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Saudi Arabia warns of ‘dire consequences’ of Israel’s new settlement plans in West Bank

Press TV – June 29, 2024

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry has warned of the “dire consequences” of Israel’s plan to expand illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank.

In a statement on Saturday, the ministry slammed the Israeli regime’s decision to legitimize five new outposts in the West Bank.

Saudi Arabia opposes the “ongoing Israeli violations of international law and international legitimacy resolutions,” it added.

“These violations undermine opportunities for peace and contribute to fueling conflicts and destabilizing regional and international security and stability,” the statement read.

On Thursday, Israel’s extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced that the Security Cabinet authorized one outpost for every country that unilaterally recognized Palestine as a state in the last month.

Last month, Spain, Ireland and Norway formally recognized the Palestinian state, joining over 140 UN member states that have recognized its statehood over the past four decades.

Slovenia and Malta have also indicated they plan to formally recognize the state of Palestine.

The five settlement outposts are Evyatar, Givat Assaf, Sde Efraim, Heletz, and Adorayim.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation in a statement on Saturday condemned Israel’s new settlement expansion plan in the West Bank.

It said all actions and decisions taken by Israel as the occupying power to perpetuate its colonial regime in the occupied Palestinian territory are null and void under international law and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions, especially UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016).

June 29, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dozens of Palestinian homes demolished across occupied West Bank

The Cradle | June 27, 2024

Israeli forces have demolished 17 Palestinian homes across the occupied West Bank on 26 June.

Local sources told WAFA news outlet that the demolitions included four houses east of Jericho, eleven homes in the Umm al-Khair community in Masafer Yatta in Hebron, one home in Beitillu village, and one home in east Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood.

In Jericho, the demolitions were carried out on the basis that they were built without Israeli-issued permits.

The eleven houses demolished in Masafer Yatta all belonged to to the Al-Hathalin family, leaving over 50 Palestinians homeless.

Bulldozers tore through the land, uprooting many solar cells, water tanks, and fences, as well as trees.

With international attention on Gaza, Israel has stepped up settler violence to ethnically cleanse and expand its illegal settlement of the occupied West Bank.

Last week, Israeli forces carried out a campaign of raids in various parts of the occupied West Bank, as Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich openly confirmed that Israel has plans to annex the West Bank. The Israeli military gave significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants working for Smotrich to accelerate the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories.

In March, the Israeli government designated 2,000 acres of Palestinian-owned land in the occupied Jordan Valley as state-owned property for the construction of over 100 settlement housing units and an area for commerce and industry.

Earlier this month, Norway’s largest private pension fund, Kommunal Landspensjonskasse (KLP), dropped its stakes in Caterpillar Inc over concerns of complicity in the destruction of Palestinian homes.

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli actions in Gaza ‘intentional attack on civilians’: UN inquiry

Press TV – June 19, 2024

A new report by a United Nations-backed independent commission has discovered that the Israeli military’s deliberate use of heavy weapons during its relentless offensives in the Gaza Strip has been an “intentional and direct attack on the civilian population.”

Navi Pillay, chairperson of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said on Wednesday that “Israeli authorities are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.”

These include “extermination, intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects, murder or willful killing, using starvation as a method of war, forcible transfer, gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys, sexual and gender-based violence amounting to torture, and cruel or inhuman treatment,” Pillay said as she presented the report to the UN Human Rights Council.

The UN commissioner said the Israeli military “forcibly transferred almost the entire population [in Gaza] into a small enclosure that is unsafe and uninhabitable” and used heavy weapons in densely populated areas in “an intentional and direct attack on the civilian population”.

Pillay said the commission concluded that specific forms of sexual and gender-based violence constituted part of the Israeli forces’ procedures.

The UN commissioner said the world faces its biggest threat of impunity for violations of international law unless perpetrators are held to account and justice is delivered for all victims.

She underscored that the large-scale surprise attack by members of Hamas and other Gaza-based resistance fighters against Israel in early October did not occur in a vacuum as it was preceded by decades of violence and retribution against Palestinians.

