Category: News

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EU warns viability of Palestine is being “constantly eroded”

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, left, greets Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir after a meeting of EU foreign ministers  in Brussels on Feb 26, 2018. (photo: Virginia Mayo / AP)

In Saudi Arabia, foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini says Europeans and Arabs share common interest in Jerusalem.

By Raphael Ahren | The Times of Israel | Apr 16, 2018

“As Europeans and Arabs we share in particular an interest in preserving the unique status of our common Holy City, Jerusalem. And you know, you can always count on us Europeans to reiterate our belief that the only viable solution is the two-state solution, with East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine.”
— EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini

The prospects for the creation of a Palestinian state are “being constantly eroded,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned on Sunday, vowing that the EU would never cease its support for a two-state solution that would see East Jerusalem became the capital of Palestine.

At the Arab League’s annual summit in Dahran, Saudi Arabia, she also vowed to work toward “preserving the unique status of our common Holy City, Jerusalem.”

“The situation on the ground is getting worse and worse. Tensions are high on the border between Israel and Gaza,” Mogherini said. “The viability of a State of Palestine — including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — is being constantly eroded.”

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Israel’s defense minister claims slain photojournalist was “Hamas terrorist”

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Palestinian journalists take part in a protest after the killing of fellow journalist Yasser Murtaja, near the Israel-Gaza border, on Apr 8, 2018. (photo: Said Khatib / AFP)

Minister provides no evidence; journalist’s colleagues reject the assertion as “ridiculous.”

By Staff | The Times of Israel | Apr 11, 2018

“[Liberman’s claims are] ridiculous comments that are not worth responding to. Yasser has been working for years in the press and making films for the United Nations, China and others. They killed a journalist and should confess it is a crime.”
— Rushdi Al-Serraj, Ain Media director and co-founder with Yasser Murtaja

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday said a Gaza journalist who was reportedly killed by Israeli gunfire over the weekend was a member of Hamas.

The claim was immediately rejected by one of Yasser Murtaja’s colleagues, who called the statement “ridiculous.”

Palestinians say Yasser Murtaja was shot Friday while covering violent mass demonstrations near the Israeli border. He was reportedly shot in the torso while wearing a vest emblazoned with the word “press” and filming in an area engulfed in thick black smoke caused by protesters setting tires on fire.

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Slain photojournalist’s last video captures brutal crackdown on protests

Palestinian photographer Yasser Murtaja’s final images eerily prescient as he documented the rising violence in Gaza before he was shot dead.

By Peter Beaumont | The Guardian | Apr 9, 2018

“Yasser Murtaja was a civilian and a journalist who was wearing clear press identification while he was filming the demonstrations at the Gaza fence with Israel. He was there because he wanted to document civilians exercising their right to peacefully protest.”
— Jan Egeland, Norwegian Refugee Council secretary-general

The drone floats above the farmland at the east of Gaza’s narrow coastal strip where beyond the fence — the transition is almost invisible — Israel’s border communities begin.

The video is among the last footage filmed by Palestinian photographer Yasser Murtaja in Gaza before he was shot dead by Israeli troops last Friday — and it eerily foreshadows his own fate.

Palestinian demonstrators walk through the flat fields, hold signs or sit in the shade of tents in the five border protest camps that dot the landscape from east of Jabaliya in the north to Khuza’a, a short drive from the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Murtaja died on the second of a series of mass Friday protests called the “Great March of Return,” which will culminate on “Nakba” Day (catastrophe in Arabic) on 15 May, which will commemorate the events of 1948 when, following the creation of the state of Israel, more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

Despite wearing body armour clearly marked with a press sign, Murtaja was shot in the stomach while covering the protests and died later of his wounds. He was one of nine Palestinian men killed in a space of a few hours.

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Video emerges of Israeli soldiers cheering as sniper shoots Palestinian

Israel’s military says incident in Gaza Strip will be “thoroughly investigated.”

