By opposing and prohibiting funding to many of the Israeli policies of military occupation that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, and by increasing the transparency around US weapons flows to Israel, Representative Betty McCollum’s latest bill is the boldest effort ever by Congress to ensure that the United States is no longer complicit in Israel’s denial of freedom to five million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
It’s been more than 500 days since Amnesty International staffer Laith Abu Zeyad has left the boundaries of the occupied West Bank, due to an Israeli ban based on secret evidence. “It’s absurd that me and my lawyers are being forced to defend myself and argue against secret evidence that we have not even seen ourselves,” Abu Zeyad told Mondoweiss after the court hearing on April 6th. “The judge said the onus was on us to challenge the evidence, but we don’t even know what it is.”
B’Tselem researcher Nasr Nawaja’a tells Mondoweiss that intimidation from Israeli settlers and the Shin Bet has increased since a video he recorded showing the arrest of Palestinian children made international headlines. In fact, just a few days after the video of the boys’ detention was published, Nawaja’a says he was summoned for interrogation by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, and was warned to “not make any more trouble for the army.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that the man, 45-year-old Atef Hanaysheh, was shot with live ammunition in the head during a protest against settlement expansion and the confiscation of Palestinian-owned land in the village of Beit Dajan.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces arrested five Palestinian children, ranging between the ages of 8 and 13, in the South Hebron Hills as they picked the seasonal wild flowers to bring back home to their families. Eyewitnesses say the children were first attacked by Israeli settlers, and then detained by Israeli soldiers at the settlers’ demand. “This was obviously an attempt by the settlers to intimidate the boys by using the soldiers,” eyewitness Basel Adrah tells Mondoweiss. “They didn’t steal or damage anything. All they were doing was picking akoub. Is this a crime?”
Palestinian-Americans were turned back from an Israeli vaccination clinic at a checkpoint outside Ramallah because they held Palestinian ID cards, and the U.S. Embassy won’t help them. “It would be different if all U.S. citizens here were being treated the same,” Wafaa Jallaq tells Mondoweiss. “But when Israel, or being Israeli, is basically the distinction between who gets vaccinated and who doesn’t, that’s when it becomes frustrating. The U.S. has let go of its responsibility towards its citizens in the West Bank.”
A new field report from Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq released this week details the numerous human rights violations that occurred throughout Palestine, particularly in the occupied West Bank, during 2020 — violations that the group said were exacerbated by, and spurred on, by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Since September 2019, the Israeli government has banned Laith Abu Zeyad from traveling outside the West Bank based on secret evidence they will not share with him. Due to this ban he was not able to travel with his mother for medical treatment in Jerusalem, or be with her when she passed away. Writing in Mondoweiss, Abu Zeyad reflects on having this ban and secret evidence indefinitely hanging over him – a prisoner in his own land, he dreams of freedom.
Palestinian politician Khalida Jarrar was arrested from her home in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on October 31, 2019, and has since been held in Israeli detention without charge or trial, under Israel’s widely condemned policy of administrative detention.
In a report published on Tuesday, Forensic Architecture and Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq claim that Erekat was executed despite posing no imminent threat to the soldiers’ lives at the time, and was additionally denied medical attention by Israeli authorities after he was shot.