives or friends they intend to visit and whether they own property or expect to inherit any property. Travellers wishing to visit Israeli settlers in the occupied Territories do not have to supply any information to the Israeli authorities.
The holiday on Sunday, the 1st of May, which is known as Labour Day, is marked with a public holiday in Palestine/Israel and in more than eighty other countries. Many Palestinians are herded like cattle through checkpoints to reach their place of work and from day to day they do not know what time they will reach their jobs. Many are forced to queue for hours in cramped and crowded conditions. Sabeel prays for an end to the occupation and for the inhumane constraints forced on Palestinian workers as they try to earn their livelihood and support their families.
Khalil Awawdeh was rushed by the Israeli Prison Service from Ramleh Prison to an Israeli hospital when his medical condition suddenly became critical. Khalil is forty years old and comes from Idhna, near Hebron. He has been on a hunger strike for 57 days in protest at his administrative detention order.
On Thursday, the 28th of April, a coalition of 46 UK based organizations urged the UK government to halt legislation which would target boycott, divestment and sanctions, (BDS) efforts. The proposed law, due to be announced at the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday, the 10th of May, would prohibit public bodies from calling for BDS campaigns against foreign countries, including Israel.
A petition brought by four human rights organizations on behalf of two families in Gaza was rejected by the Israeli Supreme Court on Sunday, the 24th of April. On the 16th of July 2014, during Israel’s attack on Gaza, seven children, brothers and cousins, were playing football on the beach when an Israeli drone fired and killed four of the children and injured the other three. The petitioners claim that the Israeli air force intentionally opened fire on the children, without identification, and that this is a serious violation of the laws of warfare and criminal law. They will now take the case to the International Criminal Court for consideration there.
Week of April 25, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, April 18, 2022, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Israel’s envoy to receive a letter from the government demanding an “immediate stop to violations” on the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, after clashes in Jerusalem’s Old City, coinciding with Ramadan and Passover, left both Palestinians and Israelis wounded.
Reported by ‘Canada talks Israel/Palestine’, on April 18,
The National Council of Canadian Muslims has called on the Canadian government to condemn the recent attacks by Israeli police on Palestinian Muslim worshippers at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. So far the Canadian government has been platitudinous, only calling for “de-escalation”.
Haaretz, April 18,
Police use of clubs has been on the rise after the force’s commander relaxed rules governing it. Several cases were documented during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinians in the Jerusalem holy site. Footage from Friday shows a police officer beating journalist Alaa Sous with a club. She was left with a broken arm.
Two Palestinians were severely wounded by Israeli live fire in the northern West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Monday. Israeli military forces raided the town and arrested people, witnesses in al-Yamun, west of Jenin, said. During the military operation, Israeli soldiers and armed locals fired at each other, residents reported.
Israeli settlers are preventing the opening of a West Bank road that has been closed to Palestinians for 20 years, connecting the Palestinian town of Azzariyeh with the main road to Bethlehem. Last week, work began to remove the roadblock, but settlers successfully prevented it from continuing, so the road remains closed. Azzariyeh residents said they were told it would open soon.
April 19, The Israeli air force attacked southern Gaza Monday in response to a rocket launched from the Strip earlier in the day, according to the military spokesperson. The Israeli army said that air force fighter jets destroyed a weapons manufacturing workshop belonging to Hamas. Hamas said that militants responded with anti-aircraft weapons, but failed to hit the Israeli jets. No injuries were reported. Meanwhile, Israeli forces and armed Palestinians clashed and exchanged fire in West Bank city of Jenin, according to Palestinian reports.
Palestinians and Israeli forces clash as thousands march to an evacuated West Bank outpost. Far-right lawmakers accompanied the protesters to the evacuated outpost of Homesh, after Defense Minister Gantz countered earlier military warnings against the march by announcing Israeli forces would secure it.
An 18-year-old Palestinian high school student succumbed to her wounds nearly two weeks after being caught in a crossfire during an Israeli military raid in Jenin, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
April 20, 2022. A war over the Temple Mount is just a matter of time. The messiahs of the right are correct when they attempt time after time to burst into Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount to establish Israeli sovereignty there. In their eyes, the main thing is not prayers but sovereignty. Control, ownership, authority. They’re right when they claim that Israel does not rule the holy compound, since as long as Jews cannot pray there as they wish, the Temple Mount is not in the hands of the state. Because what is the point of defining the state as Jewish if it has agreed to share the place most sacred to its believers with the Muslims.
Leaders of militant groups in the Gaza Strip discussed on Wednesday tensions with Israel in a meeting convened at the office of Yahya Sinwar, the local leader of Hamas, which rules the enclave. According to Hamas sources, Sinwar stressed that “independent” initiatives, such as the rocket fired at Israel on Monday, must be prevented and that any action must be coordinated by all the factions and Gaza’s political leadership.
Israel police blocked the route to Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate on Wednesday as hundreds of right-wing activists defied police orders and began marching toward the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. Far-right lawmaker Ben-Gvir joined marchers. As tensions mounted, some 20 people managed to breach police barriers and reach the gate, but were turned back by officers.
Apr. 21, Dozens of Palestinians clashed with police forces at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on Thursday morning after hundreds of Jews attempted to reach the site with police protection. Palestinians shot fireworks and threw stones at the police, barricading themselves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the ensuing clashes. The police responded by firing sponge-tipped bullets and tear gas at the Palestinian, injuring at least one, according to Palestinian reports. Gideon Levy All of us, every single Israeli, marched to Homesh the other day. All of us, every single Israeli, marched in the flag parade in Jerusalem on Wednesday. All of us, every single Israeli, are settlers. There is no other way to describe the reality. Anyone who thinks that it is only a small and violent settler minority to which most people have no connection, anyone who thinks that this is about some remote part of the land, some dark backyard that has no connection to the display window, is completely lying to himself.
Israeli jets struck the Gaza Strip early Thursday morning in what the IDF deemed “the most significant” attack on the enclave since the last major confrontation in May, after a day in which militants fired a rocket at an Israeli border city and Jerusalem stood on edge over a far-right march.
Apr. 22, At least 31 Palestinians were wounded Friday morning in a five-hour clash with Israeli police at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, as violence spikes at the Jerusalem site sacred to both Muslims and Jews. The violent skirmishes at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, revered in Judaism as the Temple Mount and by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, have surged over the past week, raising concerns about a slide back into wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Fourteen Palestinians were taken to the hospital, with two in serious condition, the Red Crescent said. An Israeli police officer was hit in the face by a rock and required medical attention.
Attorney Mohammed Assaf would take his son and two nephews to school in Nablus every morning. Last week they encountered clashes by Joseph’s Tomb. When Assaf left his car; a soldier in a speeding jeep opened the door and shot him.
April 23, Israel Police used a drone to fire tear gas grenades at the Temple Mount on Friday to quell rioting following afternoon prayers which were attended by thousands of Palestinian worshipers. According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, 57 Palestinians were wounded and treated at the scene, 26 of which were suffering from gas inhalation. Fourteen Palestinians were evacuated to hospitals — 12 in moderate condition and two in serious condition.
Reported by IMEU, As Christians gather to celebrate Holy Saturday at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers are separating Palestinian and Arab Christians from foreign Christians, denying them entry on the basis that they speak Arabic.
April 24, An Israeli settler wounded three Palestinians in a shooting attack near the West Bank town of Surif on Saturday, local Palestinian residents reported. A group of settlers was throwing stones at Palestinians near the Bat Ayin settlement before one settler started firing shots.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, April 23, Last weekend the Holy Saturday Service was celebrated across the Holy Land. Thousands of Palestinian Christians and pilgrims celebrated the Holy Fire ceremony at the Church of the Resurrection – Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, even though the Israeli authorities had imposed new restrictions on attendance. The authorities sought to limit participation to 1,000 worshippers, over a 90% decrease from previous years. Palestinian Christians and Church leaders criticized this move as an infringement of the right to freedom of worship. The local community tried to fight their way across the barriers yet they were stopped by the Israeli forces.
In the past week more than two hundred people, mostly Palestinians, have been hurt in clashes in and around the Al-Aqsa compound. Many Palestinians have been outraged by the massive Israeli police deployment at the compound. They are also angered by the repeated visits to the site by Jewish worshippers, who are permitted to enter but may not pray there.
On Saturday, the 23rd of April the Israeli authorities announced the closure of the Erez Crossing, after rockets were fired by a splinter group from Gaza into Israel. The closure comes just before the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, which will make it even harder for families in the enclave to survive. Israel carried out air raids in different areas of Gaza twice last week, in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.
Thousands of Israeli settlers marched to the evacuated settlement outpost of Homesh, near Nablus on Tuesday, the 19th of April. They passed through several Palestinian villages before marching from a location near Homesh, which was built on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Burqa. Forty Palestinian protestors from Burqa were injured in clashes with Israeli forces sent to protect the settlers. The march took place despite the Israeli Supreme Court ruling stating that the settlement of Homesh is illegal, as the land belongs to private owners from Burqa.
Week of April 18, 2022
Reported by Defence of Children International Palestine (DCIP) on April 11, 2022. Last night, Israeli forces shot 16-year-old Mohammad Hussein Mohammad Qassim in the abdomen with live ammunition in the northern occupied West Bank city of Jenin. Mohammad succumbed to his wounds this morning. An Israeli military vehicle entered Jenin around 5 p.m. on Sunday and pursued a civilian car, according to information collected by DCIP. Mohammad began running behind the Israeli military vehicle and appeared to be looking on the ground for stones to throw at it, an eyewitness told DCIP. Suddenly, without any prior warning, an Israeli soldier fired three bullets from the military vehicle’s rear window, striking Mohammad from a distance of about four meters (13 feet) in the abdomen, according to the eyewitness. Mohammad is the sixth Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces so far this year, and the third killed in or near the city of Jenin.Apr. 11, 2022 6:10 PM
Haaretz, April 11, Fourteen Palestinians suspected of terrorist activity in the West Bank were arrested on Monday, the Israeli army said in a statement. Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says Israel is ‘increasing its aggression’ and urges the world ‘to stop Israeli escalation’.
April 12, Gaza may respond with rocket fire over Israeli crackdown on West Bank. Israeli defense officials don’t rule out an extensive operation in the Jenin area, which they would prefer take place after Ramadan ends at the turn of the month.
The Israeli army detained 20 Palestinian suspected of terrorist activities in an overnight operation in the West Bank, the army spokesperson unit said Tuesday. The Israeli army has also operated in Jenin for the third consecutive day since the attack in Tel Aviv which claimed the lives of three Israelis.
A Palestinian man was shot and killed after stabbing an Israeli officer Tuesday morning in the southern city of Ashkelon, police said. The officer was lightly wounded. Police said the 40-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank was in Israel without a permit, while his relatives rejected the claim that he stabbed the officer, adding that he’d worked in such construction sites for years.
Israel’s Attorney General’s Office has approved connecting illegal West Bank Jewish outposts that were built without Israeli government approval to the electricity grid. The plan, which would also hook up Palestinian communities to power and carve a path to legalization for both illegal Jewish outposts and Palestinian villages, ignited uproar among right-wing Israeli lawmakers.
Apr. 13, A 34-year-old Palestinian activist was killed on Wednesday in clashes with Israeli forces in Nablus, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, and at least 16 others were wounded, amid a spike in tensions in the West Bank in the aftermath of a string of deadly attacks in Israel. Mohammed Assaf was hit by live fire in the chest, the Health Ministry said. Assaf was a lawyer and acted against the separation barrier and the settlements. A source said that Assaf, a resident of Kafr Laqif and a father of two, was escorting his cousin to school in the vicinity of Joshep’s Tomb and was not involved in the clashes.
Reported by Palestine Online, May 13, Israeli special forces shoot, injure and arrest a Palestinian youth outside Kadoorie University in the occupied West Bank city of Tulkarm.
Harretz, April 14, Two Palestinians were killed by live ammunition on Thursday during clashes with Israeli soldiers near the city of Jenin in the West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The two were killed during a raid in Kafr Dan, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The Israeli army said they were carrying out an arrest operation throughout the West Bank. Later Thursday, a Palestinian resident of Beita succumbed to his wounds after being hit by Israeli fire during clashes Wednesday morning in his home village, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. His death marks the sixth Palestinian killed by Israeli fire in the last 24 hour
A 14-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed Wednesday by Israeli security forces near the West Bank town of Husan just south of Bethlehem, with the Israeli military saying he was shot after hurling a Molotov cocktail at troops at an army position in the center of town. The Palestinian was identified as Qusai Fuad Hamamra, a resident of Husan. Hundreds of Palestinians protested in the town and threw stones at army vehicles on Wednesday evening. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah reported that 20-year-old Omar Muhammad Aliyan had been killed by a shot in the chest fired by security forces during clashes in the town of Silwan. Earlier on Wednesday, security forces arrested four Palestinians north of Ramallah suspected of planning to carry out an attack in Israel on Passover, which starts this week.
Haaretz’ Analysis | Extremists’ call for Passover sacrifice on Temple Mount (Islam’s holy site) is a provacative ploy. An ad promising payment to Jews who get arrested trying to offer a sacrifice at the holy site is causing an uproar among Palestinians this year.
April 14, In a plan to try to stop the wave of resignations from the force and boost morale, Police officers suspected of using excessive force against civilians while carrying out their duties, now will not be suspended and can be promoted in rank even before a decision is made in their case, Israel Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai said on Tuesday.
Haaretz editorial: An evil wind is blowing in the Israel Defense Forces. The messianic speech given by Samaria Brigade Commander Col. Roi Zweig, in a briefing to troops before they entered Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus to provide security while repair work was being done, should be keeping IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and all Israelis up at night.
Reported by American Muslims for Palestine, April 14, Since the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan (April 1st, 2022), more than 17 Palestinians have been brutally murdered, dozens injured, and over 200 have been arrested. In the last 24 hours alone, Israel continued its 5-day raid across the West Bank, murdering 6Palestinians and wounding 18 others.
Reported by DCIP, April 14, Israeli forces shot and killed another Palestinian child last night—16-year-old Qusai Fuad Mohammad Hamamra, the second Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces this week and the seventh this year. In Husan, a village near Bethlehem, Israeli forces shot Qusai multiple times with live ammunition and prevented Palestinian paramedics from poviding aid.
April 15, (DCIP) 17-year-old Shawkat Kamal Shawkat Abed succumbed to his wounds early this morning after being shot by Israeli forces yesterday in Kafr Dan, a village northwest of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank. Injuries suggest that Shawkat was struck with an exploding bullet that ruptured his blood vessels and veins. The use of expanding and exploding bullets is a violation of international humanitarian law and amounts to a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Haaretz, April 15, A six-hour clash broke out Friday in the Al-Aqsa compound between Palestinian worshipers and Israeli police forces, leaving at least 152 Palestinians and three Israeli police officers injured in the biggest escalation in Jerusalem since the holy month of Ramadan began.
