Palestine Update 609
Editorial comment
Escalating violence marks government formation in Israel
It can be depressing to read account-after-account of Israeli atrocities on Palestinian populations. That, however, is the horrific reality of Israeli apartheid. It is not as if Palestinians are provoking the army and settler attacks. Israel is launching relentless attacks on a daily basis in various parts of Palestine and is doing so in ways that are destroying many lives, particularly those of the young ones. Their goal is vile and geared to emptying the future of Palestine by scaring the wits off Palestinian youth. It is a futile goal because Palestinians are unyielding in their claim for justice. Convinced that Israel’s occupation is a colonial presence, and its administration of the occupation being apartheid in compass, Palestinian youth are now discarding rigid ideological preferences and are mounting patters of resistance with their single goal to end the occupation; to end apartheid.
The World Cup has visibly demonstrated that there is a colossal surge in support for the just claims of Palestinians across the world. Every now and then this support extends to the streets, University Campuses, trade unions, churches, and social movements in every part of the world. It has not quite acquired the depth and magnitude of the anti- apartheid Movement in South Africa at its summit. That day is, hopefully, not too far in the distance.
Apartheid Israel must be treated with the same scorn as Apartheid in South Africa by the world. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has become a virtual sub-sector of the Israeli regime cooperating in ways that show its dubious political colours. Occasional words of condemnation do not make Abbas a legitimate leader of the Palestinian people. Nor, can the world, believe that his successor will be the difference. The delay in choosing a successor to a worn out leader whose vision has faded (if ever there was one in the last two decades) suggests that the succession will be a reaffirmation of the status quo. If the current Palestinian establishment must learn from the World Cup masses, then they must hurry to quit and organize a genuine election not under the political requirements of the Zionist regime, but in an independent manner which opens up spaces for people’s aspirations to be genuinely articulated.
By now, the PA should perceive the signs of the times from the people’s impatience and resilience. The streets are rapidly budding with youth whose edginess is palpable. The contradictions are reaching the limits and, rather than surrender, they will fight back, sacrificially, at that. This is where the international community must avow that enough is enough. No more UN resolutions. They have all led to a dead-end. The compelling need is to shame and boycott the Zionist regime until the isolation pinches and hurts and coerces it to surrender its ill-gotten power and land and wealth. Israel is holding the Palestinians and international community ransom to their claim that they were victims once, and, hence, always deserving of the status of the injured party.
A regime complete with revenge and hate and brutality is not in any way in sync with a civilized world where standards of justice and equality must prevail. It is not the only country that spews out evil politics. But it ranks right up there where it is visible to all.
Readers are invited to read the reports below keeping in mind the above comments.
On behalf of Palestine Updates for MLN
Ranjan Solomon
Al-Haq Launches Landmark Palestinian Coalition Report: ‘Israeli Apartheid: Tool of Zionist Settler Colonialism’
This ground-breaking apartheid report is the product of four years of research and advocacy by the coalition of Palestinian human rights organisations. In this time, and from the efforts of this coalition, there has been growing acceptance of the reality that is Israel’s oppressive apartheid regime by the international community. While Al-Haq is encouraged by the growing global recognition of Israeli apartheid, we note that Zionist settler colonialism and its eliminatory and population transfer logic remain absent from recent analyses and reports on apartheid by Israeli and international human rights organisations such as Yesh Din, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. It is this gap that the present report seeks to fill.” “Importantly, the report is a major Palestinian publication to expand the current international discourse on apartheid, and..examines apartheid as a structural element of furthering Zionist settler colonialism on both sides of the Green Line and against the Palestinian people as a whole…The report adds clear Palestinian voices and analysis to the wider international calls demanding an end to Israel’s apartheid regime. Palestinian civil society demand decolonization and dismantling of Israel’s settler colonialism and apartheid regime, the fulfillment of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, systematically denied since the British mandate, and the right of refugees and exiles in the diaspora to return.
Read report in Al Haq
Palestinian youth executed by IOF near Nablus
An Israeli occupation soldier shot at point-blank a Palestinian youth following a scuffle between them in central Huwwara to the south of Nablus, according to video of the shooting. The video showed the soldier shooting the youth at point-blank after they engaged in a scuffle. The youth was identified as Ammar Mefleh, 22, from the village of Osrin to the south of Nablus. Israeli forces present at the scene prevented residents and ambulances from providing aid to the injured youth, spurring clashes with residents. The ministry of health said the General Authority for Civil Affairs informed the ministry that the youth died of his critical wounds.
The Palestinian presidency tonight slammed the cold-blooded killing of a Palestinian youth at the hands of an Israeli soldier in the town of Huwwara, in Nablus, as a heinous crime and as part of the series of crimes committed daily against the Palestinian people. The presidency, in a statement, affirmed that these crimes which have become an official policy for the successive Israeli governments require urgent intervention to provide international protection to the defenseless Palestinian people. It stressed that the continued international silence led to the commission of such crimes in cold blood, stating that the ongoing policy of impunity and lack of accountability have encouraged these governments to commit more crimes against the Palestinian people.
Read more in Palestine News Network News|
Two Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces in Jenin
Two Palestinians were killed and a third injured tonight in an Israeli military raid on Jenin city and refugee camp, north of the occupied West Bank, according to medical sources. Local sources said confrontations erupted between Palestinian residents and Israeli occupation forces soon after the latter raided the camp, during which two Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire.
