On Sunday, Israeli forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at Muslim worshipers at the Al-Aqsa compound and violently detained a number of Palestinians. Later that day forces escorted a reported 1600 Jewish settlers into the compound to pray, in a violation of established procedures at the holy site. Israeli PM Naftali Bennett came under international condemnation for allowing the prayer.
Israel has denied a request to release Palestinian parliamentarian Khalida Jarrar following the sudden death of her daughter. Israel reportedly is not even allowing Jarrar a phone call with her family.
In early May, a group of Israeli settlers arrived with caravans and set up an illegal outpost on the top of Jabal Sabih on the outskirts of Beita, in the northern occupied West Bank. Every single day since then, protests in the village have been nonstop. “Nothing will appease us until this settlement is returned to how it was, as olive groves,” a school teacher from Beita tells Mondoweiss.
Ghadanfar Abu Atwan has been on a hunger strike for 62 days in protest of his administrative detention by Israel, and recently began refusing water. “His health situation is dire,” Warda Abu Atwan tells Mondoweiss. “We are scared that he could die at any moment.”
Despite the ongoing crackdown and the harassment campaign targeting activists on social media, protests against the PA and the killing of Nizar Banat are ongoing. On Saturday, Ramallah saw what was perhaps the largest protest against the PA since demonstrations began two weeks ago. People continued to call for the end of the PA, and the immediate fall of Abbas and his regime.
Zuheir al-Rajabi walks through his East Jerusalem neighborhood past Israeli flags hanging from the homes of his former neighbors who were forcibly evicted from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers. “This is an occupation and nothing is going to stop them from enacting their policies,” al-Rajabi said. “They will do everything, arrest us, imprison us, and kick us out, just as they did with our neighbors.”
Israeli prosecutors filed an indictment for reckless manslaughter against a border police officer for his role in the fatal shooting of Eyad al-Hallaq in May 2020. Al-Hallaq family’s attorneys said that while this was “an important step,” the charge was “not sufficient to achieve even a small part of justice.”
Sixteen year old Palestinian teenager Ahmed Shamsa succumbed to his wounds on Thursday morning, a day after he was shot in the head by Israeli forces in the northern occupied West Bank village of Beita in the Nablus district. According to locals Shamsa is the fifth Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces in Beita since protests against the establishment of a new Israeli settler outpost in the area began in early May. Shamsa is the ninth Palestinian youth to be killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of the year.
Thousands of Israelis participated in the ultra-nationalist “Flag March” in occupied Jerusalem on Tuesday, marching through the streets of the city chanting “Death to Arabs,” “may your village burn,” and “a second Nakba is coming.” Among the participants of the march were right-wing Israeli lawmakers and members of parliament including Bezalel Smotrich, Shlomo Karai, Itamar Ben Gvir and Orit Struck.
For decades the Batn al-Hawa neighborhood in Silwan has been the target of a relentless campaign by settler organizations to forcibly expel Palestinian residents of the neighborhood and replace them with Jewish settlers — a process that is entirely legal under Israeli law. As their forcible displacement looms, Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan are asking the world to stand up against Israeli Apartheid, and are calling on people to continue bringing attention to their case