Israel murders senior Islamic Jihad official and his wife in Gaza
MEMO | November 12, 2019
The Israeli occupation army announced on Tuesday that it had killed a senior military official of Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. Bahaa Abu Al-Ata was killed in what was described as a complicated joint operation with the internal security agency Shin Bet.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that Abu Al-Ata and his wife Asmaa were killed in an Israeli air strike on their house in the east of Gaza City. It also confirmed that their children Salim, Mohammed Layan and Fatima, as well as their neighbour Hanan Hellis, were wounded in the same attack. All are in a stable condition in hospital.
In its own statement on the murder of Abu Al-Ata, Islamic Jihad also announced that a member of its Political Bureau, Akram Al-Ajjouri, survived an Israeli attack on his house in Damascus, although his son and a number of bodyguards were killed.
“These terrorist crimes are a new aggression against the Palestinian people and the declaration of a new Israeli war on them,” said the movement. It blamed the occupation authorities for any consequent escalation in the Gaza Strip. “The Israeli occupation crossed all the red lines with its new crimes which shattered all efforts being made towards the truce and tranquillity.”
Other Palestinian factions, including Hamas, Fatah and the Popular and Democratic Fronts, condemned the Israeli “aggression” and also blamed Israel for any escalation.
A lesson for the Palestinian leadership: Real reasons behind Israel’s arrest and release of Labadi, Mi’ri
Jordanian citizen Heba Al-Labadi (C), following detention by Israeli forces, was released from prison and returned to Jordan on 6 November 2019
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | November 11, 2019
The release on November 6 of two Jordanian nationals, Heba al-Labadi and Abdul Rahman Mi’ri from Israeli prisons was a bittersweet moment. The pair were finally reunited with their families after harrowing experiences in Israel. Sadly, thousands of Palestinian prisoners are still denied their freedom, still subjected to all sorts of hardships at the hands of their Israeli jailers.
Despite the jubilant return of the two prisoners, celebrated in Jordan, Palestine and throughout the Arab world, several compelling questions remain unanswered: why were they held in the first place? Why were they released and what can their experience teach Palestinians under Israeli occupation?
Throughout the whole ordeal, Israel failed to produce any evidence to indict Labadi and Mi’ri for any wrongdoing. In fact, it was this lack of evidence that made Israel hold the two Jordanian nationals in Administrative Detention, without any judicial process whatsoever.
Oddly, days before the release of the two Jordanians, an official Israeli government statement praised the special relationship between Amman and Tel Aviv, describing it as “a cornerstone of stability in the Middle East”.
The reality is that the relationship between the two countries has hit rock bottom in recent years, especially following US President Donald Trump’s advent to the White House and the subsequent, systematic dismantling of the “peace process” by Trump and the Israeli government.
Not only did Washington and Tel Aviv demolish the region’s political status quo, one in which Jordan featured as a key player, top US diplomats also tried to barter with King Abdullah II so that Jordan would settle millions of Palestinian refugees in the country in exchange for large sums of money.
Jordan vehemently rejected US offers and attempts at isolating the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.
On October 21, 2018, Jordan went even further, by rejecting an Israeli offer to renew a 25-year lease on two enclaves in the Jordan Valley, Al-Baqura and Al-Ghamar. The government’s decision was a response to protests by Jordanians and elected parliamentarians, who insist on Jordan’s complete sovereignty over all of its territories.
This particular issue goes back years. Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994. An additional annex in the treaty allowed Israel to lease part of the Jordan Valley for 25 years. A quarter of a century later, the Jordan-Israel Peace Treaty failed to achieve any degree of meaningful normalization between both countries, especially as neighboring Palestine remains under Israeli occupation. The stumbling block of that coveted normalization was – and remains – the Jordanian people, who strongly rejected a renewed Israeli lease over Jordanian territories.
Israeli negotiators must have been surprised by Jordan’s refusal to accommodate Israeli interests. With the US removing itself, at least publicly, from the brewing conflict, Israel resorted to its typical bullying, by holding two Jordanians hostage, hoping to force the government to reconsider its decision regarding the Jordan Valley.