The same event as reported by the National Council of Canadian Muslims.” Earlier this morning, as hundreds were completing their prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque, Israeli soldiers attacked with rubber bullets, stun grenades and beatings with police batons. 150 worshippers were injured. “
Haaretz, April 16, Police arrested 400 people inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque after hours of skirmishes and managed to restore calm. But images of cops detaining worshipers might trigger the next terror attack. The intense clashes Friday morning on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount were almost inevitable. The rumors on social media – and the media’s noise surrounding it – that Jews were planning to come to the site and offer a Passover sacrifice spread like wildfire.
April 16, Soldiers arrested Shams a-Dim Aazem, 17, on suspicion of throwing stones. But between his cancer and his disability, the boy can barely move around. That didn’t save him from being handcuffed and spending five hours in detention. There is no mistaking Shams a-Din Aazem’s disability. His torso is deformed and rigid and inclines to one side. His arms are as skinny as matches. His face is ashen. Though his intellect is unimpaired, his manner of speech is quiet and strained. His face is anguished. He sits down with difficulty, stands up with difficulty and moves about with difficulty because of his physical adversities and his thin build
.Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, April 18, 2022, On Thursday, the 14th of April, a Palestinian human rights lawyer and a teenager were shot and killed on the fifth day of Israeli military raids in the West Bank. Muhammad Assaf, a 34-year-old father was dropping his children at school when he was shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers in Nablus. In the evening soldiers shot and killed a 16-year-old, Qusai Hamamrah, who was caught up in riots in Husan, near Bethlehem.
Oded Goldreich, Professor of Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science, has declared his intention to donate the Israel Prize money he won, to five organizations dedicated to working for social justice and the end of the Israeli occupation. He nominated the groups as B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Adalah, Kav LaOved and Standing Together.
On Wednesday, the 13th of April, European diplomats visited the Old City of Jerusalem. They were briefed about the Israeli settler organizations which threaten to evict Christians from their properties at Jaffa Gate. They also discovered that the Israeli authorities planned to restrict numbers taking part in processions on Holy Fire Saturday, as well as limiting the number of worshippers allowed into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Shops and businesses were closed on Thursday, the 14th of April, as Palestinians in Ramallah and Bethlehem called for a general strike in protest against the recent deadly Israeli military operations. Earlier in the week a Palestinian gunman from Jenin had opened fire in Tel Aviv, killing three people and wounding ten others. In response to this incident the Israeli army launched violent collective raids throughout the West Bank, with six Palestinians shot and killed in just one 24-hour-period and many others arrested and detained.
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, (CJPME), have just published a report called ‘Arming Apartheid’, which analyses Canada’s arms exports to Israel. The report finds that military exports have accelerated in recent years and reached a 30-year high in 2020. Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME, stated, ’the potential risk to human rights is far too high to justify the transfer of any military goods into the context of occupation and apartheid.’
April 11, 2022
Haaretz, Mar 27
Following an 18-year legal battle, members of a settler organization have moved into the Petra Hotel in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Currently, Ateret Cohanim occupies only part of the Petra Hotel, but Christians in Jerusalem consider the hotel a strategic building that could affect the character of the Old City’s entire Christian Quarter.
Sabeel. April 4 (see the above news from Haaretz)
The World Council of Churches expressed solidarity with the heads of the churches in Jerusalem as Israeli settlers broke into a hotel belonging to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. On Sunday, the 27th of March, members of the Ateret Cohanim settler group, accompanied by local Israeli police, broke into the Little Petra Hotel near Jaffa Gate in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem and evicted the family who managed the hotel.
Israel has witnessed a wave of terrorist attacks over the last few weeks. In two of the attacks, the assailants were Arab citizens of Israel. As soon as the perpetrators’ identities were known, a familiar, grisly ritual began: Arab leaders denounce the attacks, and Israeli right-wingers accuse all Arabs in Israel of collective responsibility for the deaths, inciting racism and calling for revenge.Ninety-six percent of prisoners and detainees in Israel who are brought to hospitals for treatment are restrained during the procedure or hospitalization, usually cuffed to the bed, the Israel Medical Association says in a new study. The study finds that even a prisoner missing a limb has been restrained, something that not only violates the person’s dignity but can impede the treatment itself.
April 5An Arab motorist accused undercover Israeli police of detaining him Sunday in the central town of Kalansua after suspecting him of supporting the Islamic State – after which they beat him and left him in a forest upon discovering that they had mistaken him for someone else.Abed Mansour, 38, said that he was blindfolded and taken to a forest near Kochav Ya’ir, south of Kalansua, where he was beaten after police refused to believe that his Israeli identity card was genuine. Mansour claims that when the police realized they had the wrong person, they freed him and commanded him to walk away and not look back.
April 6,The Judaization of East Jerusalem gathers steam. New neighborhoods will be built on both sides of crowded Beit Safafa, but mainly for Israelis ■ Sheikh Jarrah faces possible evictions ■ Houses in Silwan are being demolished – and that’s just a partial list.
April 7A gunman opened fire in central Tel Aviv on Thursday, police said, in what appears to be the latest in a string of terror attacks across Israel.Ambulance service Magen David Adom reported six casualties that were taken to the hospital, two in critical condition and one in serious condition. The shooting took place along several different spots along Dizengoff Street, one of Tel Aviv’s busiest streets.
April 9A Palestinian militant has been killed and at least a dozen others were wounded in a fire exchange with Israeli military forces in the West Bank on Saturday, according to Israeli and Palestinian accounts.Israeli military forces surrounded a compound in Jenin belonging to the family of Raad Hazem, who carried out a deadly attack in central Te Aviv on Thursday. During the raids, the army said soldiers came under fire. Troops fired back, killing one militant.
Israeli military officials recommended increasing the numbers of work permits for Palestinians from the West Bank on Friday in order to reduce illegal entry and monitor those who enter the country.During security talks held following the wave of terror attacks that has seen 14 Israelis murdered, IDF representatives suggested giving work permits to many of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who are in Israel illegally, most of whom come in order to work. This proposal is not universally agreed upon within the defense establishment.
Abd al-Rahman al-Qassem lay wounded at the bottom of the steps next to the Cotton Merchants’ Gate, one of the entrances to the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. A few seconds earlier he had stabbed two police officers with a modest-looking knife. One officer was lightly wounded, the other’s injuries were more serious. The assailant knifed the two in a fit of rage as he descended the steps next to the gate. Shot immediately and incapacitated by the police officers, he lay on the ground, not moving when one officer shot him at close range.pril 10
April 10Israeli forces and Palestinians exchanged fire on Sunday during a raid in the town of Yabad, near Jenin, in the second consecutive day that troops have entered a gun battle with militants in the area.The Red Crescent reported six people were wounded and treated in Yabad, one of whom sustained a gunshot wound to the back and was evacuated to a hospital in Jenin. There were no reports of injuries on the Israeli side.
Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian woman in her forties after she approached them in a “suspicious manner” in the West Bank town of Husan, near Bethlehem, on Sunday.Ghada Ibrahim Ali Al-Aridi from Bethlehem, a widowed mother of six, was shot in the lower body after she did not heed to calls to stay back or warning shots fired into the air, according to the IDF.No weapon was found on her person and the IDF is investigating the incident.
Palestinians set ablaze Joseph’s tomb, a holy site for Jews, late on Saturday night, as friction continues to grow between a spate of recent terror attacks and IDF raids in the West Bank.Military spokesman Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav told Israeli Army Radio that some 100 Palestinians marched toward the site, rioted and then torched the tomb before they were dispersed by Palestinian security forces. Images on social media showed parts of the tomb inside the shrine smashed and charred.
A Palestinian woman was shot dead on Sunday by Israeli forces in Hebron, after stabbing a Border Police officer, according to Israeli authorities.A preliminary investigation found that the officer shot the woman after she stabbed him with a kitchen knife.The Israeli officer was lightly wounded in the suspected attack near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, April 11 Rev. Canon Naim Ateek and women from the Sabeel movement will lead us in worship and reflection this coming Holy Saturday, on the 16th of April, for the Sabeel Easter Service in Jerusalem. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem has appointed two new bishops. The Rev. Jamal Khader Daibes is Palestinian and has been appointed as the Patriarchal Bishop of Jordan. The new Patriarchal Vicar of Israel is the Rev. Rafic Nahra. He was born in Egypt to Lebanese parents. Sabeel gives thanks for these two newly appointed bishops. Both men were born and raised in the Middle East and have a deep love and understanding for the people there.
April 4, 2022
The U.S. secretary of state urged Israel to de-escalate tensions before Ramadan, as he visits the region for historic ‘Negev Summit’ with Arab allies.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked the Biden administration to press Israeli on freezing West Bank settlement expansion and curbing settler aggression, in a meeting Sunday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah.
According to Abbas, the international political action following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed a double standard when compared with the issue of Israeli occupation, which has not received the same attention or demands of accountability.
Following an 18-year legal battle, members of a settler organization have moved into the Petra Hotel in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Currently, Ateret Cohanim occupies only part of the Petra Hotel, but Christians in Jerusalem consider the hotel a strategic building that could affect the character of the Old City’s entire Christian Quarter.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday that he had ordered a bolstering of Israel’s security forces until Independence Day on May 5, with an emphasis on volatile regions at risk of violence following a terror attack that left two Israelis dead and put Israel’s security echelon on high alert.
Bennett’s announcement is based on a security assessment following the attack in Hadera that left two Border Police officers, in addition to the two assailants from the nearby town of Umm al-Fahm, dead on Sunday evening. This was the second deadly attack carried out by Islamic State supporters in less than a week.
The images from the north-central city of Hadera on Sunday sent many Israelis back in time to the dark days of the second intifada: two terrorists, armed with multiple weapons, standing in the middle of a busy street and opening fire.
The fact that the perpetrators turned out to be Arab citizens of Israel who had pledged allegiance to ISIS, and that an attack by another Arab-Israeli ISIS supporter took place just days earlier in the south of the country, made the situation even more shocking.
Roughly 400 security personnel, including police, soldiers and officials from Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank, took part in demolishing buildings in two settlement outposts last week. Altogether, 20 buildings were razed, after roughly two years in which the outposts had been left alone. One can only imagine how much money this operation cost, given the large number of people involved and the heavy machinery mobilized for the task.
Five cars were set on fire and vandalism was reported in suspected hate crimes against West Bank Palestinians on Sunday night, according to police.
A group of about 15 people came into Jalud, a village south of Nablus, and set fire to the vehicles, according to area activist Bashar Karyoti. The attackers also began throwing stones at a home in the village before the family living there repelled them, he said.
Five people were killed in a shooting attack on Tuesday in a suburb of Tel Aviv, in the third such attack in Israel within days, prompting police to go on the highest level of alert since the fighting with Gaza last year.
Police said that the assailant was shot at the scene by a police officer. The shooter was named as Diaa Hamarsheha, a 26-year-old Palestinian from Ya’bad, near Jenin, in the West Bank. He had apparently been in Israel illegally. The assailant had been arrested by Israel in 2013 for security offenses and served a six-month sentence.
Police are still searching for other suspects. Ramat Gan Mayor Carmel Shama-Hacohen had called on the city’s residents not to leave their homes if not absolutely necessary.
Israeli forces arrested on Wednesday four family members of the Palestinian gunman who killed five people in a shooting attack in Bnei Brak the night before.
Military forces were operating the assailant’s hometown of Ya’bad, near Jenin in the northern West Bank, as the probe into the deadly attack continues and as investigators work to determine whether 26-year-old Diaa Hamarsheh had any accomplices.
Arab leaders in Israel have decided to carry on with their plans for the 46th annual Land Day on Wednesday, amid concerns by both Palestinian and Israeli officials that events may exacerbate tensions at a volatile time, after three deadly attacks against Israelis in a week.
Palestinians worldwide have commemorated Land Day since 1976, when Israeli forces shot dead six Israeli Arabs who were protesting the expropriation of Arab-owned land in northern Israel to build Jewish communities. About 100 others were wounded and hundreds were arrested during the protest on March 30 of that year.
Police officers, who are studying at the Hebrew University as part of a program through the force, detained and questioned two East Jerusalem residents who were singing a Palestinian folk song. After being questioned on suspicion of conduct that could disturb the peace, the students were released from detention about six hours later, and suspended from the university for six days.
A day after a terror attack that left five Israelis dead, Palestinian laborers in central Israel tell of cancelled work, racism and hostility from local residents.
Reported by B’TSelem on March 31, 2022. Since December 2021, B’Tselem has documented growing pressure by the Israeli military on Palestinian communities in the northern Jordan Valley. Dozens of armed soldiers roam among the families’ paltry tents and dwellings, trampling their fields with tanks and shooting live fire. In one of these communities, Khirbet Ibziq, residents were required to vacate their homes overnight several times, sometimes up to 17 hours at a time. The military calls this “training troops.”
In just three months, between December 2021 and February 2022, the Israeli military conducted continual “military exercises” in the northern Jordan Valley. In no less than 27 days, the “exercises” were held right on the residents’ land and among their homes. The six families living in Khirbet Ibziq, numbering 35 people in total, including 17 minors, were forced to vacate their homes several times during this period, which accumulated to nine days. When the military delivers the families orders to vacate – under the guise of concern for their safety – that means massive gunfire can be expected. The residents have to gather their bare essentials, leave their livestock behind and go stay with relatives or friends. Often, they have to walk up to seven kilometers to get there. Women and children march in procession, accompanied by military jeeps.
The nightmare of Khirbet Ibziq residents does not end when they return home. Then, they have to start warning their children not to curiously touch ammunition duds left behind. The soldiers do not always bother to comb the area before they leave, often leaving ammunition behind as if no-one lives there. In 2017, ‘Udai Nawaj’ah, a 16-year-old community resident, was killed by one such dud while grazing his flock.
The decision to “train troops,” as Israel calls it, among the fields and homes of some of the most underprivileged communities in the West Bank is no accident. In addition to this “training,” from early 2021 until date, we have documented the demolition or confiscation of 76 residential structures that housed 146 people, including 81 minors, 142 non-residential structures and one road in the northern Jordan Valley. These are all manifestations of the Israeli apartheid regime’s policy, designed to create impossible living conditions for these residents so they will give up and leave their land – ostensibly of their own free willHaaretz, April 1
Settlers with firebombs descended on a Palestinian village at night, torching cars. Following the terror attack in Hadera, Mohammed Abad, a resident of the West Bank village of Jalud, refused to go to sleep, fearing settlers’ revenge. He went up to his roof when he heard noises, to find his yard in flames. “We pray five times a day, but I pray a million times a day only for the settlers not to come,” says Mohammed Abad.
Reported by Gideon Levy and Alex Levac
A smell of fire and smoke still hung in the air when we arrived on Monday this week at the residential compound of the Abad family in the West Bank village of Jalud. During the night, their parking area had become a graveyard for skeletons of cars. On the hill opposite, around 300 meters away, two hydraulic excavators were at work in the settler outpost of Ahiya, thrusting their shovels repeatedly into the earth, as part of the effort to expand the outpost. The panorama here is stunning.
April 2
Three Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces on Saturday near Jenin in the West Bank, in what Israel’s security service said was a counterterrorism operation. Four members of the Police Special Anti-Terror Unit were injured during the clash, with one in a serious but stable condition.
