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.
Israel officially revoked the permanent residency of Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri from his hometown of Jerusalem on Monday, on the basis of “breach of allegiance” to the state, paving the way for Hamouri’s forced deportation from his homeland.
17-year-old Ali Burqan was reportedly helping his neighbors demolish their own home, as per an Israeli court order, when a wall fell on him, killing him. Another teenager, 13-year-old Omar Abu al-Nil was killed in Gaza during protests on the border.
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.