![Palestinians stage a demonstration in support of Palestinian-Jordanian woman Hiba Al-Labadi, who stages a hunger strike after she was arrested by Israeli forces, in East Jerusalem on 31 October 2019. [Mostafa Alkharouf - Anadolu Agency]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/20191031_2_39089439_49038745.jpg?resize=933.5%2C622&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
Palestinians demonstrate in support of hunger striking Hiba Al-Labadi, after her arrest by Israeli forces, in East Jerusalem on 31 October 2019. [Mostafa Alkharouf – Anadolu Agency ]
The Israeli strategy backfired. The arrest of Labadi – who started a hunger strike that lasted for over 40 days – and Mi’ri, a cancer survivor, was a major PR disaster for Israel. Not only did the tactic fail to deliver any results, it further galvanized the Jordanian people, and government regarding the decision to reclaim Al-Baqura and al-Ghamar.
Labadi and Mi’ri were released on November 6. The following day, the Jordanian government informed Israel that its farmers will be banned from entering Al-Baqura area. This way, Jordan retrieved its citizens and its territories within the course of 24 hours.
Three main reasons allowed Jordan to prevail in its confrontation with Israel. First, the steadfastness of the prisoners themselves; second, the unity and mobilization of the Jordanian street, civil society organizations and elected legislators; and third, the Jordanian government responding positively to the unified voice of the street.
This compels the question: what is the Palestinian strategy regarding the nearly 5,000 Palestinian prisoners held unlawfully in Israel?
While the prisoners themselves continue to serve as a model of unity and courage, the other factors fundamental to any meaningful strategy aimed at releasing all Palestinian prisoners remain absent.
Although factionalism continues to undermine the Palestinian fight for freedom, prisoners are fighting the same common enemy. The famed “National Conciliation Document”, composed by the unified leadership of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails in 2006, is considered the most articulate vision for Palestinian unity and liberation.
For ordinary Palestinians, the prisoners remain an emotive subject, but political disunity is making it nearly impossible for the energies of the Palestinian street to be harnessed in a politically meaningful way. Despite much lip service paid to freeing the prisoners, efforts aimed at achieving this goal are hopelessly splintered and agonizingly factionalized.
As for the Palestinian leadership, the strategy championed by Palestinian Authority leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is more focused on propping up Abbas’ own image than alleviating the suffering of the prisoners and their families. Brazenly, Abbas exploits the emotional aspect of the prisoners’ tragedy to gain political capital, while punishing the families of Palestinian prisoners in order to pursue his own self-serving political agenda.
Jordanian citizen Heba Al-Labadi (C) was released from an Israeli prison and has returned to Jordan on 6 November 2019
“Even if I had only one penny, I would’ve given it to the families of the martyrs, prisoners and heroes,” Abbas said in a theatrical way during his United Nations General Assembly speech last September.
Abbas, of course, has more than one penny. In fact, he has withheld badly needed funds from the families of the “martyrs, prisoners and heroes.” On April 2018, Abbas cut the salaries of government employees in Gaza, along with the money received by the families of Gaza prisoners held inside Israeli jails.
Heba al-Labadi and Abdul Rahman Mi’ri were released because of their own resolve, coupled with strong solidarity exhibited by ordinary Jordanians. These two factors allowed the Jordanian government to publicly challenge Israel, leading to the unconditional release of the two Jordanian prisoners.
Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including 500 administrative detainees continue to languish in Israeli prisons. Without united and sustained popular, non-factional mobilization, along with the full backing of the Palestinian leadership, the prisoners are likely to carry on with their fight, alone and unaided.
See also:
Israel and the PA: security relations have never been better
Israel is silencing the last voices trying to prevent abuse of Palestinians
By Jonathan Cook – The National – November 11, 2019
It has been a week of appalling abuses committed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank – little different from the other 2,670 weeks endured by Palestinians since the occupation began in 1967.
The difference this past week was that several entirely unexceptional human rights violations that had been caught on film went viral on social media.
One shows a Palestinian father in the West Bank city of Hebron leading his son by the hand to kindergarten. The pair are stopped by two heavily armed soldiers, there to help enforce the rule of a few hundred illegal Jewish settlers over the city’s Palestinian population.
