Egypt has allowed “some 250 tonnes of domestic gas” to Gaza nearly a month after Israel shut down its only goods crossing and prevented the transfer of fuel into the strip, a Palestinian official told Anadolu news agency on Sunday.

The agency quoted Khalil Shakfa, the head of the General Authority of Petroleum, saying that “some 250 tonnes of domestic gas has been allowed into Gaza.”

Meanwhile, Sky News Arabia reported that “11 trucks of domestic gas on Monday entered Gaza through Salah al-Din Gate, located near Rafah crossing,” according to sources.

However, the Egyptian authorities have not confirmed or denied the reports yet.

Internal emails leaked to Foreign Policy have revealed that US presidential adviser Jared Kushner has been conspiring to pull the plug on the primary aid organization providing help to Palestinian refugees and to convince surrounding Arab nations to make the Palestinians citizens.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was established by the United Nations in 1949, with the help of the US, to provide relief for Palestinians displaced from their homes following the establishment of the State of Israel. However, 70 years later, most Palestinian people remain refugees, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and the numbers have ballooned from around 700,000 to over 5 million people. Of the original refugees, only a few tens of thousands are still alive, Foreign Policy noted.

The Minnesota lawmaker Betty McCollum recently took to the floor of the US House of Representatives, urging her colleagues to sign an unprecedented bill that would prohibit Israel from using US military aid to imprison Palestinian children.

This development underscores what journalist and author Ben White describes in his latest book, Cracks in the Wall, as the beginning of the end of bipartisan support for the State of Israel.

Essential services “are on the verge of collapse” in Gaza after Israel once again banned the transfer of fuel into the occupied and blockaded territory, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated on Monday.

Two hospitals – maybe more – will run out of fuel in less than two days, OCHA added.

Meanwhile 40 of Gaza’s 132 water and sanitation facilities only have enough fuel to last one or two days.

“1.2 million Palestinians are at imminent risk of possible sewage overflow around the 41 main pumping stations,” OCHA stated.

These are the threats posed by the latest deliberately designed and managed crisis imposed on Gaza by Israel to pacify the rebellion among its population of two million.

The Forward has now run two important stories (here and here) on successive days on the covert strategy of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and its right-wing NGO allies both in Israel and the United States, most prominently Canary Mission, to silence, marginalize and ultimately destroy the job and earnings prospects of young Americans on campus who have the temerity to advocate for Palestinian rights.

David Rothkopf, Carnegie scholar and former editor of Foreign Policy, has expanded on his tweets saying that American Jews have “a duty to oppose Israel.” He penned a piece for Haaretz, calling for boycott of Israel’s government, and “all manner of pressure.”

But this government of Israel and what it stands for must be opposed in every way possible – including, given the absence of other effective options, boycotts.

To the extent that laws like the nation-state law remain the unaltered law of the land, Israel’s leaders must be challenged, communities of conscience everywhere and all manner of pressure mobilized against it on behalf of those denied their most basic human rights by the law.

Israel’s government chose this path. Its acts have not only undermined its legitimacy; it has parted ways with many of those who support was in decades past most essential to its survival….

Note the words “all manner of pressure” and the loss of legitimacy.

There have been recent media reports regarding projects to liquidate the Palestinian refugee issue by means of liquidating the legal basis for their right of return to their homeland. US lawmakers began taking action to enact a law that would liquidate the issue of Palestinian refugees by recognising only about 40,000 of them, representing about 1 per cent of the over 5 million refugees. Members of the US Senate are trying to pass this law and it is associated with the reconsideration of annual aid contributed to UNRWA, as a new number of refugees not considered under UNRWA will be determined, and accordingly financial aid will be granted, depending on the number of refugees recognised by the agency as Palestinian refugees. Moreover, the UN General Assembly resolution 194 of 1948, as well as relevant resolutions, will apply to them.

Egypt bears as much responsibility for the Gaza Strip as Israel does, an Israeli cabinet minister said on Monday, in remarks that could upset Cairo as it tries to avoid being drawn back into the Palestinian enclave while brokering truce talks there.

In parallel to UN mediation, Egypt has used its contacts with both Israel and the dominant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas to discuss ways of calming a more than the three-month-old surge in confrontations along the Gaza-Israel border.

But some Egyptian officials say they would resist any attempt by Israel, or its US ally, to shift to Cairo the onus for addressing Gaza’s long-term governance or economic problems.

