Khalida Jarrar, a leading Palestinian feminist and lawmaker who defied an Israeli order last year to deport her from her West Bank hometown of al-Bireh to the desert city of Jericho, was sentenced to 15 months in prison by an Israeli military court on Monday.
Yesterday in major operation more than 1,000 Israeli forces entered Shuafat Refugee camp and demolished by explosion the family home of a Palestinian who killed three and wounded 14 in a car ramming attack in November 2014, causing clashes between residents and Israeli police.
Many Palestinian attacks have taken place on the “Israeli” side of the ugly concrete “security” wall erected by Israel through Jerusalem and the West Bank, demonstrating that the two populations are intermingled and only a political solution can end the violence.
An Israeli court today convicted two Jewish minors who abducted and burned Mohammed Abu Khdeir alive in July 2014. The court delayed ruling on the alleged ringleader, 29-year old settler Yosef Haim Ben-David pending an additional psychiatric evaluation. “Frankly I was shocked. I hoped they all would get a punishment,” said the mother of the victim, Suha Abu Khdeir, 45, from her living room hours after the trial ended. “It’s like they burned him again.”
Israeli police shot two Palestinian teenage girls, killing one and injuring the other, after they used scissors to attack a 70-year old Palestinian man from the West Bank in a crowded Jerusalem shopping district. The girls mistook the man for an Israeli, according to Israeli police.
On Monday, Israel’s security cabinet outlawed the Islamic Movement of Northern Israel, arrested a senior officer and shut down 17 affiliated charities claiming the organizations sought “to subvert the state in order to establish an Islamic caliphate in its place.” Head of the Joint Arab List Ayman Odeh asserted the move was politically motivated and strategically timed after the Paris attacks on Friday to suggest a link between the Israel-based group and ISIS. “The decision was made for strategic purposes, and its timing indicates that Netanyahu wishes to position the conflict as a religious conflict,” Odeh said.
After the tragic events in Paris on Friday where gunmen affiliated with the Islamic State or ISIS killed at least 140 in separate and coordinated attacks, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on world leaders to condemn acts of “terrorism” and “radical Islam” perpetrated by Palestinians, claiming “the terrorists who attack us have the same murderous intent as those in Paris.”
Early Wednesday morning, an undercover Israeli special forces unit disguised as Palestinian civilians accompanying a pregnant woman inside a Hebron hospital killed one man and arrested another while holding doctors at gunpoint.
“I won’t take compensation from occupation,” Issa Amro says of destruction to his property in Hebron by Israeli soldiers. Early Saturday morning Amro, 35, awoke to dozens of Israeli soldiers entering the Youth Against Settlements house and presenting him with a military order to seize control of the house for 24-hours. Amro, along with an Italian journalist on assignment with an Israeli paper, and two international activists who were staying at the Youth Against Settlements advocacy center were then ushered into a single bedroom where, with the exception of escorted bathroom breaks, they were forced to stay until after daybreak Sunday.
During the month of October Israeli forces killed 73 Palestinians, and Palestinians killed 11 Israelis in more than 30 attacks amid increased violence dubbed the “knife Intifada” or “third Intifada” by Palestinian media. The month of October also saw the highest number of settler attacks on Palestinians in years. In total there were 287 incidents which included settlers running over Palestinians in hit and runs, torching agricultural fields, stoning Palestinian houses and, attacking the convoy of Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.