Israel – Page 8 – HolyLandJustice.org

Tue, Apr 3, 2018Mon, Apr 2, 2018

Should Israeli settlers be considered civilians?

Mideast Israel Palestinians — An Israeli Jewish settler shoots in the air as Palestinians protest against a plan to resettle Israel’s Palestinian Bedouin minority from their villages in the Negev Desert, near the Israeli settlement of Bet El, north of the West Bank city of Ramallah. (photo: Majdi Mohammed / AP)

About 50% of the West Bank has been annexed by settlements, and 90% of the West Bank’s water is stolen from underneath the Palestinians.

By Robert Inlakesh | Mint Press News | Mar 29, 2018

“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
— Article 49, Fourth Geneva Convention

It is time to pose a question: Are Israeli settlers civilians? Or are they illegal occupiers? A group of Israeli settlers made the move to seize land in East Hebron (al-Khalil) last Monday (Mar 6, 2018), setting up camp — adjacent to the “Kharsina settlement” — backed by an entourage of heavily armed soldiers.

This move threatens three Palestinian families, with fears that they will soon be dispossessed of their land and homes. Those at risk of being cleansed and their property stolen, are the Eida, Jwihan and the al-Halawa families. The initiative to take this land came from the settlers themselves, who now occupy the 70-dunums. The settlers are living in four newly purchased caravans.

The above example clearly illustrates the way in which illegally established settlements, in the West Bank, come to their fruition.

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Mon, Apr 2, 2018Mon, Apr 2, 2018

“He had no gun, no Molotov” — he was just running away with a tire

crop_90abdel_fattah — Abdul Fattah Abdul Nabi, a 19-year-old Palestinian, moments before he was killed during Friday’s protests in the Gaza Strip. (photo: Mahmoud Abu Salama / The Washington Post)

An unarmed civilian was shot in the back of the head by an Israeli sniper while running away from the border fence.

By Loveday Morris and Hazem Balousha | The Washington Post | Mar 31, 2018

“These are the predictable outcomes of a manifestly illegal command: Israeli soldiers shooting live ammunition at unarmed Palestinian protesters. What is predictable, too, is that no one — from the snipers on the ground to top officials whose policies have turned Gaza into a giant prison — is likely to be ever held accountable.”
— Amit Gilutz, spokesman for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem

The morning after burying 19-year-old Abdul Fattah Abdul Nabi, his family gathered in a tent set up to receive mourners, watching and re-watching a video of the moment they say Israeli soldiers shot him in the back of the head.

The video appears to show the teenager, dressed in black, running away from Gaza’s border fence with Israel carrying a tire. Just before reaching a crowd, he crumples under gunfire.

“He had no gun, no molotov, a tire. Does that harm the Israelis, a tire?” asked his brother Mohamed Abdul Nabi, 22. “He wasn’t going toward the Israeli side. He was running away.”

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Sun, Apr 1, 2018Wed, Mar 28, 2018

Gazan Christian do not yet have permits to visit Jerusalem for Easter

FILE PHOTO: A worshipper lights a candle as she visits the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City — A worshipper lights a candle in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City, Jan 22, 2018. (photo: Ammar Awad / Reuters)

Gaza has only 1,000 Christians among a population of 2 million in the narrow coastal strip.

By Stephen Farrell | Reuters | Mar 27, 2018

“Israel is a sovereign state and it has the right to decide who will enter its gates. No foreign residents have an inherent right to enter Israel, including Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.”
— Civil Administration (COGAT) spokesman

The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem said church authorities had applied for around 600 permits for Gazans to travel, but had not received any, three days before Good Friday.

Israel tightly restricts movements out of the Gaza Strip, territory controlled by Hamas, an Islamist group that it considers a terrorist organization.

The Israeli military-run authority that operates in the West Bank defended its policy to restrict access as many Palestinians had stayed on illegally in the past, and said it would only issue permits to people aged at least 55.

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Sun, Apr 1, 2018Sat, Mar 31, 2018

Palestinian march along Israel’s border turns deadly on day one

lead_960_540 — Israeli military vehicles are seen Friday next to the border on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, as Palestinians demonstrate in Gaza. (photo: Amir Cohen / Reuters)

At least 15 people have been killed at the outset of a massive protest expected to last another month and a half.

