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. #SDG16
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.