Eyewitness onboard boat to Gaza says Israeli forces beat passengers and stole thousands of dollars, antibiotics during raid

Israel set out limited goals for Gaza truce talks on Sunday, saying the focus was on a proposal to ease its closure on the Islamist Hamas-controlled territory in return for the Palestinians calming their side of the frontier.

The Israeli statement came hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to convene his security cabinet to discuss, and possibly approve, UN- and Egyptian-brokered ideas for preventing another threatened Gaza war.

The United Nations and Egypt have not publicly detailed their proposals. They have spoken generally of a need to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza, stem cross-border hostilities and reconcile Hamas – which refuses formal peacemaking with Israel – to its Western-backed Palestinian rivals.

College campuses are being hit by militant, pro-Israel, often anonymous anti-boycott campaigns. Some of them are so rough, they’re even making pro-Israel Jews uncomfortable.

The list of Jewish groups that do anti-BDS work on campuses is bafflingly long. A partial tally includes StandWithUs, AEPi, CAMERA, the David Project, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jerusalem U, AIPAC, Sheldon Adelson’s Maccabee Task Force, and the Zionist Organization of America.

The total amount of American Jewish and Israeli government funds flooding the anti-BDS effort is easily in the tens of millions of dollars each year.

It is Jeremy Corbyn’s misfortune to be surrounded by witless blabbermouths whose unbridled remarks are a gift to Israel lobby propagandists. And while mainstream media in the UK were, as usual, whipping up an anti-Semitism ruckus orchestrated against the Labour Party leader, Israel was busy committing yet another outrage on the high seas against a humanitarian aid vessel peacefully carrying urgently-needed medical supplies for the desperate citizens of blockaded Gaza.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is under fire for posing for a photo with anti-Israel activists – and his spokesman’s excuse isn’t helping.

A grinning Booker held up a sign critical of Israel’s security wall at the Netroots Nation Conference in New Orleans Friday, flanked by members of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.

But it wasn’t Booker’s fault, spokesman Jeff Giertz insisted.

“He didn’t have time to read the sign,” Giertz told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “From his cursory glance he thought it was talking about Mexico and didn’t realize it had anything to do with Israel.”

For the past 18 months, the president's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, along with his cohorts, Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Middle East Special Envoy Jason Greenblatt, have been preparing the grounds for a great bargain between Israel and "moderate" Arab regimes, notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia - one that would end the Palestinian problem, allow for normalisation of relations, and pave the way for a new strategic alignment against a surging Iran.

Judging by their smirks and statements, Kushner and Company have succeeded in tightening the noose around Palestine in complicity with Egyptian and Saudi leaders and are now waiting for the right time to unleash a diplomatic blitzkrieg.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, has started official proceedings to investigate a complaint against Israel, submitted by the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel regarding the recent ‘Nation-State’ law.

In May, de Varennes participated in the Second Human Capabilities Conference, organised by the Follow-Up Committee in the city of Tayibe. The conference discussed the threats posed by the of the ‘Nation-State’ bill to the Arab citizens of Israel, as an indigenous community. After the bill became law, the Committee submitted an official complaint against Israel which focused on the ‘Nation-State’ law’s discriminatory and exclusionary articles against the Palestinian people in general and especially against the Arab citizens of Israel.

Israel’s Ministry of Defence yesterday released the first images of its sea barrier designed to further blockade the besieged Gaza Strip. The barrier is located on Zikim beach, approximately three kilometres from Gaza’s northern frontier. The project is slated to be completed by the end of 2018 and is likely to cost an estimated 25 million shekels ($6.7 million).

When completed, the structure will stretch 200 metres out into the Mediterranean Sea, further cutting off the Gaza Strip from Israel. The barrier will consist of three layers: an underwater base level; a 50-metre-wide sea-level platform made of armoured stone, and a six-metre-high barbed wire fence. A further fence will also surround the barrier itself as “an additional security measure.”

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has said that German sports brand Adidas is no longer a sponsor of the Israel Football Association (IFA), media reports revealed last week.

Quds Net News said that BDS activists wrote on its website that Adidas terminated its services to the IFA after a campaign asking the sports giant to stop its complicity in the oppression of Palestinian people.

In March, BDS said, over 130 Palestinian football clubs urged Adidas to end its sponsorship of the IFA over its inclusion of six teams based in Israeli settlements across occupied Palestinian territories in the West Bank.

BDS said that it handed over a petition with 16,000 signatures to Adidas’ headquarters in Amsterdam in June.

