On July 24th, the Israeli Knesset passed a measure forbidding the country’s High Court of Justice from in any way checking the power of the government, whether in making cabinet decisions or appointments, based on what’s known as the “reasonability” standard. In the Israeli context, this was an extreme act, since right-wing parliamentarians were defying massive crowds that had, for months on end…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
We speak with two Israeli journalists in Tel Aviv after lawmakers in Israel passed a highly contested bill Monday weakening the power of the Supreme Court by preventing it from blocking government decisions it deems unreasonable. The bill is part of a broader set of judicial reforms pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that has sparked months of unprecedented protests…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In the past year, the city of Jenin in the West Bank has become a particularly sharp thorn in the side of the Israeli occupation. On July 4th and 5th, Israeli forces swept into Jenin Refugee Camp in an attempt to suppress a rising armed resistance emanating from the area. Despite slaughtering 12 Palestinians, Israel accomplished little of military value in the operation, failing to flush out resistance forces or even take and hold the refugee camp. For all its brutal repression, the truth is that Israel today is far weaker than it has been in the past. Externally, international opinion, and particularly Jewish opinion, is turning against occupation and apartheid. And internally, Israel is riven by the judicial crisis and protest movement that has developed in opposition to Netanyahu’s government. Yumna Patel of Mondoweiss and Meron Rapaport of +972 Magazine join The Marc Steiner Report for a look at Israel’s war on Jenin.
Yumna Patel is the Palestine News Director for Mondoweiss.
Meron Rapoport is an editor at Local Call, a joint project of 972 Advancement of Citizenship Journalism.
Studio / Post-Production: David Hebden
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner here on the Marc Steiner Show at The Real News. It’s good to have you all with us. We’ve all been aware the Israeli attack on Jenin that killed at least 12 Palestinians, five of them children, thousands displaced from their homes, over 100 homes destroyed. This in the wake of demonstrations in Israel, decry in the end of democracy in Israel itself, but demonstrations that hardly mentioned or included Palestinians.
All this in the face of the most right-wing, religious, fundamentalist government in Israel’s history. The threat to wipe out Palestinian towns and people have come from the highest positions in the Israeli government. Before the assault in Jenin, Israel human rights group, B’Tselem, called it a regime of Jewish supremacy in all the areas under their control.
Two weeks before the invasion, Israel’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “We have to settle the land of Israel and at the same time, need to launch a military campaign. Blow up buildings, assassinate terrorists. Not one or two, but dozens, hundreds, or if needed, thousands.” All this coming on the heels of the devastation with Jenin for the second time in 20 years.
We are joined today by Meron Rapoport of 972 Local Call, who is a longtime Israeli journalist, former head of the News Department of Haaertz and political activist. Yumna Patel, who is also a political activist living in Bethlehem. The Palestine news director of Mondoweiss, who has been a freelance journalist for a long time based in Bethlehem and written articles for numerous organizations. Meron and Yumna, welcome. Good to have you both with us.
What I want to tackle first is why this happened now, why this attack on Jenin? What’s the political motivation behind it, and what’s the reality beyond the headlines that we see?
Yumna Patel:
The latest attack in Jenin is the culmination of over a year’s long military effort by the Israeli security apparatus, to quash growing Palestinian armed resistance groups in the occupied West Bank, primarily in the Nablus and Jenin areas. In Jenin, the huge focus has been on the Jenin Refugee Camp. Over the past year and a half, since the beginning of 2022, we’ve seen several large-scale Israeli army raids on the Jenin Refugee Camp, many of which have been very deadly.
Most raids over the past year or so, have a minimum of around five people killed in a single raid. What we saw last week, was the culmination of the Israeli army’s efforts to quash Palestinian resistance. As you mentioned, it ended up with at least 12 Palestinians being killed, several of them children. It was the largest raid that we saw on Jenin, and one of the largest military operations in general in the West Bank since the Second Intifada.
The bigger picture is that right now currently, and particularly in the past year, we’ve been seeing this moment in the Palestinian streets where Palestinians, particularly Palestinian youth and the young men, are feeling increasingly frustrated and disillusioned. Not only with their own governments, but also with the Israeli occupation that every day is further entrenching an apartheid reality on the ground, but is also as we know, getting increasingly right wing.
Many of the youth, particularly in Jenin, have been put in a position where they feel like the only option left for them, is to take up arms and to resist against Israeli occupation. The battle that we’re currently seeing in Jenin has many different parts, and it’s also related to what’s happening in Israeli politics right now. But I’m sure that Meron will probably give us a better answer on that.
Marc Steiner:
Meron, go ahead, please.
Meron Rapoport:
Yes. Of course, how Israel portrays it is that Jenin, the northern of the West Bank, Jenin and Nablus, but especially Jenin, has become a place where military attacks on Israeli either army or settlers in the West Bank, has been on the rise in the last year. Jenin has been portrayed as the center of that violence, but I think that these explanations are very partial. I think the main reason for the attack on Jenin was really political.
As we know, as you mentioned also, Israel is now governed by the most extreme right-wing government in its history. It has a long history of extreme government but this one is the most extreme one. Its ministers, very senior ministers, and maybe I would say the most senior ministers, and the most influential one are Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who openly support what Smotrich, the finance minister, is calling the victory plan.
It’s a little bit difficult too, it’s a final victory plan. That’s how Smotrich is describing it, which means that leaving the Palestinian three options either to accept an apartheid regime, either to be deported from Palestine. Doesn’t really say extinguished but saying that we should win them by this war. These are the three options that are laid by this government, by the senior ministers in the government.
Now the Israeli government is very weak now, as you know, with all the demonstration inside Israel and the pressure building from the right wing and it was an open pressure. It was not secret that the army should go to Jenin, has led to this operation. But at the same time, I think that the weakness of the Israeli government was manifested also in the operation itself. Yes, the Israeli army has brought destruction and killing in Jenin during this 48 hours.
But at the same time, it really didn’t achieve a great deal. Most of the armed militia men escaped the camp and were not really confronted, did not really confront the Israeli army. The Israeli army found very little weapons compared to the weapons that we know are in the camp. I think that the weakness of the Israeli government has made it that it cannot really go on with the long operation, because criticism inside Israeli society, not necessarily saying we are with the Palestinian.
Of course, this is not the issue, but maybe there could have been a criticism saying, “You, this government, does not have any legitimacy.” That’s what the protestors are saying, “You don’t have any legitimacy to govern. Therefore, you don’t have also a legitimacy to send our children to die in Jenin.” I think the Israeli army was very quick to leave the camp, because I think it also feared this internal criticism within the Israeli society.
Marc Steiner:
That’s really interesting, so let me explore this for a minute. Yumna, again, I’d like to get under this for a moment and talk about what all this might mean in terms of the future. Clearly, this is the most extreme right-wing government in the history of Israel. It also is a time when the Palestinian Authority is probably at its weakest in its history, since the occupation began in ’67, ’68.
You see these demonstrations taking place by moderate liberal, left Israelis, but Palestinians not being part of it, even Palestinian Israelis not being part of it. You see this power or the rise of the right though, that seems to be decimating the Supreme Court, coming up with all kinds of ideas about how to disenfranchise Palestinians even more and take land. I’m wondering where you think this is headed.
This seems to me, to be one of the most critical moments that I’ve experienced in all of this. I’ve been involved in this since I was a child, when I was a Zionist as a child in HaBonim in the early ’60s, to this moment now. This seems to me, the most critical thing I’ve ever witnessed. Where do you think we are at this moment? Where do you think it takes it? Let me start with Bethlehem and where you sit, Yumna?
Yumna Patel:
Yeah. I think obviously it’s hard to predict the future, but just going based off of the events that we’ve witnessed most recently, I think things are coming to a head and Palestinians are approaching a turning point. They are facing more Israeli violence in many ways than ever before, from Israel’s right-wing government. From an increasingly violent settler population in the West Bank, and from Israeli policies that are further entrenching an apartheid reality in the West Bank.
Palestinians now are currently under threat of more land being confiscated, the construction of more settlements. I think more settlement units have been approved so far this year than in all of 2022, and so Palestinians are facing threats on every different front. At the same time, as you mentioned, the Palestinian Authority is in an extremely weak position. You could argue that especially after the raid in Jenin, the Palestinian Authority is perhaps the most unpopular that it has ever been.
After the raid in Jenin, young Palestinians in the city took to the streets. Just hours after Israeli forces withdrew from the city, youth took to the streets to confront the Palestinian Authority, yelling out things like traders and where were you for the past two days? Why didn’t you protect us? We know that today the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, actually made his first trip to Jenin and the Jenin Refugee Camp in more than 11 years.
He did so under the protection of hundreds of Palestinian Security Forces and armored military vehicles, and high-level Palestinian intelligence and security officials. It’s very indicative of the fact that when you have to go into your own populations, community under armored convoy. That means that you’re not very popular and you’re probably not doing a very good job of actually governing those places. Palestinians in Jenin, I know the Palestinians that I’ve spoken to in Jenin, they want nothing to do with the Palestinian Authority.
They don’t just want the Palestinian Authority to get out of their way, they want the Palestinian Authority to be done with altogether. It’s very telling that in the wake of the Army’s raid in Jenin, there was a security cabinet meeting on Sunday, in which Netanyahu’s government announced that they were going to take measures. Obviously, the exact measures are unclear, but they said they were going to take measures to “strengthen the Palestinian Authority.”
That just further solidifies the fact that Israel and the Palestinian Authority are in bed together. Because when it comes to oppressing the Palestinian people or maintaining the status quo, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to some degree, are the ones who serve to benefit. I think that what we’re going to see in the future, is more of what we saw last week in Jenin with Palestinians actively confronting the PA.
I think the PA is going to have a reckoning sooner rather than later with Palestinians on the ground, who have had enough with the past 30 years of the Oslo Accords where this interim government that was supposed to be a temporary thing, is now 30 years in the making. Democratic elections haven’t been held in 16 years. At the same time, Palestinians are being killed at alarming rates by Israeli forces and Israeli settlers.
Palestinians are headed to an increasingly abysmal reality, let’s say, especially in the West Bank and in places like Jenin. Eventually, things are going to boil over.
Marc Steiner:
It does feel that way and seem that way. Meron, inside of Israel itself, the left, the people who have stood up against this, seem to in many ways, to have dissipated.
