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Khalil Al-Hinawi stands in front of his home, while Ministry workers demolish it with hammers, in Al-Shati Refugee Camp, Gaza, January 2023. “It is impossible to resettle anywhere else, my life is here,” says Hinawi. (Photo: Mohammed Salem)

Palestinian refugees in Gaza are being displaced by the Hamas-led government to make way for a coastal highway. Although residents have built their homes out of their own pockets over several generations, the government says they have the right to demolish the homes because the residents do not officially own the land in Al-Shati Refugee Camp.

“When the Israeli gunboat fired towards us, we refused to leave our homes,” Nasser Abu Saif tells Mondoweiss “I spent my life suffering. Now at the end of my life the government will take my home instead of supporting me and my family?”

A group called “JewBelong” just launched eight billboards across Berkeley. “You don’t need to go to law school to know anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” they declare, an obvious reference to Berkeley Law School where Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine developed a bylaw calling on other campus groups to to refrain from inviting Zionists speakers. Meanwhile, some of the Berkeley Law students who belong to groups that endorsed the bylaw are now being harassed by another pro-Israel group who sent mobile billboards to be parked outside their homes calling them antisemitic.

It was a typical Friday afternoon when Ibrahim Kharoubi led a popular local hiking group on a trip from Ramallah to the outskirts of Jericho. However, midway through the hike they saw a group of hooded figures coming down from the hilltop in front of them.

As the group got closer, the hikers could make out the wooden clubs in their hands and M16’s strapped around them. It was in that moment when it dawned on them that they were in real danger.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s radical rightwing ministers’ agenda is the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. And yet high Biden officials are meeting with Netanyahu today, and Secretary Blinken is due out within a couple of weeks, all to give Biden’s blessing to the new government — and perform what the State Department admitted yesterday is “triage” on the failure of the two-state solution.

Amer al-Khmour, 14, who was shot by Israeli forces during confrontations in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the city of Bethlehem, in the southern occupied West Bank. (Photo: Social Media)

Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in separate incidents on Monday and Tuesday. In the cases of both Palestinians who were killed, a will was found, purportedly written by each person, detailing their final wishes in death. 

The two Palestinians were Amer al-Khmour, 14, and Hamdi Abu Dayyeh, 40. The killing of the two brought the total number of Palestinians killed in January to 15. In the last six days alone, Israeli forces have killed 11 Palestinians.