The Shin Bet said that the Palestinians opened fire at the forces who were coming to arrest them, and were killed during the exchange. Weapons and grenades were later found in their vehicle. According to Palestinian reports the men were identified as Saib Abahra, 30, a father of five from Jenin, Halil Toalba, 24, and Seif Abu Labda, 25.
Apr. 2,
The three acts of murder-suicide perpetrated by four Palestinians — from both sides of the Green Line — in less than two weeks only highlight the absence of a leading political Palestinian body, employing a single, clear and unifying strategy. . The attacks reflect internal divisions and the painful awareness of Palestinian weakness and inability to act in the face of Israel’s might. On the other hand, the fact that so few choose this route, despite its availability, indicates a broader political understanding that such attacks do not further the Palestinian cause.
March 28, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Mar. 21, 2022
WASHINGTON – Fifty House Democrats urged U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to prevent Israel from moving forward with the planned displacement of Palestinian families and the demolition of their homes in the West Bank village of Walaja.
“The destruction and displacement of this community would run counter to the values shared by the U.S. and Israel, while further undermining long-term Israeli security, Palestinian dignity, and prospects for peace,” the lawmakers — led by Reps. Jan Schakowsky, David Price, Jamie Raskin, John Yarmuth and Mark Pocan — wrote concerning the pending eviction of 38 Palestinian families, totaling approximately 300 people.
Mar. 22
An Israeli orchestra plays Arabic music from memory, under a Haredi conductor. The mixed Arab-Jewish orchestra Firqat Alnoor and its conductor Ariel Cohen are fighting stereotypes — around the music they play and around Israeli Haredim and Arabic culture. And they do it all without sheet music.
Mar. 23,
The growing settlement enterprise requires a constantly growing circle of partners in crime. Even the Authority for National-Civic Service, known in Hebrew as Sherut Leumi, contributes its bit to this criminal operation. Last week we discovered that the state allows national service volunteers to do their service in illegal West Bank settlement outposts. It is time to put an end to nationalist service volunteers at illegal West Bank outposts.
Mar. 23,
An Israeli court issued an order Wednesday reducing by two weeks the detention without trial of a Jewish man who was arrested last month on suspicion of attacking left-wing Israeli activists and who had previously violated numerous restraining orders.
The 20-year-old man, whose name is under gag order, is the resident of a West Bank settlement who is suspected of assaulting the activists near the West Bank village of Burin in January. He is the only Jewish administrative detainee in the country at this time; there are 490 Palestinians being held without trial by Israel.
WASHINGTON – The Middle East Studies Association on Wednesday officially passed a resolution endorsing the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement as a means of effectively holding Israel accountable for alleged human rights violations, in what can be described as a watershed moment for the BDS movement.
Mar. 23,
A Bedouin Israeli in the south who complained to the police that he was attacked by four Jews simply because he was an Arab was arrested on suspicion that he assaulted the four men. A judge says Sabah Abu Zaid was definitely attacked first, but the complainant’s lawyer says his testimony is being treated as false while the people he complained about went home after being questioned
According to a district court judge, there is no disputing that the man, Sabah Abu Zaid, was attacked first and believed that his life was in danger.
A Palestinian man arrested for an alleged stabbing attack Saturday is being held in a Jerusalem hospital with restraints on his hands and feet, despite the objections of his doctors, while sedated and intubated.
The head of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center’s trauma center, Dr. Alon Schwartz, has asked the police to remove the restraints from Murad Barkat, 28, warning that it could endanger his recovery. The police have not yet agreed to the request.
Mar. 24
WASHINGTON – United Nations Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk accused Israel of apartheid in a report submitted Tuesday to the UN Human Rights Council, the latest example of such accusations emerging in the international arena.
Soldiers posted in the West Bank have recently received instructions from their commanders that in any shift at a checkpoint or guard post they must enter the details and photos of at least 50 Palestinians to the IDF’s “Blue Wolf” tracking system. A soldier who doesn’t make the quota, they were told at the briefing, will not be relieved from duty at the end of their shift and will be forced to remain on duty until they make quota. The Blue Wolf system is used by the IDF to tag and monitor the entire Palestinian population, even those about whom there is no intelligence.
Mar. 24, 2022 11:34 PM
Israeli soldiers operating in the South Hebron Hills region of the West Bank have been collecting personal information about human rights activists from Europe, according to footage obtained by anti-occupation group Breaking the Silence.
Videos depict Israeli soldiers photographing activists in the South Hebron Hills, ‘so they don’t let them into the airport the next time,’ according to a settlement security guard.
Mar. 25
Two Palestinian teens were riding a motorbike in Nablus when a convoy of Border Police passed by. The officers first claimed the two shot at them, then said that they just pointed a gun, which was never found. It doesn’t change the outcome: The officers shot one of the teens as he fled, riddling his body with bullets
Horrorific images, utterly appalling, showing the corpse of a 16-year-old boy riddled with bullet holes. The entire body of Nader Rayan, son to a refugee family from the Balata refugee camp abutting Nablus, is strewn with deep, bleeding bullet wounds, his flesh is bare, his brain is spilling out, his head and face are perforated. Border Police troops shot him with pathological madness, in a rage, savagely, without restraint.
Mar. 27
The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved the establishment of five new communities in the Arad area of Israel’s Negev desert. Four of the five communities in Israel’s southern desert are slated for Jews, with admission committees vetting the prospective residents.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, March, 28, 2022,
While Christians continue to observe Lent, Muslims will begin fasting for Ramadan next week. Local residents and visitors will be taking part in religious ceremonies in the sacred city of Jerusalem during the coming month, with Easter celebrations for Christians, Ramadan for Muslims and Passover for Jews. Sabeel prays that Jerusalem will remain a city of peace through this significant time. We pray that worshippers will be granted access to their places of worship without fear of unprovoked attacks.
In a number of larger Palestinian cities voting for municipal elections took place on Saturday, the 26th of March. While the level of participation in voting for mayoral candidates is often high in Arab localities in Israel, levels are much lower in the West Bank.
Sabeel prays for young and dynamic leaders to emerge from the Palestinian community with a passion to defend human rights and to support democratic values.
Sabeel has again invited people to join their healthcare initiative. They open for enrolment every three months. Sabeel has brought together churches, non-profit organizations, lay people and businesses to develop a Health Insurance Plan which is available to the whole community and is meant to give support to those in greatest need in their communities.
A new non-fiction book for young adults has recently been published which aims to tell the story of young Palestinians living in Silwan, near the Old City of Jerusalem, through their own voices. ‘Determined to Stay: Palestinian Youth Fight for Their Village’ by Jody Sokolower tackles the issues faced by Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in bite sized chapters relating to life for youngsters in Silwan.
Four people were killed on Tuesday, the 22nd of March, in a stabbing and car ramming attack in Beersheba in southern Israel. The assailant, Mohammed Abu Qian, a Palestinian citizen of Israel from the town of Hura, was shot by a bus driver at the scene. Sabeel prays
that tensions in al Naqab region may ease and that the Bedouin will not be forced from their land by the Israeli authorities.
Haaretz, referring to this same incident, on Mar. 24, (speaking of the assailant as a ‘terrorist’)
Hura residents condemn neighbor’s terror killings in Be’er Sheva and fear retaliation.
The morning after Tuesday’s attack in Be’er Sheva, the streets in the town of Hura, where the terrorist Muhammad Abu al-Kiyan lived, were almost empty. The few walking around al-Salam Street, where Abu al-Kiyan lived, looked suspiciously at any unfamiliar person passing by. ‘We live here together with our Jewish neighbors, work with them, they buy from us, and we have good relations. We won’t let anything destroy that,’ says a resident of Hura where the terrorist Muhammad Abu al-Kiyan was from.
Many of them declined to speak to me for fear of being questioned by security personnel, after police and Shin Bet forces had raided the neighborhood, and were seen walking around al-Kiyan’s family home minutes after the attack. “There’s tension here, and everyone is afraid,” said resident Nafed Abu al-Kiyan.
March 21. 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Mar. 14
The High Court of Justice will hold another hearing on Tuesday for the two petitions against the permanent eviction of the residents of Masafer Yatta from their homes, part of a bid by the state to declare part of the southeastern West Bank a “firing zone” for regular Israeli military exercises.
After putting off a decision on the petitions for two decades, the High Court is expected to hand down its final ruling soon. Following through with the state’s demands for a total evacuation would spell the end for eight Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta – also known as the South Hebron Hills – and the erasure of their distinct way of life, developed over many generations.
Mar. 13, 2022
Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri was detained without trial by Israeli authorities on Thursday, who alleged he belongs to the outlawed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and poses a threat to national security.
Mar. 15
A 16-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli fire on Tuesday during a raid in a West Bank refugee camp, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, and another Palestinian was killed in a separate incident in the Jerusalem area.
Apart from the teen, at least three other Palestinians were wounded in clashes that followed the early morning raid in Balata, a sprawling refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Nablus. One of them, according to medical officials, is in serious condition, and another suffered facial burns from a stun grenade.
Israeli undercover officers shot dead on Tuesday a suspect who opened fire on them in the southern Israeli city of Rahat, police said.
He was identified as 27-year-old Salem al-Harbad.
The incident occurred during a Shin Bet arrest of two suspects. According to the security service, one of them was wanted for staying in Israel without permits and the other for security-related offenses.
Mar. 16,
Israeli settlers established a new outpost on a UNESCO World Heritage Site last week, near the Palestinian village of Battir.
The Palestinian owners of the land near the outpost said they have been barred from accessing their land since the outpost appeared. They said they have asked Israel’s Civil Administration to remove it, and have also contacted UNESCO over the matter.
An Israeli officer and soldier filed a complaint with the police on Tuesday after settlers reportedly attacked them near the West Bank outpost of Homesh.
The IDF released details of the incident, which occurred on Monday evening, and told that an Israeli vehicle breached the checkpoint near Homesh, hitting the legs of the two soldiers. They did not require medical treatment. This follows another incident of violence near Homesh on Saturday night, in which Israelis near the outpost pelted Palestinian vehicles with stones, the IDF Spokesman reported. The troops at the scene tried to stop the incident but ended up being attacked as well, the army said.
Mar. 19
On his way home from the gym, Israe troops fired 31 bullets at him. Soldiers pump Sudki Adwani’s car with bullets, seriously wounding the innocent driver. They leave him wounded and half-naked in the rain, only later calling for a Palestinian ambulance. The final blow: the revocation of his father’s Israeli work permit.
Mar. 21
A controversial new film called ‘Huda’s Salon’ reveals the Palestinian narrative from a unique perspective: the double occupation of women.
Had anyone told me the day would come when a male Palestinian director would look at the Israeli occupation through female eyes and without self-pity, I would not have believed it. But director-screenwriter Hany Abu-Assad has outdone himself in “Huda’s Salon,” in which he paints the occupation in colors we’ve never seen before in Palestinian cinema.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Mar 21, 2022
Last week Israeli crop duster planes flew for four consecutive days near the eastern Gazan Strip, spraying chemicals, believed to be herbicides, close to agricultural land owned by Palestinians. The spraying only starts when the wind is blowing in a westerly direction, in the direction of Palestinian land. The herbicides destroy the crops and ruin the arable land. The Israeli army claims it is clearing vegetation on the buffer zone.
On Friday, the 18th of March, the Eighth International Palestine Marathon took place in Bethlehem, after it had to be cancelled for the past two years due to the pandemic. Over ten thousand Palestinians and international runners took part in the event. Full marathon runners had to run the 11km course four times over, to avoid passing through Israeli checkpoints.
The Palestinian prisoners’ movement has announced that prisoners in Israeli jails will begin an open-ended hunger strike from Friday, the 25th of March. The hunger strike will be in protest at the worsening conditions being imposed upon them by the Israeli prison authorities.
The World Council of Churches’ Easter Initiative 2022(EAPPI) gives us a glimpse of the lives of Palestinians living in and around Jerusalem. While our hearts cry out for those suffering from warfare in Ukraine, let us also remember those who live under constant threat of eviction from their homes and communities in Palestinian neighbourhoods around this sacred city. One Palestinian interviewed in Silwan spoke about how the news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes him feel ‘more persecuted than ever’. He lamented, ’I see the whole world and the UN standing resolutely on the side of the Ukrainians- as they should. But I see a double standard and I see the world giving Israel a free hand to do whatever it wants to persecute us.’
March 14, 2022
Reported by DCIP (Defence of Children International Palestine), Mar. 7,
Last night, Israeli forces killed another Palestinian child—the third in less than a month. Yamen Nafez Mahmoud Khanafseh was 15 years old. Israeli forces shot and killed him in Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.
Israeli forces prevented Palestinian paramedics from treating Yamen, firing tear gas canisters at the ambulance as it approached the scene, according to information gathered by DCIP. Israeli forces confiscated Yamen’s body, and it has not yet been returned to his family.
While it is unclear if Israeli authorities will continue to withhold Yamen’s body, Israeli authorities continue to implement a policy of confiscating and withholding Palestinian bodies in violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law. For grieving families, the Israeli policy of confiscating and withholding Palestinian bodies amounts to collective punishment.
Israel is the only country in the world with such a policy of confiscating human remains.
Reported by Haaretz, Mar. 7, 2022
A Palestinian man was killed on Monday after stabbing two Israeli police officers in Jerusalem’s Old City, police said, in the second such incident in the city in as many days. Footage from the scene shows a police officer firing at the assailant while he was on the ground. The two officers were taken to hospital in moderate condition.
Israel will permit Palestinian institutions of higher education to employ lecturers from overseas only if they teach in fields that have been designated as essential by Israel, and only if the lecturers and researchers are accomplished and possess at least a doctorate, according to a new set of procedures by the Defense Ministry.
Mar. 10, 2022
Resist Israel’s Academic occupation of the Palestinians. An officer in the Defense Ministry’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories will soon rule that a certain college instructor, a U.S. citizen, cannot enter the West Bank to teach at a university in Jenin because her area of expertise is not an “essential field” for Palestinians. The field will be determined in accordance with a COGAT ruling. A French student’s application to Bethlehem University will be refused because the Defense Ministry has decided that the department is closed to foreign students.
Israel will halt demolitions of structures built without permits in the Arab community during Ramadan next month, in order to prevent an escalation of the security situation. The police chief’s decision comes amid heightened tensions in East Jerusalem. Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai instructed the police to refrain from carrying out evictions as well as freezing home demolition orders in East Jerusalem and the Negev.
‘Extremely arbitrary’ travel bans stop thousands of Palestinians from going abroad. More than 10,000 Palestinians were issued travel bans by Israel in 2021, and many of them only find out at the border
Israel prohibited 10,594 West Bank Palestinians from traveling abroad last year but granted nearly half of the appeals against the travel bans that were filed.
A 23-year-old Palestinian shot by the Israeli army during a protest march in the West Bank last week succumbed to his wounds, Palestinian media reported on Wednesday.
Ahmad Hikmat Seif was evacuated to hospital on Tuesday last week after he was wounded by gunshots in the stomach and back during a demonstration in support of Palestinian prisoners in the village of Burqa, local sources said.
