Decades after the 1967 war, Israel is still under the illusion that violence against the Palestinians will give it peace and security
Fifty-six years ago, after Israel’s victory in the six-day war in 1967, an intensive debate took place in the country regarding the future of the newly occupied West Bank and Gaza. The options ranged from outright annexation of the land by Israel, returning the West Bank to Jordan or the establishment of a Palestinian state.
My father, Aziz Shehadeh, was a proponent of the last. As a lawyer and activist for refugee rights, he proposed a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. Washington urged Israel then to translate its undefined position for a settlement into concrete terms.
Israel’s attack on Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital has sparked accusations of war crimes – but Israel says it falls within the boundaries of international law
The Geneva conventions, adopted in the aftermath of the second world war, form the core of international humanitarian law and “are particularly protective of civilian hospitals”, according to Mathilde Philip-Gay, an expert in international humanitarian law at Lyon 3 University in south-east France.
Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, has called for a ceasefire in Gaza based on humanitarian and human rights grounds. Speaking after the UN security council backed a resolution on 15 November calling for ‘urgent extended humanitarian pauses’, Turk said: ‘The only winner of such a war is likely to be extremism and further extremism.’ The Israel-Hamas war has left more than 11,100 Palestinians dead and displaced more than 1.5 million Gazan citizens from their homes, after Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people
In today’s newsletter: Attack on alleged Hamas command centre beneath hospital is a key test for Israel’s military and its ability to protect civilians
Good morning. In the last few hours, Israeli soldiers have stormed Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital. Israel says that the raid, which is still underway, is a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas”, which it accuses of operating a command centre beneath the medical facility, a claim Hamas denies.
The attack at al-Shifa is militarily significant – but it is also taking place in the arena of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that has drawn huge global attention, with conditions rapidly deteriorating on the site since the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) surrounded it last week. And so whether Israel is able to carry out the pinpoint attack it has promised is likely to be a critical test of the international community’s view of its conduct of the war.
Conservatives | Suella Braverman has launched an astonishing attack on Rishi Sunak the day after he sacked her as home secretary, claiming he had “betrayed” the country by failing to deliver on secret promises he made her last year. Braverman indicated she will spearhead a Tory rebellion over the government’s Rwanda asylum plan, which faces a crucial legal test on Wednesday.
Cyprus confidential | Chelsea FC is facing questions over how its former owner Roman Abramovich funded the club’s success, after leaked files revealed a string of secret payments that may have breached football’s strict “financial fair play” rules. The disclosures are part of an international investigation into a cache of 3.6m leaked offshore records in Cyprus.
Cost of living | The UK inflation rate has dropped to 4.6%, down from 6.7% in September, it has just been announced. That is an even larger fall than was expected. Head to the business live blog for more.
Ukraine | The Ukrainian president’s chief of staff has said for the first time that Ukraine’s forces in the Kherson region have a foothold on the eastern bank of the Dnipro river, potentially opening a new line of attack towards Crimea. Andriy Yermak claimed that the advance was part of a developing counteroffensive.
Health | A vaccine to protect against chickenpox should become a routine childhood jab in the UK, government advisers have said, adding that it would not only reduce the number of children who become sick from the virus, but also cut the number of cases that can become fatal.
As Israeli missiles rain down on crowded apartment blocks, survivors are left numb as entire family groups are wiped out
The first call informing Fares Alghoul that a relative’s home had been hit by an Israeli airstrike arrived late on a Friday. The internet in Gaza was cut only moments later, forcing him to wait 12 hours to learn the names of the 18 dead. He would have to wait even longer for the confirmation that a further 18 family members stuck under the rubble had also been killed, bringing his family’s death toll to 36.
As a journalist, Alghoul has covered all Gaza’s previous wars but now lives in Canada, where he has had to watch from a distance as generations of his family are wiped out.
Congressional progressives say proposed $14.3bn breaches 1997 Leahy act as assault on Gaza has overwhelmingly harmed civilians
Leftwing Democrats in Congress have invoked a landmark law barring assistance to security forces of governments deemed guilty of human rights abuses to challenge the Biden administration’s emergency military aid program for Israel.