As I talked to a friend of mine in Germany the other day, who was Israeli, jokingly he said, “Well, I think most of the Israeli left, who opposes what’s happened to the Palestinians, is now living in Germany. They’re not even in Israel anymore.”
How do you see that playing out itself? Any hope of alliance, any hope of real change? Where do you think it’s going?
Meron Rapoport:
I think you’re speaking to the wrong person because I’m an optimist.
Marc Steiner:
Good, that’s good. Good, good, good, good, good, good.
Meron Rapoport:
I tend to see some kind of hope all the time, and many times I’m wrong, of course. But yes, first of all, I don’t want to exaggerate, of course, the force of the Israelis that are against the occupation, but what we call the block against the occupation is present at the demonstration. I am not saying it’s too big. It has some 1,000 people in a huge demonstration of 100,000 to 150,000, but they are there with the Palestinian flags.
Just yesterday, just 100 meters from the headquarters of the Israeli army, from where the chief of staff has his office. 100 meters from there, there were Palestinian flag in the demonstration, so this is going on. This block against the occupation is more and more accepted by the large demonstrations, demonstrators at large. There is a slight change, but I’m not saying that this block against the occupation can really change the Israeli policy.
This is really going too far. But I think yes, in a very strange thing, what Yumna described, Israel and Palestine, they are twins in a way. When Yumna described that Mahmoud Abbas needs a military escort in order to reach Jenin, I don’t think that Mahmoud is able today to go to Tel Aviv to an open meeting. Maybe not with army, he will maybe not come with soldiers, but he will be kicked out if he will come to Tel Aviv today to an open meeting. This is happening all the time.
The legitimacy of the Israeli government is very much questioned by hundreds of thousands of Israelis, not because of the occupation. No, no. I have to be very clear there, but it is questioned and it is in a very delicate moment. This delicate moment, as you said, could be very, very critical and very dangerous, because there are these pressures by these very, very extreme right-wing ministers, that are in power. Smotrich is basically the military governor of the West Bank.
He received a lot of authority, so they are pushing for a very extreme solution. I would even use the final solution in a way. But at the same time, they are very weak inside the Israeli society, for reasons that apparently, apparently has nothing to do with it, but it’s only apparently. Israeli is in a dire situation because it has been addicted. Israeli was addicted to Jewish supremacy, and this is why what we call judicial reform or judicial resolution, or whatever we call it.
This change in the way the relationship between the parliament and the judicial branch comes exactly, because this right-wing politician want to implement their policy. They want to implement this apartheid, fully blown official apartheid regime. They know that lame as it is, the current Supreme Court cannot allow them, so they have to destroy it, so everything comes together.
This crisis inside the Israeli society, apparently has nothing to do with the occupation, but it has everything to do with the occupation and Jewish supremacy, and the effort to establish a full-blown apartheid regime between the river and the sea.
Marc Steiner:
Yumna, what are you about to say? Go ahead.
Yumna Patel:
Yeah. I’d just like to add, and this has definitely been said by many Palestinians before, but in light of all the political turmoil inside Israel and within Israeli society, as weak as the Israeli government may be amongst Israelis or in the streets of Tel Aviv. The Israeli government doesn’t need the approval of Israeli society to continue advancing its colonial plants in the occupied Palestinian territory.
We know this very well for decades, Israel has continued with very little pushback from Israeli society as a whole, continued its settlement, expansion, the killing of Palestinians, et cetera. Israel may be facing extreme pushback from Israelis in Tel Aviv to the current judicial overhaul or reforms, whatever way you want to call it.
But let us not forget that the same judiciary and high court has been responsible for decades, and is continually responsible today for the ongoing dispossession and active displacement of Palestinians. That has never received an iota of the displeasure and pushback from Israeli society that we’re currently seeing today when it comes to the judicial reform.
No matter which way you swing it, with the current government and with all the Israeli governments previously that weren’t as right wing as this one. Palestinians have always been getting screwed basically, and have always been getting the short end of the stick. Because Israel, as a government, as a country, as a society, is premised on the expulsion of Palestinians. Now, with the new right-wing government, we’re just seeing that more in our faces.
Marc Steiner:
I’m just curious very quickly, Yumna, have you been to Jenin since this happened?
Yumna Patel:
I have not been since this happened, but I’m actually planning a visit soon to go speak to the Palestinians there, particularly about the recent visit by the Palestinian Authority. But I have spoken to my contacts there since the last raid.
Marc Steiner:
Once you get there and come back, we’ll have another conversation to hear what happens. I’m curious, I’ve been covering this for a long time. Usually, Meron, as you, I try to be an optimist and I try to think optimistically about things, and look at what could happen. But I must admit, that at this moment, it seems like with the very far right fundamentalist government inside of Israel, with the ineffectiveness of the Palestinian Authority.
With what we’ve just seen that happened with a devastation once more of Jenin, a little devastation of Jenin. With the push of this government to really talk about, literally talk about wiping out Palestinians from their towns and taking over and building new settlements, that we’re at a very critical point. Also, if you look at this in the context of the rise of the right wing across the globe, which means very little international opposition to what Israel is doing, we’re on a precipice.
I’m just curious, and I know nobody’s pressuring, we can’t say what’s going to happen in the future. But A, is there any hope that those in Israel who are fighting for democracy and Palestinians on the ground fighting for freedom, can actually come together to build a movement to resist and stop this? Where do you think that is at this moment?
Meron Rapoport:
Here I want to be really very, very cautious. I’m also part of a movement called Two States, One Homeland that is an Israeli and Palestinian movement calling, yes, for two states, but with the open border freedom of movement for everyone, Palestinians and Jews, including Palestinian, including refugees for full freedom of movement in all the land between the river and the sea. Historical Palestine, mandatory Palestine.
I see more people are listening. I’m talking here in Israel, people are more listening to us than before and I see a change. I have no illusions that this could happen tomorrow, but yes, I agree with you Yumna, of course, the way she described it. But yes, I think that Israel sat with regimes, and we’ve seen it in Soviet Union and we’ve seen it in South Africa. Such regimes sometimes fall out of themselves, fall, disintegrate from within.
This is what happened to a large extent, the Soviet Union and the whole Warsaw Pact, just in two years just melted away. The apartheid regime that was also in South Africa, which also seemed very, very strong, also disintegrated in a very short time. I see here signs that Israel, that the cohesion of the Israeli society, by which Israel was able to describe all what Yumna to do, all what Yumna described. It was allowed by this internal Jewish, Israeli cohesion.
Now this cohesion is falling apart, and we are seeing we in new territory. Where it will lead us, I think it’s a little bit, not a little bit, it’s too early to say. But I think some hope is there because there are still forces in the Jewish, Israeli left that are opposing the occupation. There are, of course, forces in Palestinian society that wants some, of course, in the occupation, but live in some with the Jews in this land.
I think, yes, there is here a hope something is opening the weaknesses. The weakness of the PA and the Israeli government at the same time, can maybe open new roads or new opportunities that maybe even a year ago seemed very, very far away. I see them closer now, but I also, I want to repeat again. I also see a huge danger, also potential for huge danger and huge.
That what happened in Jenin will only be an introduction to a very heavy violence by Israel against the Palestinians. This is also, maybe it’s a probability that we cannot ignore.
Marc Steiner:
Yumna, through the lens of the Palestine editor sitting in Bethlehem.
Yumna Patel:
Yeah. Like I said before, I think that we are headed towards a crossroads. What that is going to turn into, I’m not sure. I guess I’m a little bit less optimistic, although, that’s just judging from what people here tell me every single day, which is that yes, this government may collapse. Whether it’s going to lead to a whole collapse of Israel as a settler colonial state, I have no idea.
But whether this government collapses, the government that’s going to replace it, as history has proven, isn’t necessarily going to be great for Palestinians. It’s like putting lipstick on a pig. It’s just different iterations of the same settler colonial reality. Israeli democracy has never existed and it will never be achieved, until Palestinians achieve liberation. That seems right now, like a very far away reality and dream for many.
Though I do agree that I think other maybe smaller things are going to continue to happen before something big happens. Whether that means the collapse of the current government, and perhaps the total restructuring of Israeli society as we know it. Or the Palestinians total rejection of their leaders, and the Oslo framework that has dictated their lives for the past 30 years.
That could perhaps pave way for a new reality and hopefully a brighter and more just future for Palestinians. I think that those would probably be welcome changes.
Marc Steiner:
Well, let me conclude with this. I think that we started talking, writing back and forth days ago during the beginning of the attack in Jenin. That attack, the assault itself is over, but the devastation is really deep in Jenin at this moment. Clearly, from the words of Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir and others in the Israeli government, this may just be the beginning, these assaults.
It seems to me that if you look at what happened to Jenin, and if this could just be the beginning of their dream and wish to push people out and take over completely, Jenin could be a lesson for the future about what might happen. You sit inside of the Palestinian world all the time, Yumna. That’s where you live, that’s what you’re part of. When you look at Jewish opinion worldwide, younger Jews around the globe are backing away from Israel in larger and larger numbers, my children included.
They’re just saying enough. You’re seeing the same thing inside Palestine with young Palestinians and Palestinian activists saying, “Enough of the PA and enough of this occupation.” There can’t be too many more Jenins before things really explode. We seem to be at just the beginning of what this new Israeli government wants to do.
Meron Rapoport:
I want to add here, as Marc has said, history sometimes repeats itself, sometimes repeats itself as false. I’m not saying what happened in Jenin is a false. 12 people were killed. It’s not a false. But if you compare it to 2002, when Israel really occupied the Jenin Refugee Camp, I was there two weeks after the occupation of the camp and the battle, the terrible battle that took place.
The total destruction, it was like an atomic bomb was thrown in the middle of this very small refugee camp. Israel today was able, despite it’s more powerful than it was 20 years ago, military, the Palestinians are weaker militarily than they were 20 years ago. But the same, despite all these huge differences, huge imbalance, Israel was able only to go to the outskirt of the camp. I heard people who were there, they didn’t go inside the camp.
They just on the outskirt of the camp, small camp, but they didn’t go really in, they didn’t really fight. They didn’t really destroy what they went to destroy and they left after 48 hours. I think Israel is much stronger and much, much weaker than it was 20 years ago. What you described again with the Jewish, the international, the public opinion, the Jewish public opinion, especially in the US but also elsewhere, but especially in the US, I hear it all the time.