The soldiers scream at the father, repeatedly and violently push him and then grab his throat as they accuse his small son of throwing stones. As the father tries to shield his son from the frightening confrontation, one soldier pulls out his rifle and sticks it in the father’s face.
It is a minor incident by the standards of Israel’s long-running belligerent occupation. But it powerfully symbolises the unpredictable, humiliating, terrifying and sometimes deadly experiences faced daily by millions of Palestinians.
A video of another such incident emerged last week. A Palestinian man is ordered to leave an area by an armed Israeli policewoman. He turns and walks slowly away, his hands in the air. Moments later she shoots a sponge-tipped bullet into his back. He falls to the ground, writhing in agony.
It is unclear whether the man was being used for target practice or simply for entertainment.
The reason such abuses are so commonplace is that they are almost never investigated – and even less often are those responsible punished.
It is not simply that Israeli soldiers become inured to the suffering they inflict on Palestinians daily. It is the soldiers’ very duty to crush the Palestinians’ will for freedom, to leave them utterly hopeless. That is what is required of an army policing a population permanently under occupation.
The message is only underscored by the impunity the soldiers enjoy. Whatever they do, they have the backing not only of their commanders but of the government and courts.
Just that point was underlined late last month. An unnamed Israeli army sniper was convicted of shooting dead a 14-year-old boy in Gaza last year. The Palestinian child had been participating in one of the weekly protests at the perimeter fence.
Such trials and convictions are a great rarity. Despite damning evidence showing that Uthman Hillis was shot in the chest with a live round while posing no threat, the court sentenced the sniper to the equivalent of a month’s community service.
In Israel’s warped scales of justice, the cost of a Palestinian child’s life amounts to no more than a month of extra kitchen duties for his killer.
But the overwhelming majority of the 220 Palestinian deaths at the Gaza fence over the past 20 months will never be investigated. Nor will the wounding of tens of thousands more Palestinians, many of them now permanently disabled.
There is an equally disturbing trend. The Israeli public have become so used to seeing YouTube videos of soldiers – their sons and daughters – abuse Palestinians that they now automatically come to the soldiers’ defence, however egregious the abuses.
The video of the father and son threatened in Hebron elicited few denunciations. Most Israelis rallied behind the soldiers. Amos Harel, a military analyst for the liberal Haaretz newspaper, observed that an “irreversible process” was under way among Israelis: “The soldiers are pure and any criticism of them is completely forbidden.”
When the Israeli state offers impunity to its soldiers, the only deterrence is the knowledge that such abuses are being monitored and recorded for posterity – and that one day these soldiers may face real accountability, in a trial for war crimes.
But Israel is working hard to shut down those doing the investigating – human rights groups.
For many years Israel has been denying United Nations monitors – including international law experts like Richard Falk and Michael Lynk – entry to the occupied territories in a blatant bid to stymie their human rights work.
Last week Human Rights Watch, headquartered in New York, also felt the backlash. The Israeli supreme court approved the deportation of Omar Shakir, its Israel-Palestine director.
Before his appointment by HRW, Mr Shakir had called for a boycott of the businesses in illegal Jewish settlements. The judges accepted the state’s argument: he broke Israeli legislation that treats Israel and the settlements as indistinguishable and forbids support for any kind of boycott.
But Mr Shakir rightly understands that the main reason Israel needs soldiers in the West Bank – and has kept them there oppressing Palestinians for more than half a century – is to protect settlers who were sent there in violation of international law.
The collective punishment of Palestinians, such as restrictions on movement and the theft of resources, was inevitable the moment Israel moved the first settlers into the West Bank. That is precisely why it is a war crime for a state to transfer its population into occupied territory.
But Mr Shakir had no hope of a fair hearing. One of the three judges in his case, Noam Sohlberg, is himself just such a lawbreaker. He lives in Alon Shvut, a settlement near Hebron.
Israel’s treatment of Mr Shakir is part of a pattern. In recent days other human rights groups have faced the brunt of Israel’s vindictiveness.
Laith Abu Zeyad, a Palestinian field worker for Amnesty International, was recently issued a travel ban, denying him the right to attend a relative’s funeral in Jordan. Earlier he was refused the right to accompany his mother for chemotherapy in occupied East Jerusalem.
