The cash-strapped Palestinian Authority (PA) finally accepted over $1 billion in tax revenues, transferred by Israel on Tuesday. While Israel has refused to release the tax revenues in the past, the PA itself had been refusing to accept the money since May of this year, in protest of Israel’s annexation plans and US President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century.”
Construction bids for a new Israeli settlement cutting off Palestinian access to their supposed capital of Jerusalem will come in days after Biden takes office. The EU and Palestine have decried Givat Hamatos as the death of the two state solution. Experts say Biden will likely do nothing to prevent construction in February.
The Israeli settlers in the Nablus district are notoriously violent, and are routinely recorded as attacking Palestinians and their property year round. But once the olive harvest comes around every year, settlers typically focus their attacks onto Palestinian farmers and their olive trees.
In a fiery speech in 1986 then Senator Joe Biden said he would “be on the ramparts” in South Africa if he were a black leader there, and justifed armed resistance to apartheid. “Hell they’ve tried to compromise for twenty years. They’ve tried everything. Everything in their power! And look what’s happened to them. They’re being crushed.”
As the world was engulfed in the unfolding US elections on November 3rd, Israel quietly demolished an entire Bedouin enclave in the northern Jordan Valley, leaving more than 70 Palestinians homeless just as temperatures started to drop in the occupied West Bank.
Tuesday, November 3rd, will be the 100th day of the hunger strike of Maher al-Akhras. That is, if he will still be alive. Israel’s High Court of Justice refuses to allow him to leave a Tel Aviv hospital for a hospital in East Jerusalem, and it cites a “get-together” with unnamed security “elements” that oppose the move. As if al-Akhras is a threat.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US ambassador David Friedman announced amendments to US accords, sought by Trump’s biggest backer, Sheldon Adelson, that will allow US taxpayer money to be spent in Israeli settlements. Adelson seems to want to get as much out of Trump in what time remains.
Family and supporters of Palestinian hunger striker Maher al-Akhras have joined him in a hunger strike as they have been prevented by Israeli security forces from visiting him in what may be his final days. His steadfast example is mobilizing more and more people to his support.
“If you’re looking for a key sign of what occupation is about, it’s what’s happening in the olive groves,” human rights monitor Ghassan Daghlas tells Mondoweiss.
Jamal Manasra is seeking justice for his son Ahmad, who was killed by an Israeli soldier in 2019 while helping the victims of a car accident. “We knew from the very beginning that as Palestinians, it wouldn’t be easy for us to get justice for our son, even if he was innocent, that’s not how things work with the Israeli occupation,” Manasra tells Mondoweiss. “But even with low expectations, we were devastated when we were informed of the plea deal. How could they have such disregard for Ahmad’s life?”