Yes, we’ve seen comments that we have not seen before, we’ve not heard before from the Biden administration, again, with all the cautiousness we should take. But still, if Thomas Friedman is writing today that the US is going to reassess its position towards Israel, this is something that we have not heard more than 20 years since George Bush, the father, in the beginning of I think it was 1990. It’s more than 30 years that we have not seen this, we’ve heard these voices.
No, things are changing. Israel is much weaker. I know, I know that for a Palestinian living in Jenin or in Bethlehem, it’s the same Israel, it’s the same tanks, it’s the same occupation, the same settlements. But maybe looking from within, I see the weaknesses that Israel is facing. I see it maybe it’s exaggerating to say collapsing from within, but really having a lot of difficulties, despite its power or maybe because of its power.
Marc Steiner:
Yumna, conclude this for us today, anyway.
Yumna Patel:
I think that was a great conclusion. I don’t really know if I have much more to add.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Yumna Patel:
I know you saw me nodding my head.
Marc Steiner:
I saw you nodding, yes, yes.
Yumna Patel:
I think that was fantastic. Just responding to your initial question about we may very well be seeing more of what we saw in Jenin last week. I don’t think it’s an if or a may, I think it’s just a matter of when. The Israeli government has already been very clear about this, and that this is just the start of what it views as its operation in Jenin. We know that Jenin has already been an example over the past 20 years, as Meron said.
Israel conducted a much more destructive operation and invasion of the Jenin Refugee Camp 20 years ago, that totally decimated the camp and left, I think, around a quarter of the camp’s population displaced once again. But even 20 years after that, all we’ve seen is that generation who witnessed the death and destruction in 2002, that generation has now grown up and is taking up arms to confront Israel.
In Israel’s “efforts to squash what it calls the cesspool of terrorism or a hotbed of terrorism,” in reality, we know that this has been happening for decades. That Israeli operations, like the one we saw in Jenin, only serve to create a resurgence of Palestinian resistance to Israeli violence and oppression and colonialism. I think that we are for sure going to see more for Palestinians, we are for sure going to see more raid like the ones we saw in Jenin.
I don’t think it will be limited to Jenin. I think we’re going to see it in other parts of the West Bank where we’re also currently witnessing this rise in armed resistance. I think we’re going to be seeing a lot more of the same, but even on much bigger scales.
Marc Steiner:
Well, I want to thank you both, Yumna Patel and Meron Rapoport, for both your work you do, the writing you do, and for this conversation today. Look forward to many more conversations, as we’ll stay on top of this for The Real News.
This conversation today has been like a combination of Not in Our Name and the rise of the right that I do hear at The Real News. We’ll continue to do this, look, because I think it’s critical, not just for Israel and Palestine, but for the planet. Thank you both so much.
Meron Rapoport:
Thank you.
Yumna Patel:
Thank you. Thanks both of you.
Marc Steiner:
I hope you all enjoyed our conversation today with Yumna Patel and Meron Rapoport, and we’ll be linking to their articles and continuing this conversation with them about what’s happening in Israel, Palestine in the future. I want to thank you all again for joining us today. Please let me know what you thought about what you heard, what you’d like us to cover.
Your ideas and thoughts are always important to us. Just write to me at MSS@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. By the way, while you’re there, please go to www.therealnews.com/support, become a monthly donor, become part of the future with us. For David Hebden and Kayla Rivara and the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Earlier this week, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank witnessed the bloodiest and most violent Israeli military operation in recent memory. Over the course of 48 hours, Israeli land and air forces besieged the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, killed 12 Palestinians, and wounded over a hundred others. For the first time since the Second Intifada in 2002, the people of Jenin refugee…
Israel attacked the Jenin refugee camp this weekend in what some are calling the largest military operation in the occupied West Bank in 20 years. Israel claims to have attacked militants in the camp, but camp residents say they were targeted by airstrikes and ground troops. Palestinian health officials say the massive two-day military offensive killed 12 Palestinians and injured at least 140 more.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 3, 2023. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians and injured dozens on Monday in their latest large-scale raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, deploying hundreds of troops and launching at least 10 drone strikes—the largest aerial attack on the besieged territory in nearly two decades.
Al Jazeera reported that “a convoy of dozens of Israeli armored vehicles also surrounded the refugee camp and launched a ground military operation, causing heavy damage to homes and roads.”
Walid al-Omari, Al Jazeera‘s Jerusalem bureau chief, said that Israeli soldiers are “enforcing a total siege on the camp, while special forces are operating inside the camp, raiding homes, searching them, and arresting many people.”
The massive raid drew alarm from human rights groups and the United Nations. Lynn Hastings, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in Palestine, wrote on Twitter early Monday that she was “alarmed by the scale of Israeli forces’ operation in Jenin.”
“Airstrikes were used in the densely populated refugee camp. Several dead and critically wounded. Access to all injured must be ensured,” Hastings added.
The advocacy organization Jewish Voice for Peace said in response to the Jenin raid that “this is how the Israeli government treats Gaza—and now Netanyahu brought it to the occupied West Bank.”
“We demand accountability: End U.S. military funding to Israel now,” the group tweeted.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the number of Palestinians wounded in the Israeli raid is “on the rise” and demanded a “safe passage to evacuate the wounded and injured.”
Monday’s raid came just two weeks after Israeli forces killed several Palestinians, including two 15-year-old children, in an attack on the Jenin refugee camp, which Israel’s far-right government claims is being used as a “hub” for “terrorist activities.” The latest assault also came amid growing settler violence in the West Bank.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Monday that “we don’t have a fight with Palestinians,” but with “the proxies of Iran in our region, which is mainly Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, for his part, called the raid “a new war crime against our defenseless people.”
“Security and stability will not be achieved in the region unless our Palestinian people feel it,” said Abbas.
A 60-year-old resident of the Jenin camp told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces fired live ammunition into his home and wounded his 25-year-old niece, who was visiting from Jordan.
“The bullet pierced her leg and went out from the other side,” the woman said. “We found at least three bullets on our front door, and others across the walls.”
Cohen on Monday denied that the Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and packed with extremists, is planning on expanding its Jenin operations to the entire West Bank.
But Amjad Iraqi, a senior editor at +972 Magazine and a Palestinian citizen of Israel, warned last week that “far from being one-off incidents, the aerial assaults [on Jenin] reveal a dangerous phase in the evolution of Israel’s occupation.”
“Like Gaza, Jenin has long been a center of Palestinian social life and political resistance—and as such, a target of vicious repression,” Iraqi wrote. “Gaza is hardly an exception to the rule of Israeli apartheid. Rather, it is the ultimate bantustan—the model for controlling and weakening a native population in a besieged space, using modern weapons and technology, with local rulers to handle their basic needs, at minimal cost to the settler society surrounding them.”
“West Bank centers like Jenin and Nablus, already subjected to various forms of closure and invasion, are now catching a glimpse of what is yet to come,” he added.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Israeli forces killed at least eight Palestinians and injured dozens on Monday in their latest large-scale raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, deploying hundreds of troops and launching at least 10 drone strikes — the largest aerial attack on the besieged territory in nearly two decades. Al Jazeera reported that “a convoy of dozens of Israeli armored vehicles also surrounded…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Rep. Ilhan Omar and other progressive lawmakers decried their government’s continued military support for Israel on Thursday after hundreds of settlers rampaged through Palestinian towns this week, terrorizing families and setting fire to dozens of cars, homes, and businesses. “This is a pogrom,” Omar (D-Minnesota) wrote late Thursday. “The U.S. provides billions in military funding to the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This week, Israel has launched several attacks on Palestinians with weapons used in the conflict for the first time in nearly 20 years, including deploying U.S.-made Apache helicopter gunships inside the West Bank and firing a targeted assassination aerial strike. Jewish settlers have also raided Palestinian villages in the West Bank, attacking residents and setting fire to homes and vehicles.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on June 21, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
This week the Israeli government made a dangerous move that makes annexation of the West Bank an even closer reality, analysts say.
On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet met and announced plans to advance the construction of more than 4,560 settlement units in the West Bank. The cabinet also amended a law to allow settlers to return to previously evacuated settlements and outposts, including the recently reinhabited Homesh outpost.
The announcement was condemned by Palestinian and UN officials, who called on Israel to halt settlement expansion. Even the US chimed in, with the State Department calling it “deeply troubling.”
But even more disturbing than the furthering of thousands of settlements in the West Bank and the steps towards legalizing violent outposts is the not-so-small transfer of power that was formalized in Sunday’s meeting, which will make future settlement construction much easier.
According to an Axios report, the cabinet passed a resolution transferring the authority to approve settlement building plans from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, to ultra-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party.
A little background on Smotrich, in case you aren’t familiar: Smotrich, a settler himself, is known for his anti-Palestinian views and advocating to “wipe out” the Palestinian town of Huwwara. Smotrich is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right governing coalition, and in addition to openly saying “Palestinians don’t exist,” has openly supported the illegal annexation of the West Bank.
“We will continue to develop the settlement of and strengthen the Israeli hold on the territory,” Smotrich said at Sunday’s meeting.
In addition to the official transfer of powers, which comes along with even more powers in the West Bank for Smotrich announced earlier this year, the resolution reduced the stages of political approval that settlement planning must go through, from the previous four to five stages, to now just one or two stages. It also vastly shrunk the window of opportunity for any sort of intervention in the settlement construction process.
With Smotrich in control, plus the amended laws, settlement expansion has gotten much easier for the pro-settlement camp. It is also sounding alarms (again) over the Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Is annexation more possible now, or is it already a reality? And what does it mean for the 3+ million Palestinians living in the West Bank?
The latest reign of Prime Minister Netanyahu has already seen a significant rise in settlement construction. Since he took office in January, his coalition has approved the promotion of more than 7,000 new housing units in West Bank settlements, Reuters reported. With Smotrich, those numbers are expected to vastly increase.
As a result, the resolution on Sunday was welcomed by settler groups and settler leaders in the West Bank, who recognized the significant gains their communities would benefit from having Smotrich in near total control when it comes to settlement planning and approval on construction.
Naturally, where the settlers stand to gain, Palestinians stand to lose.
“I think Palestinians in the West Bank should plan and prepare for the worst over the coming months,” Tariq Kenney-Shawa, the US Policy Fellow at the Palestinian thinktank Al-Shabaka, told Mondoweiss.
