Oren Hazan from the ruling Likud party received backlash today after he boarded a bus full of Palestinians traveling from Gaza to visit relatives who are detainees in Israeli prisons, and called them “dogs” and “terrorists” in a video he posted of the encounter to social media. “No, it’s not a question of family visits-this is a reality that must stop, and that’s why I came to confront the beasts,” Hazan wrote yesterday. He further said the Palestinian passengers were “human scum.”
In light of Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this month where the United States recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Palestinian Christians held subdued Christmas celebrations across the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
President Donald Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel this afternoon in a much anticipated speech at the White House, followed by condemnations from Palestinian leaders who said Trump is unfit to be a peace broker and effectively killed the two-state solution.
This morning President Donald Trump called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to notify him he of plans to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, according to a spokesperson for President Abbas. Abbas responded and “warned of the dangerous repercussions of such step on the [long-stalled] peace process, security and stability in the region and the world,” his spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh told the Palestinian outlet Wafa, adding that Abbas will seek out support from other governments “to prevent this rejected and unacceptable” action.
Nasser al-Qudwa, spokesperson for the Palestinian party Fatah, said that if the Trump administration follows through on the congressional effort to shut down the PLO mission in Washington, D.C., “there will be a serious repercussion” — possibly the collapse of the efforts by Trump’s negotiating team of Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt to restart peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.
Israel will begin deporting 20,000 African asylum seekers, most from Eritrea and South Sudan, to an unnamed third party country “without their consent,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday in a cabinet meeting. According to Israeli media the refugees will be sent to Rwanda and Israel will pay the African nation $5,000 per head.
Stella Penn Pechanac, the Israeli actress identified as the spy for disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein who duped his accuser, actress Rose McGowan, immigrated from Bosnia to Israel with her family in 1994, helped by a Jewish family whose forbears were hidden during the Holocaust by Stella’s grandmother, who died in a concentration camp.
The 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, on November 2, is turning out to be an important occasion for Palestinians to register their sense of betrayal by Britain for colonial-era promises that still govern the lives of so many people in Israel and Palestine, and to call on Britain to make the declaration “right” by assuring Palestinians’ rights at last.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he will approve a bonanza of new settlements in the West Bank in the coming days, bringing the year-end total to 6,500, nearly three times the number of settlements approved in all of 2016.
“Eid is special”– “and we will tell you why,” say 20-year old bloggers and twin sisters from Gaza City, Asmaa and Saja Khaldi, otherwise known as the “Khaldi twins.” The pair posted a video greeting on Sunday of how they and other Palestinians celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha which occurred over the weekend.