“Thousands of Palestinians have been detained and are being held incommunicado… ” Pillay said.

“The enormity of this tragedy overwhelms us, and we are deeply disturbed by the immense human suffering.”

Pillay’s commission found that the immense numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza, and the widespread destruction of civilian objects and infrastructure were the inevitable result of an intentional strategy to cause maximum damage.

Pillay also noted that the daily onslaught in Gaza must not sideline attention to a parallel wave of violence in the occupied West Bank, where more Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers since the start of the Gaza war in any other recorded period.

Israel waged the atrocious onslaught against the Gaza Strip, targeting hospitals, residences, and houses of worship after Palestinian resistance movements launched a surprise attack, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm, against the usurping regime on October 7.

Israel has killed more than 37,390 Palestinians, most of them women and children, in Gaza since that October day.

Over 85,500 individuals have also sustained injuries. More than 1.7 million people have been internally displaced during the war as well.

June 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Beyond Rafah: What the Zionist entity is headed toward

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | June 5, 2024

The tunnel systems have not been destroyed, the weapons capabilities of the Resistance remain, and the fighters have survived some of the toughest onslaughts the Israelis are capable of mustering.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has set the invasion of Rafah as the route to a comprehensive victory against the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza. This is a lie, and the Zionist regime will not achieve its war goals, so what comes next when the Israeli public is faced with the truth?

The Zionist entity launched its genocidal military campaign against the Gaza Strip, claiming that it sought to both dismantle Hamas and retrieve its captives by force. Neither was achieved in around 8 months of confrontations, despite having inflicted massive death and destruction on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the Vietnam War.

Before the Israelis launched their ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, the line of propaganda was to pretend as if their unprecedented bombing campaign was going to dismantle the Palestinian Resistance’s complex web of tunnels underneath the besieged coastal territory. We heard about all the various munitions that were supposedly going to penetrate the tunnel systems and destroy the majority of them, prior to any face-to-face fighting.

When “Israel” did invade the Gaza Strip, it soon became clear that they were not even trying to penetrate the majority of the tunnels, despite their propaganda. The Zionist army came in on the ground, choosing to set up positions in open areas, before packing their soldiers in armored personnel carriers, tanks, and militarized bulldozers, refraining from using infantry to clear areas prior to penetrating them. They were subsequently met with tough resistance from the Palestinian armed factions. As for the tunnels and the attempts to recapture their captives, the rescue missions were all foiled, and the Israelis seemed to only be sealing off tunnel entrances they found, instead of sending forces underground to fight face-to-face.

The Zionist entity then set its sights on Gaza City, choosing to target the northern sector of the coastal territory in the initial stages of the invasion. Despite their attempts to completely ethnically cleanse the north, hundreds of thousands remained steadfast on their lands and refused to leave. Petty tactics were then employed by the Israeli ground forces, such as flying their flag in areas they managed to reach temporarily in their armored vehicles and tanks.

All this was going on as their leadership claimed that the “Hamas headquarters” was situated under the Al-Shifa Hospital, for which they released a CGI video depicting a multi-layered tunnel system. After finally invading the Shifa medical complex, the Zionist regime was outed as a bunch of liars as no headquarters was found there. Nonetheless, their evidence-free conspiracy theories about Hamas using hospitals as military headquarters’ and bases continued to drive the invasion of the north.

Suddenly, after being pointed out as having fabricated evidence in the north of the alleged “Hamas bases” and “Hamas headquarters” underneath hospitals, they began to pivot to Khan Younis. Khan Younis is the “real Hamas headquarters” they told their own settler population and the international community, deciding to invade the city in December, after the conclusion of a brief cessation of hostilities and prisoner exchange. In early January, they had already besieged the city of Khan Younis completely, finding no “Hamas headquarters”, and then began to obsess over the southernmost city of Rafah.

For months, the threats to invade Rafah were constant, and Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asserted that his regime could not win the war without invading Rafah, and we repeatedly heard about the authorization of the operation to force a ground incursion into the area. This was met with international condemnation and a series of contradictory remarks from the US President, Joe Biden, who still can’t decide on what his “red line” actually is.