“This government led by the likes of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir is emboldened to push the boundaries to see what they can get away with.”
Tariq Kenney-Shawa
“This government led by the likes of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben-Gvir is emboldened to push the boundaries to see what they can get away with. Legalizing outposts and expanding settlements are going to be just the beginning.”
Kenney-Shawa added that one area to keep an eye on is what’s known as the “E1” area of the West Bank, which lies in the central West Bank on the outskirts of Jerusalem. It’s been at the heart of Israel’s settlement expansion plans for years and has been the driving force behind plans to demolish surrounding Palestinian villages like Khan Al-Ahmar. Earlier this year, plans to build thousands of settlement housing units in E1 were put back on the table by Israeli authorities.
“Settlement expansion here is especially sensitive because it would prevent Palestinian territorial contiguity between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank, making a viable Palestinian state even less likely than it already is,” Kenney-Shawa said.
“For decades, the US has pressed Israel not to build in the area. However, because of the impunity they’ve gotten used to, I expect Israel’s emboldened far-right government to keep pushing the boundaries when it comes to settlement expansion in E1 and beyond.”
If Israel’s plans to expand settlements in areas like E1, for example, succeed, it would mean effectively cutting off the North of the West Bank from the South, holding everyday consequences for Palestinians and their freedom of movement across the territory. Additionally, it could likely mean the reinvigoration of plans to demolish the Bedouin villages in the area, like Khan Al Ahmar.
Outside of E1, Palestinians who live in areas where settlements already exist, or with land that is designated as ‘Area C’ and is under threat of being taken over by Israel, will likely be bracing themselves for more land confiscation and home demolitions to make way for settlement constructions.
Of course, Palestinians in particularly vulnerable areas where violent illegal outposts are being reinhabited and reestablished are expected to face more settler violence on their communities and property.
“Because Israeli leaders believe themselves entitled to all of historic Palestine, and because they have become so used to operating without fear of accountability under international law, settlement expansion will continue at an increasing pace,” Kenney-Shawa said.
The big question following Sunday’s cabinet meeting has to do with annexation. Does handing powers over the settlements, which have historically been controlled by bodies of the Israeli Defense Ministry and military, to a civilian ministry like the Minister of Finance (Smotrich), amount to annexation of the West Bank? Or at least, a step towards it?
First, Kenney-Shawa, noted the importance of the difference between two terms you’ve likely come across when it comes to Israel’s control over the West Bank: de facto and de jure annexation.
De facto annexation is annexation “in fact,” while de jure annexation refers to annexation “in law.”
“When it comes to Palestine, where Israel exerts full sovereignty and controls the lives of all Palestinians between the river and the sea, the distinction may sound silly, but it is important,” Kenney-Shawa said.
“For decades, Israel’s annexation of the West Bank has been de facto in that while it does exert full sovereignty, while it always has built settlements at will, opened and closed borders whenever it chooses, etc., it was not annexed ‘in law.’
“Now, with the transfer of the West Bank from military rule to civilian authority under Smotrich, the annexation of the West Bank is now de jure, highlighting the one state reality and erasing the myth that the occupation is temporary.”
Tariq Kenney-Shawa
This legal distinction, Kenney-Shawa said, has allowed Israel to “shroud the occupation in a false veneer of impermanence” that has “fueled the myth” of working towards a two-state solution, while in reality there is one government – Israel – controlling virtually everything between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
After Sunday’s cabinet meeting, however, Israeli annexation of the West Bank is now a reality, Kenney-Shawa said.
“Now, with the transfer of the West Bank from military rule to civilian authority under Smotrich, the annexation of the West Bank is now de jure, highlighting the one state reality and erasing the myth that the occupation is temporary.”
If Israel officially annexes the West Bank, the next natural question is whether anyone is doing anything about it. In short, beyond some statements from UN representatives and vague declarations of disapproval from the State Department, not much is being done to stop Israel from moving down the path it’s on.
Kenney-Shawa says he expects to see much of the same from the US in response to the latest news. The same, being, a whole lot of nothing.
“I’m confident that we will see more of the same when it comes to the long-standing US policy of turning a blind eye to Israel’s violations and shielding Israel from accountability,” Kenney-Shawa said, adding that the Biden administration has largely deprioritized Israel and Palestine, in favor of expanding normalization between Israel and Arab states.
“Biden also does not dare cross the pro-Israel lobby and risk losing key support that may cost him a second term in the White House. Keep in mind, this all goes against the democratic will of Democratic voters who have become overwhelmingly critical of Israel,” Kenney-Shawa noted.
The furthest that we will see Washington go in terms of reprimanding Israel, he added, will be expressions of “deep concern” and “recycling the same ‘both-sides’ rhetoric” while calling for “calm.”
“Biden has kept Netanyahu at arm’s length in response to the judicial overhaul, but I don’t expect that to last forever, as support for Israel will increasingly become a partisan cudgel, and Biden will be pressured to embrace Netanyahu as before,” Kenny-Shawa said.
And if a recent interview with Netanyahu, in which he flat out says Israel doesn’t view settlements as illegal (spoiler alert: international law says very clearly that they are), is any indication, Israel knows that they will face no accountability or action from international actors when it comes to their blatant disregard for international law.
“This represents the crux of the issue – Israeli leaders, not just Netanyahu, believe themselves biblically entitled to the West Bank. To them, there is no law that can deny them this perceived divine right,” Kenney-Shawa said, adding that for Israel, “international law is only applicable when it benefits their settler-colonial aspirations.”
“When international law opposes Israel’s interests or demands accountability for Israel’s violations, it is smeared as illegitimate or antisemitic.
Netanyahu knows Biden’s constraints and will continue testing the boundaries of the “special” US-Israel relationship as long as he is in power. This combination – the “divine” entitlement Israeli leaders feel, coupled with their sense of absolute impunity – is driving the current escalation that will only become increasingly violent over the coming months.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Human rights defenders on Monday blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right apartheid government after it reportedly informed the Biden administration of plans to build thousands of new Jewish-only settler homes in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine. Three Israeli and U.S. officials told Axios that Israel will announce later this month its intention to build at least…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Palestinian children living in the occupied West Bank cannot walk to school without a military escort, assuming their classrooms have not been demolished or confiscated by Israelis in the first place. Palestinian kids face constant attacks and harassment from violent Israeli “settlers” pushing to colonize the West Bank with illegal settlements, if not wipe Palestine off the map altogether.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli forces shot three Palestinians dead in the occupied West Bank on Thursday.
The Palestinian health ministry announced the martyrdom of three men shot by Israeli forces in Jaba, near the northern city of Jenin.
Palestinian Quds News Network said the killing had been carried out in “cold blood”:
Another sad day for Palestinians as Israeli occupation forces shot and killed, earlier this morning, three youths in cold blood while sitting in their car during a military raid into the town of Jaba’, south of Jenin city. pic.twitter.com/Ccp4rxehYu
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 9, 2023
The health ministry identified the dead men as Sufyan Fakhoury, Ahmed Fashafsha, and Nayef Malaysha. All were in their mid-twenties.
Israeli police claim that IDF special forces accompanied by soldiers had been in Jaba to arrest suspects involved in shooting attacks against soldiers in the area. These included Fakhoury and Fashafsha. It said the pair were operatives of the militant group Islamic Jihad. However, in a statement Islamic Jihad condemned Israel for the “heinous assassination” in Jaba.
Israeli special forces, including undercover units in civilian clothing, raided Jaba at 6am (04:00 GMT).
Local media outlets reported that an exchange of fire between Palestinian fighters and Israeli forces ensued.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) also criticised the raid, with spokesperson Ibrahim Melhem saying:
They [the Israelis] are the blind force that spreads terror and intimidation to discourage our people from continuing the struggle, which has not and will not stop, no matter the sacrifices.
In 2022 human rights charity Amnesty International labelled Israel an apartheid state following an investigation they carried out:
Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians…Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has control over their rights. This includes Palestinians living in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), as well as displaced refugees in other countries.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, said:
There is no possible justification for a system built around the institutionalized and prolonged racist oppression of millions of people. Apartheid has no place in our world, and states which choose to make allowances for Israel will find themselves on the wrong side of history.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Israeli Defence Force, cropped to 770 x 403.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
By Joe Glenton
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israeli settlers tore through the occupied West Bank on Sunday, violently attacking Palestinians and setting fire to their cars, houses, and businesses in what one rights group called a “pogrom” sanctioned by the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The settlers, who killed at least one Palestinian and injured hundreds more, launched their assault after a suspected Palestinian gunman fatally shot two Israeli settlers while they were driving in the West Bank.
Residents of the West Bank town of Huwara described the panic they felt Sunday as settlers attacked their vehicles and shops and hurled burning tires through the windows of their homes—all while Israeli soldiers looked on, doing nothing to stop the violence.
“I never thought about the house or all our stuff, I was only thinking about my children and how to save them from this nightmare,” one resident told Middle East Eye. “We got out of the house and off to safety with the help of the ambulance crews who were also attacked while trying to evacuate us. Our lives are in danger and all this is happening while the Israeli soldiers stand around waiting only to protect the settlers.”
The act of collective punishment by Israeli settlers, whose government-backed presence on occupied Palestinian land represents a violation of international law, drew outrage from human rights organizations, including the prominent Israeli group B’Tselem.
“The Jewish Supremacist regime carried out a pogrom in the villages around Nablus yesterday,” the group wrote on Twitter early Monday. “This isn’t ‘loss of control.’ This is exactly what Israeli control looks like. The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it. It’s a synergy.”
“The Huwara Pogrom was an extreme manifestation of a longstanding Israeli policy,” B’Tselem added. “It was carried out by the state of Israel.”
Smoke and flames rise from the West Bank town of Huwara. (Photo: Hisham K. K. Abu Shaqra/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The settler attack came days after Israeli forces killed at least ten Palestinians in a raid on the West Bank city of Nablus, just north of Huwara.
Israeli forces have killed dozens of Palestinians since the start of the new year.
Just two days before the deadly Nablus raid, the U.S. backed a watered-down United Nations Security Council statement voicing opposition to “Israeli construction and expansion of settlements, confiscation of Palestinians’ land, and the ‘legalization’ of settlement outposts, demolition of Palestinians’ homes, and displacement of Palestinian civilians.”