And last week Arif Daraghmeh, a Palestinian field worker for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, was seized at a checkpoint and questioned about his photographing of the army’s handling of Palestinian protests. Mr Daraghmeh had to be taken to hospital after being forced to wait in the sun.
It is a sign of Israel’s overweening confidence in its own impunity that it so openly violates the rights of those whose job it is to monitor human rights.
Palestinians, meanwhile, are rapidly losing the very last voices prepared to stand up and defend them against the systematic abuses associated with Israel’s occupation. Unless reversed, the outcome is preordained: the rule of the settlers and soldiers will grow ever more ruthless, the repression ever more ugly.
Trump rejects Israel’s request to fund Palestine security forces
Press TV – November 7, 2019
US President Donald Trump has reportedly told his close assistants that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should pay millions of dollars in annual aid to the Palestinian Authority if he thinks Washington’s decision to cut it altogether was wrong.
New website Axios reported on Wednesday that Netanyahu had earlier this year asked the White House to resume transferring money to the Palestinian authority, citing concerns by Israeli experts that not doing so would affect the future of any attempts at “peace.”
Barak Ravid, a Channel 13 reporter in Israel, claimed that Tel Aviv made the request after it found out that the US State Department had discovered $12 million in funds earmarked for the Palestinians but not transferred to the PA.
Israel, which maintains security ties with the Palestinian Authority of President Mahmoud Abbas, asked Trump to hand over the money, a request he swiftly turned down.
“If it is that important to Netanyahu he should pay the Palestinians $12 million,” Trump said according to the report, citing the PA’s decision to cut ties with his administration in the wake of Washington’s 2017 recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of the Israeli regime.
The Trump administration ended aid to the PA in January, just before the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA), passed by Congress and then signed into law by President Donald Trump last year, came into force.
The legislation allows Americans to sue those receiving foreign aid from the US government in American courts over alleged complicity in “acts of war.”
The PA reportedly asked the funding stop to avoid possible costly lawsuits in the face of long-running accusations by Washington and Tel Aviv about providing funds to the families of convicted or slain individuals whom they regard as “terrorists.”
The PA argues that the payments are a form of welfare to help the families who have lost their main breadwinner to cope with their absence.
The US State Department alleges that the annual aid of around $60 million was paid to support Palestinian security forces who cooperate closely with their Israeli counterparts against Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups in the West Bank
Since taking office, Trump has cut hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for Palestinians. This includes America’s entire support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees as well as another $200 million earmarked for humanitarian programs in the West Bank and Gaza.
The cuts abruptly ended food assistance to 180,000 Palestinians on behalf of the World Food Program last year and defunded a number of health initiatives and hospitals.
Trump’s aid cuts have also brought to halt infrastructure projects, including water treatment facilities in the Gaza Strip.
How Amazon Supports Israeli Atrocities
Produced by Chris Smiley of If Americans Knew | November 6, 2019
More news and headlines: https://israelpalestinenews.org/
At This Year’s J Street Conference, “Progressive” Pols Bow to Israel While Preaching Peace
By Miko Peled | MintPress News | October 30, 2019
My father, the late IDF general Matti Peled, called for a two-state solution in 1967, and as is stated in my book, The General’s Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine, he continued to campaign for this “solution” until the day he died. It may have been a revolutionary idea then, especially coming from a retired IDF general. Some would even call it progressive, though I personally would not go that far. It presented a path for Israel to gain legitimacy for its 1948 conquest of Palestine while placating the Palestinian people by giving them a small, powerless state that would allow them to exercise their right to self-determination.
Two decades later, when it was clear that Israel would never allow this to happen, my father called for the U.S. to halt its financial and military aid to Israel. By 1992, he called for sanctions against Israel. So when Bernie Sanders and other so-called progressives like J Street talk about a two-state solution and the possibility of using aid to pressure Israel, they are decades late and billions of dollars short. Without full support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, BDS for short, no progress can be achieved for Palestinian rights.
