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Total War – The Economic Backbone of the Occupation

Gazans being held by Israeli police. Photo from one of the workers.
International Solidarity Movement | October 15, 2023

EXPLOITATION AND OCCUPATION

Hundreds of Gazan workers are being given refuge in Palestine, after having been dumped in the West Bank by Israel.

45 of them are in al-Khalil and the ISM spoke to many of them this evening.

These labourers were working in Israeli settlements. When Hamas broke out of Gaza they were rounded up, detained, and at least one of them was beaten and hospitalised. They spent four hours in prison, their phones confiscated and without contact with the outside world. One man says 6500NIS was stolen from him by the police.

Apartments have been provided by charitable individuals and groups are giving them food and bringing them brand-new clothing to replace the belongings they were not allowed to bring from Israel. No help comes from the P.A.

SO WHAT WERE THESE GUYS DOING IN ISRAEL?

After 16 years of blockade, Gaza’s economy has collapsed. Gazans buy Israeli work permits so as to get jobs as labourers in construction or hospitality. These permits, valid for one month, are purchased from specialised companies and cost 3,000 NIS. Gazan workers earn 6000 NIS monthly for 45 hour weeks. Israelis would be paid around 20,000 shekels for doing an equivalent job. These migrant workers have no health insurance or job security. They have to be married, too.

Women migrant workers find jobs in factories or in agriculture. Manual labour is the only option available to people from Gaza. One of the workers we spoke to has a degree in engineering, one qualified as a social worker and another was a teacher.

Visits to their wives and families are possible at weekends, and they try to return at least twice a month. Travel through the Eretz crossing involves a long wait of up to 12 hours, the crossing opens at 4am on a Sunday morning to let them through. Everything is checked, and they can’t take clothes through, so clothing has to be bought (at high expense) in Israel.

The guards at the border can deny entry at will to anyone, whether or not they have a permit. Israeli intelligence often interrogates and threatens the workers, hoping to add them to the network of informers in Gaza.

THE LUCKY ONES

We were told that around 1,500  migrant workers are still detained or missing in Israel. Their families in Gaza were asking for information about them.

We heard that, when Israel declared war, one of the employers of Gazan workers informed the police that the people working for him were terrorists. We saw a video of corpses after the police intervention. The people shot were colleagues of one of the men we spoke to. Here are their names:

Hashim Barawi (killed)

Suliman Al Atar (killed)

Hary Al Masry (location unknown)

Sahel AL Masry

Nabil Al Barrawi (injured)

Talal Warshasha (injured)

The workers intend to use every legal means possible to obtain justice.

NOT WAR BUT EXTERMINATION

The situation these men are in is difficult, but they are distraught about the situation in Gaza and worried about their families. “My son works with the emergency services, Israel bombed his ambulance, the driver was killed and my son is injured.” “My building was bombed, and my wife and kids are now living in a tent.” “I keep phoning my wife, but there is no answer.”

They denounce the lies and hypocrisy of the international community in its support for Israel. Western countries talk about law and democracy, but they respect neither. How can they support this massacre, this lack of humanity?

One of the men sums it up: This is not war, it is extermination.

Despite the atrocious, immoral position of the countries whose passports we hold, only one man didn’t greet us warmly. Hearing we were from European countries, he said he didn’t want to be in the same room as us.

I was totally sincere when I replied that I understood his feelings, that we are in Palestine because of our countries’ responsibility in the destruction of Palestine, because we don’t agree with Europe’s policies and that we would like to do what we can to tell people  about what is happening here. If you’ve read this far, please help us in getting the word out and stopping this genocide.

October 15, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli Army Kills A Palestinian Child In Tulkarem

IMEMC | OCTOBER 14, 2023

On Saturday, Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian child in Zeita town, north of Tulkarem, in the occupied West Bank’s northwestern part.

The Palestinian Health Ministry has confirmed that the soldiers killed Omar Ahmad Abdul-Rahman Asmar, 15, after shooting him with live fire.