The statement marked the first time in six years that the U.S.—which has veto power in the body—allowed the U.N. Security Council to issue a statement critical of Israeli settlements. But observers warned the statement would do little to deter the far-right Israeli government, which appears bent on settlement expansion.
In a social media post on Sunday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price condemned the “violence” that took place in the West Bank, citing the “terrorist attack that killed two Israelis and settler violence, which resulted in the killing of one Palestinian, injuries to over 100 others, and the destruction of extensive property.”
Responding to Price, Francesca Albanese—the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories—wrote, “I condemn Israel’s 55-year-old settler-colonial occupation of Palestinian territory (and recent Israeli politicians’ incitement to commit crimes) that is causing continuous violence/despicable loss of life.”
“I also condemn the continuous misrepresentation of this violence and its root causes,” Albanese added.
A Palestinian man stands amid torched cars near a house in Huwara. (Photo: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)
Netanyahu, meanwhile, merely asked settlers not to “take the law into your hands” and to let Israeli forces “carry out their work.”
One Israeli lawmaker, Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli, echoed B’Tselem’s condemnation of the Sunday assault as a “pogrom” and said the settlers “get their legitimacy from senior members of this government.”
“This cancerous growth that threatens the country,” Michaeli added, “must be excised as soon as possible before it leads us to utter ruin.”
The Palestinian presidency similarly blamed far-right Israeli lawmakers—as well as members of the international community that continue to support the government—for enabling Sunday’s assault.
“This terrorism and whoever stands behind it aims to destroy and thwart the international efforts exerted to try to get out of the current crisis,” the statement reads. “We stand at a crossroads, either for the international community to assume its responsibilities, led by the United States of America, by obliging the Israeli government to stop its aggressions and stop the crimes of settlers immediately, or else the situation will enter into a circle of action and reaction.”
On Thursday, February 23, city streets in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip were silent. Palestinians had declared a general strike and a day of mourning in light of the Israeli invasion of one of the West Bank’s most ancient cities the day before, which left 11 Palestinians dead and over 102 people injured. On the morning of February 22, Israeli forces invaded Nablus.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A general strike has been called across Palestine, to remember the 11 people who were killed by Israeli forces in the city of Nablus yesterday. Among the dead are a 16-year-old boy and two elderly men. More than 100 people suffered gunshot wounds.
People from all over the West Bank are participating in the strike today. Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes carried out strikes on the Gaza strip this morning, including on the al-Bureij refugee camp.
The Canary spoke to Dr Ghassan Hamdan, the General Manager of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in the Nablus area. Ghassan told us that the operation yesterday was an indiscriminate “act of collective punishment”. Israeli forces surrounded people while they were going about their daily business, deploying jeeps, Apache helicopters, and armed drones.
Ghassan told us that 56 people remain in hospitals in Nablus, and that four of them are in intensive care. He described how stretched health services are right now:
Our hospitals are not ready to have this number of injured people…. Yesterday when we had these attacks by the Israelis the hospitals had to stop their normal operations, and receive the people who had been shot. Sick people had to be transferred back to their homes, because the hospitals needed to receive the shot people.
The Israeli army repeatedly fired on medical personnel yesterday. Ghassan told us:
Yesterday Israeli forces shot the ambulances and [fired on] the medical personnel who were trying to help the injured people.
We need international protection for our medical services.
Some medical personnel were under [fire from] tear gas so they couldn’t help people in the field. When we came to help the injured people they shot in the air, stopping us from doing our duty.
Wednesday’s massacre is just the latest in a series of increasingly deadly raids on Palestinian cities. On 6 February, Israeli troops killed five Palestinians in Jericho’s Aqbat Jaber refugee camp. The attack on the camp followed a ten-day siege of the city.
On 26 January, an Israeli assault on a refugee camp in the city of Jenin killed nine people. Israeli soldiers attacked a hospital in the city. An elderly woman was among those murdered.
2022 was the most deadly year for Palestinians since the second Intifada (uprising) in the early 2000s. And Israel’s police, armed forces and colonists have already killed 61 people this year.
Israeli settlers have intensified their attacks on Palestinians. 144 such attacks were reported in one day in the Nablus area alone.
Electronic Intifada warned yesterday that:
According to some close observers, the new far-right government in Tel Aviv may be deliberately seeking a violent escalation to provide a pretext to implement its aims to formally annex West Bank land and further consolidate its colonial, apartheid rule.
A general strike is ongoing today across Palestine. People have closed their shops and businesses in mourning for the 11 people killed in Nablus. Schools in the West Bank and Gaza have announced that they will close for the day too.
A general strike is being held across the occupied Palestinian territories in protest against the Israeli raid in Nablus that killed 11 Palestinians and injured more than 100. pic.twitter.com/4Y0Nba6WFE
— V PALESTINE
(@V_Palestine20) February 23, 2023
Ghassan said that the strike is taking place “across the West Bank, Gaza in Ramallah – Hebron everywhere”. He told us:
the people are going now to funeral places where they can give support to the families and relatives [of those killed]. In Nablus we have a general place [of mourning] in Balata refugee camp and Al Askar refugee Camp – people are coming from all over the West Bank.
Everything is closed in Nablus – schools, factories, institutions – everything is closed now.
These strikes have been called because of the massacres.
Many such general strikes have taken place over the last months, in response to the occupation’s crimes.
Ghassan said that international organisations should be doing more to protect Palestinians.
Where are the organisations protecting human rights? Why are they not protecting the Palestinian people?
Israel is not respecting conventions, or any international agreements.
Where is the United Nations, where are the human rights organisations, we are asking these institutions to protect the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, Palestinian organisation Samidoun released a call for action in response to the attack. They demanded active solidarity with the Palestinian anti-colonial movement:
This crime must impel all of us to act, to organize, to engage in direct actions, to isolate the occupier, to build our collective resistance and to support the Palestinian people and their revolutionary movement on the front lines of struggle for justice and liberation.
The war being waged against the Palestinian people is an existential one. Palestinians are warning that the Israeli state may be about to launch another massive offensive. It is up to us to act in solidarity. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has set out how ordinary people everywhere can join the struggle for justice. You can find out more here.
Featured image is of a damaged house in the old city of Nablus, via Al Jazeera / Screenshot
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on Canary.
A child and two elderly people were among at least 10 Palestinians who were killed Wednesday morning by Israeli military forces conducting a raid in the West Bank city of Nablus. The attack brings the number of Palestinians killed in the occupied territories by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to 61 since the beginning of the year — a rate of more than one per day, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The state of Israel‘s repression and apartheid in Palestine is steadily mounting. January 2023 was the most deadly month since 2015 for Palestinians. 2022 was the deadliest year since the second Intifada (or uprising) in the early 2000s.
Stop the Wall, a Palestinian grassroots anti-apartheid campaign, said:
2023 so far has been nothing less than traumatic.
It tweeted:
Looking back at January 2023, the most deadly month since 2015. Behind each number are Palestinian lives killed or brutalized by Israeli apartheid. Until when?#UNInvestigateApartheid #EndEthnicCleansing pic.twitter.com/QNHn4frFoq
— Stop The Wall (@stopthewall) February 8, 2023
Israeli forces killed five people on Monday 6 February during a raid on Jericho’s Aqbat Jabr refugee camp.
The Israeli military confined camp residents to their houses during the raid, while Israeli snipers occupied the rooftops. Israeli forces blocked off the entrances and exits to the camp. They also positioned guns on the nearby mountains, while drones flew overhead.
Israeli forces are refusing to return the bodies of those killed. The Stop the Wall campaign says this is “to inflict further pain on their families and friends”.
The raid followed 10 days of siege in Jericho. The occupying army placed restrictions on movement after a shooting at a restaurant frequented by Israeli settlers on 26 January. Israeli soldiers have been subjecting Palestinians to searches as they come in and out of the city. They’ve also demolished houses and businesses.
The raid on Aqbat Jabr camp comes less than a fortnight after the bloody 26 January attack on the Jenin refugee camp. During that attack, Israeli forces murdered nine people, including an elderly woman. Troops also stormed the Jenin government hospital.
Stop the Wall have accused the new Israeli government – and its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu – of fascism:
The current government, lead by apartheid Israel’s longest serving prime minister, marks both, continuity in the settler-colonial project and apartheid policies as well as a new level of brutality, unmasked racism and openly fascist tendencies.
Palestinian groups have made a united call for international solidarity in response to the mounting violence. According to Stop the Wall:
As grim as the reality looks for Palestinians, this has to be the moment of change.
Groups including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Council, and the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisation Network signed the statement. It expresses the urgency of the current situation and proposes building an “Arab and international front” “to end apartheid and settler colonialism”.
The call reaffirms that Israeli policies of systemic racism amount to apartheid, saying it’s a “crime against humanity… as defined in international law”. It points to Israel’s Nation-State of the Jewish People Basic Law of 2018, which permits Israeli institutions to discriminate against non-Jewish people.
The call states that Zionism is a racist and colonial ideology:
Zionism, which arose in the context of European imperialist and colonial expansion, is the intellectual and ideological basis of settler-colonialism in Palestine. It is a racist, genocidal ideology that encourages terrorism and fascism, as our people has witnessed for 74 years.
The demands of the call are for:
The authors of the statement are calling for intersectional solidarity. They want to work together with anti-racist and global movements for environmental and social justice.
Palestine and its people have been making calls like this for international support for many decades, most notably the 2005 call for BDS. But the increasing violence, coupled by the policies of the most right-wing government in the history of the Israeli state, demand renewed action in support of the Palestinian people.
We need to think seriously about how the UK’s social movements can answer this call. We must work together to increase our support for Palestine.
You can read the full “Call towards a global front to dismantle Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid” here.
Featured image via ShanghaiEye – YouTube
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious Zionist coalition, which was sworn in on December 29, 2022, declared in its manifesto that Jews have the “exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.” To that end, in a little over a month, the Israeli regime has killed Palestinians, demolished their homes, mounted incursions into occupied Palestinian territory and…
Israeli forces launched their latest bombing campaign in the occupied Gaza Strip early Friday morning just hours after killing at least nine Palestinians in a raid on a West Bank refugee camp — resulting in the deadliest single day in the besieged territory in more than a year. The airstrikes came after the Israeli army said two rockets fired from Gaza were intercepted by Israel’s missile defense…
Israeli forces launched their latest bombing campaign in the occupied Gaza Strip early Friday morning just hours after killing at least nine Palestinians in a raid on a West Bank refugee camp—resulting in the deadliest single day in the besieged territory in more than a year.