On May 6, Hamas called the Israeli-US bluff and accepted a ceasefire proposal. This was despite the fact that Netanyahu had been talking about his unwillingness to accept any ceasefire with Hamas for over a week prior. Although the Israeli premier was promising an invasion of Rafah, the US Secretary of State was publicly lauding the ceasefire proposal and urging Hamas to take it during his visit to West Asia. When Hamas decided to accept the proposal, which was almost identical to the one that was promoted by the US and elements within the Israeli regime’s leadership, it caused shockwaves, and the Zionist military responded by launching its invasion that same day.

The Israelis made a fatal mistake, however, deciding to also invade the al-Zaytoun neighborhood near Gaza City and Jabalia, both located in the north of the Gaza Strip. The invasion of Jabalia appeared to be an attempt to try and pull off a propaganda victory, by extracting the bodies of Israeli captives killed by their own airstrikes. However, they were surprised by the level of fighting waged against their soldiers by the Palestinian Resistance, who not only inflicted heavy losses on the Zionist invaders but, in the case of Jabalia, managed to pull off one of the toughest battles of the entire war as well.

The Zionist entity is renowned for concealing its casualties, but it could not hide all of them, and the public was exposed to daily reports about incidents in which their soldiers were killed and dismembered. This was a major embarrassment because the Israelis had told their own people that they managed to dismantle all of the Resistance battalions in the north months before, which clearly was not true.

Then came the announcement last Saturday from Abu Obeida, the spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, who informed the world that an ambush had taken place in which the Resistance group managed to capture, kill, and injure the members of a force that they lured into a tunnel. The very next day, after increased rocket fire into the surrounding settlements during the weeks prior, al-Qassam launched a barrage of rockets from Rafah that struck north of “Tel Aviv”, managing to cause impacts and bypass the Iron Dome system. Embarrassed and in disarray once again, the Zionist entity decided to commit a series of massacres against civilians, the most egregious taking place against refugees sheltering in tents northwest of Rafah City.

All of this is to say that the Zionist regime is now faced with a dead end, as it will not find victory in Rafah and will fail as it did everywhere else. Not one of the dozen armed Resistance groups operating in the Gaza Strip have been defeated, let alone Hamas. The tunnel systems have not been destroyed, the weapons capabilities of the resistance remain, and the fighters have survived some of the toughest onslaughts the Israelis are capable of mustering. Moreover, the captives have not been extracted by force and now they have lost even more in Jabalia. So what is next?

The Zionists are out of real options in the Gaza Strip, they have not found any reasonable plan for a day-after scenario, and once they meet failure in Rafah, there is nowhere else they can claim is the “real Hamas headquarters” any longer. This is why they have to pivot away from Gaza and find another target.

The single biggest thorn in the side of the Israelis right now is the Lebanese Resistance. Over the course of the war, Hezbollah and its allies have annihilated the Israeli monitoring and defense capabilities, smashed their military sites to pieces, destroyed many settler housing units in the bordering settlements, and forced over 100,000 Israeli settlers to flee in fear. The Israeli economy in the north has been paralyzed and the image of the Zionist army has been dismantled, as Hezbollah uses Israeli soldiers and military bases as test subjects for its military equipment.

What the Israelis could do is to either wrap up their invasion of Rafah quickly or continue it in a slow fashion, while deciding to launch a limited military operation against Lebanon. In the event that this occurs, it is not likely for the Zionist regime to commit suicide, and so, it is more likely that, despite the propaganda that they will release about such an operation, they would attempt to prevent it from spilling over into a full-scale war.

If “Israel” chooses this option, it understands well that Hezbollah will respond with unprecedented strikes that will shake the entity to its core, which will result in the sidelining of the Gaza war. Not only will the Israeli settler population be focused almost entirely on Lebanon, but so too will most of the world and certainly the international community. This would provide them with the opportunity to bring a close to the Gaza war and conclude a prisoner exchange while ensuring that it looks like they are attempting to restore their broken image. Such a scenario would also buy Netanyahu and his leadership more time in power.

