A month that should be filled with happiness, peace, and devotion has unfortunately, in Palestine, become synonymous with occupation, apartheid, and repression.
Israeli forces injured and arrested dozens of Palestinians over the weekend in occupied East Jerusalem, as Muslims marked the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. Last year, Israeli police violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem during the holiday was the primary driver of Palestinian protests that swelled into the May 2021 uprisings.
There are conflicting reports whether the Sierra Club has canceled plans for educational trips to Israel that were supposed to begin this month. It was originally reported that the environmental organization made the decision to cancel the trip after discussions between members of its board and a coalition of Palestine advocacy groups. But now, the Times of Israel is reporting the environmental organization has buckled under pressure from the Israel lobby.
Israeli forces have killed five Palestinians over the past week, and 17 Palestinians since the start of 2022. Of the 17 Palestinians killed, three were children.
A young Palestinian girl was one of several Palestinians to be brutally assaulted by Israeli police forces in occupied East Jerusalem on Monday, as hundreds of Muslims gathered in the city to commemorate a religious occasion. Videos and photos flooded social media on Monday, showing armed Israeli forces brutalizing Palestinians outside the Damascus Gate area of the Old City in East Jerusalem.
Tensions are flaring again in Sheikh Jarrah as right-wing Israeli lawmakers and Jewish settlers continue to incite violence ahead of the looming displacement of another Palestinian family from the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood. Scuffles ensued over the weekend after the far- right Israeli lawmaker, Itamar Ben Gvir of the Religious Zionism alliance, “opened” an office in Sheikh Jarrah, on the property of the Salem family, who are under threat of expulsion.
After a standoff that captured global attention, Israel forcibly displaced the Salhiya family from their home and demolished it in the middle of the night on Wednesday, in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
Members of the Salhiya family in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah faced off against Israeli police on Monday morning, as Israeli forces attempted to forcibly remove them from their home. A number of the young men in the family barricaded themselves on the roof of the home in an effort to stop the removal, and several news outlets quoted Mahmoud Salhiya as saying that he would set himself on fire and blow the house with the gas tank if the eviction was carried out.
The residents of Sheikh Jarrah announced on Tuesday that they were rejecting a proposal by the Israeli Supreme Court that would have made them “protected tenants” in their own homes, paving the way for the future displacement of their families by Israeli settlers.