The captain of The Audacity of Hope, a US boat carrying activists seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been jailed in Athens. John Klusmer is being charged with two felonies, including “disturbing sea traffic”
Israeli Defense Forces arrested 23 Palestinians, including two members of the Palestine National Council, in operations across the West Bank. There are 6,700 Palestinians currently held in prisons and camps in Israel and in the West Bank.
The Audacity of Hope, US-registered lead ship in the Gaza aid flotilla, was stopped by the Greek Coast Guard just some 20 minutes outside the port of Perama. Athens says all ships bound for Gaza will be prohibited from leaving Greek ports.
An Israeli human rights group is appealing a court decision upholding the policy that allows Christians —but not Muslims—to exit the besieged Gaza Strip for worship at Jerusalem’s holy sites.
Activists preparing the new aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip charge that Israel sabotaged one of their boats at the Greek port of Piraeus—and denied Israeli reports that they intend to kill soldiers, using chemical weapons.
After the State Department issued a warning that those running the Gaza blockade may face “injury and death,” six Congress members sent a letter to Hillary Clinton “to ensure the safety of the US citizens” on the new aid flotilla.
A new Israeli proposal that would forcibly transfer more than 40,000 Bedouin citizens into government-planned townships in the Negev desert has raised the ire of Bedouin communities and their supporters
Dozens of armed Israeli settlers attacked residents of Qusra village in the northern West Bank, as Israeli troops broke up a an anti-settlement rally in Iraq Burin and conducted raids across the West Bank.
The mosque in the village of Maghayer near Ramallah suffered damage and threatening graffiti in a pre-dawn vandal and arson attack—with scrawled slogans calling it a “price tag” by Israeli settlers.
Thousands of Israelis marched in Tel Aviv in support of a return to the 1967 borders—as the IDF fired on protesters attempting to cross the Golan Heights ceasefire line from Syria, leaving several dead.
The Abu Alkiyan Bedouin clan pledge to resist their forcible relocation to make way for a new Jewish town outside Beersheba. Israel says the clan is illegally squatting state lands—although it was transferred there in 1956 by military order.
A new bill in the Knesset would change Jerusalem neighborhoods with Arabic names to Hebrew ones—while Mayor Nir Barakat said the municipality would continue to build Jewish-only housing regardless of “political issues.”