If this happens, the course of the struggle will not come to a conclusion, however, as there is another very obvious front and that is the occupied West Bank. It is possible that the Israeli leadership could then shift its focus again, this time to the usurpation of what is known as area C of the West Bank; an area which constitutes around 60% of the total territory. For a long time, the Zionists have sought to seize this area, but due to external pressures from their allies, they have refrained from doing so.

The excuse in the West Bank will be the Resistance groups, which are primarily operating in the north of the territory and would work to justify a large-scale military campaign. In the event that a ceasefire is already concluded in Gaza, they could then go in without the fear of the resistance in the Gaza Strip pulling off a major defensive attack and seizing the land they seek. This would be the embodiment of their decades-long plot to divide the four parts of Palestine from each other, that being the 1948 territories, occupied eastern part of al-Quds, the West Bank, and Gaza. If Netanyahu manages to end his bloody campaign of terrorism and genocide in the West Bank, it is the one place where he can actually extract what appears on paper to be a victory and it may be enough, in his mind, to save him from the inevitable political death he is slowly dying today.

What is mentioned above may not occur in the exact order listed, but it is almost inevitable that the war on Gaza is going to shift to Lebanon and the West Bank in the foreseeable future. Unless the Zionist regime comes up with another excuse to maintain the course of the war in Gaza for a longer period of time, which will delay the pivot to other fronts, it seems like what lies beyond Rafah will be Lebanon and/or the West Bank. The decision to delay the invasion of Rafah for so long seems to have been down to the fact that this will be the end of their justifications for remaining at war in Gaza. The response to what the Zionist Entity is planning will be in the hands of the resistance.

June 6, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli soldier confesses to killing US elderly man in West Bank

Al Mayadeen | May 22, 2024

A self-proclaimed soldier from “Israel’s” infamous Netzah Yehuda battalion has admitted that his unit killed 78-year-old Palestinian-American, Omar Asad, in January 2022, according to recordings obtained by The Grayzone.

However, after announcing plans to sanction the battalion, the Biden administration withdrew the decision without offering further explanation.

“Four of these units [Israeli units] have effectively remediated these violations, which is what we expect partners to do,” the US State Department claimed.

The fifth unit appears to be Netzah Yehuda, an all-male unit of Orthodox Jewish nationalists that operates exclusively in Ramallah of the occupied West Bank and is accused of crimes, including sexual assault and beating at least three older men to death while they were lying on the ground while in custody.

Netzah Yehuda soldiers detained Asad and left him outdoors in harsh conditions, bound and blindfolded until he died. Instead of punishment, all the soldiers got was a slap on the wrist, and compensation was paid to Asad’s family.

A report by Washington DC-based human rights organization, DAWN, found that at the time of the killing, the commander of the unit, Lt. Col. Mati Shevach, was promoted to Deputy Commander of the Kfir Brigade, which oversees the Netzah Yehuda formation.

Spokesperson Vedant Patel responded during an April 29 State Department press briefing to questions regarding why the administration had hesitated to sanction the battalion.

“This is an ongoing process,” Patel said, further claiming, “I’m not going to speak to it more specifically, but consistent with the memorandum of understanding that we have with the government of Israel, we are engaging with them, consulting with them as it relates to not just this broader process but additional information that they’ve shared.”

The Grayzone obtained the glorified account of the killing of Asad, which according to the self-described soldier’s account, the unit brutalized Asad as punishment for supposedly interfering with a raid.

“This geezer who’s like trying to interfere with our operation, we’re going to like, f*** with him for a night,” the soldier said, as he called Arabs “murders, criminal animals” and boasted about killing and torturing Palestinians, likening himself to Americans who photographed themselves with dead Japanese soldiers during World War II, “doing funny things with their bodies.”

“Yeah, I enjoy it because they’re our enemy,” he expressed.