By Oliver Holmes | The Guardian | Apr 10, 2018

“Do you have a bullet in the barrel?” asks a voice off-camera in Hebrew. A crack is heard and the man falls suddenly. “Wow, what a video. Yes! Son of a whore!” another person says as people are seen running towards the victim to help. “Wow. They hit someone in the head,” says an off-camera voice.

Footage has emerged of an Israeli sniper shooting a seemingly unarmed and motionless Palestinian man in the Gaza Strip, followed by exuberant whooping from an onlooker.

Israel’s military said an initial inquiry found the shooting had taken place on 22 December, when one of its soldiers injured the man in his leg during what it called violent riots.

The grainy video comes after almost two weeks of daily protests by Palestinians on the Israel-Gaza border in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have fatally shot more than two dozen people and wounded hundreds more, according to Gazan health officials. . . .

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Palestinian negotiator says Trump’s envoy Greenblatt has turned Into Israel’s spokesman

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas meets with Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt in Ramallah, Mar 14, 2017. (photo: Mohamad Torokman / Reuters)

Since the Gaza border protests began, Trump’s envoy to the peace process has “consistently repeated Israeli talking points.”

By Jack Khoury and Noa Landau | Haaretz | Apr 13, 2018

“It is clear that those who do not consider that the lives of Palestinians and Israelis are of equal value cannot possibly promote any plan that will be remotely close to a just and lasting peace.”
— Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat

In an unprecedented move, a senior Palestinian official sent a letter on Thursday to all foreign diplomats stationed in Ramallah assailing the American envoy to the peace process, Jason Greenblatt.

Saeb Erekat, who is the Palestinians’ chief negotiator as well as secretary general of the PLO’s executive committee, also urged the diplomats to back the Palestinians at the United Nations and other international agencies, including the International Criminal Court, in demanding an investigation into “ongoing Israeli crimes against Palestine and the Palestinian people.”

Erekat, who has met with Greenblatt many times since the latter took office, charged that since the mass demonstrations near the Israel-Gaza border began a few weeks ago, the U.S. envoy has “assumed the role of spokesperson of the Israeli Authorities” and “consistently repeated Israeli talking points.”

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ICC chief prosecutor calls for end to violence in Gaza

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The Palestinian photojournalist Yasser Murtaja, shot by an Israeli sniper while filming a Palestinian protest, is carried to his burial, Apr 7, 2018. (photo: Samar Abu Elouf / ImagesLive)

Attacks on civilians could be unlawful under international criminal court treaty.

By Owen Bowcott | The Guardian | Apr 8, 2018

“Since 30 March 2018, at least 27 Palestinians have been reportedly killed by the Israeli Defense Forces, with over 1,000 more injured, many as a result of shootings using live ammunition and rubber bullets. Violence against civilians, in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza, could constitute crimes under the Rome statute of the [ICC] . . . .”
— Fatou Bensouda, ICC chief prosecutor

The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court has called for an end to violence in Gaza after hundreds of mourners attended the funeral of a Palestinian journalist shot beside Israel’s security fence.

Yasser Murtaja, a 31-year-old photographer, was wearing a clearly marked press vest as he reported on a mass demonstration along the Gaza border, in Khuzaa, on 6 April when he was shot. The area was engulfed in thick black smoke from tyres that had been set on fire.

Murtaja was one of about 30 Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire over the past 10 days along the border. As many as 491 people were wounded in last Friday’s protest against the founding of the Israeli state in 1948. Mass rallies are due to continue until 15 May.

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300 meters in Gaza: Snipers, burning tires and a fence

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A protest in Khan Younis on Mar 30. The photographer, Yasser Murtaja, was killed by an Israeli sniper in the same location the following week. (photo: Yasser Murtaja, Ain Media)

A fence that divides Israel and Gaza has become the latest flashpoint in the decades-old conflict.

By David Halbfinger, Iyad Abuheweila and Jugal Patel | The New York Times | Apr 13, 2018

Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants, and marching on the fence highlights their desire to reclaim the lands and homes from which they were displaced 70 years ago in the war surrounding Israel’s creation.

