Five years ago organized rock climbing in Palestine was non-existent. Then two young American climbing enthusiasts began developing rock climbing sites near Ramallah and refugee camps around the West Bank. “You know there are beautiful areas around Ramallah, but we would not go there if we didn’t climb,” local climber Momen Naeem tells Mondoweiss. “It makes people love the land, makes you love this place more.”
After US Ambassador David Friedman said Israel has a right to annex parts of the West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it may file a complaint with the International Criminal Court. “What reasoning could justify Friedman’s logic? International law prohibits the annexation of a land by force,” it said.
Every year during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Israeli authorities approve a package to “relax” the restrictions on movement for West Bank Palestinians to facilitate worshippers’ trips to Jerusalem. As a result, tens of thousands of Palestinians headed to Qalandiya checkpoint, Bethlehem 300 checkpoint, and Zaytoun checkpoint early on Friday mornings to take advantage of the unusual regulations. Ahmad Al-Bazz reports from Qalandiya and Bethlehem to show what life under Israel control looks like.
“I drive through more than 15 checkpoints,” per day, Mahmoud Ali tells Mondoweiss. “That means they take away my freedom 15 times and give it back to me 15 times. My freedom is in their hands, not my hands.”
Michael Oren hangs up on the New Yorker and accuses it of “delegitimization” when reporter Isaac Chotiner asks why he has a right as a Jew born in New York to move to the occupied West Bank. The New Yorker inches closer to the awareness that today’s Zionism is settler-colonialism.
Since Netanyahu’s reelection, mainstream Democrats have taken up ardent opposition to his plan to annex parts of West Bank. Sec’y of State Mike Pompeo won’t say what Trump will do, but MD’s Chris Van Hollen dares to imagine one state with equal rights: “Would you agree that in a one state solution Palestinians should have full and equal political and legal rights with other citizens of that state?”
It is planting season in Palestine. For the last few weeks Shatha al-Azzeh and her colleagues in the Environmental Unit at the Lajee Center in Aida refugee camp outside of Bethlehem have been working with young people from the camp to set up new rooftop planters.
Hundreds of Palestinians organized small protests on Tuesday across the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in solidarity with prisoners held inside of Israel, following tensions at Ktzi’ot Prison in the southern Negev Desert where two guards were stabbed earlier this week.
Dozens of Israeli ministers and lawmakers from Netanyahu’s and other right-wing parties signed a pledge to settle 2 million Jews in the occupied West Bank; and Israel has approved some 4,000 new settlement units. Many of these units are in Beit Hanina and Shuafat, Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.
In December, 39 Palestinian-owned structures were demolished or seized by the Israeli authorities, the same as the 2018 monthly average, displacing 56 people and affecting over 270 others.