Read also: IOF units ‘remediated’ after rights violations, no Leahy sanctions

May 22, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel gives extremist settler ‘absolute’ control of occupied West Bank

The Cradle | May 3, 2024

Brigadier General Avi Bluth, an extremist religious settler, has been appointed to the position of Central Command commander of the Israeli army, Israeli media reported on 2 May.

Bluth has previously served as commander of the Army’s Judea and Samaria Division and as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Military Secretary.

According to Muhammad Shehada of Euro Med Human Rights, Bluth will now have absolute powers over the West Bank, including the ability to demolish homes and conduct army raids.

Bluth contributed to pogroms against Palestinians in the towns of Huwara and Burqa by standing by as Jewish settlers lynched civilians and burned and destroyed homes, shops, and vehicles.

He also played a role in incorporating extremists from a religious settler group called the Hilltop Youth into units of the Israeli army.

Bluth pushed for Operation Break the Wave in 2022, in which the army killed 149 Palestinians in the West Bank and abducted 2000 others in a series of raids, and Operation Bayit Vagan in July 2023, in which the army carried out a massive assault on Jenin, killing 12 Palestinians and leaving widespread destruction in its wake.

Bluth is a signatory to the army’s 2015 policy change, which loosened the conditions for using live fire against Palestinians throwing stones and carrying out ramming operations.

Shehada adds that Bluth has links to the Religious Zionism Party led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which is committed to stealing and annexing Palestinian land in the West Bank.

Bluth was raised in Neve Tzuf, an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. He earned a BS in philosophy, economy, and political science from Hebrew University and an MA in strategic thinking from the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

May 4, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces kill 14 Palestinians during refugee camp siege in West Bank

Press TV – April 20, 2024

The Israeli regime’s forces have gunned down at least 14 Palestinians, including 10 fighters, during their ongoing days-long siege on Nour Shams, a refugee camp located in the northern part of the occupied West Bank.

“So far, our crews have evacuated 14 martyrs from Nour Shams camp to the hospital,” the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Saturday.

News agencies, meanwhile, reported sighting Israeli drones loitering overhead and armored vehicles roaming throughout the camp.

Earlier, the Palestinian health ministry said it had confirmed that as many as 11 people had been injured by the troops. Seven of those injured had been “wounded by live gunshots,” it said, adding that among the wounded was a paramedic shot while trying to get to the wounded.

Medics had been alerted to “a number of killed and injured” inside the camp, but the army was “denying them access to tend to the wounded,” the ministry noted.

Minister Muayad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, said residents were suffering from the “destruction of homes, shops, the electricity grid, the sewerage, the water network, and infrastructure.”

The Israeli military began its siege on the camp on Thursday, rolling bulldozers into the area, and deploying military vehicles on all routes leading to the camp.

The military began destroying main streets, alleyways, water, and wastewater networks inside the camp.

Reporting on Friday, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency said, “They (Israeli forces) turned some houses into military outposts, deployed snipers and prevented ambulances from entering the camp to evacuate patients.”

Also on Friday, the Israeli military killed Muhammad Samer Jaber, commander of the Tulkarm Brigade, a Palestinian resistance group affiliated with Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of the Gaza Strip-based Islamic Jihad movement, and a number of resistance fighters.

The Israeli regime has notably escalated its aggression against Palestinians across the West Bank since October 7, when it began an all-out genocidal war on Gaza.

Around 480 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank ever since the onset of the war that has claimed the lives of more than 34,000 people so far.

April 21, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti beaten by guards

MEMO | March 19, 2024

Prominent Palestinian political prisoner Marwan Barghouti has been attacked with clubs by Israeli prison guards and suffered bleeding in his eye, Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed reported the Palestinian Commission for Detainees and Ex-Prisoners’ Affairs and Barghouti’s family saying.

Barghouti, 64, who is a member of the Central Committee of Fatah, is being subjected to isolation, torture and humiliation, said his wife, Fadwa Barghouti.

Fadwa explained that her husband’s life and the lives of other prominent prisoners are in great danger, adding that the Israeli prison administration “deliberately brutalises them in order to break their morale.”