At least four Palestinians were arrested by the attacking Israeli forces during the raid, two of whom were said attacked and rammed while on their motorbike by an Israeli military vehicle before they were arrested. A one-day strike was announced in Jenin in morning of the two Palestinians killed by the occupation forces. The latest figures bring up the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli occupation forces since the beginning of the year to 210, including 158 in the West Bank and 52 in Gaza.
Read Palestine News Network for more
Palestine in Pictures: November 2022
The Electronic Intifada
Occupation forces killed at least 20 Palestinians in the West Bank during November as Israel elected its most extreme right-wing government yet in its fifth vote in less than four years.
On 2 November, a 54-year old man was shot and killed at a checkpoint near the central West Bank city of Ramallah after he hit a soldier, causing serious injuries, and exited his vehicle while brandishing an ax. The following day, Israeli soldiers raided Rayyan’s home and killed a second man, Daoud Mahmoud Khalil Rayyan, 42, during protests that erupted during the operation. “Israeli forces prevented medical staff from reaching the injured man for at least half an hour and only allowed the ambulance to transport him after confirming his death,” the UN monitoring group OCHA stated, citing medical sources. Also on 3 November, Amer Husam Bader, 20, was shot and killed by police after stabbing and moderately injuring an officer in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Two Palestinians were also killed during a raid by undercover Israeli forces in Jenin that same day, Israeli forces shot and injured Rifat Eissi, 29, while he was trying to reach his workplace in Israel through a gap in Israel’s wall near Anin, a village in the northern West Bank. Eissi, who spent most of his life in Jordan, died from his wounds. “Not being from here, he probably froze on the spot, utterly terrified, when a white Kia Picanto pulled up next to him and four soldiers emerged from it, their weapons trained on him,” Gideon Levy reported. That same day, Israeli forces shot Mahdi Muhammad Hamdallah Hashash, a 15 year old near Joseph’s Tomb and detonated an explosive object near the teen and other Palestinian youths.
Children killed
On 14 November; Israeli forces shot and killed Fulla Rasmi Abdulaziz Mallouh, 14, while she was traveling in a car near Ramallah. Soldiers fired at least 20 bullets at the car, hitting Fulla in the head and chest, Defense for Children International-Palestine stated . Israel claimed that soldiers fired at a “suspicious vehicle that was accelerating toward them,” according to OCHA.
The following day killed three Israelis in and around the Ariel industrial zone, where he worked, in the northern West Bank, before being shot and fatally injured. During the attack that lasted more than 20 minutes, al-Souf stabbed and killed two Israelis before ramming another settler with a stolen vehicle, according to OCHA. Two additional Palestinian children were killed in the northern West Bank in late November. The following day, a 16 year old was shot dead during confrontations near Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. “Ahmad was near an armed Palestinian man during confrontations between Israeli forces and Palestinians when an Israeli sniper shot Ahmad in the chest, striking his heart,” according to Defense for Children International-Palestine. Joseph’s Tomb, important to Jews, Christians and Muslims, is a frequent flashpoint of occupation violence. “Since the beginning of 2022, Israeli forces have killed four Palestinians, including two children, and have injured 525, while accompanying Israeli settlers to the site” according to OCHA.
Israeli occupation forces and settlers have killed 34 Palestinian children in the West Bank so far this year. An additional 17 children were killed during Israel’s three-day military offensive in Gaza in August, 10 of them as a result of Israeli strikes. The remaining seven children were killed as a result of misfired rockets from Gaza or in unclear circumstances.
Israeli forces have killed approximately 200 Palestinians so far this year. Two Islamic Jihad fighters killed during an Israeli raid in Jenin on 1 December and a Palestinian man was extra-judicially executed by a Border Police officer in Huwwara near Nablus on 2 December. Around 30 people in Israel and Israelis in the West Bank were killed in the context of the occupation during the same period. In addition to the three Israels killed in and around the Ariel industrial zone, a 16-year-old Israeli boy with dual Canadian citizenship died in a bombing in Jerusalem on 23 November.
Israeli authorities stated that an organized cell planted “high quality, powerful explosive devices with a high level of damage” that were detonated remotely, roughly half an hour apart during the peak morning commute. No Palestinian factions have claimed responsibility for the bombings but various groups described them as a natural response to Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people. A second person, a 50-year-old Israeli originally from Ethiopia, died as a result of injuries sustained in the Jerusalem attack on 26 November. Earlier in the month, on 7 November, an Israeli man died from injuries sustained during a stabbing attack in al-Funduq village near Kedumim settlement in late October.
Also during the month, 21 Palestinians in Gaza died after a house fire in Jabaliya refugee camp. The horrific blaze on 17 November claimed multiple generations of the Abu Raya family, who had gathered to celebrate the third birthday of one of several children who died from injuries sustained during the fire. And on 23 November, Palestinian gunmen abducted the body of a 17-year-old Druze citizen of Israel from a hospital where the high-schooler was treated after being critically injured in a car crash. The abduction sparked a crisis and raised fears of a massive deployment of force in Jenin before the teen’s body was transferred 30 hours later.
Read the report in Electronic Intifada along with pictures
