One year after the announced “easing” of the Gaza siege, the IDF releases a report boasting of improved conditions in the Strip. But the Israeli rights group Gisha crunches the numbers to reveal that the “easing” is more illusory than real.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem finds that more than 800 Palestinian youths under the age of 18 charged with throwing stones in the West Bank over a six-year period have been imprisoned—while imprisonment of minors is illegal in Israel.
More than 3,000 people—Jews, Muslim, and Christians, Israelis and Palestinians—marched in Jerusalem to demand an independent Palestine in the 1967 borders, chanting “Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies.”
Hundreds of young Israelis are now living in a tent city they have erected on the fashionable Rothschild Boulevard across from the National Theater to protest unaffordable rents in Tel Aviv.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization released a statement confirming the occupied status of East Jerusalem, which is on UNESCO’s “World Heritage in Danger” list, of threatened sites of global significance.
The Knesset has just passed a law banning calls for a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The Israel-based website BoycottIsrael! remains online at the moment, and it will be interesting to see if any action is taken against it.
Four years after an order from the Israeli Supreme Court, the IDF demolished a two-mile section of the West Bank wall near Bil’in village. The demolition came after the attorney for the villagers threatened a contempt of court motion.
Israel’s Civil Administration on the West Bank declared 189 dunams of land belonging to the Palestinian village of Karyut to be state land, so as to retroactively “legalize” a nearby settlement outpost.
In a resolution that passed 406-6, the US House of Representatives threatened to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority if it pursues recognition of statehood outside of negotiations with Israel.
A new report by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon into the violence along the Israeli-Lebanon border on Nakba Day harshly criticizes the Israeli army for using unnecessary force in firing on protesters.
As participants in the Gaza flotilla return to the US, their ships impounded by the Greek coast guard, Israel and the blockade-busters are waging a propaganda war to spin the affair before world opinion.
The Tahrir, a Canadian ship taking part in the planned aid flotilla to Gaza, was forced to return to Aghios Nikolaos harbor in Crete after an attempt to reach international waters was thwarted by coast guards.