Burqa and nearby villages in the northern West Bank have become flash points for violence in the last few months, amid renewed attempts by Israelis to reestablish the West Bank settlement of Homesh.
Anti-Arab graffiti was spray-painted on a car and the tires of 30 other vehicles were slashed on Wednesday in the central town of Jaljulya.
The graffiti reads “Arabs beware,” warning Arab men to stay away from “my sister,” referring to Jewish women.
While hate crimes targeting Palestinians are relatively common in the West Bank, this is a rare case within Israel’s borders.
Mar. 10, 2022 2:59 PM
Israel’s coalition passed a law effectively barring Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza who are married to Israeli citizens from gaining citizenship or residency on Thursday, in a fraught final session before the Knesset breaks for recess.
The bill passed with 45 votes in favor and 15 against, with both the United Arab List and Meretz of the coalition opposing the law.
Reported Sabeel, Jerusalem, Mar. 14,
On Thursday, the 10th of March, the Knesset passed the new Citizenship Law. It replaces a temporary order introduced in 2003, which was renewed annually. The law discriminates against those Palestinians who are Palestinian by heritage and Israeli by citizenship. It prevents them from extending citizenship and permanent residency to their Palestinian spouses, if they come from the occupied Palestinian territories or Gaza. It will force thousands of Palestinian families to emigrate or to live separately.
There has been another attack on the Orthodox Monastery in Nablus, at the site of Jacob’s Well. The monastery and the Superior, Archimandrite Justinus, suffered a previous attack on the 24th of January. He has survived no fewer than thirty-two life threatening attacks.
March 7, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Feb. 28
The Palestinian Red Crescent said 14 were wounded in confrontations near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, signalling mounting tensions ahead of Ramadan.
Israeli forces detained at least 20 Palestinians in clashes in Jerusalem’s Old City, and 14 were wounded, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent, four of whom were rushed to hospital.
An 11-year-old child was wounded in the leg by a stun grenade, the Red Crescent said. She was taken to hospital, but her condition remains unclear.
Mar. 1,
Two Palestinians were killed during an overnight raid by Israeli forces at the Jenin refugee camp.
Israeli forces entered the Jenin refugee camp to arrest a suspect – who turned himself in – but two others were killed in firefight
One of them, according to witnesses, was an unarmed 18-year-old, and the other a member of Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad.
Reported by B’Tselem, March 1
Last May, Israel established the settlement outpost of Evyatar on top of Jabal Sabih – a hill near Nablus in the northern West Bank. The outpost was built on land that belongs to the towns of Beita and Qabalan and to the village of Yatma. Since then, the residents of these communities have not had a single day’s peace. Nine months without respite; nine months of fear and loss, and of people killed, wounded and detained.
Since the outpost was established, Israeli forces have killed nine Palestinians from these communities. Eight were shot to death during or near the demonstrations against the land grab; the ninth, a plumber from Beita, was shot and killed near the town’s water mains.
This week, we are publishing a report about the lethal open-fire policy the military is employing against residents of Beita who protest the establishment of the outpost. According to UN figures, in addition to the people killed in the demonstrations, more than 5,300 have been injured: about 180 by live fire, about 1,000 by rubber-coated metal bullets or sponge rounds, and the rest by tear gas inhalation. More than 100 residents of Beita have been arrested, and Israel has revoked the work permits of dozens.
Meanwhile, in Beita, Yatma and Qabalan, everyone is asking, “How many more dead, how many more wounded and arrested? How much destruction and suffering will it take to return to the hill?”
Haaretz, Mar. 1,
A 19-year-old Palestinian student was killed by Israeli army gunfire near a West Bank town just south of Bethlehem, the Palestinian Health Ministry said on Tuesday.
According to an Israeli security official, Amar Shafiq Abu Afifa, a resident of the al-Aroub refugee camp, and another Palestinian were near a viewpoint, between Beit Fajjar and the Migdal Oz settlement, where several Israelis were sitting.
Palestinian families slated for eviction from their Sheikh Jarrah homes can stay there until a final decision on property rights in the contested East Jerusalem neighborhood has been reached, Israel’s top court ruled on Tuesday.
The Supreme Court partially accepted the Palestinian residents’ appeal, letting them keep their homes for now for a reduced rent, paid to the settler group that claims ownership of the houses.
Mar. 2, 2022
Jerusalem police officers have used excessive force against Palestinians this week, police sources say, warning that tensions in the city and elsewhere could seriously escalate if the Jerusalem District, under the command of Maj. Gen. Doron Turgeman, doesn’t change its policy.
Eight Israeli settlers were arrested Wednesday over an attack on soldiers and Palestinians last month in the northern West Bank.
The police suspect that they arrived at the Shavei Shomron checkpoint in an attempt to enter the nearby illegal outpost of Homesh. After soldiers refused to let them pass, the eight allegedly started shoving and attacking soldiers and Palestinians in the checkpoint’s vicinity. A video footage of the incident shows settlers throwing stones at a Palestinian taxi.
Mar. 4, 2022
Sanctions on Russia: What about sanctions helping Palestinians?
The Palestinian leaders are following developments in Ukraine and biting their lips. “This is a time for remaining silent,” a senior Palestinian official told me. “Any statement or taking of a position will cost us dearly. Why annoy the United States and the West? We desperately need their help. And why open a front against the Russians and Putin?”
Mar. 4,
A Palestinian man who was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers near Bethlehem on Tuesday had been strolling with a friend in a forest near his home when he was killed, the friend told B’Tselem’s investigator on Thursday.
Amar Shafiq Abu Afifa was a ‘peaceful’ person on a hike ■ ‘If he had wanted to clash with the army, he had plenty of opportunities in the refugee camp’Amar Shafiq Abu Afifa, a 19-year-old college student, was shot in the leg and then died from another shot to the head, the preliminary investigation into his death shows.
Mar. 5,
This is what Israeli evil looks like: Even after a deathly ill Hisham Abu Hawash ended his hunger strike, which had gone on for 141 days in protest of his administrative detention, Israel insisted on returning him to his cell until the termination of the period of his arrest without trial. Last weekend, he was finally released. He survived a 141 day hunger strike in Israel custody and vows to do it again if arrested. But despite the happiness at home, he is still far from the person he once was. His physicians in Shamir Medical Center, near Rishon Letzion, where he spent the final days of his hunger strike, told him that it would take a year and a half for his body to recover. For now, his speech is faint, his walk hesitant and the food he eats is measured.
Mar. 6,
Karim El Kusami, a 19-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem stabbed police in the Old City early Sunday morning and was subsequently shot dead by officers, according to Israeli police. Two officers were lightly injured during the attack and received treatment.
El Kusami’s brother, Muhammad, was arrested by police forces at the end of a house search conducted by Israeli officers according to an eyewitness.
Mar, 7
Bethlehem factories now face harsher security regulations from Israel. Even after installing cameras in factories, equipping trucks with GPS devices and conducting security checks on workers, factory owners say they have to travel to far-away checkpoints to transfer goods to Israel.
A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli military fire near Jerusalem, the Palestinian Health Ministry and Israel Defense Forces said on Sunday.
According to the IDF, Israeli soldiers operating in the village of Abu Dis identified two suspects throwing firebombs at one of the army positions in the area. Yamin Jaffal was wounded by Israeli fire and later succumbed to his wounds. The second suspect fled the scene.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Mar 7, 2022,
On Tuesday, the 1st of March, entry requirements for travelers to Israel were relaxed. The rule change means that more pilgrims and tourists can return to visit Palestine and Israel after thirty months of absence and uncertainty, due to the pandemic.
A project called ‘Afaq’,(meaning, horizons) is being sponsored by the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and Bethlehem University. It aims to help Palestinian women and young people start their own businesses. So far it has reached one hundred Palestinians across thirteen parishes.
Ra’ef Salaymeh was forced to start demolishing his own home in the occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina on Friday, the 4th of March. The Israeli municipality accused him of building his home without a permit. The municipality rarely grants permits to Palestinians. He would incur a fine of $35,000 in demolition costs if he had not started to demolish his own house.
The funeral of Ammar Abu Afifeh took place at his home in the Arroub refugee camp, north of Hebron on Wednesday, the 2nd of March. Ammar had been shot and killed by Israeli soldiers at the village of Beit Fajjar, north of Hebron on the previous day, but the army had refused to release his body to his family for twenty four hours. Hundreds of Palestinians attended his funeral to protest his killing. Mourners at the funeral were fired on by Israeli soldiers using rubber coated bullets and many also suffered suffocation from tear gas canisters fired at the crowd by the soldiers.
On Wednesday, the 2nd of March, Israeli settlers chased Palestinians who were foraging for gundelia,(or akkoub) in the Khallet Makhoul area, in the northern Jordan Valley. Israeli soldiers provided protection for the settlers and detained some of the foragers. Gundelia is a thistle-like plant which grows for a brief season in the springtime and has been used in traditional Palestinian dishes for generations. Israeli authorities claim the plant is now an endangered species. Palestinians maintain that environmental degradation and any threat to plant species is caused by rapidly expanding Israeli settlements and the proliferation of closed military zones in the occupied Palestinian territories.
February 28, 2022 Summary
Reported by Haaretz, Feb. 21, 2022
Representatives of the three largest churches in Jerusalem warn against attempts of ‘various entities’ who ‘are seeking to minimize, not to say eliminate, any non-Jewish characteristics of the Holy City’. The heads of the largest churches in Jerusalem have urged Israel’s environmental protection minister to halt a plan to expand the Jerusalem Walls National Park surrounding the Old City. The plan calls for expanding the national park on the slopes of the Mount of Olives to property owned by several different churches. The heads of the major denominations believe the scheme will infringe on their rights at the sites and on the status quo there.
Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority said on Monday that it was backing down from an expansion plan to encompass Christian holy sites on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives in a national park, following outcry from major churches.
The Justice Ministry has decided to close an investigation into police officers suspected of killing an uninvolved Israeli Arab during a shootout with criminals a year ago.
The Justice Ministry says it’s ‘more likely’ that Ahmad Hijazi was shot by one of the suspects and not one of the officers. The Family plans to appeal the decision.
The police arrested 13 Palestinians, including three minors, during a nighttime police raid of their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Isawiya.
The Palestinians are suspected of hurling firebombs, stones and fireworks at security forces over the past few months. According to police, the suspects committed the acts between September and November of last year.
Feb. 22,
A Jerusalem court suspended on Tuesday the evacuation of a Palestinian family from their home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, which had been slated for March, in favor of a Jewish settler group. The court feared that the evacuation could have reignited violence in Jerusalem, particularly due to its timing, just before Ramadan.
A 14-year-old Palestinian was shot dead on Tuesday by Israeli forces near Bethlehem, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.
The Israeli military said in a statement that the teen, Mohammed Shehadeh, was throwing a Molotov cocktail before being shot by soldiers in the West Bank town of al-Khader.
Reported by DCIP, Feb. 24,
Yesterday evening, an Israeli soldier shot and killed 13-year-old Mohammad Rezq Shehadeh Salah with live ammunition. The shooting occurred close to the Israeli separation barrier in Al-Khader, southwest of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
After Mohammad was injured and lying on the ground, Israeli soldiers approached him and removed his clothes, according to video footage taken after the shooting. Israeli forces prevented a Palestinian ambulance from reaching Mohammad, and he remained lying on the ground for around 30 minutes after being shot.
Haaretz, Feb. 23,
The Israeli army is refusing to process humanitarian requests from Palestinians and Israeli Arabs seeking to leave or enter the Gaza Strip if the necessary documents that they submit are labeled with a “State of Palestine” header.
Numerous Palestinian applicants were denied permits to attend family funerals, weddings or visit a sick family member over the new practice
In most cases, the heading appears on medical records or death certificates issued by Palestinian hospitals in the Gaza Strip. In many cases, documents have been rejected even though there were no factual disputes regarding the basis for the request.
The Israeli government has issued a demolition order of the home of a 95-year-old physically disabled woman in an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev.
The order was issued even though the woman’s shack is built on the ruins of the old house where she had lived for the last 15 years in order to make it wheel-chair accessible.
Feb. 25,
Israeli soldiers shot on Friday a Palestinian man who the military says threw an explosive device from his car at a West Bank checkpoint, seriously wounding the man, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. He was taken to hospital in Jenin.
There were no other casualties in the incident near the Jalameh checkpoint, in the northern West Bank.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Feb. 28, 2022
Video footage of Israeli police manhandling Muhammad al-Ajlouni, a young Palestinian man with Downs’ syndrome, has caused outrage. On Monday, the 21st of February, Muhammad started to join in with the protesters he came across at Sheikh Jarrah. When soldiers attempted to restrain him, he was terrified. An Israeli police officer came to apologise to his family for the rough treatment on the following day and stated that the police had, ‘a duty to take care of people with special needs’.
On Thursday, the 24th of February, B’Tselem published the full witness statements of those Palestinians who had been affected by settler attacks while driving in the Nablus and Ramallah areas over a period of four days, from the 21st to the 24th of November, 2021. The settlers had damaged Palestinian vehicles by driving by and throwing large stones at their windscreens, injuring three Palestinians and inflicting life-changing injuries on one driver.
B’Tselem has also highlighted the disruption caused by the 50-day closure of the village of Deir Nizam in the Ramallah District by the Israeli military during this past December and January. On the premise of looking for Palestinian children who may have thrown stones at Israeli settler cars, the army set up a checkpoint to control movement in and out of the village, patrolled the village and detained residents as a form of collective punishment.
February 21, 2022 Summary
Reported by Haaretz, Feb 14, 2022,
Large numbers of police were deployed in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on Monday, using stun grenades to disperse young Palestinians who had gathered in the neighborhood.
Supporters of the Likud party rallied nearby with Israeli flags, as far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir returned to a makeshift office he set up in the flash point neighborhood.
Reported by Defence of Children international, Palestine, Feb. 14,
Late last night, Israeli forces entered the village of Silat Al-Harithiya in the northern occupied West Bank to demolish the home of a Palestinian prisoner—a policy that amounts to collective punishment. As villagers gathered near the soldiers, an Israeli sniper shot 16-year-old Mohammad Akram Ali Taher Abu Salah in the eye with live ammunition.
Bystanders transported Mohammad to a hospital in Jenin, where he was pronounced dead a few hours later.
Haaretz,
A 26-year-old Palestinian was killed Tuesday in the West Bank by Israeli army fire near Ramallah, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. Israeli defense officials have confirmed the fatality and said the circumstances of the incident are being investigated.
Nihad Amin al-Barghouti was shot in the village of Nabi Saleh, according to a local activist, after an Israeli force entered the village northwest of Ramallah.
Feb. 16,
Elad, a right-wing Zionist organization, has been holding educational activities on private Palestinian farmland in East Jerusalem under the auspices of the Jerusalem Municipality.
The activity is defined as a joint project between Elad and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and was made possible after Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon signed a landscaping order to develop the area of the Hinnom Valley where the farmland is located.
Police arrested on Wednesday 17 people suspected of assaulting Palestinians and causing damage to property in the West Bank village of Hawara last month.