The discovery of a rare aerial photo of Jerusalem in the 1930s, taken by a Zeppelin, has provided the long-sought after proof that when Israel occupied the Old City in 1967 it secretly destroyed an important mosque that dated from the time of Saladin close to the al-Aqsa mosque.

The destruction of the Sheikh Eid mosque – in an area widely considered to be the most sensitive site in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – revives questions about Israel’s continuing abuse of Islamic holy places under its control.

The issue has been in the spotlight recently because of a growing number of arson and vandalism attacks by Jewish extremists on mosques in Jerusalem and the West Bank, in what are termed “price-tag” attacks designed to dissuade the Israeli government from making diplomatic concessions to the Palestinians.

On 29 July, the Israeli Navy stormed the Freedom Flotilla boat al-Awda and diverted it from its intended course to Gaza to Israel. Here Dr Ang Swee Chai, medical doctor on board, recalls what happened that night

The Palestinians’ deteriorating conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip makes even long-term optimism difficult. Neither a one-liberal-state nor two-state resolution seems in the offing because (if for no other reason) either would seem to spell political suicide for any foreseeable Israeli government. The one-staters have a good argument against the two-staters and vice versa. Would it really be easier for an Israeli prime minister to evict 400,000 Israeli Jews from the West Bank (leaving aside the more than 200,000 in formally annexed East Jerusalem) than it would be to agree to one secular democratic state in which non-Jews would soon outnumber Jews if they don’t already? I don’t see it.

Israel's Defense Ministry released on Sunday first pictures of a new maritime barrier across the Gaza Strip coast.

The barrier is 200 meters long and 50 meters wide, and has a 6-meter-high fence. "This structure will require additional measures that will provide full coverage of the entire sea against infiltrations," the ministry said in a statement.

Israel's Border and Seam Planning Administration and the Engineering and Construction Department at the Defense Ministry started to construct the barrier about two months ago on the Zikim beach, near the Gaza border.

Israel decided to build the barrier after its 2014 military campaign in Gaza, during which Gaza militants attempted to cross into Israel through the sea.

Believing that the destruction of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) would both punish the Palestinians for rejecting President Trump’s declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and lay the groundwork for the US peace effort, Jared Kushner is trying to see Palestinians stripped of their refugee status.

Kushner, the son-in-law of President Trump, has been pushing the matter with Jordanian officials, trying to get the Jordan government to strip all refugee status recognition from the over two million Palestinians living there.

The UNRWA has jurisdiction over in excess of five million Palestinian refugees across the region, with Jordan having the largest number. Refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank hold another two million,and the rest are in Syria and Lebanon.

On Friday Israel attacked a Swedish yacht, in int’l waters exercising right of ‘innocent passage’ taking medical supplies to Gaza. All 12 people aboard kidnapped & illegally detained in Israel. Demand they be released to continue their journey.

Senator Cory Booker was photographed holding a sign bearing a pro-Palestinian movement slogan. The image appeared on the Twitter feed of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a self-described “coalition of 330+ groups” working “for a US policy toward Palestine/Israel based on freedom, justice, and equality.”

“From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go,” the sign read.

While celebrating Ahed release, we should also pause to remember Razan Al-Najjar, the heroic nurse tending the wounded at the Gaza Great March of Return fatally shot on June 1st by an IDF sniper in cold blood while apart from the demonstrators, away from the fence, dressed in easily identifiable white medical clothing, working in the vicinity of Khan Yunis.

We should also salute Dareen Tatour, fine Palestinian poet, author of the poem “Resist My People, Resist Them,” sentenced to prison just now for the sin of writing defiant poetry, having only recently been released from years of house arrest, denied access to the Internet, and even to her own village community.

At a time when Israeli high-tech companies are outsourcing their work to countries such as Ukraine and India, the Palestinian Authority, where about 3,000 students a year graduate from computer science and engineering programs, provides a workforce that can be hired for less than is generally paid in Israel. There are several Palestinian manpower firms operating in Palestinian West Bank cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and the new planned community of Rawabi that provide high-tech placement services.

“For the price of one Israeli engineer, an [Israeli] company can hire three Palestinians in the West Bank, and they have very high motivation,” Slama said. Mellanox itself, which is based in Yokne’am, southeast of Haifa, employs more than 100 Palestinians, including 20 engineers who work in the Gaza Strip. The other 80 employees are based in Rawabi.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, some Jewish intellectuals and humanists expressed the thought that ‘after Auschwitz Jews have to locate themselves at the forefront of the battle for humanity and against all forms of oppression.’