The child was among many wounded Palestinians during protests that took place after several Israeli army vehicles invaded the town.

His death brings the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli army fire in Tulkarem on Friday and Saturday to six, in addition to dozens of injuries.


On Saturday dawn, Israeli soldiers killed Mahmoud Shehada, 27, injured three, including one who suffered serious wounds, and abducted six in Jericho, in the northeastern part of the occupied West Bank.

Also at dawn, Israeli soldiers killed a young Palestinian man, Abdul-Rahman Ribhi Al-Ammouri, in a car near Al-Isawiya town junction, northeast of the occupied Palestinian capital Jerusalem, in the West Bank.

On Saturday dawn, as the Israeli army continued to fire hundreds of missiles and shells at homes and buildings in the Gaza Strip, including a busy marker in the Nusseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

The Health Ministry has confirmed that the extensive Israeli bombing Saturday has killed 315 Palestinians, including 90 children, and injured 1788, mainly women and children.

It added that 2215 Palestinians, including 724 children and 458 women, have been killed, and 8714 Palestinians, including 2450 children and 1536 women, have been injured as the Israeli onslaught on Gaza entered its eighth day.

On Friday, the soldiers killed fifteen Palestinians, including two children, in several parts of the occupied West Bank Friday.

October 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

West Bank death toll surges as Israeli soldiers, settlers carry on attacks

The Cradle | October 13, 2023 

Israeli settlers and soldiers have killed thirty-six Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry announced on 12 October. 

A 24-year-old Palestinian was shot by Israeli forces near Ramallah on Thursday, succumbing to injuries later that evening. 

“With the killing of Suleiman Malsa, the toll from the Israeli aggression against our people in the West Bank since last Saturday has now reached 36, with over 650 wounded,” WAFA news agency said, citing the health ministry. 

A 17-year-old Palestinian in the town of Qusra near Nablus was shot and killed a day earlier by Israeli settlers under the army’s protection. Several others were killed and injured in the attack. 

Settlers also shot and killed a father and son at a funeral on 12 October. 

Violence has surged dramatically in the occupied West Bank since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel’s indiscriminate air raids against Gaza’s civilian population. 

Palestinians across the West Bank carried out several protests and marches in solidarity with Gaza. West Bank resistance groups have also stepped up armed confrontation against Israeli troops and settlers, particularly after a call by Hamas for a mass Palestinian uprising in all occupied territory. 

Intense clashes between Israeli troops and groups affiliated with Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have been ongoing since Saturday. Dozens of individuals have also been detained over links to Hamas and its affiliates in the West Bank.

Two Israeli police officers were wounded, one critically, in a shooting attack on a police station in occupied east Jerusalem on Thursday. The attacker was killed. The Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), claimed responsibility for the shooting.

Residents across the West Bank have also reported facing significantly higher levels of violence since Hamas’ surprise operation against Israel on 7 October, reinforcing accusations that Israel employs a policy of collective punishment against Palestinians. 

More videos

October 13, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

What is ‘Firing Zone 918’ and how Israel uses it to grab more Palestinian land

By Dr Mustafa Fetouri | MEMO | October 5, 2023

Israeli firing zones are usually closed military areas exclusively reserved for military training purposes. They are scattered all over the Occupied West Bank, encompassing many small and equally scattered Palestinian villages of mostly Bedouin communities.

The idea of the creation of “firing zones” was the brainchild of Ariel Sharon when he was minister of agriculture in 1979. Despite designating them as firing zones, Sharon, essentially a military man, had another sinister purpose in mind.

In a recently declassified document (in Hebrew), Sharon told a secret meeting with the World Zionist Organisation’s Settlement Division, that he wanted such zones to “provide an opportunity for Jewish settlements in the area.” He explained his intention behind creating the zones by saying “the firing zones were created for one purpose: land reserves for settlements.” Literally, to help settlers grab more Palestinian land.