A fence that divides Israel and Gaza has become the latest flashpoint in the decades-old conflict, with Israeli soldiers unleashing lethal force against mostly unarmed Arab protesters who have been demonstrating every Friday for the past several weeks.

The image above shows how each side is arrayed in Khan Younis, one of five demonstration sites where 34 Palestinians have been killed since the protests began nearly three weeks ago.

The protests resumed on Friday, and the Palestinians plan to keep the weekly protests going with large turnouts until May 15, when many plan to try to cross the fence en masse. The Gazans are protesting Israel’s blockade, which has been choking off the impoverished coastal strip for more than 10 years. They also want to reassert the rights of refugees and their descendants to reclaim their ancestral lands in Israel, 70 years after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced.

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“Sorry Commander, I Cannot Shoot”

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Protesters wave Palestinians flags in front of Israeli solders on Gaza’s border with Israel, east of Beit Lahiya, Gaza Strip, Apr 4, 2018. (photo: Adel Hana / AP)

Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem has launched a campaign titled “Sorry Commander, I Cannot Shoot,” calling on Israeli troops to refuse orders to shoot unarmed demonstrators.

By Elliott Gabriel | Mint Press News | Apr 6, 2018

“Our legitimate protest against Israeli military occupation, colonization and apartheid is granted in international law and must be protected by the international community. . . . The 70-year-old practice of Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and dehumanization of the Palestinian people must end.”
— Dr. Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to Washington

Tens of thousands of residents in the besieged Gaza Strip plan on returning to the Israeli-controlled border Friday [Apr 6] in defiance of menacing promises from Tel Aviv to use massive and disproportionate force. The event will occur exactly one week after the Israelis massacred 17 unarmed demonstrators with live ammunition on Palestinian Land Day.

The protest is the latest in a six-week-long set of nonviolent protests meant to commemorate the continuing dispossession of the Palestinian people and the absorption of ancestral Palestinian land by the country now known as Israel.

The series of events will last until the 15th of May, a date making the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel — known to Palestinians as Nakba Day, or “The Day of Catastrophe” — when three-quarters of a million Palestinians were brutally displaced by Israeli militia in 1948.

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I’m not ashamed to be Israeli — but I’m disgusted with having become Pharaoh

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Palestinian paramedics carry a protester injured during clashes with Israeli forces following a tent city gathering at the Israel-Gaza border, Apr 2, 2018. (photo: Said Khatib / AFP)

Living in Israel has turned me into a person who can live with a government that relates to African asylum-seekers and millions of Palestinians as property.

By Bradley Burston | Haaretz | Apr 2, 2018

Living in Israel has hardened my heart. It has made me into a person who cannot believe that Israel will do the right thing. That Israel will make any effort at all to even begin treat the true cancer in our body — the occupation.

The best people I have ever met live in Israel.

They are tireless. They come in all colors and creeds. Their reservoirs of hope, goodness, giving for others, respecting the Other, striving for a better, more human, society — despite everything, despite hatred and graft and incitement and ill-will — are as boundless as they are inexplicable.

Then there is Caroline Glick.

Continue reading “I’m not ashamed to be Israeli — but I’m disgusted with having become Pharaoh”

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Israeli forces kill photojournalist at Gaza rally

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Yaser Murtaja, 30, was shot in the abdomen in Khuza’a in the southern Gaza Strip on Apr 6. 2018. (photo: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters)

Seven other journalists were wounded in Friday’s protest.

By Al Jazeera | Apr 7, 2017

The Palestinian health ministry reported that on Friday 491 people were injured by live ammunition after Israeli forces fired on protesters who had gathered near the Israeli border in the besieged Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian journalist shot by Israeli forces during a mass demonstration along the Gaza border has died of his wounds.

Yaser Murtaja, a photographer with the Gaza-based Ain Media agency, was shot in the stomach in Khuza’a in the south of the Gaza Strip on Friday, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Murtaja, 30, was hit despite wearing a blue flak jacket marked with the word “press,” indicating he was a journalist.

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