Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today for failing to condemn the killing of an American tourist in Jaffa yesterday evening in an attack where 10 more were injured.
In the West Bank, leading feminist and imprisoned Marxist-Leninist politician Khalida Jarrar released a statement from jail to mark International Women’s Day. Jarrar writes, “This year, our call focuses on the freedom and self-determination of our people, and the freedom and self-determination of Palestinian women: achieving equality and liberation, and ending all forms of oppression and injustice committed against them.”
Thousands of Palestinian teachers demonstrated yesterday afternoon in cities across the West Bank, marking the start of a third week of strikes. What began as a protest over a bureaucratic 2.5% pay increase in early February has quickly become a wider anti-democratic crackdown against Palestinian society’s beloved and underpaid public servants, teachers.
In what began as a case of wrong directions, one Palestinian was killed overnight in Qalandia refugee camp in the West Bank in clashes that broke out between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli forces during an Israeli army rescue mission to retrieve two soldiers who lost their way after marking their course with the mobile directions app Waze.
Israeli police fired several rounds into an incapacitated Palestinian after he stabbed officers near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate yesterday morning. Two Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack. A team from Al Jazeera captured the killing as it unfolded in the background of their rolling cameras, astonished by the quantity of live-fire shot into the downed Palestinian.
William Booth, the Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief, was conducting interviews by the Damascus Gate outside of the Old City’s walls in Jerusalem this afternoon when Israeli border police detained him, accusing the journalist of incitement. His detention comes at a time of tense words from the Israeli government aimed at the foreign press corps in Israel, and increased governmental scrutiny of Israeli journalists.
Three members of the Joint List—the third largest faction in Israel— were suspended from Knesset today for visiting the homes of East Jerusalem Palestinian families whose relatives carried out attacks against Israelis in recent weeks. Hanin Zoabi and Basel Ghattas will be barred from Knesset meetings for four months, and Jamal Zahalka for two.
Old battles between Israel’s right and left are playing out inside of the government and on the streets of Tel Aviv, amid a Knesset discussion on sanctioning left-wing groups. The NGO transparency bill proposed last November by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked would require organizations that receive funds from foreign donors to disclose the sources on materials presented to the government.
Two Israeli minors were convicted in a Jerusalem district court this afternoon for the abduction and killing of 16-year old Mohammed Abu Khdeir in July 2014. One of the killers aged 17 was sentenced to life in prison, and the younger defendant aged 16 was sentenced to a lesser 21 years. “We are really disappointed feeling sad and angry,” said Amsam Abu Khdeir hours after the judgment was issued. “We want to treat them as they treat any Palestinian, to demolish their houses, and withdraw their nationality, and to get a lifetime in prison. As they [the killers] prevent Mohammed from life, they should taste the same and whatever this court sentence is it won’t be enough for us. Nothing will bring Mohammed back to us. They burned him for the second time today.”
Some 60 Palestinians awoke Tuesday morning to the sound of bulldozers razing their West Bank village in the South Hebron Hills as the Israeli army cleared the grounds to expand a live-fire training zone. The military demolished 22 structures in the herding community of Khirbet Jenbah, a ramshackle town with houses made of tin, tarp and stone. Thirty-two children were left homeless.