Israeli forces shot and killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in Deheisha refugee camp in an overnight raid early Monday morning near in the southern occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Just outside the walls of the Old City in occupied East Jerusalem, a years long demographic battle between the Israeli state and Palestinian residents of the city has found new life in recent weeks. Last week Israel advanced a bill allowing residential settlements to be built inside areas zoned for national parks in East Jerusalem. Jawad Siyam of the Wadi Hilweh Information Center tells Mondoweiss: “This is all done with the intention of emptying Jerusalem of Palestinians and part of the plans to make Jerusalem a Jewish-majority city.”
Israel finally built an access road to the West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar last week, after half a century of delays. But the only vehicles allowed along it are the bulldozers scheduled to sweep away its 200 inhabitants’ homes. As Bedouin resident Ibrahim Abu Dawoud observed: “For us, leaving the desert is death.”
The detention of Palestinian legislator and feminist Khalida Jarrar is, in many ways, unexceptional. In Israel, where mainstream political discourse is decidedly anti-democratic, the detention of Palestinians, including lawmakers, without charge or trial is an everyday occurrence. No evidence has been brought against Jarrar, and yet there is every chance that she could spend the rest of her life in the Israeli military detention system.
Palestinians took to the streets of Ramallah city Sunday night, demanding that the Palestinian Authority end its sanctions on the besieged Gaza Strip that have exacerbated a humanitarian crisis in the small Palestinian enclave. The crowd chanted “With our souls and blood, we will save you Gaza” and “Shame on you, you sold Gaza in dollars.”
On Sunday, Mohammad Tamimi, 15, was thrown into the back of an unmarked car by undercover Israeli agents dressed as Arabs in the occupied village of Nabi Saleh and detained until the end of the night. Mohammad is recovering from a life-threatening injury after being shot in the head by Israeli forces five months ago.
Lydia Noon revisits the largest unrecognized Bedouin village in the West Bank, Abu Nuwar. There she finds a community reeling from home demolitions and revoked work permits to enter Israel. Students are now learning in a barber shop as their classroom was destroyed.
Israeli settlers have built 32 cemeteries across the West Bank. Palestinians say these markers are painful reminders that settlers have no intention of ever leaving the occupied Palestinian territory. In the last two years, Israeli cities in the West Bank, Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim, have established cemeteries. Ghassan Daghlas: “It affects us psychologically. The graves have a hidden message that they will never leave our country.”
On December 10, 2017, 17-year-old Abdul-Khaliq Burnat was on his way to buy pizza from a neighboring village, when Israeli armed soldiers ambushed the car that he and his two friends were travelling in. He has now been sentenced to serve 19 months in Ofer Military Prison for stone throwing and cutting the fence at the illegally built separation wall on his village’s land. In addition, the court decided that Abdul-Khaliq’s family must pay a fine of 18,000 NIS (around $5,100). The family is now raising funds to pay this large fine.
The Israeli border police officer who shot and killed Palestinian teenager Nadim Nuwara in 2014 was sentenced on Wednesday by an Israeli court to nine months in prison and a $13,940 (50,000 NIS) fine for negligent homicide. Nuwara’s father Saim said the sentence “does not even come close to justice.”