By Krishnadev Calamur | The Atlantic | May 30, 2018

If the demonstrations continue, and Israel responds the way it did today, there is a significant risk that the death count will rise, and an already complicated situation will get worse.

Israeli troops opened fire Friday at Palestinians near the Gaza Strip’s border with the Jewish state, killing at least 15 people and wounding many more. The numbers came from the Palestinian health ministry, which put the number of those injured at more than 1,000.

The Palestinian demonstration at the border, dubbed the Great March of Return, was billed as peaceful and nonviolent. Protesters pitched tents near the border with Israel and demanded that refugees be allowed to return to homes they left behind in 1948 during the creation of the state of Israel. Israel, which estimates that 17,000 Palestinians have gathered near the border at six locations, said its troops were enforcing “a closed military zone.” The Israeli army also said it opened fire toward the “main instigators” of what it called rioters who were “rolling burning tires and hurling stones at the security fence and at” Israeli troops. Israel had warned Gaza residents against protesting, and said Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, was “cynically” sending women and children “to the security fence and endangering their lives.”

The date the protest began, March 30, is the anniversary of Land Day, a 1976 event in which Israelis killed six Palestinians who were protesting the confiscation of their lands. The protests are expected to last until May 15, the anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel, which the Palestinians view as a “naqba” or “catastrophe” for their people.

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Sat, Mar 31, 2018Sat, Mar 31, 2018

Palestinians hold day of mourning after 773 shot with live ammunition

5760 — A wounded Palestinian is evacuated during the clashes between demonstrators and Israeli troops. (photo: Barcroft Images / Xinhua)

At least 15 killed when Israeli soldiers open fire during mass demonstrations in Gaza.

By Hazem Balousha and Oliver Holmes | The Guardian | Mar 31, 2018

“There is fear that the situation might deteriorate in the coming days.”
— Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, assistant UN secretary general for political affairs

Gaza hospitals, running low on blood and overstretched by the huge number of wounded, were reeling after one of the enclave’s bloodiest days outside of open war, in which Israeli soldiers shot 773 people with live ammunition, according to the ministry of health.

Fifteen of the wounded died, said the ministry spokesperson Dr Ashraf al-Qidra. “Most of the dead were aged between 17 and 35 years old,” he said. “The injuries were on the upper part of the body.” He added that the remainder of the wounded, some of whom were in a critical condition, had been “shot with live ammunition.”

The violence erupted on Friday after mass demonstrations took place demanding the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants to land in Israel.

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Sat, Mar 31, 2018Mon, Mar 26, 2018

More Arabs than Jews live in Israel and Palestine, according to Israeli Army

1-5940740-2440408184 — Palestinian women at the Qalandiyah checkpoint, 2016. (photo: AP)

The Israeli Army presented data to the Knesset showing 6.8 million Palestinians now living in Israel-Palestine, but only 6.5 million Jews.

By Yotam Berger | Haaretz | Mar 26, 2018

“Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean there is an equal number of Palestinians and Jews, and that’s nothing new. That’s why the crossroads where we presently find ourselves is clear: either two states based on 1967, or one state that is an apartheid state, or one democratic state in which everyone has the right to vote. There is no other option, and at least this simple truth has to be stated clearly.”
— Knesset Member Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List

The Israeli army presented data on Monday to a Knesset panel which show that more Arabs than Jews live between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

According to Civil Administration’s deputy commander Col. Haim Mendes, five million Palestinians live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This figure does not include the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem, or the 1.8 million Israeli Arabs. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, as of September 2017 some 6.5 million Jews live in Israel. . . .

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Fri, Mar 30, 2018Tue, Mar 27, 2018

Palestinians set to reject US peace plan

rts1miz1-870 — A girl holds a Palestinian flag in front of Israeli troops during clashes in Ramallah, Mar 7, 2018. (photo: Mohamad Torokman / Reuters)

The peace plan contemplated by the Trump Administration will offer Palestinians limited sovereignty over limited territory.