A Safe Bet
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was dangerous because there was a real possibility that it could happen. Today, after five decades in which consecutive governments of Israel have worked tirelessly to integrate the West Bank with the rest of the state of Israel, a Palestinian state is no longer possible and calling for it is a safe political move. Bernie Sanders knows it, the folks at J Street know it, and all the other so-called progressives know it too. A bold, progressive move would be to call for a democratic state with equal rights for all of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
However, we mustn’t get ahead of ourselves. One has to ask, where were these progressives when the possibility of a two-state solution was feasible? This is not to say it was a just or good solution, for it did legitimize the Zionist crimes of 1948 and earlier. Setting that aside for a moment, where were these so-called progressives when the possibility of an independent Palestine emerging in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was a real possibility? They were nowhere to be found.
While the official line of consecutive U.S. administrations was that UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 should be the basis of a peace agreement, neither the various administrations or other American politicians outside of the administration did a single thing to push this idea forward.
Now that is it too late, and it is clear that Israel never intended to allow the Palestinian right to self-determination to materialize, and now that we know that the “peace process” concocted by the Rabin-Peres duo was nothing more than a charade, the Bernie Sanders and J Street liberals decided to make a “bold” statement out of an old, outdated idea. But there is nothing bold about their support for Israel. There is nothing progressive about waiting five decades to support an idea that has no chance of becoming reality.
A Step in the Right Direction
The last thing that can be said about this very slow learning curve is that it is a step in the right direction. Recognizing and declaring today that the Palestinian people have been subjected to genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid for over seven decades is still slow, but it would signal a real step in the right direction. However, neither Sanders nor his hosts at the J Street conference are willing to go that far.
The farthest Sanders is willing to go is to say that he supports Israel and that Palestinians have been treated unfairly. Now, he is suggesting that some of the $3.8 Billion of aid money going to Israel should be diverted to resolve the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. How much? He didn’t say. So why not suggest halting aid to Israel altogether and sending those billions of dollars to the people who really need them in order to rebuild Gaza and provide medical care, water, and food.
The problem is that we have all become accustomed to believing that Palestinians should never ask for too much. Palestinians should be grateful for the scraps offered to them by white rich politicians in the United States and Israel. They should welcome the idea that Israel will “give” them a fraction of their homeland in which to build a mini-state. They should be grateful that a politician in the U.S. said publicly that they are treated unfairly. Palestinians should not be unreasonable and they should refrain from calling for anything that would bother Israel and its Zionist supporters around the world.
BDS
The call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel is a step too far for Sanders and J Street, the latter claiming that it is opposed to the call for a boycott and that “The Movement is not a friend to Israel.”
Palestinians, apparently, are required to prove that they are friends of Israel before their demands can be heard, much less accepted and also to recognize the right of Israel to exist, another absurd demand regularly made of Palestinians.
The fundamental problem lies in statements such as this by J Street: “J Street believes that maintaining a strong, vibrant US-Israel relationship […] US support for Israel as a democracy and a national home for the Jewish people is an historic and crucial commitment.”
As long as the U.S. relationship with Israel is viewed as more valuable than the human rights of the Palestinian people, justice for Palestinians will remain a distant dream. Without support for BDS and their declared demands, namely: ending Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land, equal rights and the right of refugees to return to their homes and their land, no progress can be made.
Hold the Champagne
Reading posts on Twitter while the J Street conference was taking place in Washington could give one the impression that justice for Palestinians is just around the corner. However, it is Israel that was the focus, not Palestinian human rights. The ongoing discussion of the two-state solution at the event acted as a fig leaf, shielding Israel from true criticism and allowing human rights violations in Palestine to continue unabated.
Statements like this one, made by Julian Castro, are indicative of a prevailing head in the sand, ostrich-like attitude: “We need a government in Israel that will get back on the path of the two-state solution.” No one bothered to ask if Israel was really ever on that path.
Bernie Sanders made a statement at the J Street conference that was also indicative of a desire to intentionally miss the target: “It is not anti-Semitism to say that the Netanyahu government has been racist – that’s a fact,” he said. Netanyahu is, without question, indeed a racist. Yet he is no different than any other Israeli prime minister. The issue is not a single prime minister, it is the entire Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine which is the problem.
How Much Longer?
