Amit Halevi, a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, has proposed dividing the Al-Aqsa Mosque between Jews and Muslims. Such plans can no longer be disregarded as extremist fantasies but increasingly represent mainstream Israeli politics.
An estimated 70,000 Israeli settlers participated in the annual flag march in occupied East Jerusalem on Sunday, with some crowds chanting “Death to Arabs.” Hundreds of Palestinians have been injured across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem as Israeli forces suppressed protests that erupted in response to the march. Follow here for news throughout the day.
A month that should be filled with happiness, peace, and devotion has unfortunately, in Palestine, become synonymous with occupation, apartheid, and repression.
Israeli forces injured and arrested dozens of Palestinians over the weekend in occupied East Jerusalem, as Muslims marked the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan. Last year, Israeli police violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem during the holiday was the primary driver of Palestinian protests that swelled into the May 2021 uprisings.
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.
Ghada Hania was raised in the UAE on bedtime stories of Palestine from her mother, but when she moved to Gaza at the age of 12, reality clashed with the idealized version of homeland in her head.
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.
A plan to build a cable car for tourists in Jerusalem’s occupied Old City has largely been a local issue so far. That changed on on Thursday, when Palestinian concerns about the new transit route were raised to the international level at a United Nations debate on the fragile peace process.
Last summer, Trump’s moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem opened the floodgates for a new era of Israeli provocations on the city’s Palestinians. Helena Cobban outlines the decades-long Zionist assault on the Palestinian presence and institutions in the holy city, and says that this new period will likely see greater government support for projects to extend the extremist settlers’ matrix of control over all parts of the Old City.