By Uri Saver | Al-Monitor | Mar 25, 2018

The plan is much closer to the Israeli position than the Palestinian:

Two states

Palestine would comprise about half the West Bank

Gaza would be included if Hamas disarms

Israel would control West Bank security and border crossings

East Jerusalem would be part of Palestine, but not the Old City

No right of return

Despite growing tensions with the Palestinians, US President Donald Trump still intends to reveal a US peace plan for the Middle East. The plan will apparently be divulged right after the US Embassy moves to Jerusalem and after Trump’s meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

According to a senior US diplomat in Tel Aviv, the fact that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refuses any contact on the matter with US officials and that he had bad mouthed David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, has not altered Trump’s determination. Actually, messages on the evolving plans are conveyed nowadays to Ramallah by Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. More so, the March 20 meeting in Washington between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was largely dedicated to two major topics: the common front against Iran in the region (including the Iran nuclear deal issue) and Israeli-Palestinian peace.

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Fri, Mar 30, 2018Thu, Mar 29, 2018

Quick facts about the Nakba

nakba-afp — Haganah fighters expelling Palestinians from Haifa, May 12, 1948. (photo: AFP / Getty Images)

Today Palestinians in Gaza will take part in the March of Return to mark the 70^th anniversary of the Nakba, when some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from the newly-created State of Israel.

By Institute for Middle East Understanding | May 13, 2015

The “Nakba” (“catastrophe” in Arabic) refers to the mass expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from British Mandate Palestine during Israel’s creation (1947–49).

The Nakba was not an unintended result of war. It was a deliberate and systematic act necessary for the creation of a Jewish majority state in historic Palestine, which was overwhelmingly Arab prior to 1948.

The Nakba’s roots lay in the emergence of political Zionism in 19^th-Century Europe, when some Jews, influenced by the nationalism then sweeping the continent, began emigrating as colonists to the Holy Land, displacing indigenous Palestinians in the process.

The Nakba did not end in 1948. It continues today, in the form of Israel’s ongoing appropriation of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and for Jewish communities inside Israel.

Tomorrow, Palestinians in Gaza will take part in the March of Return to mark the 70^th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), when some 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed to make way for a Jewish-majority state of Israel. Many of the participants will be Nakba survivors and their descendants, who have been denied their internationally-recognized legal right of return to the lands they were expelled from during Israel’s establishment.

Here are some quick facts about the Nakba.

Continue reading “Quick facts about the Nakba”

Thu, Mar 29, 2018Tue, Mar 27, 2018

This Friday, Israel’s tear gas and tanks will confront Palestinian marchers — but brute force isn’t the answer

1-5938306-3562308338 — A Palestinian demonstrator hurls stones at Israeli troops during clashes along the border fence near Khan Yunis in Gaza, Mar 23, 2018. (photo: Said Khatib / AFP)

Israel has flagged the drones, tear gas, sniper fire, even tanks it will employ against thousands of Palestinians planning to approach the Gaza border. But confronting a PR campaign with the language of force only invites disaster.

By Peter Lerner | Haaretz | Mar 25, 2018

Israel needs to prepare for the coming celebration and marching season with an extensive public diplomacy effort, not only to celebrate our own independence, but to give those that wish to mourn, the room to do so.

The Palestinians are planning and producing a huge PR event. The stage is set, and the curtain will be drawn this Friday, March 30^th. Organizations in Gaza are initiating a series of events that will challenge Israel on the ground, physically and militarily, but their real intended target is the public arena.

As Israel organizes its own public relations opportunities in celebration of its 70-year anniversary, complete with a bonus additional PR event, the opening of the new American embassy in Jerusalem, the Palestinians plan to march.

Palestinians in Gaza intend to kick off their series of events by erecting “return camps,” tent campsites along the area bordering Israel. Some assessments have suggested Hamas is going to rally around 100,000 people along the border area in a huge show of force. . . .

Over the last few days, reports in the Israeli media have multiplied about how the security forces will confront the oncoming demonstrations and riots. Various means of riot dispersal, dropped from drones; tear gas; water cannons; targeted sniper fire against the main instigators; and even reports of tanks being deployed along the Israel-Gaza border. . . .

What appears to be lacking from the Israeli preparation is the response to the political challenge.

Continue reading “This Friday, Israel’s tear gas and tanks will confront Palestinian marchers — but brute force isn’t the answer”