This is a principled and heroic ideal, but the reality on the ground has been somewhat different. Just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the Jewish state ethnically cleansed the vast majority of indigenous Palestinians. Two years later, in 1950, Israel’s Knesset passed the Law of Return, a racist law that distinguishes between Jews who have the right to ‘return’ to someone else’s land and the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that were expelled by force from their villages and cities.

After claiming success for Argentina’s cancellation of the friendly football match with Israel in June, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign has placed another controversial match under their crosshairs.

This time their target is the match between Israel and Northern Ireland, which is scheduled for 11 September in Belfast. The friendly has been condemned by Palestinian groups who have called on the Northern Irish Football Association (IFA) to rethink its decision to host the match.

Palestinian campaigners for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel say that Jewish state “uses international sporting events to prop up its failing image as it becomes increasingly isolated due to its flagrant contempt for Palestinian rights”.

Darin is one of the Palestinians who stayed to their homes when the Zionist movement occupied Palestine and decided to established a state and homeland on it. She, like one and half other million Palestinians living in Israel, are referred to merely as Arabs, by the authorities. She and the rest of her community were forced to hold the Israeli citizenship. She is denied the freedom to lament the destruction of her homeland and the tragedy of her people, and asked to celebrate it instead, under the name of “Israel Independence Day”.

On 2 June 2014 a group of young Israelis kidnapped a Palestinian boy, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, while he was walking to a nearby mosque to perform dawn prayers, put him in a car and took him to a forest where they beat him and forced him to sallow petrol, poured more on him and set him a blaze. His family immediately informed the local police of his disappearance. His charred body was found a few hours later.

Lieberman’s statement said that the ban was done because of incendiary balloons crossing the border, and continuing tension at the Gaza border fence. He said this would pressure Hamas into doing more to stop the balloons.

This came despite Israel having reopened the crossing only a week ago, citing the decreasing number of balloons and declining tensions at the border. Though some balloon fires have been reported in southern Israel in recent days, it is far fewer than before.

Lieberman now says that limits on goods entering Gaza will be intensified, and that Israel insists on total quiet in Gaza before they will ease the restrictions any further. At present, the crossing allows only limited food and medicine to enter.

Palestinian musicians perform on stage during the Palestine International Festival 2018, in Gaza City, on July 29, 2018.

The biggest bloc of developing countries at the United Nations has chosen the observer state of Palestine as its next leader, the Palestinian ambassador said Tuesday, a decision that could cause new tensions with Israel and the United States.

The ambassador, Riyad H. Mansour, said in a telephone interview that Palestine would take over leadership of the bloc, known as the Group of 77, from Egypt, starting in January.

Originally 77 countries when formed in 1964, the bloc’s membership has nearly doubled in size. The bloc often speaks as one voice in the General Assembly and represents more than 80 percent of the world’s population.

Israel’s recent killing of unarmed Palestinian protesters at the Gaza border, storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, and other aggressive actions, plus the US administration’s irresponsible recognition of Jerusalem, have added up to a dangerous escalation. Dr. Ashrawi calls on the international community and organizations to hold Israel accountable and to protect the people and holy sites of Palestine.

More than 350 Israeli soldiers who took part in last summer’s military onslaught on the Gaza Strip have since received psychiatric counseling for post-traumatic stress, an Israeli report has revealed.

Children remain at the heart of the struggle in Israel-Palestine. But while settlers’ terrorism organised and sponsored by the regime in Tel Aviv, the Palestinian resistance is the product of individuals.

Last Thursday, Mohammad Tareq Yousef, from the Palestinian village of Kobar (northwest of Ramallah), entered a settlement called Adam (southeast of Ramallah and al-Bireh) and stabbed a group of settlers before being killed. Isreal responded immediately with a round of assaults and home demolitions in Kobar.

This same village produced a young man named Omar Al-Abed who carried out a stabbing last year in a settlement called Halamish.

Moreover Adam settlement also produced the group of settlers who kidnapped Mohammad Abu Khudair (16 years old) from Jerusalem and burned him alive, killing him in July four years ago.

Three days ago, the Freedom Flotilla boat Al Awda, a Norwegian boat, was stopped by the Israeli navy in international waters some 46 miles off the coast of Gaza, three months after it had set sail from Norway.