Firing zones are not the same as “closed military areas” regularly announced by the Israeli army. Closed military areas are usually temporary, limited in scope and intended for a purpose. Usually, their designation, as such, is lifted once the purpose behind the designation has been achieved. For example, when the Israeli army and security forces besiege any Palestinian city, town or village looking for resistance fighters or seeking to murder or apprehend an individual, they designate such target area as a “closed military area”. Once the purpose is achieved, the designation is lifted.

Firing zones, on the other hand, tend to be permanent or remain as such for longer. Any civilians – and there are thousands of them – living in such zones or near them become less safe and face expulsion and their dwellings are demolished. Israel usually justifies such measures by “building without permit” or because the building is standing in a “military zone”, but usually avoids using the firing zone label.

Firing Zone 918, declared in the 1980s, is a good example of this. It encompasses a sizeable piece of land in the Southern Hebron region, surrounding, particularly, the Masafer Yatta, area. Thousands of Bedouin Palestinians living in the area are facing expulsion.  Their case has been in the courts for the last 40 years. By the time it reached the Israeli occupation High Court in May 2022, the court simply threw out all residents’ petitions by upholding the long-standing expulsion of thousands of them. In explaining its ruling, the court said that those Palestinians were not living in the area before it was designated as a firing zone.  However, historical Israeli sources show that Palestinians have been there, at least, since the end of the 19th century— long before Israel itself came into existence.

Under international law, firing zones are illegal since they are on occupied land. According to the United Nations 2022 report, firing zones take up to 18 per cent of the West Bank land which is about the same total area under the control of the Palestinian Authority pursuant to the Oslo Accords (some 17.7 per cent of the West Bank area is supposed to be controlled by PA) when, in reality, the PA only enjoys limited and occasional authority over this area and it is always vulnerable to incursions by Israeli forces. On top of that, as per the Oslo Accords, some 30 per cent of area C of the West Bank has also been designated as a firing zone—area C is fully controlled by Israel and is supposed to be transferred to full PA control after the final status negotiations, which have never taken place so far. Area C is about 60 per cent of the entire Occupied West Bank.

The same UN report estimates that almost 5,000 civilian Palestinians in 38 communities are scattered within these firing zones. It says that only 20 per cent of the designated firing zones are actively used for military training purposes, while the rest are mostly inactive. Around these areas, settlers, under the protection of the Israeli army, usually erect their colonial outposts on Palestinian land and later expand them into fully-fledged settlements.

Firing zones are closed to the public and the Israeli military uses them whenever it wants without any warning, thus endangering the lives of the civilian population living within or around such areas, eventually, leading to their forced expulsion. They represent serious dangers including: displacement, damage to property, safety risks and access restrictions among others.

Last March, Cassandra Dixon, a 64-year-old peace activist from Wisconsin in the United States, joined other protestors in trying to prevent the expulsion of Tuba village residents. Tuba is one of 15 such villages that make up Masafer Yatta.

Despite her age and the fact that she was peacefully protesting, she was attacked by a settler who hit her with what she described as a “large stick” over her head, causing a fracture to her skull and bleeding in “my brain”, she said.

Because she is a US citizen, she managed to go to court with the help of the US State Department. With additional pressure from a US Senator, the Israeli authorities arrested the settler and the case went to trial.

Mrs. Dixon, in an email message to me, wrote “the court scheduled another hearing for 2 November.”  In a previous hearing, on 6 September, she said the entire proceeding was held “in Hebrew”, without interpretation. She does not understand the language. To make things even worse, the presiding judge ordered the human rights lawyer, who was accompanying her, to leave the courtroom, leaving her alone.

The attacking settler, named Dovid Weinstock, was released from jail and put under house arrest, pending the court ruling.

Mrs. Dixon told me she is determined to go back during next year’s olive harvest to help prevent the village being “seized” by Israel. In the meantime, while in Wisconsin she, along with a group of locals, are sponsoring olive trees to “replace” the ones destroyed by settlers.

