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.
Meet Mohammed al-Sabbagh, a sprightly Palestinian plumber in his early 70s who has lived in Sheikh Jarrah since 1956. Today he has become an unofficial spokesperson for one of the most contentious flashpoints in Palestine.
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.”
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
“Israel fights my daughter because she is telling the story of Sheikh Jarrah,” Nabil El-Kurd told journalists and supporters outside the police station following the arrest of his children, Muna and Mohammed El-Kurd.
If our commitment as social media users is truly to solidarity and allyship, then we must move past virtue signaling through shares and actually engage with like-minded users in the real world to work towards collective action.
Apartheid in South Africa ended in part due to sanctions and pressure from the international community. It is once again on the international community to ensure that international law is upheld and apartheid sees its demise — this time in Palestine.
The news invariably invokes “Hamas” and “rockets” to explain the Israeli siege and massacres. No: Although Israel heightened its blockade after the rise of Hamas, the siege began in 1948 and has continued unabated since. Many of the people Israel ethnically cleansed in 1948 ended up in Gaza, facing starvation, cold, and disease in the suddenly overpopulated land.
Hundreds of Palestinians were injured and dozens were hospitalized on Friday night across the city of Jerusalem, as Israeli forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and continued to crackdown on protests against the imminent evictions of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah. The violence that erupted on Friday was the culmination of weeks of rising tensions in the city and across the occupied Palestinian territory.