Three Palestinians were injured in the incident, after a convoy of cars passed through the West Bank village of Hawara and some passengers hurled stones at vehicles and shopsThe suspects, some of whom are from the north, settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, are being questioned by the police on suspicion of assault, taking part in illegal gathering and causing damage to property out of racist motives. Their detention may be extended later on Wednesday.
Reported by Defence of Children International Palestine, Feb 17,
Israeli authorities renewed the administrative detention of Palestinian teen Mohammad Mansour for an additional four-month period, adding to more than 300 days of imprisonment without charge or trial. Israeli forces detained Mohammad, then 17, during a night raid on his home in Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank on April 9, 2021. He’s been imprisoned without charge ever since.
Haaretz, Feb. 18,
The Shin Bet’s former No. 3 thinks it’s time for Israel to rethink its modus operandi. ‘We arrested countless Palestinians for no reason”, says ex-0top Shin Bey officer.
The events of the past two weeks – tensions in Sheikh Jarrah and the increase in the number of Palestinians killed in clashes with the army – have strengthened assessments inside the Israel Defense Forces that a major escalation could break out in the territories around April, between the start of Ramadan and Passover.
Dozens of settlers, the ‘Klan on Mt.Qantub’, swooped down, armed with axes and clubs, on a pastoral shepherding community on the dark edge of the Judean Desert and attacked a 73-year-old Palestinian, Mohammed Shalaida this week.
He is now sitting on an old bed in a shabby room in Sa’ir, a town near Hebron. His head and hand are bandaged: Shalalda is recovering from a pogrom. He was hospitalized for five days in Hebron and is now recuperating at the home of one of his sons. When he is well again, he’ll return to his tent-home in his family’s small pastoral enclave, which lies a few kilometers to the east, on Mount Qanub. Shalalda, who has 10 children, was born on that mountain and will probably die there, too.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Feb. 21, 2022,
On Friday, the 18th of February, representatives from the Humanitarian Country Team in Palestine met with the Salem family in the neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem. The family of twelve, including six children, face forcible eviction from their home in March. The team, comprised of members of UN agencies and international and Palestinian NGOs has called on the Israeli authorities to halt all further evictions from the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem. 218 Palestinian families are living with this imminent threat.
Footage of Israeli soldiers arresting a 19-year-old Palestinian at his workplace at night in al-Bireh, near Ramallah was released on Wednesday, the 16th of February. Malik Maala was working as a guard at an industrial facility to raise money for his university tuition fees when soldiers arrived to arrest him. The film shows that when the soldiers came to detain him, he raised his hands behind his head, expecting to be handcuffed. At this point an Israeli soldier released a military dog which pounced on him and attacked him. Some moments later the dog was recovered by a soldier and Malik was detained and taken to an undisclosed location.
Acute water scarcity has forced the villagers of Furush Beit Dajan, near Nablus, to abandon their once famous lemon trees and to grow tomatoes in greenhouses instead. There are plenty of wells under their land for crops but their water has been diverted. The Israeli army has constructed artisian aquifers and supplies unlimited quantities of water to the nearby Israeli settlements of Hamra and Mekhora.
On Friday, the 25th of February Sabeel Jerusalem will host an event with Rev. Mitri Raheb. He will be discussing a document he helped to write which is entitled, ‘We choose abundant life’. It is the work of a group of theologians and specialists in human and geopolitical sciences, both women and men, from different church traditions, who have come together to lay out a new vision for the people of the Middle East.
Last week Palestinian Christians gathered in Beit Sahour to pay tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died in December 2021. The prayer service was held at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, where Tutu prayed when he visited in 1989. Tutu came to Beit Sahour during the first Palestinian Intifada. He spoke at Shepherd’s Field, where he was welcomed by thousands of Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim. Tutu identified the situation in Palestine/Israel as apartheid three decades before the recent reports of B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Samir Mansour once again opened his bookstore/library in Gaza to customers on Thursday, the 17th of February. His shop had been completely destroyed by Israeli bombing in May 2021. Last year Human Rights lawyers Mahvish Rukhsana and Clive Stafford Smith led a fundraising operation called 3DC to help raise donations from all around the world to help him rebuild and restock his shop.
February 14, 2022 Summary
Reported by Haaretz, Feb. 9, 2022
Two vehicles owned by a Palestinian man were vandalized Tuesday night in the West Bank by a group of Hebrew-speaking attackers, hours after the nearby illegal outpost of Ma’ale Ahuvia was evacuated.
The group smashed the windows and punctured the tires of the car and tractor owned by a resident of the Palestinian village Deir Jarir.
The Netzah Yehuda Battalion, the West Bank militia formed inside the Israeli army, has a long history of bad behavior, driven by a far-right ideology imbibed from the settler movement.
Haaretz, Feb 13,
A 17-year-old Palestinian was killed by live Israeli fire in clashes in the Jenin area that erupted after the military demolished the home of one of the Palestinian attackers convicted of a deadly shooting attack last year.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Muhammad Akram Ali Tahr was killed by a gunshot wound to the head fired by Israeli forces. The ministry reported 11 more Palestinians were wounded. The Red Crescent said two of them were in serious condition.
Far-right MK Ben-Gvir came to Sheikh Jarrah to reopen an office and pour some more fuel on the flames which threaten to reignite simmering Arab-Jewish tensions in the neighborhood.
If the next round of violence pitting Israel against Hamas and the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem begins soon, it will begin in the ugliest corner of the city, in the small plot of land between the homes of the Yushvaevs and the Salems in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. The area is covered with garbage and construction debris, with a large muddy puddle in the center, and next to it a burned-out vehicle and a trampled fence. This plot has been the center of the confrontation between the neighborhood settlers and Palestinians in recent weeks.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Feb 14, 2022,
On Saturday, the !2th of February, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territory reported that the Israeli authorities had demolished, confiscated or forced owners to demolish 53 Palestinian-owned homes in Area C of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The authorities cite the reason for the demolitions is the lack of Israeli building permits,(which Palestinians find almost impossible to obtain). The demolitions affected the livelihoods of 400 Palestinians and displaced 26 people, including 13 children. Some of the structures that were torn down were temporary shelters, which had been provided as humanitarian assistance to families whose homes had already been demolished.
‘Coalition-stop settlements’is a broad alliance of NGOs, grassroots movements, trades unions and politicians who have come together to halt the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory. On Sunday, the 20th of February, they are launching the European Citizen’s Initiative. They are aiming to get one million signatures to support their petition. They are appealing to the European Commission to start respecting international law by stopping all trade with illegal settlements.
During the first month of 2022 the Israeli authorities have arrested 502 Palestinians, according to prisoner advocacy groups. Among the detainees were 6 women and 54 children, one of whom was younger than twelve-years-old. There are now 4,500 Palestinian detainees in Israeli military prisons, 500 of whom are held on administrative detention. Many prisoners are suffering from Covid, with 500 cases reported in Ofer Prison alone.
Stanford University in the US has announced that the scientist Bassam Dally is now ranked in the top two per cent of scientists across the world. Bassam is a Palestinian- Australian academic and his family originated from Kafr Yassif, near Galilee. His research currently focuses on the use of renewable energy sources to decarbonise pollution from heavy industries. Alongside his academic work he has continued to support Palestine.
This year Kumi Now is taking a fresh look at the different challenges faced by Palestinians and finding out from them about the innovative ways they have come up with to overcome them. On Tuesday, the 15th of February, Vera Baboun, who served as the first female mayor of Bethlehem, is featured in the new Palestinian Innovator Series.
February 9, 2022 Summary
Reported by Haaretz, Feb. 7, 2022,
Israel’s public security minister has called for an investigation into the Israel Police’s use of hard sponge-tipped bullets against Bedouin, five of whom suffered head injuries, during protests last month over the planting of JNF trees.
Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev asked the Justice Ministry’s police misconduct unit to investigate the cases after learning about them from a report published by the Hebrew edition of Haaretz on Sunday.
16-year-old Abdullah Tarabin lost an eye ■ Bassem has three fractures in his jaw ■ Taleb’s skull was smashed ■ Obeideh and Uday were injured in their faces ■ Israeli police loosened restrictions on the use of the hard sponge-tipped bullets. These are the stories of those paying the high price for it.
It’s been two weeks since his eldest son, Abdullah, lost his left eye to a hard sponge-tipped police bullet, but Mohammed Tarabin, a soft-spoken 38-year-old man, still finds it difficult to work up the courage to tell his family.
“I’ve lied to everyone,” he told Haaretz, explaining that he hasn’t been able to share the news that the 16-year-old has permanently lost his sight in the eye.
Feb. 8,
Israel said its forces killed three Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday in Nablus, accusing them of several shooting attacks targeting military forces and Israeli civilians in the West Bank over the past weeks.
The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the three deaths, calling the Israeli operation “an assassination.” The Foreign Ministry described it as a “field execution.”
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Feb. 8, 2022,
Amnesty International launched its most recent report, entitled ‘Israel’s apartheid against Palestine’ on Tuesday, the 1st of February in occupied East Jerusalem. The report concludes that the Israeli occupation state has imposed a ‘cruel system of domination and has committed crimes against humanity’. Fourteen Israeli NGOs and human rights’ groups have signed a statement in support of the Amnesty International report and expressed their concern over an attack against the report by the Israeli government which accuses it of being antisemitic.
The Rawajba family have spent the last fourteen months trying to establish what has happened to their son. They do not know if he is alive or dead and they are worn down with suffering. Their son, Bilal was wounded by the Israeli army when he drove by Huwara, an army checkpoint near Nablus. He was reported to have been injured and airlifted to an unnamed hospital in Tel Aviv. At one point the family were contacted to let them know he had died, but they were later told he was still receiving treatment.
The scenes of Syrian refugees struggling to survive in wintry conditions moved Ibraheem Khalil and his friend Jabr Hijaz to launch an online campaign to raise funds for the work of relief organisations building houses for them in Syria, Jordan and Turkey. They have raised more than 10 million shekels in relief funds from Palestinians living in Arab cities in Israel.
On Saturday, the 29th of January, Episcopalians from the Washington D.C. area adopted resolutions, (3 to 1), to oppose the Israeli apartheid, to confront Christian Zionism and to defend the right to boycott as a legitimate form of protest.
This week five Palestinian NGOs, supported by Israeli human rights’ NGOs, made a formal request that the IDF Legal Advisor from the West Bank reverse his declaration, made in October 2021, that they were ‘unlawful associations’. A sixth group is not part of the latest legal challenge. The Palestinian NGOs have long established records of working to support the human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, and have worked in partnership with the UN and the global human rights’ community. The IDF has stated that it will not produce evidence against the groups as it is based on classified intelligence.
The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, first passed in 2003, makes inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza ineligible for the granting of Israeli citizenship and residency permits that are usually available through marriage to other Israeli citizens. Palestinians living in East Jerusalem pay a particularly heavy price for this law, often denied unification rights with members of their family. Some Palestinian families have recently been granted residency permits, but many thousands are still denied the right to live with their own family members.
A US District Court judge has blocked the State of Texas from enforcing its Anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Law against a Palestinian-American contractor who refused to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel. The judge stated that this law infringed Rasmy Hassounas’ First Amendment rights. A number of US states have recently introduced legislation to prevent citizens from participating in any economic boycott of Israel and from any expression of support for Palestinians on the grounds of antisemitism.
Haaretz, Feb. 9,
Thousands take to the streets in the west Bank over the colt of living. The price of fruits and vegetables has skyrocketed, and gasoline, electricity and dairy products have also gone up substantially, but the Palestinian Authority has had a hard time providing solutions.
Feb. 9, 2022
Police cleared out some 20 right-wing activists who set up several mobile structures in a largely Bedouin area in southern Israel early Wednesday morning. At least 15 were briefly detained after refusing to leave ‘Ma’aleh Paula,’ which was set up as a new ‘settlement’ by activists looking to pressure authorities on Bedouin construction in the Negev
February 7, 2022
Reported by Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ (PCHR) on Jan 31, 2022,
On Saturday, 29 January 2022, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza announced that the Israeli authorities have banned the import of new medical radiology devices for the Gaza Strip hospitals for several months, including stationary and mobile x-ray machines. According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ (PCHR) follow-up, it was confirmed that the Israeli occupation authorities have banned the import of new medical devices necessary for radiology services in the Gaza Strip hospitals for 10 months. The Israeli authorities also banned the import of spare parts necessary for the maintenance of many broken and out-of-service medical devices despite their importance in diagnosing diseases and treating patients.
Reported by Haaretz, Jan. 31, 2022,
New research has uncovered an Israeli military operation commanded by Moshe Dayan, whose goal was to forcibly remove Bedouin citizens from their lands. ‘Transferring the Bedouin to new territories would annul their rights as landowners and make them tenants on government lands,’ wrote Dayan in 1951.
WASHINGTON – Several of the most significant U.S.-Jewish establishment organizations issued a rare joint statement Sunday, vehemently condemning Amnesty International UK’s upcoming report accusing Israel of being guilty of “the crime against humanity of apartheid.”
The report, slated to be released Tuesday, marks the first time the group is officially using the term “apartheid” to describe the state of affairs in Israel, going further than last year’s Human Rights Watch report that limited its description of apartheid to Palestinian areas under Israeli occupation. Various human rights organizations within Israel proper, including B’Tselem and Yesh Din, have also begun using the term in recent years.
The years-long weakening of the Palestinian Authority, widely unpopular among the Palestinian public, has served to strengthen Hamas and threaten Israel’s security, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Monday.
While Gantz maintained that the Israeli government refuses to negotiate with the Palestinian leadership, he stressed that maintaining a “diplomatic horizon,” is within Israeli interests.
Reported by Al Jazeera, Feb. 1,
Israel forced two Palestinian families in occupied Jerusalem to self-demolish their own homes this morning. Thirteen Shqeirat family members, incl. 5 children, were forcibly displaced.
Haaretz, Feb. 3,
Non-profit groups and aid organizations from Israel’s Arab community have raised more than 20 million shekels ($6.3 million) for residents of refugee camps in northern Syria, as the region suffers from freezing temperatures.
Officials from the aid organizations said they were surprised by the outpouring of donations they received from the community, many of whose members are of low socio-economic standing and are facing their own economic hardships.
Haareetz, Feb. 4,
Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank confront winter Covid , fueled by Omicron. 70,000 active cases in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip on Thursday, Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry reports, as West Bank hospitals reach 85% capacity.
Analysis: Settlers score decisive win against israeli government.
One of Avichai Mendelblit’s last decisions before his term as attorney general ended this week was also one of the most shameful. He legalized the illegal West Bank settlement of Evyatar. In his legal opinion, he wrote that the preparations for founding the settlement can begin now, and when they have been completed the government can authorize the construction of a new settlement on the site.
A mentally ill Palestinian, 30, was arrested on suspicion of running over a soldier. Now for weeks, despite three court orders, Israel has failed to provide a psychiatric opinion saying that he is mentally fit for detention or to stand trial.
The Israeli government said Thursday that no date has been set for the evacuation of the illegal outpost of Homesh, and that the decision to remove the last remaining structure in the northern West Bank site rests only with Defense Minister Benny Gantz.