Mrs. Dixon managed to reach the court because she was a US citizen. Imagine how it is for Palestinians, whom Israel does not recognise as citizens of its own or that of any other state, including Palestine, and how their suffering is simply ignored by Israel and its judiciary.

October 5, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces injure Palestinian school children in West Bank raid

Press TV | October 2, 2023

The Palestinian Ministry of Education has suspended classes in the village of Burqa due to the injury of a child in a raid by Israeli forces into a school.

Ghassan Daghlas, acting governor of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, said on Monday the decision to close the school was to maintain the safety of students.

Local media reported that Israeli forces also directly fired stun grenades and tear gas canisters toward the Palestinian students inside the school during the raid a day earlier. Dozens of children also suffered from smoke inhalation.

Israeli forces also denied teachers of 27 schools access to classes in Masafer Yatta area, located south of the city of al-Khalil (Hebron). The regime forces placed barriers to block the roads leading to the education centers.

In recent months, Israeli forces have also demolished a number of schools across the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian Ministry of Education in an earlier statement said the demolition of schools was “a heinous crime.”

“These practices have become a flagrant violation of students’ right to safe and free education.”

October 2, 2023 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s twisted logic makes the murder of Palestinian children a matter of state policy

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | September 5, 2023

Israel murders Palestinian children as a matter of state policy. This claim can be demonstrated easily and is supported by the latest findings of a Human Rights Watch report. The question is: why?

When the police or army shoot a child anywhere in the world, it can usually be argued, at least in theory, that the killing was an unfortunate and tragic mistake. But when thousands of children are killed and wounded in a systematic, “routine” and comparable method within a relatively short period of time, there has to be something very deliberate about it.

In a recent report — “West Bank: Spike in Israeli Killings of Palestinian Children” — HRW reaches a strong conclusion based on an exhaustive examination of medical data, eyewitness accounts, video footage and field research, the latter pertaining to four specific cases.

One is the case of Mahmoud Al-Sadi, a 17-year-old Palestinian boy from the Jenin Refugee Camp. He was killed last November, 320 metres away from fighting between invading Israeli forces and Jenin resistance fighters. Mahmoud was on his way to school and carried nothing that could be seen, from the soldiers’ point of view, as threatening or suspicious.

The story of the Jenin boy is typical and is repeated often throughout the occupied West Bank, sometimes daily. The predictable outcome, as HRW puts it, is that these killings are followed with “virtually no recourse for accountability”.

As of 22 August, 34 Palestinian children in the West Bank have been killed in 2023, adding yet more tragic numbers to a foreboding year that promises to be the most violent since 2005. This year “already surpasses 2022 annual figures, and the highest figure since 2005,” in terms of casualties, reported Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East, during a UN briefing on 21 August.

These statistics, among other factors — including the expansion of illegal Israeli Jewish settlements in the West Bank — “threatens to worsen the plight of the most vulnerable Palestinians,” according to Wennesland.

Those “most vulnerable Palestinians”, however, exist beyond the realm of statistics. When Israeli soldiers killed 2-year-old toddler Mohammed Tamimi on 5 June, the little boy’s name was added to an ever-expanding roll call of shame. The memory of the infant, however, like the memory of all other Palestinian children, is etched into the collective consciousness of all Palestinians. It deepens their pain, but also compels their struggle and their resistance.

For Palestinians, the killing of their children is not a random act of a military that lacks discipline and fears no repercussions. Palestinians know that the Israeli war on children is an intrinsic component of the larger Israeli war on every single one of them.

Of course, Israel does not declare officially that it is targeting Palestinian children on purpose. That would be a public relations disaster. Some Israeli officials in the past, however, have let their guard down, offering a strange and troubling logic.

Palestinian children are “little snakes”, wrote Israeli politician Ayelet Shaked in 2015. In a Facebook post, published in the Washington Post, Shaked called for the killing of “the mothers of the [Palestinian] martyrs.” In doing so, she declared war on all Palestinians. “They should follow their sons,” she wrote, “nothing could be more just.” Shortly afterwards, Shaked rather ironically became Israel’s justice minister.