Members of the Democratic party’s progressive wing say the $14.3bn package pledged by the White House after the 7 October attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,400 Israelis breaches the Leahy Act because Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has overwhelmingly harmed civilians. An estimated 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, among them 3,700 children, according to the Gaza health ministry, run by Hamas.
Thousands of Palestinian workers from Gaza who were stranded in Israel when war broke out last month have been deported back to the war-torn strip after being expelled by the Israeli government.
A Guardian reporter in Rafah, on the southern edge of the strip, saw a steady stream of men of all ages with no phones, money or identity cards enter the territory on Friday morning via the Kerem Shalom crossing for commercial goods, having walked about 2km from the Israeli side of the border. Mada Masr, an independent Egyptian news outlet, said about 3,200 people had been sent back through the checkpoint, which is controlled by Israel and Egypt.
Craig Mokhiber, director of human rights body, accuses the US, UK and much of Europe as ‘wholly complicit in the horrific assault’
The director of the New York office of the UN high commissioner for human rights has left his post, protesting that the UN is “failing” in its duty to prevent what he categorizes as genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza under Israeli bombardment and citing the US, UK and much of Europe as “wholly complicit in the horrific assault”.
Craig Mokhiber wrote on 28 October to the UN high commissioner in Geneva, Volker Turk, saying: “This will be my last communication to you” in his role in New York.
Last time I visited from Australia, Ibtisam remained calm as I trembled through an Israeli attack. This time it is very different
“We are not special,” Ibtisam, my mother-in-law says, and it is as if I am beside her, trembling, while she calmly pours the summakiya into the plates. The smell of it brings some comfort. It is the smell of home.
I remember my mother’s summakiya as if its smell and taste suffuse my kitchen now, although it, and she, are lost to me. I regret not writing her recipe before she died. It is 10 years since I left home in Gaza and settled in Perth, where I became a mother and learned to make all her dishes – but not her summakiya. The whole neighbourhood of Tuffah knew Huwayda’s summakiya was the best! She was invited to make the dish at every wedding. Despite being a refugee, her family displaced to Gaza in 1948, she perfected the Gazan traditional dish.
Two activists from a Jewish-Arab peace movement were recently detained in Israel for putting up posters with a message that the police deemed to be offensive. The message was: “Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together.”
The activists, members of Standing Together, had their posters confiscated, as well as T-shirts printed with peace slogans in Hebrew and Arabic.
Two activists from a Jewish-Arab peace movement were recently detained in Israel for putting up posters with a message that the police deemed to be offensive. The message was: “Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together.”
The activists, members of Standing Together, had their posters confiscated, as well as T-shirts printed with peace slogans in Hebrew and Arabic.
British Jews came together to condemn Hamas, but concerns over Israel’s actions are being voiced
Two days after Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians in southern Israel, hundreds of British Jews waved Israeli flags and sang the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, at a vigil outside Downing Street.
The event, organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, and attended by the chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, was a powerful show of communal solidarity as the enormity of Hamas’s atrocities was still becoming clear.
One can be opposed to Hamas, as I am, and to the indiscriminate bombing and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, as I am
What are you doing to stop the imminent ethnic cleansing of Gaza? This is a serious question. If ever there was a time to stand up for the rights of an oppressed people, this is it. And yet, in many places in the western world, you can’t. It’s literally been outlawed. How is this even possible?
As I’m writing this, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied territories, is pleading with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, to demand Israel stop its killing. “The delay in calling on Israel to cease taking revenge on millions of Palestinian civilians,” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “is intensifying the descent into [the] abyss.”
The president has a frosty history with Israel’s PM, and he has emphasised that US backing depends on the upholding of democratic values
President Biden’s response to the murderous attack by Hamas on Israeli towns, villages and kibbutzimthat claimed more than 1,200 Israeli lives, the majority of them civilians, was one of the most heartfelt expressions of support for Israel by a US president for a very long time. His speech on 10 October emphasised that Washington would not confine its backing for the Jewish state to words, and would immediately translate those words into tangible assistance. But Biden’s pledge of “surging” support, including sending aircraft carriers “to deter hostile actions against Israel” – is not without caveats, to which Israel should pay careful heed. Over the weekend, Biden wisely warned Israel against occupying Gaza, and expressed his support for opening a humanitarian corridor to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe that is already taking place.