The crew was arrested, and the boat was diverted towards the Israeli Ashdod port. Of the 20 crew members, the two Israeli citizens (Zohar Chamberlain Regev and Yonatan Shapira) were released shortly after on bail, but the 18 other members have already spent two nights in prison detention. The two international journalists were released.

I had already interviewed leading crew member Zohar Chamberlain-Regev in Copenhagen in late May, when the boat was passing through several Scandinavian and European ports on its way to Gaza to challenge the blockade. This time, German Palestine solidarity activist Christoph Glanz (CG) has interviewed Zohar Chamberlain-Regev (ZCR), following her release on bail, and has kindly provided me with the transcript, from which I cite here:

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee spoke in favor of the settlements from behind a podium with a red and white sign which read, “Build Israel Great Again.”

Israeli Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, issued an order banning the entry of fuel and gas into the besieged Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom (Karm Abu Salem) crossing from this morning.

Lieberman said he was doing this in an effort to stop Palestinians flying kites and balloons near the border fence.

Although, the Kerem Shalom crossing was recently partially reopened after it had been closed for about a week, Lieberman announced that the reopening would depend on the reduction of launched of the kites.

The partial reopening included allowing food, medicine, fuel and gas to enter the Gaza Strip.

Prior to that, the one-week closure of the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is Gaza’s main commercial crossing, came as a result of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to impose severe economic sanctions on the Gaza Strip.

Senior Israeli officials were in attendance yesterday when a new settler-run “heritage centre” was opened in the heart of Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, reported the Washington Post.

The inauguration of the centre was also attended by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, in addition to Israeli government figures including Culture Minister Miri Regev.

According to the Israeli government, which has allocated $1.2 million to develop the site, the new centre honours Yemenite Jews who lived there in the 19th century.

However, as the paper noted, “Palestinians say the centre is part of a larger effort by Jewish settlers and their allies in the government to consolidate control of Arab neighbourhoods in the city.”

All Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory – including in East Jerusalem – are illegal under international law.

Israeli authorities began deporting several of the international solidarity activists who were aboard the Al-Awda ship of the Freedom Flotilla, Gaza’s National Committee for Breaking the Siege announced yesterday.

Gaza’s National Committee confirmed that the activists’ deportation comes two days after they were detained following an attack by Israeli naval forces on the ship in international waters.

Zaher Birawi, head of the committee, said in a statement that a number of international activists were deported on Tuesday, including a Malaysian professor, Dr. Mohammed Afandi Salleh, and the rest were to be deported yesterday.

The Lebanese and Palestinian experiences show the difficulty, if not impossibility, of combining the “authority” and the “resistance”. Each one of these “institutions”, so to speak, has its own different logic and tools. They each have their own incompatible, not to say “contradictory”, considerations and calculations, and the “best of both worlds” will find itself forced to abandon one in favour of the other. The experiences of history, both past and recent, indicate that authority is usually chosen at the expense of resistance.

The “threats” facing Israel are numerous and diverse: artists painting murals on walls; poetry on Facebook; even clowns and circus performers. The newest danger to the Zionist state is a South African celebrity who usually features in the entertainment section of the newspapers, rather than the politics pages. Last week, Israel banned South African entrepreneur and former model Shashi Naidoo for 10 years after she tried to enter the West Bank to educate herself about Israel’s military occupation of Palestine.

Israel is targeting Palestinian journalists in an effort to limit the coverage of its atrocities against civilians in the occupied territories, Hamas said yesterday.

Commenting on the detention of four Palestinian journalists from the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, Hamas said in a statement: “The retention of the Israeli policy of detaining journalists is proof that the occupation is afraid of the free journalists who report the suffering of Palestinians.”

The International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza expressed its concern for the safety of the international solidarity activists who were on board the Gaza-bound Al-Awda (Return) boat which was boarded by the Israeli navy on Sunday.

Activist on board on the boat were reportedly assaulted by masked Israeli soldiers. They were then detained by the Israeli naval forces and held at Givon prison in Ashdod. Among those assaulted was 69-year-old British activist and orthopaedic consultant Dr. Swee Ang.

New Zealand Unite Union leader Mike Treen was also among those attacked and unlawfully detained by the Israeli military.

Many people on the Al Awda were beat up and tasered when the IDF fascists boarded the boat. The doctor on board had 2 ribs broken. This remains a very dangerous voyage taken by our brave allies out of love for the people of Gaza and love of justice.

Read the instructions at the end of this post to see what YOU can do.