But not all Israeli officials are candid about the killing of Palestinian children, and even their mothers. Data collected by international rights groups, however, leaves no doubt that the nature of the killings is part of a comprehensive strategy developed by the Israeli military. “In all cases,” recently investigated by HRW, “Israeli forces shot the children’s upper bodies.” This was done without the “issuing of warnings or using common, less lethal measures.”

Specifically, the killing of Palestinian children is a centralised and deliberate Israeli military strategy. The same twisted logic, now applied to the West Bank, has already been used in the besieged Gaza Strip. UN figures show that, in the Israeli war against the Palestinians in Gaza in 2008-9, 333 Palestinian children were killed; other estimates put the figure at 410. In the 2012 Israeli offensive against Gaza, 47 children were killed; in 2014, there were 578 killed; in 2021 it was 66; and in 2022 17 children were killed in the besieged territory by Israeli soldiers.

Between 2018 and 2020, 59 Palestinian children were killed in what was known as the “March of Return” protests that took place at the fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip. All the children were killed from a distance by Israeli snipers.

When the numbers of dead and wounded children are tallied, they are in the thousands. According to the UN, there were precisely 8,700 Palestinian child casualties between 2015 and 2022.

Even the callous and often dehumanising term “collateral damage” cannot justify such statistics. And although the war on Palestinian children is clearly intentional, protracted and ongoing, not a single Israeli military or government official has ever been held accountable in an international court. Moreover, the UN “List of Shame for Killing Children” has never branded Israel, although other countries have been “named and shamed” for far fewer crimes against children.

As the killing of children is perceived — according to the twisted logic of the likes of Shaked — to be functional for Israel, given the absence of any accountability, the occupation state finds no reason or urgency to end its war on Palestinian children. And with the constant loosening of the rules of military engagement in Israel, and the terrifyingly genocidal language used by its extreme far-right ministers and their massive constituency, more Palestinian children are likely to lose their lives in the near future.

Despite this, the most that UN officials and rights groups seem to be able to do now is to count the alarming number of child casualties. Alas, no number is large enough to dissuade Israel from killing Palestinians, including children.

The problem for Palestinians is not just that of Israel’s violence, but also the lack of international will to hold Israel accountable. Accountability requires unity, decisiveness of will and action. This task should be a priority for all countries that genuinely care about Palestinians and universal human rights. Without such collective action, Palestinian children will continue to be killed in large numbers and in the most brutal ways, a tragedy that will continue to pain, in fact, shame, us all.

September 5, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

West Bank: Jewish settlers vandalise Palestinian school threatened with demolition

Ras al-Tin, a Palestinian Bedouin school located east of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, following an attack by Israeli settlers, on August 13, 2023. (Wafa news agency)
MEMO | August 14, 2023

Jewish settlers stormed a Palestinian school in the central occupied West Bank on Sunday, breaking windows and vandalising fixtures and fittings, Wafa has reported. Ras Al-Tin School to the east of Ramallah is threatened with demolition by the Israeli occupation army.

The school is located in a Palestinian Bedouin community on land belonging to the villages of Kafr Malik, Khirbet Abu Falah and Al-Mughayer. It was built in 2020, and is part of the Palestinian Tahaddi School Group.

According to Wafa, in October 2020 the Israeli authorities decided to demolish the school, on the pretext that it is located in an area under full Israeli control, and construction is prohibited for any reason, even for education purposes.

Jewish settlers also stormed the Tahaddi school in the Wadi Al-Siq Bedouin community on Sunday. They too smashed its windows and vandalised its contents.

There are currently 18 Tahaddi schools in the occupied West Bank built by the Palestinian Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission with international support. They are in so-called Area C, in which Israel prevents construction on the pretext of a lack of building permits, which are almost impossible to obtain.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the settler attacks on the two schools. It described them as part of the “serious escalation of settler attacks and their targeting of Palestinian educational institutions, especially those located in areas classified as ‘C’ that are threatened with seizure. These attacks fall within the framework of the occupation state’s attempts to isolate, Judaise and annex the West Bank, and to fight all forms of the Palestinian national and humanitarian presence in those areas targeted by settlement.”