It is no secret that US-Israel relations have been strained since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power at the end of last year. The US administration has been openly critical of the crass attempt to weaken the country’s judiciary, and with it Israel’s democratic system, by the newly formed, most rightwing government coalition in its history. Indirectly supporting the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have been regularly taking to the streets in defence of their democracy, Biden linked US friendship with Israel to the preservation of that democracy, and asserted that: “The genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they are both built on strong institutions, on checks and balances, on an independent judiciary.”
Mahmoud Abu Latifa cut his nephew’s hair into a shiny black bowl cut and fretted to the soundtrack of cable news describing bombardments of Gaza. “This is all I do: I cut hair and watch the news – it’s making me sick. I want to get rid of this ugly war,” he said.
The previous day, he had decided to get bread from a town that required him to pass close to the nearby Qalandiya checkpoint, a shuttered fortress of watchtowers and charred concrete walls covered in graffiti and murals of Palestinian political figures.
The government’s mealy mouthed criticism of the Israeli PM’s increasingly rightwing policies is not enough. He should be persona non grata in the UK
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, might have been hoping for some brief respite from the tumult back home during his flying visit to London. Instead, in addition to his meeting with Rishi Sunak and other officials, the Likud leader was met with protests from human rights activists, including a protest by Amnesty International, a Palestine solidarity demonstration outside No 10 and anotherby the British Jewish group Na’amod.
Such protests are well justified. Since the new government was sworn in, as reported by international governments, lawyers and human rights groups, Israel has furthered “annexation” of occupied land and advanced construction in illegal settlements. In 2023 so far, 75 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces (as of 13 March); last year, at least 231 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, including nearly 40 children.
During the holy month of Ramadan, Muslims from all corners of the globe come together to celebrate. Each country has its own traditional rituals.
In Palestine, Ramadan is more than just a month of fasting and worship; the month is an important opportunity to connect with the stolen culture of Palestine’s ancestral heritage.
Although the occupation’s restrictions and technology impact the normally festive atmosphere of the holy month, Palestinians still preserve the practices and traditions which make the celebrations uniquely Palestinian.
In the days leading up to the announcement that the month of Ramadan has commenced, Palestinians begin to prepare. Streets, mosques, homes are decorated with lanterns and lighting, and merchants prepare their shops with several kind of dates, sweets, pickles, juices and more.
Ramadan scenes from Gaza . . . decorations (below), dates (middle), and lights (bottom). Images: Kia Ora Gaza/Palestinian Information Centre..
Ola Abu Salim, a mother and artist used to design and produce Ramadan lanterns from her home in Deir Albalah town, gifting to her neighbours and relatives, but Ola, whose house is decorated with many kinds of lanterns in diverse sizes and shapes, confided to me: “I recently started to make big number of lanterns and sell them to shops and merchants to make a living for my family amid the ongoing dire situation in the blockaded Gaza [Strip].”
Ramadan vibes During Ramadan, family gatherings are prioritised and iftar meals are shared with entire extended families.
Worship during Ramadan is essential. The late evening prayer, known as the Tarawih, is held an hour after eating the Ramadan iftar. Men and women perform prayers in mosques.
Om Ahmed, 66, says “During Ramadan I go with my husband, sons, daughters and my granddaughters to the mosque.”
She tells me: “We like walking to the mosque all together, we can see joy on the kids’ faces because we can gather in the mosques only during Ramadan and Eid.
“We enjoy watching fireworks at nights. In the past it was simple and we made handmade fireworks with simple things. Now it’s different, with more lighting.”
Om Ahmed also recalls the atmosphere of Ramadan 40 years ago: “I used to cook and send a dish to my neighbor from what I cooked, and my neighbour sends me the same.
“The social and family relations were closer and stronger in the past than these days amid using the technology and the internet so people contact online more than in person.”
A Musaharati is a drummer who wears a mask, beats a drum, and chants Ramadan songs as they roam neighborhoods in the early morning to wake the people up for Suhur, the pre-dawn meal before the daily fast begins.