More than five decades had passed since my late father, one of the exalted IDF generals of the 1967 war, called for a two-state solution. A solution that favors Israel and recognizes very limited rights for Palestinians and is a poor excuse for a peace plan. A solution that ignores the crimes which my father, among others, committed in 1948. A solution, which in fact legitimizes those crimes. It is a “solution” behind which politicians who want to seem progressive can hide because it offers no solution. It is a solution popular among those who pretend to care for justice and human rights but that do not want real change. One must ask how much longer this charade will be allowed to continue.
Hamas: Iran Provided Palestinian Resistance with Weaponry & Money
Hamas leader Yehia Sinwar in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip January 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem
Al-Manar | November 4, 2019
Gaza’s Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar Monday gave Iran the greatest credit for supporting the Palestinian resistance and providing it with money, expertise and weaponry.
Sinwar stressed that the Palestinian resistance has developed anti-armored missiles, adding that it can fire missiles at Tel Aviv for six consecutive months.
Sinwar also reiterated that the Deal of the Century aims at eradicating the Palestinian cause, adding that the weekly Return Protests achieved many targets.
The UN exploits Palestinian children to further the two-state propaganda
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 23, 2019
There is one thing the UN and its personnel would do well to keep in mind when pontificating about the purported peace process and to promote Israel’s security narrative: Palestinian children are not props for exploitation. At a time when the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees is facing a severe crisis due to funding shortages, as well as the misdemeanour allegations concerning its staff, the last thing the UN should be doing is exploiting Palestinian children for the sake of upholding the obsolete two-state compromise.
Earlier this month, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov posted a photo on Twitter, of himself and UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo, together with a group of female refugee students attending one of UNRWA’s schools. “I hope these young girls grow up to participate in democratic elections where Palestine, Israel live side-by-side in peace and security,” he tweeted.
Just because the colonial narrative makes Israel, peace and security synonymous doesn’t mean there are no inherent contradictions in the rhetoric. The UN, a collaborator since before the inception of Israel, is, of course, aware of the discrepancies, but it prefers to enforce historical cycles of dispossession upon Palestinians, including students, framing them as a warped peace process in which Israel’s existence is paramount, even at the expense of Palestinian lives.
Mladenov’s wish for Palestinian children is not that they exercise their right to live freely in all of historic Palestine. On the contrary, he is demanding perpetual subjugation and oblivion of the Palestinian right of return, and what better way to attempt indoctrination than with the younger generations, according to the UN’s delusional standards?
But Palestinians have remembrance, and that remembrance is political. Has Mladenov deigned to listen to the Palestinian children’s refugee narratives? Are Mladenov and the UN expecting future Palestinian generations to exploit themselves for Israel’s colonial plans? How do UN officials reconcile democracy with the colonialism inherent in the two-state paradigm, which is the purported solution envisaged for Palestinians by the international community?
Taking the latter one step further, since the UN knows that the two-state hypothesis is obsolete, it stands to reason that these Palestinian children, along with many others, will be witness to further colonial appropriation by Israel. Mladenov’s legacy to this group of students will be nothing other than a promotional photo taken for UN propaganda purposes, while in the background; Palestinian families are permanently ruptured and dispossessed by Israel.
UN antics are not impressive; they are endangering the lives of Palestinians and attempting to tarnish students with acquiescence. Parroting about democratic elections while envisaging perpetual colonialism is vile, all the more when involving students in UN propaganda. So, stop the rhetoric of hope, which is an illusion when there is factual support for the elimination of Palestinian rights. Mladenov never intended Palestinian students’ voices to reach the international arena. The promotion photo speaks volumes about how the UN coerces Palestinians into silence. When the focus is Palestinian children facing perpetual refugee status, it is clear the UN could not sink any lower.
Soldiers Force Palestinians Out Of Their Olive Orchards In Nablus
IMEMC | November 2, 2019
Israeli soldiers invaded Palestinian olive orchards between Burin and Huwwara towns, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, and forced the Palestinians out on Saturday, in addition to threatening them with “bringing the settlers to attack them.”
Eyewitnesses said the soldiers invaded the orchards near the illegal Yitzhar colony, which was built on private Palestinian lands, and attacked the families.
