“The improper use of crowd control weapons against children must end immediately,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at Defense for Children International-Palestine. “Israeli soldiers who aim crowd control weapons at children’s heads and upper bodies at close range must be held accountable for their actions.”
Knesset members from all coalition parties and some in the opposition signed a bill that would deport Palestinian attackers’ family members to Gaza, even though the Israeli Attorney General said last week that expelling the families from the West Bank to Gaza violates Israeli and international law.
Israeli forces, Monday, once again abducted the coordinator for the Youth Against Settlements (YAS) movement, Issa Amr, after storming the organization’s headquarters in Hebron’s Old City. Mohammad Azghir, a spokesman for YAS, said that forces accused Amr of incitement against Israel. According to Azghir, Amr’s arrest indicates the military’s intentional target on Palestinian popular resistance and its activists in Hebron, especially after the Open Al-Shuhada Street Campaign.
Israeli intelligence handed over the body of Musab Mahmoud al-Ghazali to the Palestinians on Sunday night, 65 days after he was killed by Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem, for him to be buried. Al-Ghazali, a 26-year-old Palestinian from the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, was shot dead on Dec. 26 after Israeli police say he pulled a knife on an officer in Allenby Square in Jerusalem. However, a witness on the scene said that al-Ghazali had not been holding a knife when he was killed.
Prime Minister David Cameron said that though he was a strong supporter of Israel, he had been taken aback by what had seen first hands on visits to the occupied territories in Jerusalem. “I am well-known as being a strong friend of Israel but I have to say the first time I visited Jerusalem and had a proper tour around that wonderful city and saw what has happened with the effective encirclement of East Jerusalem – occupied East Jerusalem – it is genuinely shocking,” he told MPs in the House of Commons.
Israeli bulldozers predawn Sunday demolished an elementary school and seized all its contents in Abu al-Nawwar Bedouin community, east of Jerusalem, according to one of the Bedouin locals. In addition, Israel has razed over 200 EU-funded buildings in the West Bank in the past two years. This year alone around 480 people, including 220 children, have been left homeless.
Hundreds of protesters gathered in Bil‘in on Friday to mark 11 years of weekly demonstrations against the Israeli occupation and the separation wall.
Two Palestinians were killed on Sunday evening while exchanging fire with Israeli soldiers and police officers near the light-rail station in the Bab al-‘Amoud area in occupied Jerusalem. Their deaths bring the number of Palestinians killed on Sunday to five. Kilzar al-Uweiwi, 18, was killed by Israeli soldiers in Hebron on Saturday after stabbing an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian bystander near the Ibrahimi Mosque.
Israeli forces stormed the northern occupied West Bank district of Jenin’s Qabatiya village, the home of three Palestinian youths who were shot dead Wednesday after killing one 19-year-old Israeli police officer and seriously injuring another, a PLO spokesman told Ma‘an. Ali Zakarneh said that during the raid, Israeli forces shot and injured four youths with live bullets, one of whom is in critical condition after being shot in the head.
“Opposition leader” Isaac Herzog posts on Facebook setting out his vision for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “Why [doesn’t the Netanyahu government] implement an effective separation? Why don’t they erect a wall? What’s the point of a fence if one can hop over or crawl under it? We don’t need a livestock fence. We need real separation that will truly block the terrorists. We can erect a real fence, topped with electrified barbed wire, one that can’t be traversed. Any weaker solution is wantonness that this government is responsible for. We need a fence that’ll deter murderers and defend civilians. We can do that and defend our civilians from terrorism and murder. That’s part of my separation plan.”