“Marwan was subjected to continuous attacks, which we learned of on 6 and 12 March [through lawyers], which caused bleeding in one of his eyes, while the prison’s repressive forces constantly threatened him,” she added, explaining that he had been relocated five times during the last three months, and each time he was assaulted and his prison conditions were tightened.

In four prisons he was put in solitary confinement, she said, warning of a “real war” being waged against Palestinians prisoners and their leaders, which hurts their morale.

For its part, the Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Political Prisoners campaign said in a statement that lawyers who had visited Megiddo Prison learned of the brutal attack on Barghouti and other prominent prisoners by the prison’s special repression units, adding that many of them had been placed in solitary confinement.

The campaign said it had contacted a number of international figures, including diplomats, parliamentarians and human rights institutions, as well as leaders of the Fatah movement and the National and Islamic Action factions, calling on them to provide protection to the Palestinian people including political prisoners in Israeli jails.

Barghouti was arrested in 2002 and later sentenced to five life terms on charges of “killing and injuring Israelis.”

In parallel with the onslaught on the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, Israel has increased raids and arrests in the occupied West Bank, arresting more than 7,000 people, alongside a campaign of harassment against prisoners in Israeli jails, resulting in the deaths of at least 13 prisoners since 7 October 2023.

March 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Settlers burn through West Bank village under army protection

(Photo credit: AFP)
The Cradle | February 20, 2024

Israeli settlers rampaged through the occupied West Bank village of Burqa, northwest of Nablus, on the evening of 19 February, attacking homes and destroying vehicles under the protection and coordination of the Israeli military. 

Settlers threw Molotov cocktails at several Palestinian homes as Israeli troops shut down all main roads to the village. 

Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Israeli troops “did nothing to stop the colonists’ attack,” adding that Israeli forces used large amounts of tear gas and prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded. 

Earlier on Monday, Israeli settlers, with the help of troops, fenced off a tract of Palestinian-owned land south of Jerusalem with barbed wire to occupy it. 

Settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank has surged to all-time highs under Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. It has escalated even further since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the Gaza war. 

Palestinians have been subject to increasing levels of forced displacement since the war began. 

Since October, over 1,000 people – including hundreds of children – have been forced by settlers and Israeli army soldiers to abandon their homes, according to the UN.

Additionally, more settlers are being armed. Thousands of weapons have been handed out to settlers in the occupied West Bank under an initiative sponsored by the Israeli National Security Ministry. 

According to Israeli watchdog NGO Peace Now, Israeli settlers established a record-breaking 26 outposts in the occupied West Bank in 2023. The report correlates the rise in unlawful settlement construction with the Jewish supremacist policies of the Israeli government.

Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law. 

Nonetheless, the Don’t Buy Into Occupation (DBIO) civil society organization highlighted in December that European financial institutions have provided billions of dollars to support settlement construction in the occupied West Bank over the past few years. 

February 20, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian arrests in West Bank exceed 7,000 since 7 October

(Photo Credit: Anadolu Ajansı)
The Cradle | February 14, 2024

The number of Israeli arrests in the West Bank since 7 October has risen to around 7,020, multiple institutions concerned with the rights of detained Palestinians reported on 13 February. 

According to the human rights groups, 18 arrests were made in the West Bank overnight, including two women from Jericho alongside other children and former prisoners. 

Overnight arrests made by the Israeli forces were mainly carried out in Hebron and Qalqiliya, while other arrests were made across Jericho, Nablus, Jerusalem, and Ramallah. 

The Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS), and the Addameer Prisoner Care and Human Rights Association released a joint statement revealing that the total number of arrests – including individuals from the 1948 territories – amounted to approximately 220 women and 440 children.

The number reported includes those arrested in their homes, at military checkpoints, those taken hostage, and those forced to surrender under pressure.

The statement added that 53 journalists had been detained since 7 October – 36 of whom remain imprisoned – with 21 others under administrative detention without charge or trial.