Despite the availability of alarms via mobile devices, the custom continues in most Palestinian cities and towns. Sometimes the Musaharati is one person, sometimes a group.
It is customary for people to offer gifts to the drummers to thank them for their efforts to wake them up. On the night of the announcement of the advent of the holy month, Palestinian children gather in the neighbourhoods awaiting the proclamation that the fast has begun.
The audiovisual and print media outlets also devote a great deal of spaces during Ramadan to advise and support those who fast.
Ramadan feast The Palestinian holiday table offers a diverse range of popular and traditional dishes such as molokhia, sumaghiyyeh, fatteh, akoub, jereesheh, musakhan and maqlouba. No meal is left without pickles, especially for Gazans. As for beverages, Palestinians prepare juices, particularly of tamarind, almonds, liquorice and carob.
People also consume plenty of the qatayef desert.
Another common practice is Takaya, where groups of people cook and provide hot iftar meals for low-income families.
Muhammad Astal, 52, a Palestinian from Gaza, says, “In the past, I used to help my father during Ramadan to prepare and distribute Ramadan Takaya for the poor and the orphaned families.
“And now I serve it by myself after my father passed away 2 years ago, for the sake of taking Ajr and helping people.”
Fears grow of renewed escalation Ramadan comes this year amid growing fears of rising tensions and escalations in the Occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and the occupation jails. In the occupied city of Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque has in the past been the main centre of worship for all Palestinians but now it has become impossible to reach for those coming from outside the city.
The Israeli military checkpoints, the deployment of occupation soldiers on the roads, and the closure of the entrances to the city to Muslim visitors; all of these measures have made the Holy City inaccessible to Palestinians from outside of Jerusalem.
Nevertheless, many Palestinians always succeed in praying in the Old City, bypassing all barriers.
In the occupation prison, Palestinian detainees have announced that they will go on hunger strike with the start of Ramadan, a step that comes after several protest steps refusing the new inhumane practices imposed upon them including banning them from fresh bread, medical treatment and canteen access.
And despite all of the occupation’s harassments — which increase during Ramadan — the Palestinian custom of celebrating Ramadan remains.
Wafa Aludaini is a Gaza-based journalist and activist. She contributed this article to the Palestinian Information Centre. It is republished from Kia Ora Gaza with permission.
From house demolitions to military detention, the violence we Palestinians face daily reflects the power imbalance of occupier and occupied
Almost every day, the bulldozers are on the move. In the Palestinian neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, my city, Israeli forces are demolishing homes on an almost daily basis. Dispossession and discrimination have been a longstanding reality here in the eastern part of the city, under Israeli military occupation for 56 years, but under the new far-right Israeli government, Jerusalem has seen a spike in demolitions – more than 30 structures were destroyed in January alone.
The news from our region in western capitals and media outlets tends to be dominated by bloodshed – and the Palestinian people are going through some of the most violent, destructive and lethal days in recent memory. The year 2022 was the deadliest in nearly two decades in the occupied West Bank. In January a further 31 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire. Hopelessness, frustration and despair hover over us all like a dark cloud. But the numbers alone do not express the extent of this cruelty.
Kennedy School allegedly bowed to donors unhappy with organisation accusing Israel of apartheid in occupied territories
The dean of one the US’s leading schools of government blocked a position for the former head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) over his organisation’s criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.
The Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy offered Kenneth Roth a position as a senior fellow shortly after he retired as director of HRW in April after 29 years. Roth is highly regarded within the human rights community for the part his organisation played in advances such as the creation of the international criminal court and the prosecution of major human rights abusers.
The swearing in of the extremist leadership in Israel demands the Aotearoa New Zealand government reassess its policy towards the Middle East.
New Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared his top priority is to build more illegal Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land.
This policy declares the leadership’s intention to:
“advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel – in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights, and Judea and Samaria”. (These are the Biblical names for the occupied Palestinian West Bank)
New Zealand has bipartisan support for UN Security Council resolution 2334 of 2016 which was promoted by the former John Key National government. It declares Israeli settlements on Palestinian land as “a flagrant violation under international law” and says all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, must “immediately and completely cease.”
With the announcement of its intention to escalate these flagrant violations of international law, Israel is giving us the middle finger.