In response to a petition filed at the Supreme Court by the Palestinians who own the land, the government also said that it will continue to allow Israelis who study at the outpost yeshiva to come there, despite this violating a law that bars the presence of Israeli civilians from areas which Israel withdrew in 2005.
Female Palestinian journalist Raja Jaber was shot and injured by Israeli regime forces while she was doing her job in covering the weekly anti-settlement protest in Beita town, in the occupied West Bank.
Reported by the Palestine Information Centre, Feb. 5,
The Israeli occupation police on Friday summoned Jerusalemite researcher and activist Nasser al-Hadmi and notified him of their decision to impose renewed restrictions on his movement and contacts in the holy city.
According to the police decision which was issued at the behest of the Shin Bet intelligence service, Hadmi will be banished from east Jerusalem and banned from contacting certain Jerusalemite figures for six months.
The Israeli intelligence apparatus claims that Hadmi, who works as head of the Jerusalem Committee Against Judaization, is a Hamas activist and participates in events that pose a security threat to Israel.
Similar restrictions had been imposed on Hadmi during the past six months, but they expired on Thursday, February 3, 2022.
Hadmi described the renewed measure against him as “a violation of his rights to freedoms of movement, worship and work,” adding that this would prevent him from working, visiting his doctor and the bank, shopping for his family and taking his children to schools and other places.
Haaretz, Feb. 6, 2022
The decision by outgoing Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit to establish a settlement on the location of the outpost Evyatar did nothing to cool the ardor of the residents of Beita, the Palestinian village whose lands the outpost occupies. On the contrary. “It only strengthens our will to resist and fight,” a 17-year-old, attending the demonstration against the outpost, the largest weekly protest in the West Bank, told Haaretz. The Palestinians of Beita have demonstrated every week since the establishment of Evyatar last year, losing eight people. With Mendelblit’s final action in office, he has given the protests a new lease of life.
Feb. 6, 2022, Ibrahim Abu Yaqoub was killed by Israeli soldiers when he was out for a walk. A soldier’s testimony exposes the contrast between how the army treated his death and how it reacted to the death of a Palestinian-American.
As a number of writers have asserted, with varying levels of cynicism, the Israel Defense Forces treated the death of 78-year-old Omar As’ad seriously because he was an American citizen. A look back at the killing of another Palestinian, Ibrahim Abu Yaqoub, 34, shows how extraordinary the steps are that the military has taken against those involved in As’ad’s death.
Feb. 7, 2022 6:05 AM
The Israel Defense Forces and police continue to pass the buck to one another in the face of increasing numbers of politically motivated anti-Arab crimes committed by Jews in the West Bank.
‘It’s very difficult to instill an understanding in the commanders and soldiers that their job is to protect the safety of both sides,’ a senior security source said, ‘Eventually, this violence will blow up in our faces’
January 31, 2022
Reported by Haaretzm Jan. 23, 2022 (Opinion )
This weekend’s attack on Israeli peace activists by violent West Bank settlers should put to rest any attempts to doubt or dismiss the severity of what is a grotesque and accelerating campaign of terror. But perhaps even more alarming than the attempts to turn a blind eye to settler violence is the misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the settlers’ goals. Most violent attacks by West Bank settlers are not random acts of hooliganism. They are harnessed to a strategy, a political objective wholehearted endorsed by sections of the current Israeli government.
Jan. 25,
WASHINGTON – Seven prominent American-Jewish organizations urged Israeli officials Tuesday to condemn “the ongoing terrorism and political violence committed by Jewish Israeli extremists in the West Bank against Palestinians, Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers.”
Jan. 24, 2022
Raz Sagi, a city council member from the Jewish Tel Aviv suburb of Rosh Ha’ayin, and Musa Abu Zaid, of the neighboring Arab town of Kafr Qasem, sit together in a small protest tent. The smell of coffee prepared on a camping stove wafts through the tent in the middle of an open field near Kafr Qasem. They have been sitting there for the past month as part of a joint effort to stop the construction of the Kesem power plant, which is slated to be built between their two communities.Jan. 24, 2022
Three Palestinians were reportedly wounded on Monday as settlers hurled stones at businesses and cars in the town of Hawara south of Nablus in the West Bank.
According to Palestinian reports, three Palestinians were lightly injured and the windows of some 20 cars and two stores were shattered in the attack. In a video of the incident, soldiers are seen standing at the side of the road and a military jeep is seen driving behind the settlers’ vehicles.
During a two-hour visit to the Eyal Checkpoint near Tul Karm on a particularly cold January afternoon, hundreds of Palestinians, perhaps thousands, were on their way home. Aside from the few women, most of whom work in agriculture, they were men in clean clothes and tall, dirty boots, hinting that they work in construction. They had set out for Israel 14 hours earlier. Now, they will travel in a Palestinian taxi to their homes near Nablus, Jenin or Tul Karm, only to get up before dawn the next morning and start the exhausting trip all over again.
A great exploitation: under the current system, tens of thousands of Palestinian workers are each forced to pay 2,500 shekels ($780) a month for a work permit in Israel.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Jan 31, 2022,
On Saturday, 29th December, Sabeel international held a service of thanks for the like of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The service, on Zoom, was very well attended and Sabeel are thankful to all those who attended to celebrate the life of Archbishop Tutu, a former patron of Sabeel.
On Friday, 29th December, Daoud and Daher Nassar from the Tent of Nations were attacked by a group of 15 men carrying clubs and other weapons. Daoud and Daher were both hospitalised with head injuries following the assault. Sabeel asks for prayers for the Nassar family, and especially for Daoud and Daher, as they recover from this attack, and asks for blessings for the Tent of Nations as they strive to live on their farm and seek the way of peace as they ‘refuse to be enemies’.
13-year-old Lujain Alqattawi is a finalist in the Time Magazine Kid of the Year competition. Lujain, an American Palestinian, began to teach Palestinian refugee girls in her community to speak English and has created a programme with the aim of healing Palestinian refugee girls to achieve their dreams.
On Saturday, the 23rd of January a group of lawless Palestinians attacked Archimandrite Ioustinos, the caretaker of the Church on the site of Jacob’s Well in the city of Nablus. He suffered medium physical injuries. This attack is not the first one, as it happened several times in the past. The Palestinian Authority promised to bring the persons who did it to justice but until now no one was arrested.
Kumi Now online sessions restart on Tuesday 1st February with the first in our new ‘Palestinian Innovators’ series. These sessions, which take place on the first Tuesday of each month, will hear from upcoming and influential Palestinians. On the third Thursday of each month we will hear about possible solutions to the situation in Palestine.
January 24, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Jan. 17, 2022
A Palestinian man was shot after attempting to stab an Israeli soldier at the Gush Etzion Junction in the West Bank, the military’s Spokesperson’s Unit said Monday.
The Palestinian exited his vehicle, armed with a knife, and attempted to stab the soldier. The soldier then shot his attacker, according to the military. There were no casualties among the Israeli soldiers, the army says, as Palestinian media says the assailant, Falah Jaradat, was killed Jan. 17,
Israeli military restricts Palestinians, but allows settler event at evicted oupost.
Some 1,200 people participated in a Tu B’Shvat seder on Sunday at the evacuated settlement of Homesh in the West Bank, although the site is a closed military zone and the event was held without IDF permission or coordination. Other events there since the killing of local yeshiva student Yehuda Dimentman were coordinated with the army.Jan. 17,
The eviction of a family from their home in the flashpoint East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah was delayed after police clashed with locals and failed to complete it on Monday.
The attempted eviction saw Mohammed Salahiya, a Palestinian, barricading himself on the roof with his children and threatening to blow up a gas tank.
Then on Jan. 19, The pre-dawn demolition marked the end of a struggle over a family home in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah on land that has been expropriated by the Jerusalem Municipality to build a school
Israeli police carried out a demolition order and arrested over a dozen people in the flashpoint East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah early Wednesday morning, heading off a two-day struggle between a local family and the Jerusalem Municipality.
The European Union condemned Thursday the “worrying trend of increasing numbers of demolitions and evictions in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem,” one day after the after police razed a Palestinian home in the flashpoint neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
The statement issued by EU spokesperson Peter Stano highlighted the decision by the Jerusalem municipality to “advance a plan for the construction of more than 1,450 settlement-housing units” in East Jerusalem, warning that the plan “undermines the possibility of Jerusalem serving as the future capital of both States.”
Jan 19, 2022
Where the streets have no Arabic name, a group of women remind us of Palestinian history. Behind the project Shawari’a Yafa (‘Streets of Jaffa’), is a mix of Arab and Jewish residents, who seek to commemorate Arab street names that were Hebraized by putting up additional street signs. An enterprise of the utmost importanceJan. 21, 2022 12:56 PM
Four human rights activists were injured following a settler attack on Friday near the Palestinian village of Burin in the West Bank. Footage from the scene depicts a group of masked people attacking activists with clubs, hurling stones at them and setting one of their cars on fire. The injured activists were evacuated to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva.
Then on Jan. 22, Israeli public security minister called the masked setters who attacked human rights activists on Friday a ‘terror organization’, but stated that it is ‘very difficult’ for police to arrest the perpetrators.
Jan. 21, 2022
There’s a mass Palestinian grave at a popular Israeli beach, veterans confess. The Israeli veterans of the 1948 battle at Tantura village finally come clean about the mass killing of Arabs that took place after the village’s surrender.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem on January 24,
On Wednesday 19th January, Israeli occupation forces evicted the Salhiye family from their home and plant nursery business in the East Jerusalem area of Sheikh Jarrah. In previous days attempts to force the family out had failed due to the peaceful resistance of the family and others, however, the forces arrived in the very early hours of Wednesday morning, evicted the family and demolished their house and several surrounding structures.
After 13 days in a coma, South Hebron Hills community leader Suleiman al-Hathalin (Haj Suleiman) passed away in hospital. 75-year-old Suleiman had been run over by a tow truck operating for the Israeli occupation forces and had suffered head injuries and broken bones.
Rasmia Barbur, 28, from the northern city of Nof Hagalil became the 6th victim of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian community this year after being killed by her husband. Violence in the Arab community in northern Israel has been on the rise in recent years with 126 Israeli-Palestinian citizens killed in 2021. Police investigation of these killings is not always completed with only 23 percent solved compared to 71 percent in the Jewish community.
Jewish settler extremists from the illegal outpost of Givat Ronen attacked Palestinians and left-wing Israeli activists, including some from Rabbis for Human Rights, as they planted olive trees in the area of Burin, near Nablus in the West Bank. In an unusual move, the Yesha Council which represents much of the settler leadership, condemned the attacks as ‘aberrant’ and said that ‘such grave conduct is against the values of the people of Israel…It is not our path. We call for authorities to investigate the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.”
UN agencies, including UNICEF, UNWRA, and OHCHR, have called upon Israeli occupation authorities to immediately release Palestinian teenager Amal Nakhleh. Amal, who suffers from a severe autoimmune disease requiring continuous medical treatment and monitoring, has been held in an Israeli military prison on administrative detention without charge or trial for over a year.
January 17, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Jan. 10,
Hundreds of police officers were deployed to guard Jewish National Fund workers preparing land for forestation near the Bedouin town of Hura in the Negev on Monday – land used by locals for agriculture.
Several people were detained after residents gathered to protest the work, including Nas Radio journalist Yasser Okbi. He was detained on suspicion of interfering with police, despite the fact that he had presented his press card. One person was reported to be injured.
Jan. 12,
The Israeli government said on Wednesday that future work by the Jewish National Fund in the Negev will be negotiated by coalition partners, in a bid to ease tensions after days of violent clashes over forestation work on the land used for agriculture by local Bedouin.
The JNF’s tree-planting, which began on Monday, ended on Wednesday as planned.Jan. 13,Police disperse hundreds of protesters with stun grenades and tear gas, as Israel’s Negev erupts in protest over Jewish National Fund’s tree-planting on land used for agriculture by local Bedouin.
Thirteen protesters were arrested Thursday after clashes in southern Israel resumed for the fourth day in a row, with hundreds of protesters demonstrating against the Jewish National Fund’s tree-planting in Bedouin communities in the Negev.
Jan. 11,
The Gaza Health Ministry says: “We don’t have the ability to deal with the Omicron wave”, and urges the international community to press Israel to let more medical equipment into Gaza.
Jan. 11,
The High Court of Justice has for the first time refrained from issuing a freeze order for the demolition of a terrorist’s house to avoid harming the victim’s grieving family with procedural misunderstandings.
Judge Barak-Erez criticized the state for, among other things, not informing the family of Eliyahu Kay in advance that an order might be issued to freeze the demolition of the terrorist’s house, which would then lead to a hearing.Jan. 10
Fifteen sewage treatment plants were torched in recent years, menacing water facilities of mainly Palestinians in Northern Israel. Haarerz is asking: “Where are the police?” The police tell corporations to hire security guards.
The burnt smell surrounding the water pumping facility in the village of Zarzir is particularly strong against the backdrop of the pastoral landscape of the green valley spreading beneath the village homes.
Almost a year has passed since the previous arson attack against the facility, which was preceded by another six instances of destruction, break-ins or arson. The local water company has already stopped counting the number of times when fuel was stolen from the site.Jan. 11, 2022 12:55 PM
The shooting of a Palestinian in the West Bank settlement of Anatot raised questions on the ‘problematic’ scope of armed security coordinators’ work, as one defense official put it. ‘This system is often exploited for ideological interests,’ attorney says.
They walk around armed. They’re trained by the army. They’re allowed to detain Palestinians, and they have the authority to send out emergency response teams. In some sense, they’re the local sheriffs, the highest security authority in and around the settlements. But who has authority over the people responsible for day-to-day security in the West Bank? Not only by Palestinians or leftist activists who find fault in their mode of operation wonder about this question, but also the security coordinators themselves.
Jack Khoury
Jan. 12, 2022 3:58 PM
An 80-year-old Palestinian man died of a heart attack on Wednesday after being detained overnight by Israeli forces in the Ramallah area, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. According to the ministry’s statement, Omar Abdalmajeed, As’ad was “assaulted” and beaten by Israeli soldiers, who stopped him on his way home, in the village of Jiljilya, and handcuffed him.
Jiljilya village council head Fouad Qattoum said As’ad was returning home after visiting relatives when Israeli soldiers stopped his car, bound him, blindfolded him and led him away to a building still under construction. Another villager said he saw Israeli soldiers walking As’ad away around 3 A.M.
As’ad’s body was found more than an hour later, according to vegetable seller Mamdouh Elaboud, who said he was himself detained for 20 minutes, then released.As’ad’s family said he was taken to a hospital in Ramallah, where he was pronounced dead. His brother said that As’ad was “an elderly man who suffered from respiration and heart problems.”
“I don’t understand how a man that age can be considered a danger,” the brother added. “They handcuffed him and shoved him. That’s abuse… I have no doubt what he went through caused his death.”