The ministry said that it holds the Israeli government fully responsible for the results of the settler attacks. “We call upon the US administration, the international community and the relevant UN organisations, particularly UNESCO, to shoulder their responsibilities in providing protection for educational institutions.”

August 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel cuts water supply to Palestinians in Hebron

Israeli forces raze four water wells in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank [Ihab Alami/ApaImages]
MEMO | July 18, 2023

Israel’s water company Mekorot has this month reduced the water supply to the occupied West Bank cities of Hebron and Bethlehem, causing severe shortages for Palestinians, Quds Press reported yesterday.

Mohammad Al-Jaabari, a Palestinian from Hebron, said he has to wait for days in queues until he gets his turn to get a tank load of water for his house.

“However,” he told Quds Press while looking at the illegal Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba, “we see the settlers play with water, irrigate their trees and home gardens.”

Al-Jaabari said: “This is unfair, but who can deter the Israeli occupation in order to stop its unfair distribution of water?”

Hebron’s Deputy Mayor, Asmaa Al-Sharabati, said: “The Israeli occupation continues practicing its control of natural resources. This complicates the water problem.”

She said that the amount of water being provided to Hebron each day is “far less than the needs of residents,” adding that some areas that used to receive water once every 18 days are not sent supplies every 28 days. This too during the summer heat.

“We do not have any roles in the water supplies,” she told Quds Press. “All we have is to receive water from the Israeli company and ensure fair distribution among the Palestinian residents of the city.”

Al-Sharabati said everyone needs 100 litres of water a day, and 30 litres during emergencies. “A Palestinian in Hebron receives far less than 30 litres a day,” she said.

“The water crisis is political,” she stressed.

July 18, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Resistance vs. the Palestinian Authority: Will Abbas lead Palestinians to civil war?

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO |  July 17, 2023

This is the perfect opportunity for Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to exit the stage. But he will not.

Abbas’ brief visit to the devastated Jenin refugee camp in the northern Occupied West Bank on 12 July demonstrated the absurdity and danger of the PA and its 87-year-old leader.

As he walked, Abbas struggled to keep his balance, in what was promoted as a ‘solidarity’ visit to the camp.

Thousands of frustrated Jenin residents took to the streets, hardly chanting Abbas’ name. Some looked on with disappointment; others asked where the President’s forces were when Israel invaded the camp, killing 12, wounding and arresting hundreds more.

The BBC reported on a “huge armed deployment” to secure Abbas’ visit, where “PA security forces joined a thousand-strong unit of Mr. Abbas’ elite presidential guard”. Their only job was to “clear a path” for Abbas into the camp.

On the initial and most deadly first day of the Israeli invasion of Jenin, Israeli media, citing military sources, said that 1,000 Israeli soldiers were taking part in the military operation.

Yet, it took more Palestinian soldiers to secure Abbas’ brief visit to Jenin.

Indeed, where were those well-dressed and equipped PA soldiers when Jenin was fighting and dying alone?  And why does Abbas need to be protected from his own people?

To address these questions, it is important to examine recent contexts, three significant dates in particular:

On 5 July, Israel ended its military operation in Jenin.

On 9 July, despite protests by some of his security cabinet members, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that Israel would do its utmost to prevent the collapse of the PA. He stated outright that the PA “works for us”.

And, finally, on 12 July, Abbas visited Jenin with a stern message to Palestinian Resistance groups.

These three dates are directly related: Israel’s failed raid on Jenin has heightened the significance of the PA in Israel’s eyes. Abbas visited Jenin to reassure Israel that his Authority is up for the task.

To live up to Israel’s expectations and to ensure its survival, the PA is willing to clash directly with Palestinians who refuse to toe the line.

