Tag: West Bank

Palestine
Gaza

Palestine: ICC prosecutor warns of ‘war crimes’

Individuals involved in the new outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian fighting may be targeted by an International Criminal Court investigation now underway into possible war crimes in earlier eruptions of the conflict, top prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in an interview with Reuters. Bensouda said she would press ahead with her inquiry even without the cooperation of Israel, which rejects the ICC’s jurisdiction. “These are events that we are looking at very seriously,” Bensouda stated. “We are monitoring very closely and I remind that an investigation has opened…” She also warned in a tweet of the “possible commission of crimes under the Rome Statue.” (Photo: Maan News)

Palestine
Jerusalem

Electoral impasse exposes Jerusalem apartheid

For weeks, East Jerusalem has seen nightly protests over the impending eviction of hundreds of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah district—culminating in violent clashes with riot police at al-Aqsa Mosque. Compounding the anger is another grievance—Israel’s denial of East Jerusalem Palestinians’ right to participate in elections for the Palestinian Authority’s Legislative Council. With the overwhelming majority of East Jerusalem Palestinians denied Israeli citizenship by an array of bureaucratic artifices, this means they are effectively disenfranchised of the vote in either sovereignty. (Photo: RJA1988 via Jurist)

Palestine
apartheid

HRW accuses Israel of ‘apartheid and persecution’

Human Rights Watch issued a report accusing Israeli authorities of crimes against humanity, specifically those of apartheid and persecution, targeting the Palestinian people. The report charges that there is “an overarching Israeli government policy” to mitigate what authorities have openly described as a “demographic threat” from Palestinians. The 213-page report, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, cites definitions in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. (Image: HRW)

Palestine
Jerusalem

State Department: Jerusalem ‘capital of Israel’

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced that “the State Department will allow US citizens born in Jerusalem to request either ‘Jerusalem’ or ‘Israel’ as their place of birth on consular documents,” including passports. The announcement is the latest in US pro-Israel policy shifts that began with President Trump’s December 2017 proclamation recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel. The proclamation reversed decades of US policy and drew criticism from the international community. In May 2018, the US Embassy in Israel was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (Photo: Ma’an News Agency)

Palestine
Jerusalem

Israeli settler gets life for killing Palestinian family

An Israeli court sentenced a Jewish settler to life in prison plus 20 years for murdering a Palestinian family in a 2015 firebomb attack on their home in the occupied West Bank. The district court determined that Amiram Ben-Uliel led a racially-motivated attack on the Dawabsheh home in Duma village, and spray-painted the terms “Revenge” and “Long Live the Messiah” on the home’s walls in Hebrew alongside a depiction of the Star of David. The attack killed Saad Dawabsheh, 32, and Riham Dawabsheh, 27, along with their 18-month-old son, Ali. Then four–year–old Ahmed Dawabsheh was the only family member to survive the attack, with severe burns. Judge Ruth Lorch stated that Ben-Uliel did not commit “a reckless act” in “a spontaneous manner,” but acted in a “meticulously planned” manner “stemm[ing] from racism and an extremist ideology.” (Photo: RJA1988 via Jurist)

Palestine
Mitzpe_Kramim

Israel high court: settlement must be removed

The Supreme Court of Israel ruled that a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank had been built on land that was privately owned by Palestinians, and as a result, the settlement must be removed. The case involved the settlement of Mitzpe Kramim, an outpost in the Jordan Valley built 20 years ago. The settlers claimed they had been granted authority to build there by the Israeli government. Palestinian plaintiffs filed suit in 2011, arguing that they were the legal owners of the land and the construction undertaken by the settlers was illegal. The court has given the government 36 months to arrange for the removal of the settlers to alternative housing. Prime Minister Netanyahu responded that his government will “exhaust all processes in order to leave the residents in their place.” (Photo via Peace Now)

Palestine
jordanvalley2

UN rights chief: West Bank annexation ‘illegal’

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on Israel to halt its efforts to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. Israel plans to annex settlements in the West Bank, as well as areas of the Jordan Valley, in the coming days. Bachelet said that, regardless of how much land Israel tries to annex, such a move is illegal. She added that while the consequences of annexation would be hard to predict, “they are likely to be disastrous for the Palestinians, for Israel itself, and for the wider region.” (Photo: Ma’an News Agency)

Palestine
Rabin Square

Rally in Tel Aviv against West Bank annexation

A joint Jewish-Palestinian rally against Israeli plans for annexation of West Bank settlements drew thousands to Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List of Arab-led parties, told the crowd, “We are at a crossroads. One path leads to a joint society with a real democracy, civil and national equality for Arab citizens… The second path leads to hatred, violence, annexation and apartheid. We’re here in Rabin Square to pick the first path.” US Sen. Bernie Sanders addressed the rally via video conference, saying he was “heartened” to see Arabs and Jews demonstrating together. (Photo: +972)

Palestine
Ibziq

Israel demolishes emergency clinic in Jordan Valley

Officials from Israel’s “Civil Administration” for the West Bank arrived with a military escort, a bulldozer and two flatbed trucks with cranes at the Palestinian community of Khirbet Ibziq in the Jordan Valley. They confiscated poles and sheeting that had been brought in to erect tents, emergency housing and a field clinic in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The force also confiscated a tin shack in place for more than two years, as well as a power generator and sacks of sand and cement. Four pallets of cinder blocks intended for the tent floors were taken away and four others demolished. Israeli human rights group B’tselem stated: “As the whole world battles an unprecedented and paralyzing healthcare crisis, Israel’s military is devoting time and resources to harassing the most vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank, that Israel has attempted to drive out of the area for decades.” (Photo: B’tselem)

Palestine
Gaza march

Palestinians reject ‘Swindle of the Century’

Trump’s Israel-Palestine “peace” plan (sic), unveiled at the White House in a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, has been anointed with the very Trumpian epithet “Deal of the Century.” It is actually a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum to the Palestinians to accept the status quo of bantustans, surrender much territory to actual Israeli annexation, give up their long-standing demand for justice for refugees—and call it “peace.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas predictably responded with “a thousand no’s.” And Palestinians immediately mobilized in outrage, in both the West Bank and Gaza. (Photo: Maan News)

Palestine
Bensouda

ICC prosecutor rejects Bibi’s ‘anti-Semitism’ charge

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court responded to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who accused her of “pure anti-Semitism” for seeking to investigate possible war crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. “This is a particularly regrettable accusation that is without merit,” Fatou Bensouda told the Times of Israel in an interview. “I, along with my office, execute our mandate under the Rome Statute with utmost independence, objectivity, fairness and professional integrity. We will continue to meet our responsibilities as required by the Rome Statute without fear or favor.” (Photo: Wikimedia Commons via +972)

Palestine

Gaza invasion averted; West Bank land-grabs escalate

An Egyptian-mediated ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip took effect with no formal announcement, after two days of hostilities that saw the most extensive Israeli air-strike since 2014. Hidden from the headlines, the ongoing confiscation of Palestinian lands on the West Bank meanwhile continues. The day after the ceasefire, Israeli troops forced several Palestinian families to evacuate from their homes in the Jordan Valley, in order to make way for military training. Days before, Israeli bulldozers uprooted some 120 fruitful olive trees west of Ramallah, to pave a settler-only road through the area. A document said to outline Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century” to end the Palestinian conflict calls for a reduced Palestinian state on lands not already appropriated by settlement blocs. The areas of the blocs are to expand, incorporating outlying settlements, and will remain under Israeli control—apparently amounting to a de facto annexation. (Photo: Ma’an)