Jan. 13,
Proof of vaccination or recovery from COVID is necessary to gain admission to a range of public places, but Palestinians with legal residency in Israel cite several obstacles in receiving the so-called Green PassPalestinians who are married to Israeli citizens and are legal residents of Israel are unable to download the Health Ministry’s Green Pass, which certifies that they are vaccinated against the coronavirus or recovered from the virus. Many Palestinians reported difficulties in acquiring the Green Pass, even if they were vaccinated in Israel. The Health Ministry said in response that the matter is being dealt with, but affected Palestinians say the issue is persisting.
One of the affected Palestinians is Rim Shibat, who is a legal resident of Israel and is married to an Israeli. She has been living in the southern Israeli Bedouin town of Rahat for several years and has national medical coverage provided through a special plan. She has received three doses of the coronavirus vaccine but has been unable to obtain a COVID certificate on the Health Ministry website. When she enters her personal details, she receives a message saying that it does not match system records. “We feel humiliated and discriminated against after so many months of trying to issue a Green Pass so we can live like normal people in Israel,” Rim Shibat’s husband, Adam Ziadna, said. They are being brushed off and told to contact the Palestinian Authority, “where my wife hasn’t lived since 2004,” he added. “The Health Ministry is washing its hands of us.”Jan. 11, 2022
The Police Internal Investigations Department pressed charges Tuesday against a female Border Police officer for attacking a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The indictment, which was filed to the Jerusalem Magisters Court, charges Orian Ben Califa with assault and obstruction of justice. “The suspect grabbed the complainant and ripped her hijab off her head and then pulled her hair.” states the indictment against an officer who allegedly assaulted a Palestinian in Jerusalem.
Jan. 17,
A Palestinian man is threatening to blow up a gas tank while barricaded on the roof of his home as a large police force attempts to evict his family from their home in the flashpoint East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
The Jerusalem Municipality expropriated the land on which the family home is built in order to build a school.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, January 17, 2022,
An 82-year-old Jewish woman, who is being investigated by Labour for alleged antisemitism for the third time in less than three years, is threatening legal action against the party, claiming it has unlawfully discriminated against her based on her belief in anti-Zionism.
Film stars including Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Gael García Bernal, and Viggo Mortensen, have backed Harry Potter actress Emma Watson, after her social media post about Palestinian solidarity drew ire from Israeli officials. “We join Emma Watson in support of the simple statement that ‘solidarity is a verb’, including meaningful solidarity with Palestinians struggling for their human rights under international law,” said a statement signed by more than 40 film industry notables.
Israeli settlers attacked the Palestine TV crew this morning while they were returning from a filming assignment in the Jordan Valley. The crew, composed of three members, were stopped and forced out of their vehicle near the village of Bittin, east of Ramallah. The settlers proceeded to harass and attack the Palestine TV members until they were bruised. They, the settlers, were protected by Israeli occupation officers nearby, who did nothing to stop the brutality.
Dozens of Palestinian Bedouins have been wounded in a crackdown by Israeli forces on a protest against continuing Israeli forestation work on land residents say they privately own near the southern city of Beer al-Sabe (Beer Sheva). The Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) use tree planting as a method of preventing Palestinians from accessing their land and to obliterate Palestinian villages.
An 80-year-old Palestinian was found dead in a village in the West Bank early Wednesday, his body still handcuffed after an Israeli arrest raid. Omar Abdulmajeed Asad and other family members were returning from visiting relatives when they were stopped by the soldiers. After the troops withdrew, villagers found Asad’s body in a building under construction.
January 10, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Jan. 6, 2022,
A Palestinian was killed overnight Wednesday in an exchange of gunfire with Israeli troops at the entrance to the Balata refugee camp, adjacent to the West Bank city of Nablus.
The man was identified as Bakir Mohammed Hashash, and according to his brother, he has been wanted by Israeli security forces for some time.
Yehuda Dimentman’s murder last month has intensified setters’ revival efforts around the illegal Homesh outpost, and has led to a number of attacks against the local Palestinians and punishment of the Palestinians by the military.
For three weeks, all traffic from Nablus to Jenin has been funneled to a small, narrow, broken road. The reason for this is an IDF checkpoint erected near the settlement of Shavei Shomron on Route 60, the main road connecting the two districts, and is manned by soldiers 24 hours a day since the killing of Yehuda Dimentman near the settlement of Homesh last month.
A masked right-wing protester attacked a Palestinian press photographer on Wednesday, during a demonstration against the release of Palestinian detainee Hisham Abu Hawash in front of the central Israeli hospital he is kept in after ending a 141-day hunger strike.
The Israeli protester struck Faiz Abu Rmeleh, a photographer for Turkish news agency Anadolu, with two fists, knocked him to the ground, and fled the scene. The police canvassed the scene, but has yet to locate the suspect.
‘We were playing. A white car passed by and two people got out of it and started firing. We all ran, but Ammar was on the swing and couldn’t run fast,’ says 7-year-old witness
A 4-year-old (sic.),was killed in northern Israel on Thursday, with sources saying the toddler was struck in the neck by a bullet.
The boy, Ammar Hujayrat, was found unconscious in a playground in the Bedouin town of Bir al-Maksur near Nazareth. The police are checking whether Hujayrat had been hit by a stray bullet and said it was fired from a construction site some 300 meters (nearly 1,000 feet) away from the playground.
Reported on Jan 9,’The guns have started to threaten all of us, even in our own homes,’ says the mayor of the Bedouin village in northern Israel, where 3-year-old Ammar Hujayrat was killed by a stray bullet,
Deputy Economy Minister Yair Golan of the Meretz party came under widespread criticism after he dubbed settlers at the West Bank Homesh outpost “subhuman” on Thursday, in response to the vandalism of gravestones by Jewish settlers in a nearby Palestinian village.
In response, Haaretz reported, on Jan. 9, Gideon Levy’s words: “They’re the scum of the earth. Any one who snatches a Palestinian teen, abuses him for hours, beats him and kicks him, ties him up under the car’s hood and then finally hangs him from a tree and burns the soles of his feet with a lighter is subhuman. How is it possible to say otherwise?
Anyone who expels the legal owners of the land he stole by threatening to shoot them, destroys their gravestones, tramples their harvests into the dust, vandalizes their cars and torches their fields is subhuman. What else?”
Jan. 6.
‘I need a place to play, Dad,’ my seven-year-old daughter, Daliah, tells me. When my kids see the playgrounds built for the settlers’ kids, they have a hundred questions. They ask why I can’t build them the same kind of playground,” Nasser Nawaja, a resident of Susya and a field researcher for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem in the South Hebron Hills, tells me. “Targeting our kid’s play space is so disturbing: so crude, intrusive, almost obscene. It makes me afraid for the future of my children”. When violent settlers pick on Palestinian kids in Susya, backed by the army, it is part of a larger strategy.
Eight Palestinian teens were killed on Thursday when the van they were in collided head-on with a truck in the Jordan Valley.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a day of national mourning following the fatal incident.
The victims, all 14-17 years old, are from Aqraba, a village in the Nablus area, according to a Palestinian labor union. They were driving back from work.
Jan 8,
The army continues to expel residents of this Jordan Valley village when it trains on their land. It bulldozes Palestinian wheat fields to make way for tanks.Amira HassJan. 9, 2022 6:02 AM
Israel is holding up the entry of hundreds of vital replacement parts for the proper functioning of Gaza’s water and sewage systems. As a result, partially treated wastewater is being released into the sea, water leakage from pipes is even worse than usual, rainwater runoff is causing a danger of flooding. The quality and quantity of drinking water, purified in special facilities, is also being affected, and the same problems keep happening because repairs are being made with makeshift materials.
The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem has accused radical Israeli groups of threatening the presence of Christians in the holy city, in remarks that Israeli officials rejected as baseless.In a column in the Times of London on Saturday, His Beatitude, Theophilos III, said he believed the aim was to drive the Christian community from Jerusalem’s Old City, which has sites sacred to Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
“Our churches are threatened by Israeli radical fringe groups. At the hands of these Zionist extremists the Christian community in Jerusalem is suffering greatly, he said.
“Our brothers and sisters are the victims of hate crimes. Our churches are regularly desecrated and vandalized. Our clergy are subject to frequent intimidation.”
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, January 10, 2022,
Suleiman al Hathaleen (Hajj Suleiman), a 75-year-old activist and community leader from the South Hebron Hills was hit by an Israeli police tow-truck as he protested against the removal of vehicles from the community of Umm al-Khair. Suleiman was left without help in a coma with head injuries along with spine, rib, and hip fractures. Sabeel prays for the swift and full recovery of Suleiman. We are thankful for the skills and knowledge of those responsible for his treatment. Grant strength to the communities of the South Hebron Hills as they struggle daily with threats from settler communities and oppression by Israeli authorities.
As Palestinian farmers looked on, more than 500 dunams (125 acres) of cultivated land were destroyed by Israeli occupation forces in the Jordan valley on Monday 3rd January. The land, used to grow wheat, was used by the Israeli tanks as part of a training exercise for the Armored Engineering Corps. Sabeel fervently prays that these farmers will have the strength and opportunity to re-sow their crop and that crop be allowed to grow to harvest.
On Tuesday 18th January, Bethlehem will see its third and final round of Christmas celebrations. The Armenian community will celebrate the birth of Jesus on this date based on the Gregorian calendar.
At the 16th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO, held mid-December, Palestinian embroidery (tatreez) was added to the UNESCO cultural heritage list. While the practice originated in rural areas, the culture of stitching and wearing embroidered items is now common across cities and villages, with different patterns representing the various regions in historic Palestine and can act as an indicator for the economic and marital status of the woman wearing it.
Kumi Now has started for 2022, with information being sent out on a weekly basis regarding the topics for that week. We will be starting exciting new webinars from 1st February, starting with webinars with influential and innovative Palestinians followed by a webinar panel discussion on February 15th. These webinars will continue on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month at 6pm. Watch out for more information in coming weeks.
January 3, 2022
Reported by Haaretz, Dec. 31, 2021.
A Palestinian was shot dead after attempting to carry out a stabbing attack at a junction near the West Bank settlement of Ariel on Friday, according to the IDF. The man reportedly got out of a car and charged a bus stop where civilians and soldiers were present, the army is searching for the vehicle which fled the scene. The assailant, identified as 36-year-old Amir Ataf Reyan, as evacuated to Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva in a serious condition, and later succumbed to his wounds.
However, a friend of the assailant disputed the account, stating Reyan had worked in Israel for a long time to support his family, including his wife, who is seven-months pregnant, and their four other young children. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the killing as “an execution.”
Dec. 30, 2021
Opinion: Bar-Lev is right: Jewish terror exists.
Omer Bar-Lev, a courageous warrior who once commanded Sayeret Matkal, the general staff’s elite special-operations force, has insisted that Jewish terror exists, and thus has been transformed by social media into a “traitor,” a “murderer” and a “terrorist.”
January 1, 2022
The Israel Defense Forces acting as a subcontractor for the Shin Bet security service. That’s the situation when a Shin Bet agent wants to meet with a young Palestinian man: A force of 20 soldiers is sent to his home after midnight, they wake up the whole family, throw 15 people into a small room, where they are left for several hours, pummel a few of them with rifles and fists, and kick them when they collapse. The wanted young man is taken to meet the Shin Bet agent for an incredibly brief interrogation – for reasons never explained – and is then sent home. In the meantime, four family members need to be taken to the hospital in ambulances, after their beatings by the soldiers, and one is taken into custody until the conclusion of the proceedings against him – he has been accused of assaulting a soldier. All this to arrange a short meeting with a Shin Bet man.
Jan. 2, 2022
Pressure on the Palestinian Authority to intervene on behalf of Hisham Abu Hawash from Israeli custody is intensifying, as his condition rapidly deteriorates on the 139th day of a hunger strike to protest his detention without trial.
Abu Hawash’s family members have urged the PA leadership to intervene with Israel to save his life, while protests have taken place across the West Bank over the weekend, including in Al-Manara Square in Ramallah.
Israel attacked targets in Gaza early on Sunday, hours after two rockets were fired from the Hamas-controlled enclave at Israel but fell into the Mediterranean Sea, according to the Israeli army.
Jan. 3, 2022
In the northern Jordan Valley, on Saturday a week ago, settlers attacked a Palestinian shepherd and his family who came to his assistance. The settlers, a few of them armed, used batons and fists. The Israel Defense Forces and police arrested those attacked: Eight Palestinians. They were transferred to a nearby army base, and soldiers called for the settlers to conduct a lineup for identification of “their attackers.” The settlers beat the detainees on the base too. Four of the eight Palestinians were released the same day. The others were held in detention for four more days, and at a hearing on extending their detention they were released without posting any bail and without an indictment.
Palestinian witnesses who spoke with Haaretz bolster police investigators’ suspicions that a car accident in which a Nablus resident was badly injured was caused by stones thrown by settlers.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Jan 3, 2022
A new book on the Tent of Nations has been published. “The Stories I Never Knew” – Acts of Loving Kindness in the Struggle for Human Rights and Dignity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel was written by William Plitt and tells the story of the Nassar family and their belief in refusing to be enemie
An Israeli court has ordered the owners of a printing house in Umm al-Fahm, north of Jenin, to pay a fine of 3,500 Israeli Shekels to an activist from the right-wing Return to the Mountain movement. The printing house had refused to print flyers for right-wing activist Yair Kehati. The community of Umm al-Fahm came together to raise the fine and it will be paid in thousands of agora coins (the smallest legal currency in Israel).
Israeli occupation forces continue to disrupt education in the West Bank. On Wednesday 29th December, Israeli forces attacked staff and students at a high school in Tuqu’ town, east of Bethlehem. The Ministry of Education said that a number of Israeli soldiers attempted to break into the campus of Tuqu‘ Secondary Boys School, when they were stopped by the school staff. Following a scuffle with the staff preventing them from breaking into the school campus, the soldiers beat the teachers with rifle butts and fired tear gas into the school.
On the 20th of December, Israeli forces demolished the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib for the 14th time in 2020. The village has been the source of constant demolitions and the latest marks the demolition of the village, or structures in the village 196 times since the year 2010.
As the new year begins, Kumi Now is taking a break whilst we consider the best way forward. We would like to thank all of those who were involved in producing the Kumi Now sessions, from those behind the scenes, to the speakers, and our MC’s drawn from friends of Sabeel. We would also like to thank everyone who attended a session, took part in action, or helped to spread the word.
December 28, 2021
Reported by Haaretz, Dec 20,
This Christmas, Bethlehem is preparing for a very ‘Silent Night’. Before omicron fears prompted Israel’s latest tourist ban, residents of the biblical town of Bethlehem were preparing for a sea of pilgrims this Christmas season. Now the magnificent church, the hotels and the shops stand empty, and locals are wondering how they will recover the losses.
Jack Khoury Dec. 21, 2021 12:35 PM
Representatives of Palestinian prisoners in administrative detention announced on Monday that they had decided to boycott the Israeli legal system, and their lawyers will no longer appear in sessions on their matters in military courts and the Supreme Court.