The soldiers even told the families that if they do not leave, they will bring the colonists from Yitzhar, known for constantly attacking the Palestinians and their lands, to assault them.
Olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank is always accompanied by dozens of Israeli violations by both the soldiers and the illegal colonists.
There have been numerous violations this olive harvest season alone, including twelve just recently in Qaryout village, south of Nablus.
The attacks include assaulting Palestinians, uprooting their trees, burning their lands and orchards, in addition to the military’s refusal in many cases to allow the Palestinians into their lands, isolated behind the illegal Annexation Wall.
It is worth mentioning that the Palestinians in Nablus governorate are not allowed to enter more than 3,500 Dunams of their olive orchards, except for a few days a year, after prior coordination and approval from the military.
Even when they receive the permits, the Palestinians and are forced to wait until the soldiers open the gate for them, and sometimes the soldiers do not open it at all or force them to wait for long periods.
On Friday morning, several colonists invaded a Palestinian orchard in Yasuf village, east of the central West Bank city of Salfit, and stole a donkey, blankets and olive picking tools.
Such attacks against Palestinian lands, especially olive orchards, including those carried out by soldiers, take place in various areas across the West Bank, always escalate during the olive harvest season, and include cutting, burning and uprooting trees, picking olive trees and stealing the produce, in addition to assaulting the Palestinians and forcing them out of their orchards.
Lavrov: US’ ‘Deal of Century’ Example of Swapping International Law for Norms Suitable for US
Sputnik – November 1, 2019
MOSCOW – The so-called deal of the century on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict settlement that Washington says it is preparing is an example of how the international law is changed for rules that the United States finds convenient, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
“Instead of implementing these [UNSC] resolutions, the United States promises everyone to present some ‘deal of the century,’ which, as you have already understood, will not envision the creation of a full-fledged Palestinian state. This is an example of how international law represented by UNSC resolutions is swapped for rules that the United States has invented and which it finds convenient”, Lavrov said in an interview on TV on Friday.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has for years said it would announce its plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In July, it released what was characterized as an economic component of the plan — an infrastructure and investment project to support Palestinians.
However, the Palestinian authorities have rejected Washington’s involvement in the settlement of their conflict with Israelis after Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the Holy City despite the condemnation of the Muslim world and the UN recommendations to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in the city until its legal status is settled.
The UN Security Council has issued multiple resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian settlement. For years, the Arab world remains committed to the Arab Peace Initiative, originally agreed upon at the Beirut Summit back in 2002. The plan has been formed on the basis of the UNSC Resolution of 194.
‘Defend International Law’ Petition Demands Norway Impose Sanctions on Israel
Sputnik – November 1, 2019
Dozens of Norway’s leading lawyers believe that Israel violates international law and doesn’t deserve the preferential treatment it currently enjoys.
A group of 44 lawyers, including award-winning luminaries and distinguished professionals such as professor Jan Fridthjof Bernt, have called on Norway to impose sanctions on Israel for its violations of international law.
The petition called “Defend international law” was published by the newspaper Dagsavisen.
Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and has announced the annexation of the Jordan Valley – without having any major consequences, the petition stressed.
Between March 2018 and September 2019 alone, the lawyers emphasised, 309 Palestinians who have participated in protest marches along the Gaza Strip border were killed. In the past year alone, 56 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces, again without any repercussions, including from Norway. The number of Palestinians who have died at the hands of the state is comparable to the number of murders in the country: 103 people were victims of homicide in 2018, compared with 136 in 2017, according to the local media. For comparison’s sake, police in the US, which is better known for police killings, fatally shot approximately one person for every 19 murder victims in 2017.
“Norwegian authorities and politicians must restore respect for international law and work to ensure that Israel’s long-standing and systematic breaches of international driving rules are met with sanctions”, the petition said.
The authors of the petition stressed that the absence of an international reaction to Israel’s violation of international law, human rights and humanitarian law raises concerns.
“While Israel’s serious and persistent violations are only verbally criticised, other countries that violate international law are exposed to reactions from the international community through concrete actions and sanctions”, the petition said.
On the contrary, Israel is the only country in the world to have been granted a special status in the Norwegian government’s Granavolden platform that allows Oslo to “facilitate enhanced research and development cooperation, trade, tourism and cultural exchange with Israel”.