If our support for international law and United Nations resolutions is to have real meaning, then our government must urgently reassess its relationship with Israel.
The new Israeli leadership includes several extreme racists and supporters of anti-Palestinian terrorism such as Itamar Ben-Gvir as Minister of National Security. Ben-Gvir has expressed support and admiration for Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish Israeli man who killed 29 Palestinians in a shooting at Hebron’s Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994.
Israeli protests against the most rightwing government in history. Video: France 24
Just a few weeks before his swearing in as Minister of National Security, Ben-Gvir described as a hero an Israeli soldier who shot to death a young Palestinian at point blank range — widely described as an assassination.
We have had our own deadly terrorist attack on a mosque in Christchurch in which 51 New Zealanders (including six Palestinian New Zealanders) were killed. Why would we have relations with a government whose senior leadership includes Ben-Gvir who for many years had a picture of the terrorist Goldstein on his living room wall?
Alongside Palestinian groups, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s largest and most respected human rights group, B’Tselem, have all declared Israel to be an apartheid state.
Because the new Israeli leadership has declared its intention to accelerate its apartheid policies against Palestinians, we should suspend our relationship with Israel and finally recognise a Palestinian state.
John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.
Alongside Palestinian groups, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s largest and most respected human rights group, B’Tselem, have all declared Israel to be an apartheid state. Image: TDB
Salah Hamouri expected to be deported after decision on grounds of ‘breach of allegiance’ to state
Israel has stripped a prominent Palestinian-French human rights lawyer of his Jerusalem residency and is expected to deport him to France, a legal first that sets a dangerous precedent for other Palestinians with dual nationality in the contested city.
Salah Hamouri, 37, had his Jerusalem residency revoked in October 2021 on the grounds of a “breach of allegiance” to the Israeli state, based on secret evidence. Israel alleges he is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel’s western allies.
More than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year. Where is the accountability?
It was early April 1988, at the height of the first intifada, and the hills were awash with spring flowers. I took the professor and activist Noam Chomsky to visit the Palestinian village of Beita near Nablus. He wanted to speak to the villagers about a recent incident in which a group of Israeli settlers from Elon Moreh, 10km (6 miles) from Beita, had got into a confrontation with some villagers while out hiking. Two of the Palestinian villagers and one of the Israeli settlers were shot and killed. The army initially blamed the Palestinians for the settler’s death. It emerged later that she – like the two dead villagers – had been killed by a bullet fired by one of the men guarding the settlers. But, by then, the army had invaded the village, destroyed at least 14 houses, killed a third villager, arrested dozens of men in the village and deported several of them. Chomsky listened attentively and was saddened but not surprised. He had anticipated that an increased rate of settlement-building would place the occupier and the occupied, the land confiscators and those who lost their land, close together physically – with predictable results.
This prediction has grown truer by the year, but I still could not have imagined the state we would be in 34 years later. Just last Friday, soldiers killed Adel Daoud, aged 14, and Mahdi Ladadweh, aged 17. On Saturday, two more teenagers, Mahmoud Al-Sous and Ahmed Daraghmeh, were killed. The number of people killed by Israeli forces this year stands, shockingly, at more than 100.
For many years, the land around Beita was generally peaceful, and we enjoyed many lovely walks in the valley below the mountain of Jabal Sabih. It was surrounded by olive orchards. The track we would walk along had smooth rocks where water flowed in winter, and in spring carpets of multicoloured wildflowers covered both sides.
Then, last February, the Israeli attorney general moved to authorise the re-establishment of the evacuated Israeli settlement of Evyatar, on land that is privately owned by Palestinians, near Beita on Jabal Sabih. Since May 2021, regular protests have been held by Palestinians against this outpost and other settlements in the area, resulting in nine Palestinians being killed and 5,300 injured.
At the time of Chomsky’s visit, there was still some expectation that the Israeli political opposition to settlements had some prospect of success. Today, the left in Israel is almost completely silenced. The major parties in next month’s elections compete on who is the greater proponent of settlements, and who takes a tougher line at quashing Palestinian resistance to it. The prime minister, Yair Lapid, and defence minister, Benny Gantz (both of “liberal”, “centrist” parties), each tries to prove to voters that, contrary to what the right claims, they are not weak on “security”. This means that, until the elections take place, we can only expect more Palestinians to be maimed and killed.
