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Posts tagged ‘West Bank’

Feb 24

Calling Israel’s occupation of Palestine apartheid isn’t lazy or inflammatory – it’s based on fact

This week I have participated in events organised as part of Israeli Apartheid Week, which every year “aims to raise awareness about Israel’s ongoing settler-colonial project and apartheid policies over the Palestinian people”.

For some, talk of Israeli “apartheid” may seem like just another buzzword used by activists. Others see it as unhelpful, lazy, inflammatory, or even antisemitic.

But what are we really saying when we talk about Israeli apartheid? Read more

Feb 5

The missing data on the Palestinian revolt

On Wednesday, Palestinian youths from a village in the northern West Bank attacked Israeli Border Police officers outside Damascus Gate, in Occupied East Jerusalem, killing one and wounding another. The three assailants were killed on the spot.

With nearly daily bloodshed, most news agencies have been using ‘copy and paste’-style paragraphs to provide context for readers. Here are three such summaries, taken from reports of Wednesday’s attack by Reuters, The Associated Press, and AFP. Read more

Jan 25

Why Israel invented the concept of ‘settlement blocs’

“We are here to stay.” These were the words of Israel’s Science and Space Technology Minister Ophir Akunis, as he attended the ceremonial opening of a new “heritage centre” in Ariel settlement on 17 January. “I want to send the EU ministers a message from here, the city of Ariel,” the minister said. “No step or decision that you take will remove us from our land.”

Ariel, established in 1978, is one of the largest Israeli settlements in the West Bank, with some 20,000 residents, as well as a university. The colony lies some 12 miles from the “Green Line”, and was “strategically built to wind its way along a mountain ridge surrounded by Palestinian towns and villages on all sides.” The Ariel “finger”, or bloc, includes a dozen or so separate, official settlements. Read more

Jan 13

Truth and Lies

Ever since the the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip began in 1967, successive Israeli governments have taken advantage of every opportunity at hand to increase the settlers’ population  in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

The illegality of Israel’s settlements has been affirmed by the United Nations Security Council, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, settlement policy is a war crime.

Aside from being a grave breach of international law—and, as Amnesty International has put it: “inherently discriminatory”—the settlements are also a substantial obstacle to the establishment of a viable, sovereign Palestinian State in the OPT. Read more

Dec 15

The university where Israeli soldiers train on campus and shoot Palestinian protesters

There can’t be many universities around the world where an occupying army has built a firing range on campus. But that is the reality for Palestine Technical University in the West Bank.

Since October, the Tulkarm campus has been under repeated attack by Israeli forces, with student demonstrations suppressed by rubber-coated metal bullets, tear gas – and even live ammunition. In an approximately six week period, 350 students were injured by the Israeli army. Read more

Nov 25

Revealed: UK ad watchdog gives green light to Israeli ‘annexation’ of West Bank

The UK advertising watchdog is facing calls for an inquiry after rejecting a complaint about an Israeli government-issued tourism brochure depicting the West Bank as part of Israel.

Cross-party MPs and Palestine solidarity campaigners have slammed the decision by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), with the Palestinian ambassador to the UK warning that the ruling gives a green light to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism to ‘annex’ the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Read more

Nov 18

Israel-Palestine: The Unattainable Peace

October 2015 was one of the bloodiest months in Palestine/Israel since the Second Intifada, with 69 Palestinian fatalities (including some 40 attackers or alleged attackers) and 7,392 injuries, along with eight Israeli fatalities and 115 injuries.

The number of Palestinians injured mainly during anti-occupation protests across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was more than for the whole of 2014. 2,887 Palestinians were shot by Israeli forces with live ammunition or rubber-coated metal bullets.

The international guardians of the comatose peace process, however, remained largely on the side-lines, with little ability to influence events on the ground that have ebbed and flowed irrespective of external appeals for ‘calm.’ Read more

Oct 30

Israel’s barbaric occupation and endless violence towards Palestinians knows no bounds

Israeli embassy spokesperson Yiftah Curiel accuses the British media of “callousness towards innocent Israelis’ lives.” As ever, when it comes to claims of “anti-Israel” bias in the media, the evidence is flimsy, consisting mainly of supposedly inaccurate headlines.

I welcome Curiel’s focus on “clear and simple [facts]”, and so here is a (partial) summary of significant acts of violence, violations of international law and human rights abuses conducted this month not by private individuals, but by the Israeli government and its armed forces. Read more

Oct 30

When all was ‘calm’: a typical month for Palestinians under Israeli occupation

When US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the Middle East last week, for meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the senior diplomat had one clear stated goal: to restore ‘calm’ after several weeks of violence.

Speaking last Thursday, Kerry stressed the need to “defuse the situation”, and spoke of the need for “parties…to move to a de-escalation.” Other recent diplomatic efforts, and media reports, have used a similar kind of language. Read more

Oct 27

A Third Intifada?

It was just after midday on Oct. 5, 13-year-old Abd Al-Rahman Shadi Obeidallah was standing with friends in Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem. Young Palestinians had been throwing stones at the Israeli occupation forces stationed nearby when, without warning, a soldier fired two live bullets. Abd Al-Rahman was struck in the chest. An hour later, he was pronounced dead at the local hospital. Read more

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