“There will be one Authority and one security force,” Abbas declared angrily, only days following the burial of Jenin’s victims. “Anyone who seeks to undermine its unity and security will face the consequences,” he added, further promising that “Any hand that reaches out to harm the people and their stability shall be cut off.”

The hand in reference is not that of Israel, but any Palestinian who resists Israel.

Abbas knows that Palestinians outright despise him and his Authority. Just days earlier, Fatah party deputy Chairman, Mahmoud Aloul, was removed from Jenin by angry crowds.

The crowds chanted in unison, “get out”, to Aloul and two other PA officials.

They did, but Abbas returned to the same scene. He was flown in a Jordanian military helicopter. Waiting for him, below, was a small PA army that had taken over the streets and the high buildings – or whatever remained of them – in the destroyed camp.

All of this happened through logistical arrangements with the Israeli military.

But why is Netanyahu keen on the PA’s survival?

Netanyahu wants the PA to survive simply because he does not want the Israeli occupation administration and military to be fully responsible for the welfare of Palestinians in the West Bank and the security of the illegal settlers.

Despite its near complete failure, the Oslo Accords succeeded in one thing: it provided Israel with a Palestinian force whose main mission is to assist the Israeli occupation in its quest to maintain total control over the West Bank.

Abbas’ trip to Jenin was intended to reassure Tel Aviv that the PA is still committed to its obligations to Israel.

Another message was sent to US President Joe Biden, who has, in a recent interview, cast doubts on the PA’s ‘credibility’. “The PA is losing its credibility,” Biden told CNN, and that has “created a vacuum for extremism.”

The message to Washington was that the hands of the so-called ‘extremists’ will be “cut off”, and that there will be “consequences” for those who defy the PA’s will.

Abbas seemed to speak, not only on behalf of his Authority but that of Tel Aviv and Washington as well.

Even ordinary Palestinians understand this to be the case; in fact, they always have. The only difference now is that they feel strong and emboldened by a new generation of Resistance which has succeeded in reclaiming a degree of Palestinian unity, amid factional politics and PA corruption.

The PA is now seen by most Palestinians as the obstacle in the face of full unity. That position is fully fathomable. While Israel was ramping up its deadly operations in Jenin and Nablus, the PA police was arresting Palestinian activists, angering Resistance groups in the West Bank and Gaza.

If this continues, a civil war in the West Bank is a real possibility, especially as Abbas’ potential successors are equally distrusted, even by Fatah’s own rank and file. These men were also in Jenin, standing shoulder to shoulder behind Abbas as he was frantically trying to lay out the new rules.

This time around, Palestinians are unlikely to listen. For the Resistance, the stakes are too high to back down now. For the PA, losing the West Bank means losing billions of dollars of Western financial handouts.

A clash between the Resistance and their popular support, on the one hand, and the West-Israel-backed PA forces, on the other, will prove very costly for Palestinians.

Yet, for Tel Aviv, it is a win-win. This is why Netanyahu is anxious to help Abbas keep his job, at least long enough to ensure that the post-Abbas transition goes through efficiently.

Palestinians must find a way to block such designs, preserve Palestinian blood and restructure their leadership, so that it represents them, not the interests of the Israeli occupation.

July 17, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli forces blind Palestinian child with stun grenade

Defence for Children Palestine | July 13, 2023

16-year-old Omar was hiding in a school when Israeli forces threw a stun grenade inside, which exploded in his face and blinded him in his right eye.

Israeli soldiers shot 11-year-old Palestinian boy in the head with rubber-coated metal bullet

Safi Ahmad Mohammad Jawabra, 11, was shot by Israeli forces in the head above his left eye with a rubber-coated metal bullet around 10 a.m. on May 29, 2022 at the entrance to Al-Arroub refugee camp, near Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, according to documentation collected by Defense for Children International – Palestine. Safi was walking home from school after completing his final exam in math when an Israeli soldier shot him in the head unexpectedly and without warning. While running away, another group of Israeli soldiers around 50 meters (164 feet) away fired tear gas canisters in front of Safi.