The airstrikes came after the Israeli army said two rockets fired from Gaza were intercepted by Israel’s missile defense system.
No injuries or deaths have been reported from the Israeli strikes as of this writing, but Al Jazeera noted that the country’s warplanes hit the al-Maghazi refugee camp in the center of Gaza with its early Friday bombing, which caused infrastructure damage and power outages.
At least 14 missiles were fired by Israeli fighter jets Friday morning.
“We didn’t sleep the whole night, bombing and missiles,” 50-year-old Gaza resident Abdallah Al-Husary told Reuters. “There is worry and there is fear, any minute a war can happen. With any clash in the West Bank, there can be war along the borders in Gaza.”
Israeli forces have killed at least 30 Palestinians so far this year under the far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has elevated virulently anti-Palestinian figures to top posts, including national security minister.
Last year,
according to data gathered by Middle East Eye, Israeli forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank—at least 220 people—than in any year since the Second Intifada.
“Israel’s horrific colonial violence must end,” the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights said in response to the fresh round of bombing.
Friday’s attack on Gaza could be the first of many to come, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant suggested Friday. As the
Associated Press reported, Gallant “instructed the military to prepare for new strikes in the Gaza Strip ‘if necessary.’”
The burst of violence by the Israeli military drew a muted international response.
According to Al Jazeera, the United Arab Emirates, China, and France have requested a closed-door United Nations Security Council meeting on Friday to discuss the situation.
“While Palestinian deaths mount, the international response to Israel’s violations consists of little more than timid condemnation at best, and unconditional support at worst.”
Vedant Patel, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said during a press briefing Thursday that the Biden administration is “deeply concerned by the escalating cycle of violence in the West Bank.”
“I want to underscore the urgent need for all parties to de-escalate, to prevent further loss of civilian life, and to work together to improve the security situation in the West Bank,” Patel added. “Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely.”
Following the deadly Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp, the Palestinian Authority suspended a security cooperation agreement with Israel.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is scheduled to visit the Middle East starting Sunday, with planned trips to Egypt, Israel, and the West Bank. Axios reported that CIA Director Bill Burns “arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday for visits to Israel and the occupied West Bank, where he is expected to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders and his counterparts on both sides.”
Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa research and advocacy director at Amnesty International, condemned the international community for continually refusing to act in the face of Israel’s unending violence against Palestinians.
“For almost a year, Jenin refugee camp has been at the center of Israel’s escalating military crackdown,” Luther said in a statement Thursday. “Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead in the camp last May, and its residents continue to be subjected to relentless military raids which amount to collective punishment.”
“Meanwhile, Israel continues to enjoy total impunity for the system of apartheid it imposes on Palestinians—a system which is partly maintained through violations like unlawful killings,” Luther added. “While Palestinian deaths mount, the international response to Israel’s violations consists of little more than timid condemnation at best, and unconditional support at worst. Today’s bloodshed is a reminder of the cost of this shameful inaction—until there is accountability, deadly attacks against Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territories will continue.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
An elderly woman was among at least nine Palestinian people killed in an early morning raid at a refugee camp in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, in what President Mahmoud Abbas denounced as “a massacre from the Israeli occupation government, in the shadow of international silence.”
The woman died of a gunshot wound in her neck, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported.
Heavily armed soldiers with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered the refugee camp in a commercial truck and shot at residents who were trying to block them. The IDF also used bulldozers in the raid and targeted an area that was used as a meeting place for residents. According to Al Jazeera, “dozens of armored vehicles and snipers” were involved in the raid.
“The sounds of bullets and gunfights were intense, and clouds of smoke covered the sky,” Anas Huwaisheh, a correspondent at a local channel, told MEE. “The Israeli occupation cut off the electricity, the internet, and the cell phone network during the storming. This shows that it was planned.”
At least 20 people were injured as of this writing, including four who were in critical condition.
\u201cIsraeli forces shot dead nine Palestinians and wounded at least 16 others during a raid on Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. \n\nThe attack is one of the deadliest days since Israeli raids intensified at the start of last year, and has been described as a \u201cmassacre\u201d.\u201d— Middle East Eye (@Middle East Eye) 1674741232
The raid made Thursday one of the deadliest days in the occupied West Bank since the IDF intensified its attacks early last year in response to the Palestinian resistance.
At least 29 Palestinians have now been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem this month, including five children and 15 people from Jenin.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai al-Kaila accused the IDF of obstructing ambulances as emergency workers tried to take victims to a nearby public hospital and of “deliberately [firing] tear gas bombs at the hospital’s children’s department, choking children.”
“There is an invasion that is unprecedented… in terms of how large it is and the number of injuries,” Wissam Baker, the head of the public hospital, told Al Jazeera. “The ambulance driver tried to get to one of the martyrs who was on the floor, but the Israeli forces shot directly at the ambulance and prevented them from approaching him.”
The IDF denied firing tear gas at the hospital deliberately but said soldiers fired the chemicals close enough to the hospital that it could have entered the children’s ward.
Murad Khamayseh, a medic, told MEE that “it was almost impossible to go into the camp” to rescue victims.
“Israeli forces fired warning shots and signaled at the team to not approach the area,” Khamayseh said. “As paramedics we have gotten used to this, but I honestly couldn’t keep myself together after the things I have seen today.”
Political analyst Aleef Sabbagh told Al Jazeera that the raid is likely “the first shot in a coming, larger Israeli operation” and warned that without a “real, strong response” to the attack and other incidents like the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last year, “Israel will continue to do what it wants without punishment.”
“The targeting of ambulances and hospitals, preventing aid to wounded people, the field executions—even the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh—there has been no accountability,” Sabbagh said.
Abu Akleh was shot to death while covering an IDF raid in Jenin last May; multiple investigations have determined the Israelis were responsible for her killing, either intentionally or unintentionally, but Israel said in recent weeks it would not cooperate with a U.S. investigation into the matter.
Jewish Voice for Peace said Thursday that the Jenin raid was “the result of unrestrained violence by the Israeli military.”
\u201cThe massacre in Jenin is the result of unrestrained violence by the Israeli military: 9 killed in one day, including 2 children. We support the calls for a national strike across all Palestine.\u201d— Jewish Voice for Peace (@Jewish Voice for Peace) 1674749525
A general strike was called across the West Bank on Thursday to protest the raid at the refugee camp.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
An Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp on 26 January killed nine Palestinians including an elderly woman, Palestinian officials said. The Palestinian health ministry also accused Israeli forces of using tear gas inside a hospital children’s ward.
The health ministry said that the death toll rose to “nine martyrs including an elderly woman”, with multiple wounded. In a separate statement, Palestinian health minister Mai al-Kaila said that:
occupation forces stormed Jenin Government Hospital and intentionally fired tear gas canisters at the paediatric department in the hospital.
She described the situation in the refugee camp as “critical”, and said Israeli forces were preventing ambulances from reaching the wounded. When Agence France-Presse (AFP) asked Israel’s army to respond to the tear gas allegation, they declined to comment.
Thursday’s fatalities bring the number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank so far this year to 29, including fighters and civilians, most of whom were shot by Israeli forces.
The mounting toll follows the deadliest year in the Palestinian territory since United Nations records began in 2005.
Jenin deputy governor Kamal Abu al-Rub told AFP that residents were living in a “real state of war”. He also said:
The Israeli army is destroying everything and shooting at everything that moves.
The Palestinian presidency said Thursday’s raid on Jenin was happening “under international silence”. A spokesperson for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said:
This is what encourages the occupation government to commit massacres against our people in full view of the world.
Palestinian health minister al-Kaila called for an urgent meeting with the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross over the atrocities in Jenin.
Political analyst Aleef Sabbagh told Al-Jazeera:
The lack of a response – neither Arab nor international – over what Israel is doing, is encouraging it to continue with its raids and killings
The latest violence comes a day after Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians in separate incidents. Israeli soldiers killed a 22-year-old near the West Bank city of Qalqilya. They also subsequently killed a 17-year-old boy who appeared to point a fake gun at police during a raid in the Shuafat refugee camp in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem. The teenager was the fifth Palestinian minor killed during operations by Israeli forces so far this month.
Featured image via YouTube screenshot/AFP News Agency
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
This post was originally published on Canary.
A top Human Rights Watch official warned Monday that restrictions recently placed by Israel’s apartheid government on “foreigners”—including Palestinians—seeking entry into the West Bank could turn the illegally occupied territory into “another Gaza,” which is often described as the “world’s largest open-air prison.”
Last year, a three-page document used by Israeli authorities to screen foreign nationals wishing to enter the West Bank was replaced by a 61-page guide detailing occupation forces’ policies and procedures for foreigners seeking to visit only the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, or to extend a stay for specific purposes including studying, teaching, volunteering, or working there.
“The guidelines are distinct from those for entering Israel, which are normally applied at Ben Gurion Airport and other ports of entry,” explained HRW—whose own Israel and Palestine director, Omar Shakir, was denied an entry permit under the new rules. “A West Bank permit holder without an Israeli entry visa has no legal authorization to enter Israel, nor occupied East Jerusalem.”
HRW deputy Middle East director Eric Goldstein said in a statement that “by making it harder for people to spend time in the West Bank, Israel is taking yet another step toward turning the West Bank into another Gaza, where two million Palestinians have lived virtually sealed off from the outside world for over 15 years. This policy is designed to weaken the social, cultural, and intellectual ties that Palestinians have tried to maintain with the outside world.”
\u201cNew Israeli restrictions on access to the West Bank for foreigners further isolate Palestinians from their loved ones & global civil society\u2014another step by Israel to turn the West Bank into Gaza, which it runs as open-air prison. New @hrw report out today https://t.co/LELHp4YAa1\u201d— Omar Shakir (@Omar Shakir) 1674450399
HRW interviewed 13 people last year “who detailed difficulties they have faced for years entering or remaining in the West Bank and their concerns about how the new guidelines will affect them.”
“Ayman,” who was born in Europe in the mid-1990s to a Palestinian father from the West Bank and a European mother, has lived in the West Bank most of his life. However, because he has no Palestinian identification card, he has relied upon visas in his European passport to remain in the West Bank and fears the new regulations could endanger his ability to remain in Palestine.
“Palestine for me is home,” as “my childhood, schools, classmates, friends, extended family, relatives, and all the memories I have are all here,” he told HRW, and yet “I am in Palestine as a tourist, as a European citizen.”
“Israel’s duties as an occupying power require it to facilitate foreigners’ entry to the West Bank in an orderly manner.”
“I may lose the right to visit,” Ayman added. “I won’t be able to visit as a tourist either according to these regulations.”
HRW asserted that “while countries have wide discretion over entry into their sovereign territory, international humanitarian law requires occupying powers to act in the best interest of the occupied population or to maintain security or public order.”
“There are no apparent justifications based on security, public order, or the best interests of Palestinians for how significantly Israeli authorities restrict volunteers, academics, or students from entering the West Bank or Palestinians’ loved ones from remaining on a long-term basis,” the group argued.
\u201cDozens of Palestinian women and their children are demanding that Israeli authorities allow them to change the address on their ID cards from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, which would allow them to reunite with their partners\nhttps://t.co/ELYyG98645\u201d— Middle East Eye (@Middle East Eye) 1674450030
“By excessively restricting Palestinian families’ ability to spend time together, and blocking the entry of academics, students, and nongovernmental workers who would contribute to social, cultural, political, and intellectual life in the West Bank, Israel’s restrictions fall afoul of its duty, which increases in a prolonged occupation, to facilitate normal civil life for the occupied population,” HRW continued.
“Israel’s duties as an occupying power require it to facilitate foreigners’ entry to the West Bank in an orderly manner,” HRW added. “Subject to an individualized security assessment and absent compelling reason of law, Israeli authorities should at minimum grant permits of reasonable duration to foreigners who would contribute to life of the West Bank, including the family members of Palestinians and those working with Palestinian civil society, and residency to immediate relatives.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
As chaos continued in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to the chamber took aim at Israel’s new far-right government for its plans to forcibly displace over 1,000 Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta region of the illegally occupied West Bank.
After noting that “2022 was one of the deadliest years for Palestinians on record,” U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—an outspoken critic of violence by Israeli forces and settlers, and the United States’ military aid to Israel—declared that “Congress must stop funding apartheid.”
“Not even one week into 2023, the new far-right apartheid government is moving to ethnically cleanse entire communities—which would displace more than 1,000 Palestinian residents, including 500 children,” Tlaib tweeted. “All with American backing, bulldozers, and bullets.”
The congresswoman also shared a tweet from the U.S.-based group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which pointed to video footage of Israeli occupation forces destroying homes and other infrastructure in Masafer Yatta.
Just days after the new Israeli government is sworn in, families in Masafer Yatta are already facing more ethnic cl… https://t.co/2RcHh1x8eR— Jewish Voice for Peace (@Jewish Voice for Peace) 1672770808
In a statement Wednesday, JVP managing director Tallie Ben-Daniel also called out Israel’s most far-right government in history—Benjamin Netanyahu of the Likud party was again sworn in as prime minister last week after forming a controversial coalition with right-wing parties—for escalating the forced expulsion of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta.
“The horrifying actions of this new government, only five days in, prove exactly what Palestinians have been saying all along: Israel is an apartheid state, where Palestinians are treated as inferior,” said Ben-Daniel. “The dangerous escalations by the new Israeli government make clear that now is the time for action. All Jewish people who believe in justice should support Palestinians’ calls for freedom and speak up against this far-right, extremist new government.”
\u201cIsrael regularly destroys Palestinian water infrastructure as part of its inhumane apartheid regime. This has devastating consequences for Palestinian health & the environment \ud83d\udca7\ud83c\udf0d\n\nNo aspect of life is safe under Israeli occupation\n\n#SanctionsOnIsrael #SaveMasaferYatta\u201d— Friends of Al Aqsa (@Friends of Al Aqsa) 1672851302
JVP political director Beth Miller put pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden, who said last week that “I look forward to working with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has been my friend for decades,” while also claiming that “the United States will continue to support the two-state solution and to oppose policies that endanger its viability or contradict our mutual interests and values.”
Miller argued that “the Biden administration has enabled and paved the way for this extremist Israeli government by ensuring total impunity for Israel’s actions and actively fighting against any attempts to hold the Israeli government accountable for its human rights violations. Claims by the administration to ‘oppose’ escalatory policies are empty without concrete action to end U.S. complicity in Israeli apartheid.”
\u201cThe Israeli authorities must immediately halt the forcible eviction of 1,000+ Palestinians from Masafer Yatta. \n\nDispossession is one of the key pillars of Israel\u2019s racist system of apartheid over Palestinians. It cannot go on. \n\n#SaveMasaferYatta\u201d— Amnesty UK (@Amnesty UK) 1672763229
Al Jazeera reported Wednesday that human rights groups and residents of Masafer Yatta said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) “has informed Palestinian officials of their imminent plans to forcibly displace more than 1,000 Palestinian residents,” which was approved last May by the Israeli High Court of Justice, despite charges of “ethnic cleansing” from critics worldwide.
According to the report:
“They may come without notice—they may isolate each village and displace them one by one, or they may carry out mass displacement at once. We don’t know,” Nidal Younis, head of the Masafer Yatta Village Council, told Al Jazeera.
“In the last period, especially after the court decision, they paralyzed the movement of people in this area,” continued Younis. “There are villages with checkpoints at their entrances, and only residents of the area are allowed to enter and exit,” he added, noting that the army has held up residents for up to 12 hours in the past.”
The forcible transfer of protected residents—defined by the Geneva Convention as “civilians who find themselves in the hands of a party to the conflict of which they are not nationals” in occupied territory is classified as a war crime under international law.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem also made that point in a statement Monday, noting Israeli plans to expel Palestinians from their lands and homes to an “alternate location.”
“Forcible transfer of protected persons in occupied territory is a war crime,” said B’Tselem. “Therefore, the Israeli ‘offer’ of an alternative is meaningless. It is a violent threat that leaves the residents with no choice.”
\u201cSince Israel confiscated makeshift tents in the community about a month ago \u2013 after demolishing the school itself some six weeks ago \u2013 the teachers have been folding the tent up after every school day in the hope of preventing its confiscation. >\u201d— B’Tselem \u05d1\u05e6\u05dc\u05dd \u0628\u062a\u0633\u064a\u0644\u0645 (@B’Tselem \u05d1\u05e6\u05dc\u05dd \u0628\u062a\u0633\u064a\u0644\u0645) 1672844025
In a clear display of international disapproval of the Israeli occupation, the day after Netanyahu took the oath of office last week, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution asking the International Court of Justice to issue an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s ongoing “occupation, settlement, and annexation” of Palestinian territories.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been sworn in for his sixth term as prime minister of Israel. While his prior tenures resulted in the commission of war crimes against the Palestinian people, Netanyahu’s new regime promises to be the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history. Netanyahu won reelection despite facing criminal charges for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Palestinian region of Masafer Yatta, in the South Hebron Hills area of the occupied West Bank, is under intense pressure from Israeli forces.
A 2022 Israeli High Court ruling said that there is no legal barrier to the complete eviction of the majority of the villages of Masafer Yatta. However, local people have vowed to remain on their land.
The violence against communities in Masafer Yatta continued on 3 January, with the demolition of a house in the village of Maeen.
Local resident Sami Huraini tweeted:
Now Israeli Occupation Forces are demolishing a Palestinian house in the village of Ma3ein in the South Hebron Hills , Masafer Yatta #defendmasaferyatta pic.twitter.com/abxt2mr194
— #defendmasaferyatta (@HurainiSami) January 3, 2023
A day earlier, on 2 January, Israeli forces confiscated a bulldozer in the nearby village of At-Tuwani. The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) tweeted:
IOF stormed the village of at-Tuwani in #MasaferYatta, #southhebronhills, and confiscated a bulldozer. Palestinians need to pay hefty fines to have their possessions returned after these illegal confiscations. #SaveMasaferYatta #DefendMasaferYatta #FreePalestine #EndApartheid pic.twitter.com/eEYcbbbN0B
— ISM Palestine (@ISMPalestine) January 2, 2023
Both of these demolitions are part of a concerted military campaign to make life impossible for Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta.
Israeli forces carry out demolitions on a near daily basis across the West Bank, as well as within the borders of Israel. These colonial demolitions are carried out with a host of different justifications, but their intention is to push Palestinian communities off their land.
Certain areas of the West Bank are under increased pressure from Israeli forces. Right now those communities include Masafer Yatta, the Jordan Valley, several Palestinian areas in and around East Jerusalem, and the village of Al Araqib in the Naqab. These communities are under imminent threat of destruction.
Residents in Masafer Yatta have launched an international initiative to save their region. The Save Masafer Yatta campaign explained:
Masafer Yatta is an area in the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank, which is home to twelve Palestinian villages totaling about 2,800 residents. The area is spread out over about 35,000 dunam [a dunam is roughly an acre] of land, where agricultural communities have lived for generations.
It continued:
In opposition to international law, which prohibits the expulsion of a population from its land and the use of occupied land for military training, the Israeli army declared the area Firing Zone 918, in the early 1980s, in order to dispossess Palestinians from their homes and strengthen Israeli settlements in the area.
Since this declaration, residents have lived under the daily threat of demolitions, evictions, and dispossession. Families in Masafer Yatta are denied access to their land, roads, sources of water, schools, medical services, and hospitals. This is in addition to nearly daily violence from settlers in the region.
The campaigners highlighted how damaging the Israeli High Court decision last year could be for the region:
On May 4th, 2022, the Israeli High Court issued its final decision in the decades-long case, rejecting the residents’ petition and giving the army the green light to forcibly evict these communities at a moment’s notice. If the Israeli army moves ahead with the eviction it will be one of the largest expulsions carried out by the State of Israel in recent decades, an alarming precedent that could lead to further expulsions across the West Bank, and a further escalation of Israel’s policies of annexation and Apartheid.
We must not stand by as Israel evicts and expels entire communities. We cannot allow Apartheid to go unchallenged.
The United Nations has confirmed that since the ruling:
Israeli authorities have increasingly intensified a coercive environment for Palestinians in Masafer Yatta
Although the villages of Maeen and At-Tuwani lie outside the firing zone, the whole Masafer Yatta region is subject to increased colonial harassment, confiscations, and violence from the occupying forces.
The demolitions and confiscations in Masafer Yatta are continuous. The village of Isfey al-Fauqa is just one example of a community that has faced the colonising forces in recent months.