Raja Shehadeh is the author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Profile Books)
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Salah Hamouri stages protest against being imprisoned without charge for the last six months
A prominent Palestinian-French human rights lawyer has gone on hunger strike in protest against his imprisonment without charge by Israeli authorities for the last six months.
Salah Hamouri, 37, a father of two from occupied East Jerusalem, has been held in administrative detention since 7 March, and his detention order has been renewed until at least early December based on undisclosed evidence.
Human Rights Watch calls for donors to cut off funding to security forces and urges international court to investigate
Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip systematically torture critics in detention, a practice that could amount to crimes against humanity, an international rights group has said.
In its report Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for donor countries to cut off funding to Palestinian security forces that commit such crimes and urged the international criminal court to investigate.
Shells fired at agrochemical warehouse created toxic plume that has left residents with health problems
An Israeli airstrike on an agrochemical warehouse during last year’s war in Gaza amounted to the “indirect deploying of chemical weapons”, according to a report analysing the attack and its impact.
Incendiary artillery shells fired by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) hit the large Khudair Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Tools warehouse in the north of the Gaza Strip on 15 May last year, setting fire to hundreds of tonnes of pesticides, fertilisers, plastics and nylons. The strike created a toxic plume, which engulfed an area of 5.7 sq km and has left local residents struggling with health issues, including two reports of miscarriages, and indications of environmental damage.
Amnesty International’s report JCB Off Track gives evidence that the company’s equipment has been used in the destruction of Palestinian homes, writes Stuart Penny
These are not the only abuses of human rights committed using JCB equipment. Amnesty International’s report JCB Off Track, published in November last year, gives evidence of the use of JCB equipment in the destruction of Palestinian homes, agricultural land and other property in the occupied Palestinian territories. The report explains the steps that Amnesty says the company could take to prevent this.
Those who attack cultural boycotts in the name of ‘free speech’ are conveniently missing when Palestinians are routinely bullied for speaking their truth
In early December 2021, Palestinians and Arabs representing a diversity of creative, activist and academic practice approached the board of Sydney festival after it was revealed the board had accepted $20,000 funding from the Israeli embassy for the presentation of Sydney Dance Company’s realisation of Decadance, a work created by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin of the Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv. The amount gave the embassy “star partnership” status with Sydney Festival.
We made three requests: divest from the star partnership, end all relations with the State of Israel, and remove any Israeli government emblem from Sydney festival’s promotional material.
UK government watchdog finds lack of due diligence over human rights in occupied territories
JCB, the British tractor firm, has been found by a UK government watchdog to have failed to carry out due diligence human rights checks over the potential use of its equipment to demolish homes in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT).
The watchdog ruled: “It is unfortunate that JCB, which is a leading British manufacturer of world-class products, did not take any steps to conduct human rights due diligence of any kind despite being aware of alleged adverse human rights impacts and that its products are potentially contributing to those impacts.”
Analysis: while identity of hackers is not known in this case, Palestinians have long been spied on by Israeli military
The disclosure that Palestinian human rights defenders were reportedly hacked using NSO’s Pegasus spyware will come as little surprise to two groups of people: Palestinians themselves and the Israeli military and intelligence cyber operatives who have long spied on Palestinians.
While it is not known who was responsible for the hacking in this instance, what is very well documented is the role of the Israeli military’s 8200 cyberwarfare unit – known in Hebrew as the Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim – in the widespread spying on Palestinian society.
Investigation finds rights activists working for groups accused by Israel of being terrorist were previously targeted by NSO spyware
The mobile phones of six Palestinian human rights defenders who work for organisations that were recently – and controversially – accused by Israel of being terrorist groups were previously hacked by sophisticated spyware made by NSO Group, according to a report.
An investigation by Front Line Defenders (FLD), a Dublin-based human rights group, found that the mobile phones of Salah Hammouri, a Palestinian rights defender and lawyer whose Jerusalem residency status has been revoked, and five others were hacked using Pegasus, NSO’s signature spyware. In one case, the hacking was found to have occurred as far back as July 2020.