Read more: https://www.dci-palestine.org/israeli…

Israeli forces take over Palestinian home during invasion of Jenin

Eight-year-old Minatullah describes how terrified she was when Israeli forces took over her family’s home in Jenin to use as a base for snipers.

July 15, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

MK expelled from Knesset for condemning Israel invasion of Jenin

MEMO | July 14, 2023

The Hadash-Ta’al list’s Chairman, Ayman Odeh, was forced out of the Knesset plenary last week during a vote on the Counterterrorism Law after condemning the Israeli attack on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin.

He said: “People killed in Jenin. People wounded in Tel Aviv. A killed soldier. All of their blood is because of your damned occupation. Occupation blinds you. Power blinds you. You are not only acting like occupiers, you are acting like idiots.”

His speech came just days after Israel concluded its largest military operation in Jenin in more than 20 years. At least 12 Palestinians were killed, including four children, and more than 140 were injured in the offensive, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The raid also left a massive trail of destruction across the West Bank city, with dozens of homes, vehicles, shops and utility lines destroyed.

“Every action has a reaction. These are the rules of nature,” added Odeh. “There’s a reaction to the occupation, so there will be resistance. Resisting against occupation is legal. Occupation is illegal. Long live the Jenin! Long live the Palestinian people! Long live their resistance! Shame on you! Take me down!  But the Palestinian people will continue to fight!”

In response, Almog Cohen from the far-right Otzma Yehudit Party, shouted: “The blood of those murdered is on your hands; go to Gaza. The more terrorists we kill, the better.”

It all came amidst the approval of the Counterterrorism Law, which specifies that anybody who expresses support for “terrorists” may face up to five years in prison.

Religious Zionist Party MK Zvi Sukkot introduced the bill “to stop the probability test that is required today due to the seriousness of expressing solidarity or sympathy for an act of terror or its perpetrators.”

Following MK Odeh’s criticism against the Israeli invasion of Jenin, Sukkot appealed to the Ethics Committee of the Knesset, Israel Police, and the Attorney General to open an investigation against the MK for expressing his support for the residents of Jenin.

July 14, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Trauma in Jenin’: UN officials shocked by latest Israeli atrocities

Press TV – July 10, 2023

A delegation of the United Nations has expressed shock at the level of destruction left as a result of Israel’s largest operation in Jenin in two decades.

Officials from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) visited the Jenin refugee camp on Sunday.

“The destruction I saw was shocking. Some houses were completely burned down; cars had been crushed against walls; roads were damaged. The UNRWA health center was destroyed. But more than the physical damage, I saw the trauma in the eyes of camp residents who had witnessed the violence. I heard them speak about their exhaustion and fear,” said Leni Stenseth, the UNRWA deputy commissioner-general.

The two-day deadly Israeli onslaught of July 3 was the fiercest of its kind in over 20 years, according to UNRWA, which is tasked with assisting Palestine refugees.

Twelve Palestinians, including four children, were killed. 140 were injured. Virtually 900 houses were damaged. Many are now uninhabitable. Also, at least 3,500 Palestinians were forced from homes. The UNRWA health center was so badly damaged it can no longer be used.

Some parents said children are too scared to go out.

“Children were shaken and shocked… many of them are too afraid to leave their homes. In one classroom we visited, students shared with us that just 10 days ago, they had buried a classmate who was killed in an incursion,” said Adam Bouloukos, the director of UNRWA West Bank.

“It is very hard for children to walk to school as the main roads are still unusable. When trying to find alternative ways to school, some younger children lost their way. We truly feared for their safety due to the risk of unexploded ordinance. A priority now is to provide mental and psychosocial support to help children cope with their fear and anxiety.”

Bouloukos said the refugee camp, home to nearly 24,000 people, now has no access to electricity and water. “The camp is now partially without access to electricity and water.”

“Nearly eight kilometers of water piping and three kilometers of sewage lines were destroyed due to the use of heavy machinery that ripped up large sections of the roads.”

July 10, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment