Key Developments (August 7 – 10)
- Late on Monday evening, August 7, Israeli forces invaded the eastern side of Askar refugee camp in order to punitively demolish the family home of the slain Abdelfattah Hussein Kharrousha, the 49-year-old resistance fighter who was killed in Jenin along with five others last March. Kharrousha took part in a shooting operation earlier this year in Huwwara near Nablus, in which two Israeli settlers were killed, which led to the Huwwara pogrom. Israeli forces demolished Kharrousha’s home as part of Israel’s punitive home demolition policy, an illegal form of collective punishment meant to deter Palestinians from engaging in armed resistance. It is also meant to penalize the immediate family of resistance fighters as part of the broader Israeli policy of demonizing all of Palestinian society as an incubator for “terrorism.” The demolition on Monday night left the Kharrousha family homeless, including Kharrousha’s amputee brother Saleh Kharrousha.
- On Tuesday afternoon, August 8, a shooting attack on a settler bus occurred as it passed through the illegal Israeli settlement of Ateret north of Ramallah, but no injuries were reported.
- On Thursday afternoon, August 10, Palestinian Authority (PA) President, Mahmoud Abbas, issued a unilateral decree forcing most Palestinian governors in the West Bank into retirement — which included the governors of Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilya, Tulkarem, Bethlehem, Hebron, Tubas, Jericho, and the Jordan Valley.
- Early Thursday morning, Israeli forces invaded Jenin city after informing PA security forces to evacuate the area, paving the way for the Israeli army to enter the city. Armed Palestinian youth from the Jenin refugee camp responded to the Israeli military incursion with armed confrontation and to the evacuation of PA forces (the only official armed body in the West Bank) with a mockery car parade as they drove out of the city.
- Israeli forces also conducted a large-scale military raid on Thursday in the town of Zuwata, west of Nablus. One Palestinian, Ameer Ahmad Muhammad Khalifa, 28, was killed with two bullets to the head and back.
- On Thursday morning, a Jordanian citizen with a permit to work in Israel conducted a stabbing attack in the illegal settlement of Petah Tikva east of Tel Aviv. One Israeli settler was seriously injured, according to Israeli police reports. The attacker was reportedly arrested and taken into interrogation. The attack was unique in that it was conducted by a Jordanian national in Israel on a work permit, as opposed to the more common phenomenon of Palestinians with both West Bank and Jordanian IDs. This also comes in the context of the recent arrest of a Jordanian diplomat at the Allenby Border crossing under allegations of weapons smuggling from Jordan to the West Bank.
Key Figures
- Israeli forces and settlers have killed 223 Palestinians since the start of the year, which is grimly set to surpass last year’s record as the deadliest year for Palestinians since the UN began documenting fatalities in 2005.
- Israeli forces have arrested more than 4400 Palestinians since the start of the year. That averages to 137 Palestinians per week.
- This year also marks the highest rate of administrative detention orders, the practice of imprisoning Palestinians without charge or trial.
- Six Palestinians are currently on hunger strikes in Israeli prisons, protesting their administrative detention.
- Since the start of this year alone, Israeli authorities have demolished 161 homes across the West Bank and Jerusalem, 18 of which were in Nablus.