The detention campaigns are accompanied by escalating instances of abuse, beatings, and threats against the detainees and their family members. This includes the destruction of homes as well as the confiscation of vehicles, money, and jewelry. 

They also reported executions targeting members of detainees’ families.

The data given by the prisoner rights groups does not include those arrested from Gaza due to Israel’s refusal to disclose such information. 

The total number of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons is estimated to exceed 9,000 individuals. Among them, there are 3,484 administrative detainees and 606 individuals classified as “illegal fighters” from Gaza. 

February 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Iran urges intl. condemnation of Israel’s ‘barbaric’ assassination of Palestinian patients in West Bank

Press TV – January 30, 2024

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman has strongly condemned the assassination of Palestinian patients by Israeli forces in a hospital in the occupied West Bank, calling on the international community not to remain silent in the face of the “terrorist act.”

Nasser Kan’ani made the remarks in a statement on Tuesday, after a unit of undercover Israeli special forces fatally shot three young Palestinians inside Ibn Sina Hospital in the west of Jenin earlier in the day.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman went on to say that such brutal action can pave the way for normalization of “organized terrorism” in the world, urging the international community not to remain silent and condemn the Israeli regime’s “barbaric behavior.”

Kan’ani further noted it is regrettable that the Israeli regime’s supporters are silent in the face of such obvious crimes in medical centers and the continued activity of the Zionist genocide machine.

Palestinian media outlets reported on Tuesday that members of the Israeli hit squad dressed as doctors, nurses, and even civilians went up to the third floor of the Ibn Sina Hospital and shot three young Palestinians dead with guns equipped with silencers before escaping the building.

“This morning three young men were martyred by the bullets of the occupation [Israeli] forces who stormed the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin and shot them,” the Ministry of Health in Ramallah said.

One of the slain Palestinians was undergoing treatment in the hospital for some three months since he was injured by the Israeli army.

There was no apparent attempt to arrest the Israeli assailants.

The Israeli military later claimed that the three Palestinians were members of a team affiliated to the Hamas resistance movement planning to carry out attacks against the regime.

Hamas said in a statement that Israel’s “crimes will not go unanswered,” adding that the killings are a “continuation of the occupation’s ongoing crimes against our people from Gaza to Jenin.”

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also condemned “in the strongest terms the occupation forces’ assassination of the three young men.”

Israel has ramped up its aggression in the West Bank since its genocidal war on Gaza began in early October.

Nearly 350 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since October 7, when Israel waged the war on Gaza after Hamas carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

The Israeli aggression has so far killed at least 26,637 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 65,387 others in Gaza. The Tel Aviv regime has imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food, and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.

January 30, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The genocide in Gaza is an opportunity for Ben-Gvir to get what he wants in the West Bank

Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | January 23, 2024

If what is currently happening in the Israeli-occupied West Bank took place before 7 October, our attention would have been fixated completely on that part of Palestine. The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, however, has distracted us from the important events underway in the West Bank, which is now a stage for the most violent Israeli military campaign since the Second Palestinian Uprising between 2000 and 2005.

At the time of writing, since 7 October more than 360 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis in the West Bank, while thousands have been wounded. Thousands more have been arrested. These numbers exceed, by far, the total number of Palestinians killed in 2022, which was already designated by the UN as the most violent year on record in the occupied territory since 2005.

How are we to understand the logic behind the Israeli violence in the West Bank, given that it is already under a brutal Israeli military occupation and the joint “security” control of the Israel “Defence” Forces and the Palestinian Authority? And if the Israelis are honest in their claim that their offensive in Gaza is not genocide against the Palestinian people per se, but a war against Hamas, why are they attacking the West Bank with such ferocity, killing people from all different political and ideological backgrounds, and many civilians, including children?

The answer lies in the growing political power of the Jewish settlers, whose presence is illegal under international law. Historically, there are two kinds of Israeli violence meted out routinely against Palestinians: violence carried out by the Israeli army; and violence carried out by Jewish settlers.

Palestinians understand fully that they are intrinsically linked. The settlers often attack Palestinians under the protection of the Israeli army, and the latter often launches violent raids on Palestinians for the sake of the illegal settlers.