“This attitude taken by the Norwegian authorities against serious violations of basic humanitarian and international law principles helps legitimise Israel’s policy based on the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land, and the collective punishment of Palestinians on the Gaza Strip,” the petition said.
According to lawyer Kjell Brygfjeld, one of the signatories, the are plenty of sanctions Norway could impose on Israel.
“We are already involved in sanctions against Russia, Venezuela, Iran and a number of other countries. All countries should be treated in the same way and with the same severity for violations of international law. We must not make a difference between those we like and those we do not like,” Brygfjeld told the newspaper Klassekampen.
According to him, the Norwegian government has chosen an opposite strategy, where efforts to boost relations are made despite the fact that some Norwegian residents have been denied entry to Israel.
Earlier this week, Oslo’s newly installed “red-green” City Council led by three left-of-the-centre parties, the Socialist Left, Labour and the Greens, announced it was contemplating a ban on the municipality’s procurement of goods and services from Israeli settlements, which it called “an area occupied in violation of international law”.
However, State Secretary Audun Halvorsen of the Conservative Party said he doesn’t believe sanctions are the way to go. He also stressed that Norway expressed concern over Israeli authorities’ excessive use of force and human rights violations, “when there are grounds for doing so”.
Norway was one of the first nations to recognise Israel in 1949. The stance toward Israel is one of the issues that signals the left-right divide between Norwegian parties. While left-wing parties generally favour Palestine, to the point of being ready to boycott goods and services from what they view as territories occupied by Israel. Right-of-the-centre parties by contrast tend to be more supportive of Israel, with Progress Party leader Siv Jensen being a staunch supporter of Israel.
Featured Video
Diplomacy is Now a Crime in Britain / Ian Proud
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Is America behind the massive surge in Kiev regime’s child trafficking?
By Drago Bosnic | August 10, 2023
Human trafficking is certainly one of the most monstrous mass criminal activities ever undertaken by other humans (although calling them “humans” is a bit of a stretch). And yet, there’s a special kind of this deeply repulsive crime that pushes it to diabolical proportions – child trafficking. Underage kids, particularly those who were abandoned, sold or have very poor/abusive family backgrounds, are by far the most vulnerable group. The depraved criminals who engage in such illicit activities specifically target unfortunate children and given there are millions of them all around the globe, particularly in war-torn areas, the “recruitment pool” is effectively endless. Unfortunately, the demand on the black market also seems to be constant and growing, making it a very lucrative and appealing prospect for criminals. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Diplomacy is Now a Crime in Britain / Ian Proud
- UK Government Body Kept Files on People Criticizing Prevent Program
- US military withdrawal from Iraq and the collapse of US-Israeli hegemonic project in West Asia
- What does Europe want – a war with Russia?
- She Followed the Actual Data on COVID Vaccines and Masks — Her Career Took a Huge Hit
- Florida AG Sues Pfizer, Bourla Over Deceptive Marketing of COVID Vaccines
- Von der Leyen gifts her spin doctor a job for life
- 10K More U.S. Troops Deploy as Trump Weighs New Iran Strikes /Suliaman Ahmed
- Iranian crew declared Dena training vessel ‘unarmed’ to US warship before deadly torpedo strike: Report
- Iran’s NPT debate moves beyond parliament
- If Americans Knew
- Israel is squeezing the life out of Palestinians – Daily Update
- The Israeli Right Portrays Islam as Murderous. It Serves a Political Purpose
- Jordan Has Had Enough: King Abdullah’s Scathing Warning to Israel
- Israeli Colonizers (i.e. Settlers) Kill Palestinian Man Near Salfit
- New Google Maps images reveal massive scale of devastation in Gaza
- Jewish supremacy, anti-Palestinian bigotry on display in Israel – Daily Update
- Israeli Soldiers Abduct At Least 22 Across Occupied West Bank
- Eight Palestinians Killed in Israeli Attacks on Gaza
- Israeli former leaders and security chiefs threaten legal action over ‘Jewish terrorism’
- Israel map in LA Times ad includes all land from the river to the sea
- No Tricks Zone
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