During 2022, residents living inside Firing Zone 918 decided to set up a school in Isfey al-Fauqa. The new school meant that local children would be able to get an education close to where they live, instead of walking over the hills to faraway communities.
However, soon after the school was established, it was knocked down.
I visited the village of Isfey al-Fauqa in November 2022 – after the first demolition – as part of a group of volunteers from the ISM, and met local residents. We wrote at the time:
We visited Isfey al Fauqa school the day before the second demolition took place. Local residents told us that the school had been established to provide education for 22 students – from the villages of Isfey al Fauqa, Isfey al Tahte, Tuba and Musa Zain – who would otherwise have to walk at least 4km over the mountains to get to school.
The determination of the people to stay on their land despite the violence and intimidation was tangible, even amongst the small children. Our group wrote:
The day before the demolition happened we played games with the kids inside the tents and helped to paint a mural on the rubble. One young boy told us “I love my school”, and a little girl sang a popular song to us over and over again. Some of the words she sang translate like this:
“You will find me on my land
I belong to my people, I sacrifice my soul for them
My blood is Palestinian”
The destroyed building had been replaced by tents, but Israeli forces soon returned to confiscate them. They threw sound grenades at local school children and residents in the process. ISM tweeted:
06.12.2022 – IOF demolished 2 temporary school tents in Isfey al Fauqa, in #MasaferYatta. The tents were set up by locals to keep providing education to the children of the Isfey school after it was demolished by the IOF on November 23. #SaveMasaferYatta #FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/G1gbJIkr9I
— ISM Palestine (@ISMPalestine) December 7, 2022
Residents of Masafer Yatta are calling for people internationally to join their campaign to save the area. Check out the Save Masafer Yatta website to find out how.
Masafer Yatta is one of the regions on the frontline of Israel’s ethnic cleansing policies. It’s up to us to show our solidarity as they stand their ground in the face of colonialism.
Featured image via Youth of Sumud (with permission)
By Tom Anderson
As part of his bargain with the fascist blocs of Religious Zionism and Jewish Power, according to the Israeli newspaper Arab 48, incoming Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke of an “exclusive Jewish right” to expand settlements inside Israel proper, in Galilee and the Negev, as well as to plant squatters in the Palestinian West Bank.
An exclusive Jewish right to settle and live in the land implicitly announces that the 6.5 million Palestinians who live on it are there by suffrage and maybe have no right to be there at all. That right is exclusively Jewish, Netanyahu says.
A Jordanian newspaper called this plank of his platform “the execution of the Palestinian people.”
According to the Associated Press, Netanyahu announced that he will legalize those Israeli squatter-settlements on Palestinian-owned land that even Israel had considered illegal. He would vastly expand the number of Israeli squatters in the Palestinian West Bank. And ultimately, he pledged to annex the Palestinian West Bank entirely to Israel.
Since Netanyahu has no intention of ever granting Israeli citizenship to the 3 million Palestinians living under Israeli military rule, the formal annexation of their territory would cement Israel’s Apartheid system of racial difference.
According to Arab 48, the Adalah human rights organization denounced the platform as openly racist, discriminatory and Jewish supremacist, especially the language about exclusive Jewish rights to the land, which implies that Palestinian East Jerusalem will never be allowed to become the capital of a Palestinian state. Adalah called on the world to take a stand against this flagrant Israeli Apartheid.
The outline of Netanyahu’s governmental program ominously said that preference would be given to former soldiers in the Israeli army for admission to university departments of medicine, law, computer science, accounting, and engineering. Since the 21% of the population who are of Palestinian heritage are not permitted to serve in the military, this step would put them at a severe disadvantage in receiving admission to those departments. Only the small community of Druze are an exception to the ban on military service.
He wants to make reforms in the education system. The mealy-mouthed contradictions are apparent in his pledge both to treat all communities equally and to use the education system to “strengthen Jewish identity.”
Likewise, he will safeguard the Jewish character of the state, but not upset the status quo among the various religions in Israel. (Most of the 21% who are of Palestinian heritage are Muslim, but there is a vocal Christian minority that is increasingly upset about Jewish attacks on churches and attempts to take away church lands. Netanyahu’s new best friends on the fascist Right are for anything but treating non-Jews equally or maintaining the status quo regarding Muslim and Christian places of worship.
But of course Palestinian-Israelis are 21% of the population and sometimes they can have an impact on elections, so Netanyahu turned around and said in his platform that he would address issues in insecurity and crime in Palestinian-Israeli communities, and would invest in education and infrastructure for them. Very magnanimous of him, since apparently they are excluded from the exclusively Jewish right to even be there.
His platform made a sinister call for a “rebalancing” of the powers of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, with the implication that the judiciary would be cut down to size. Netanyahu is on trial for corruption before the courts. Netanyahu apparently wants to strike down the prerogative of judicial review of laws that appear to contradict organic laws that have a constitutional character. In short, the supreme court could not overturn a law of the parliament or Knesset that its justices believe to be unconstitutional.
It is sort of as though Steve Bannon were elected president and started rejiggering the U.S. constitution and racial relations, only in Hebrew.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Palestinian activists’ hopes for change were boosted by Labor’s decision to end recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Khaled Ghannam looks at how much change Labor is prepared to make.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
This headline in the Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, only tells part of the story: “The Lions’ Den, Other Palestinian Groups are Endless Headache for Israel, PA.”
It is true that both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority are equally worried about the prospect of a widespread armed revolt in the Occupied West Bank, and that the newly formed Nablus-based brigade, the Lions’ Den, is the epicenter of this youth-led movement.
However, the growing armed resistance in the West Bank is causing more than a mere ‘headache’ for Tel Aviv and Ramallah. If this phenomenon continues to grow, it could threaten the very existence of the PA, while placing Israel before its most difficult choice since the invasion of major Palestinian West Bank cities in 2002.
Though Israeli military commanders continue to undermine the power of the newly formed group, they seem to have no clear idea regarding its roots, influence and future impact.
In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz claimed that the Lions’ Den is a “group of 30 members”, who will eventually be reached and eliminated. “We will lay our hands on the terrorists,” he declared.
The Lions’ Den, however, is not an isolated case, but part of a larger phenomenon that includes the Nablus Brigades, the Jenin Brigades and other groups, which are located mostly in the northern West Bank.
The group, along with other armed Palestinian military units, has been active in responding to the killing of Palestinians, including children, elders, and, on October 14, even a Palestinian doctor, Abdullah Abu al-Teen, who succumbed to his wounds in Jenin. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, over 170 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and Gaza, since the beginning of the year.
The Palestinian response included the killing of two Israeli soldiers, one in Shuafat on October 8, and the other near Nablus on October 11.
Following the Shuafat attack, Israel completely sealed the Shuafat refugee camp as a form of collective punishment, similar to recent sieges on Jenin and other Palestinian towns.
Citing Israel’s Hebrew media, the Palestinian Arabic daily Al Quds reported that the Israeli military will focus its operations in the coming weeks on targeting the Lions’ Den. Thousands more Israeli occupation soldiers are likely to be deployed in the West Bank for the upcoming battle.
It is difficult to imagine that Israel would mobilize much of its army to fight 30 Palestinian fighters in Nablus. But not only Israel, the PA, too, is terribly concerned.
The Authority has tried but failed to entice the fighters by offering them a surrender ‘deal’, where they give up their arms and join the PA forces. Such deals were offered in the past to fighters belonging to Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, with mixed degrees of success.
This time around, the strategy did not work. The group rejected the PA’s overtures, compelling the Fatah-affiliated governor of Nablus, Ibrahim Ramadan, to attack the mothers of the fighters by calling them ‘deviant’ for “sending their sons to commit suicide.” Ramadan’s language, which is similar to language used by Israeli and pro-Israel individuals in their depiction of Palestinian society, highlights the massive schisms between the PA’s political discourse and those of ordinary Palestinians.
Not only is the PA losing grasp of the narrative, it is also losing whatever vestiges of control it has left in the West Bank, especially in Nablus and Jenin.
A senior Palestinian official told the Media Line that the Palestinian “street does not trust us anymore”, as they “view us as an extension of Israel.” True, but this lack of trust has been in the making for years.
The ‘Unity Intifada‘ of May 2021, however, served as a major turning point in the relationship between the PA and Palestinians. The rise of the Lions’ Den and other Palestinian armed groups are but a few manifestations of the dramatic changes underway in the West Bank.
Indeed, the West Bank is changing. A new generation that has little or no memory of the Second Intifada (2000-2005), had not experienced the Israeli invasion then but grew up under occupation and apartheid, feeding on the memories of the resistance in Jenin, Nablus and Hebron.
Judging by their political discourse, chants and symbols, this generation is fed up with the crippling and often superficial divisions of Palestinians among factions, ideologies and regions. In fact, the newly established brigades, including the Lions’ Den, are believed to be multi-factional groups bringing, for the first time, fighters from Hamas, Fatah and others into a single platform. This explains the popular enthusiasm and lack of suspicion among ordinary Palestinians of the new fighters.
For example, Saed al-Kuni, a Palestinian fighter who was recently killed by Israeli soldiers in an ambush on the outskirts of Nablus, was a member of the Lions’ Den. Some have claimed that al-Kuni was a leading member of Fatah’s Brigades, and others say he was a well-known Hamas fighter.
This lack of certainty regarding the political identity of killed fighters is fairly unique to Palestinian society, at least since the establishment of the PA in 1994.
Expectedly, Israel will do what it always does: amassing more occupation troops, attacking, assassinating, crushing protests and laying sieges on rebellious towns and refugee camps. What they fail to understand, at least for now, is that the growing rebellion in the West Bank is not generated by a few fighters in Nablus and a few more in Jenin, but is the outcome of a truly popular sentiment.
In an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, translated by Al-Quds, an Israeli commander described what he has witnessed in Jenin during a raid:
When we enter (Jenin), armed fighters and stone throwers wait for us in every corner. Everyone takes part. You look at an old man … and you wonder, will he throw stones? And he does. Once, I saw a person who had nothing to throw (on us). He rushed to his car, grabbed a milk carton and he threw it on us.
Palestinians are simply fed up with the Israeli occupation and with their collaborating leadership. They are ready to put it all on the line, in fact, in Jenin and Nablus, they already have. The coming weeks and months are critical for the future of the West Bank, and, in fact, for all Palestinians.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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