In recent years, however, the relationship between these two violent entities has started to change, thanks to the rise of the far right in Israel, which is situated mostly within illegal settlements, and their supporters inside Israel. Hence, it should not be a surprise that both of the most far-right ministers in the extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, are themselves settlers.

As soon as Ben-Gvir became National Security Minister, he began promoting the idea of establishing a National Guard. After 7 October, he managed, with direct support from Netanyahu’s government, to establish so-called civilian security teams. Israeli officials like Yair Lapid, for example, have described Ben-Gvir’s new armed group as a “private militia”. And he is right.

Although Ben-Gvir insists that the war in Gaza must continue, his actual aim from this — aside from the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population in the territory — is to use this rare opportunity to fulfil all of the wishes of Israel’s political extremists, all at once.

Remember, Ben-Gvir came to power based on the lofty promises of annexing the West Bank, expanding settlements and seizing control of Palestinian holy sites in East Jerusalem, among other extremist ideas. Al-Aqsa Mosque was a major target for him and his equally far-right followers, who believe that only by building a Third Temple on the ruins of Islam’s third holiest shrine would Israel be able to reclaim total control over the Holy Land.

Ben-Gvir’s bizarre political language could once have been dismissed as the extremism of a fringe politician.

Not any more, though. He is arguably the most powerful politician in Israel, due to his ability to use six seats in the Knesset to make or break Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.

While Netanyahu is behaving largely out of desperation to save his own political skin, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant is fighting to redeem the tattered reputation of the army. Others, like War Council Minister Benny Gantz, are walking a political fine line so as not to be perceived as the ones who have broken Israel’s fragile political unity during a most decisive war.

None of this applies to Ben-Gvir. The man sees himself as the political descendant of the likes of the notorious late Meir Kahane; he is a fervent advocate of religious war. And since religious wars can only be the outcome of chaotic social and political circumstances, he is keen to instigate these very events that could ultimately lead to the war that he covets most.

One of the prerequisites is unhinged violence, where people are killed based on the mere suspicion of being “terrorists”. For example, on 18 January, Ben-Gvir told Israeli border police officers during a visit to a base in the West Bank, “You have complete backing from me.” He urged them to shoot at every “terrorist” — for which read “Palestinian” — even if they do not pose a threat.

Ben-Gvir perceives all Palestinians in the West Bank to be potential terrorists, the same way that Israel’s “moderate” President Isaac Herzog perceives all in Gaza as being “responsible” for the actions of Hamas. This essentially means that the Israeli security forces — soldiers and police — in the West Bank have the green light to kill Palestinians there with the same impunity as those killing Palestinians in Gaza.

Even though security and intelligence officials in Israel have warned Netanyahu against launching war on another front in the West Bank, the Israeli army has no other option but to fight that supposed “war” anyway. Why? Because it is already seen by a large constituency in Israel as a failure for its inability to prevent or respond successfully to the 7 October attacks, even after over 100 days of war in Gaza. To redeem their tarnished honour, senior officers are happy to fight a less challenging “war” against isolated and under-equipped Palestinian fighters in small parts of the West Bank.

Ben-Gvir, of course, is ready to manipulate all of this in his favour. And he is getting precisely what he wants: expanding the war to the West Bank, ethnically-cleansing Palestinians; torturing prisoners; demolishing homes; torching properties; and all the rest.

Arguably his greatest achievement so far is his ability to create a perfect amalgamation between the political interests of the settlers, the government and the security apparatus. His aim, however, is not merely to steal yet more Palestinian land, or expand a few settlements. His wished-for religious war will, he believes, lead ultimately to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, not just from Gaza, but also from the West Bank.

The war in Gaza is a perfect opportunity for these sinister goals to be achieved. For now, this genocidal war continues to create opportunities for religious Zionism to acquire new followers, and to lay deeper roots within Israel’s political establishment. A sudden end to the war, however, could represent the marginalisation of religious Zionism for years to come.

January 23, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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