Representatives of the detainees explained that the decision was made in protest of the broad use of administrative detention by the defense establishment in Israel. According to the representatives’ statement, if Israel continues to use this tool, which they say violates international law, the administrative detainees could very well declare a general hunger strike next week.Nir HassonDec. 21, 2021 5:46 PM
The heads of Christian denominations in Jerusalem have launched a campaign protesting violence by radical groups and attempts by Israeli settler organizations to acquire properties in the Old City, decrying a “systematic attempt to drive the Christian community out of Jerusalem and other parts of the Holy Land.”Amira HassDec. 22, 2021 Israel’s 1,000 front war in Palestinians:
Under orders from Minister of Public Security Omer Bar-Lev, police on Sunday banned a meeting of Palestinian business people at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem. The minister claimed the meeting was initiated, sponsored and financed by the Palestinian Authority. The business folks had been invited to a meeting and dinner by Al-Quds Bank.
Israeli miliary let settlers come to an outpost despite warnings of violence. A month before a deadly shooting, officers warned that growing tensions in the immediate area could undermine security throughout the West Bank.Staff at Israel’s defense bodies have been warning the army, police and Shin Bet for months that the yeshiva operating at the Homesh outpost in the West Bank was becoming a focal point for violence that could end up endangering the settlers living there illegally.
Despite the warnings and a series of violent incidents occurring in the Homesh area recently, the army has not acted to block settlers from coming to the yeshiva.
December 23,
A Palestinian man was shot dead late Wednesday by Israeli forces in the West Bank after he has opened fire at Israeli troops, according to the military.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that Muhammad Issa Abbas, 26, was shot in the back near the al-Amari refugee camp in Ramallah.
A military force entered the West Bank city of al-Bireh after it has identified suspects on their way to the settlement of Psagot, the army said. According to a military statement, shots were fired at the troop from a passing-by vehicle. Soldiers then opened fire at the car and hit the shooter.
Haaretz editorial, Dec 24.
Thousands of settlers, under the army’s protection, went Thursday, once again, to the “evacuated” West Bank settlement of Homesh, after the one-week mourning period for Yehuda Dimentman, a student at the Homesh yeshiva who was murdered nearby.
Instead of this provocative demonstration, the state should have allowed the owners of the land on which Homesh stood, Palestinian farmers from the village of Burka, to finally return to this land, which has been their private property for generations. As long as this doesn’t happen, and as long as the settlers, with backing from the government and the army, continue making mischief – whether by maintaining a yeshiva at Homesh or anything else – Homesh will continue to be a place of injustice and bloodshed.
A court halted the evacuation of a Palestinian family from their home in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on Thursday, after police asked the court registrar to postpone the eviction, citing a security risk.
Earlier this week, the head of the European Union’s mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff, visited the Salem family, who have been living in their home in Sheikh Jarrah for the past 70 years. He blasted the eviction, calling it “inhuman and unfair.
Gideon Levy Dec, 25,
Jamil protested against the takeover of his family’s land, and was shot dead by the Israeli Defence Force. He was the eighth casualty in recent months from the village of Beita, whose residents are outraged at the settler outpost Evyatar on their land, signalled by on outsize Hanukkah menorah planted by the encroaching settlers. along with the row o trailer hoes and watchtowers.
Dec. 25, 2021
A Palestinian man was seriously wounded by Israeli army fire in the West Bank village of Burqa, as protests continue against settlement activity in the nearby Homesh outpost, more than a week after the death of a young settler in a shooting attack reignited tensions in the area.
Nine other Palestinian protesters were also wounded by live fine, the Palestinian Health Ministry said, and 48 others lightly wounded by rubber-tipped bullets fired by Israeli forces.
Dec. 27, 2021
A 16-year-old stripped and beaten in a public washroom, a 60-year-old woman handcuffed and dragged across the floor, a female journalist subjected to sexist comments during an interrogation, a youth attacked in a city center, and another one dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, falsely identified as someone else, his family members beaten. All of this can be found in six complaints filed in recent months at the unit for investigating police misconduct at the Justice Ministry, copies of which have reached Haaretz. Following several complaints of serious violent behavior towards Palestinians, only one indictment was filed against a policeman. The Jerusalem police response: “This is a distorted and one-sided picture which does not reflect the truth.”
Joshua Angrist, one of the recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics, , who once taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, noticed a paradox in the Palestinian labor market: A plasterer working in Israel makes more than someone with a graduate degree in chemistry, in the territories. The result is a negative return on higher education. In other words, it simply doesn’t pay for Palestinians to invest in getting an education, since it only harms them.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, December 28,
Archbishop Emeritus of South Africa, Desmond Tutu, passed away on Sunday 26th December. Archbishop Tutu was an outspoken activist against apartheid in South Africa and, in his later years, turned his attention to the Holy Land and the similarities he saw between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the treatment of black South Africans under apartheid.
Hisham Abu Hawash, a Palestinian prisoner in an Israeli military prison, has been on hunger strike for over 4 months. In the past days, Abu Hawash’s health condition has deteriorated significantly. Abu Hawash, 40 and the father of five children (Hadi, Mohammed, Izz al-Din, Waqas and Saba), has spent 8 years in total in Israeli occupation prisons. Of that time, 52 months — over half of his time behind bars — has been spent jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention orders.
The Palestinian town of Burqa, near Nablus, has been under constant attack by Israeli settlers and Israeli occupation forces. The town is almost completely blocked from the rest of the area by mounds of earth which block the roads to allow settler-only access to the illegal Israeli settlements and outposts which surround the area. Burqa has been under increasing attacks since around 15,000 Israelis gathered at the settlement of Homesh to commemorate the life of Yehuda Dimentman, who was reportedly killed by Palestinian gunmen.
Kumi Now on Thursday 28th December, heard from Bishop Emeritus Munib Younan. Bishop Younan spoke on the topic of Christians in the Holy Land. This is the last week of the Kumi Now year and we will now take a break to assess the future of Kumi Now.
DECEMBER 20, 2021
Reported by Haaretz, Dec. 14, 2021
The Israeli military and Shin Bet security service arrested early Tuesday morning 11 students who are allegedly part of a Hamas cell, after raiding two Palestinian universities in the West Bank, a statement by the Israeli army said.
Those arrested, all students at An-Najah University in Nablus, were accused of funneling money, organizing rallies in support of Hamas as well as incitement, according to the statement.
Dec.18
A Palestinian woman stabbed a 38-year-old Israeli Saturday morning near the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, in the West Bank.
The Israeli, a resident of the Kiryat Arba settlement, suffered minor injuries and the Palestinian woman was arrested on the spot.
According to the Israeli Border Police, after the stabbing, the Israeli man fought with the woman, who is 65-years-old and a resident of Idna village in the West Bank.
Dec. 17, 2021
A Palestinian couple was attacked in their West Bank home in the early morning on Friday by a group of settlers they said claimed to be Israeli soldiers in order to get into the house.
The attack – which left 55-year-old Wail Mohammed Makbal with fractured ribs, and his 46-year-old wife, Samiha, requiring medical attention after inhaling pepper spray – occurred hours after the death of a 25-year-old Jewish settler in a shooting attack in the same area of the West Bank.
Israeli troops and settlers zero in on a new target for attacks: Palestinian schools. Israeli soldiers forcibly prevent these Palestinian kids from reaching school, and fire tear-gas grenades into classrooms. Settlers curse and beat them, and humiliate their teachers. Imagine what sort of sentiments are brewing here.
No one is getting better lessons in the doctrines of occupation and apartheid than the children of Lubban al-Sharqiyah, a village of 4,000 people located 15 kilometers south of Nablus. It’s not hard to guess what sort of sentiments are developing there and what future generations will spring from its two elementary schools, one for boys and o bne for girls, from Lubban and two other villages. The buildings are both located near Highway 60, the West Bank’s busiest roadway, used by both settlers and Palestinians, and where there have been many incidents of stone throwing by Palestinian kids.
Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, Dec. 20, 2021,
Palestinian political prisoners are continuing to hunger strike. The hunger strikes are against torture, ill treatment, and medical neglect of Palestinian political prisoners at the hands of the Israeli authorities, as well as Israel’s widespread use of administrative detention, which is only permitted under international law in extremely limited circumstances.
This Christmas we turn our eyes to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, and we see a suffering town. The pandemic has hit the economy of the town hard with many people relying on international tourism which has now been largely absent for two years. Some families are having to continue to withdraw their children from schools, forced to make hard choices between education, food, or medicine. Others can no longer afford to pay rent and are having to move back in with their parents and grandparents.
The Kumi Now initiative focuses this week on the Syrian Golan. Syrians still living in the Golan live under the threat of Israeli military activity as well as the promotion of tourism from illegal settlements in the area. Next Tuesday, Kumi Now will focus its attention on Christians in the Holy Land.
DECEMBER 13, 2021
Reported by Haaretz, Dec. 6, 2021,
The PA’s 140,000 employees in the West Bank and Gaza would see their November salaries cut by 25 percent, treasury says, amid prisoner, taz dispute with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority said on Monday it would cut wages paid to its employees in response to a cash crunch exacerbated by a renewed dispute with Israel over payments it makes to Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Israel and the United States say the PA stipends, dispersed monthly to prisoners, their relatives and the families of Palestinians killed for allegedly carrying out attacks, encourage further violence. The Palestinians consider them a form of welfare for inmates they regard as national heroes.
Dec. 7,
Israeli demolition orders for Palestinians in West Bank Area C hit a five-year record. 797 demolition orders were issued by Israel last year, the Civil Administration said, while less than 1 percent of Palestinian requests for construction permits in Area C were granted between 2016 and 2020.
Dec. 8, 2021
In Israel, a detainee is allowed to die in jail – if he is a Palestinian.
In a locked room in an Israel Prisons Service clinic, lies a man who has refused to put food into his mouth for 114 days. Besides his extreme weight loss, he has difficulty speaking and communicating, even drinking water and whenever he moves, he has palpitations. He is brought to meetings with his lawyer groggy and in a wheelchair. This is Hisham Abu Hawash, 40, who is on a hunger strike to protest his administrative detention.
An Israrli woman was stabbed in East Jerusalem; a Palestinian minor was arrested. The Palestinian assailant’s family is among those in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood who have immediate eviction orders pending against themAn Israeli woman was lightly wounded Wednesday in a stabbing attack in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.Police apprehended a 14-year-old Palestinian girl, Nofoud Jad Araf Hamad, from the neighborhood. She is suspected of stabbing the 26-year-old Israeli woman with a knife while she was crossing the street with her daughter. Hamad fled the scene after the attack and was found about an hour later at the nearby al-Ruda girls’ school. The stabbing victim was taken to Hadassah University Hospital at Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.
Hamad’s family is among those in Sheikh Jarrah who have immediate eviction orders pending against them; her grandfather is a prominent activist against the evictions. Before the teenager was apprehended, a large number of police officers, aided by a police helicopter, searched the area for the suspect.
Also taken into custody were the school’s principal, another staff member and another student who is related to Hamad. Police raided Hamad’s home and arrested her mother as well.
Testimonies continue to pile up, documents are revealed, and gradually a broader picture emerges of the acts of murder committed by Israeli troops during the War of Independence. Minutes recorded during cabinet meetings in 1948 leave no room for doubt: Israel’s leaders knew in real time about the blood-drenched events that accompanied the conquest of the Arab villages
Dec. 9, 2021.A Palestinian medic rushed toward a hurt protester. An Israeli cop shop him at close range.
Palestinian paramedics are often attacked by Israeli soldiers, who prevent them from fulfilling their duty during clashes. Mohammed Omar was beaten and arrested in 2018 – a year when three of his colleagues were shot to death in Gaza protests. Recently he too was hit by live fire. Every few nights he gets an alert from the social networks or rescue services about an IDF incursion in his city of El Bireh or a nearby village.
Mohammed Omar is a friendly 29-year-old who managed to extricate himself from life in the Amari refugee camp near Ramallah, where he grew up, and move to the adjacent city of El Bireh. He has only a primary-school education, makes a living selling coffee at a kiosk that he owns, and is currently engaged to be married. For the past eight years he has volunteered several times a week as a paramedic with local firefighters. Having no prospect of entering university, he has taken courses in first aid and firefighting, so that he can contribute his share to the community and be a better citizen. “There are those who donate money – I volunteer,” he says.
Dec. 11, 2021 11:12 AM
Palestinians held municipal elections in the occupied West Bank on Saturday in a rare democratic exercise and amid rising anger with President Mahmoud Abbas after he canceled planned legislative and presidential votes earlier this year.
More than 400,000 Palestinians were eligible to cast ballots for representatives in 154 village councils in the West Bank, where Abbas’ Palestinian Authority has limited self-rule. Municipal votes are typically held every four or five years.
60 Palestinians live there, but Jerusalem city hall insists on demolishing the building. The municipality doesn’t do construction planning for Palestinians and hasn’t approved their self-financed plan
Dec. 13, 2021,
The Custodian General’s Unit in the Justice Ministry is promoting widespread plans for building Jewish neighborhoods and housing complexes in East Jerusalem – a move that would entail the eviction of Palestinian residents.
The Custodian General’s Unit in the Justice Ministry is promoting widespread plans for building Jewish neighborhoods and housing complexes in East Jerusalem – a move that would entail the eviction of Palestinian residents.
The proposal includes a new neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah, one near Damascus Gate, two near Beit Safafa, and one each in Sur Baher and Beit Hanina, documents obtained by Haaretz show. The Justice Ministry, for its part, says that except for examining a construction project in Sheikh Jarrah, no other plans are being advanced.Dec. 13, 2021 11:08 AMAmira Hass
Mining gold from East Jerusalem’s streets: Israel profits twice from Palestinians living in the capital: once from the fines they pay for the city’s own crimes, and again when the community is forced into a life of low-paying jobs and abject povertyMoney, and lots of it, is behind the ongoing Israeli refusal to develop and build for Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. Money – and not just the clear intention to restrict the number of Palestinians in the city.
Mayors, heads of planning and construction departments, municipal officials and successive interior ministers in the Jewish democratic state have conspired together to create a sophisticated system that sucks the very marrow from the bones of local Palestinians. The talent and the enthusiasm for squeezing money out of the Palestinians were created and heightened by the very nature of their key functions in a country whose essence is occupation and the expulsion of another people from its land.Reported by Sabeel, Jerusalem, December 13, 2021,
On Saturday, 11th December, Sabeel, in coordination with the Pontifical Mission and the Jerusalem Center for Palestine Studies, held a conference in Ramallah, on the Christian History of Palestine.
Sabeel will hold a Zoom session to present the Christmas story from the perspective of Palestinian liberation theology. www.bilda.nu/Christmas-Theological-Uprising
During this time of Advent and Christmas, we turn our thoughts towards those for whom this time of year is difficult. Especially this year for those who rely on tourism which has been decimated once again by Covid-19 travel restrictions with no end in sight.
The plan to build a new settlement on the site of Qalandia Airport (Atarot) in East Jerusalem has been delayed by the Jerusalem district planning and building committee citing the need for an environment study for their delay. At the same time, the US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield said that settlement building had “reached a critical juncture”.
Kumi Now on Tuesday concentrated on the issue of the right of return for Palestinians forcibly evicted from their homes in 1948. On Tuesday, 21st December, we will hear about the Syrian Golan.