Seventy members of Congress are urging the Trump administration to immediately reinstate US aid in order to alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Israel has seized a boat and detained almost two dozen people as they were trying to reach Gaza by sea with a cargo of medical supplies.

“In Gaza, more than 50 percent of the children live beneath the poverty level, living on $1.74 per day. A report from the UN noted that 95 percent of tap water is not safe to drink, and last year warned that the Gaza Strip could become ‘unlivable’ well before 2020,” the lawmakers, all Democrats, stated in a letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton on Monday.

The lawmakers say that Palestinians in Gaza should not be held hostage to politics.

Security is desired by everyone. But it’s high time we stop treating everyone as if they’re terrorists, not humans. Under the name of security, governments can do whatever they want (water boarding, Guantánamo, torture, etc). But sometimes they go too far and it’s the job of people like us to know when things are too far or not.

Similarly, under the name of security, millions are given a sub-human treatment. I’ve always had the mindset that it’s possible to treat people as humans and still keep the world secure. If you don’t think it’s possible, then that’s a whole bigger issue!

Plus, this is a funny video not an angry one

Ahed Tamimi is free, but she hasn’t forgotten the other 5,000 Palestinians still trapped inside Israeli prisons. AJ+ spoke to Ahed about life inside an Israeli prison.

Chomsky was "taken aback" that “anyone could support the idea—offered by a national political leader, no less—that the US should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.”

The Israeli authorities are so worried about the symbol for resistance that Ahed has become internationally that on Saturday, a day before her release, they arrested two Italian artists who had painted a large portrait of her on the separation wall near Bethlehem.

The Knesset is to hold a final controversial vote this week on legislation that limits Palestinian access to the High Court of Justice and is seen as the latest step toward de-facto annexation of the West Bank.

The move is part of an attempt by right-wing politicians to prevent the demolition of illegal settler homes and to ensure that Jews living in Judea and Samaria enjoy the same access to the lower courts as those who live within sovereign Israel.

“The rights of Judea and Samaria residents are no less important than the rights of citizens within the Green Line,” said Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked who authored the bill.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu attacked Jews who oppose a notorious nation-state bill that has downgraded the status of the Arabic language in Israel, accusing them of siding with “the other.”

“The attacks from Leftist circles, which define themselves as Zionists, are absurd and reveal the depths to which the Left has fallen”, Netanyahu said in a speech on Sunday.

He accused left-wingers in Israel who are against the law of being hypocrites because according to him, they allegedly want a withdrawal from the occupied West Bank in exchange of a Jewish state.

Israel's defence minister announced on Wednesday that authorities are set to grant permission for the construction of thousands of new settler homes - deemed illegal under international law - in the occupied West Bank as early as next week, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Israeli right-wing hardliner Lieberman said authorities have approved the construction of 2,500 new settler homes with plans for 1,400 new units on occupied Palestinian land.

"We promised to advance building in Judea and Samaria and we kept our word," Lieberman said, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names favoured by pro-settlement Israelis keen to erase Palestinian identity from the territory.

With the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship Al-Awda seized by Israel on Sunday, its 13,000 euros’ worth of medical supplies in the Israeli city of Ashdod and its 22 activists detained, the question of what happens next is on the minds of pro-Palestinian activists around the world.

"The Freedom Flotilla Coalition calls on the Norwegian Government, the national governments of those aboard Al-Awda and the Freedom [Flotilla], other national governments and relevant international organizations to act immediately," Norwegian politician and activist Torstein Dahle said Sunday. The Al-Awda sails under the Norwegian flag.

Two important events happened towards the end of the third week of July in Israel: The ethnocratic settler-colonial state of Israel passed its new Jewish nation state law, which has been in the making for over two years now, and Hungary’s anti-Semitic Prime Minister Viktor Orban made a two-day visit to Israel. Despite the international uproar over the law, critics did not link these interrelated events, even though both events attest to a radical shift towards authoritarian governance in the alleged “only democracy in the Middle East.”

Capped by the fanfare around her release, her detention ultimately did more damage to Israel’s international image than the initial video of her slapping a soldier ever could.

During her incarceration, Tamimi has been compared to brave female heroes ranging from Joan of Arc and Anne Frank to Rosa Parks and Hannah Szenes, and her blonde hair even drew comparison to Bar Refaeli. She has been championed by American celebrities such as Sarah Silverman, Alice Walker, Danny Glover and Rosario Dawson, and in Israel, controversially, by songwriter-performer Yehonatan Geffen.

Two Dutch researchers were detained, subjected to humiliating treatment and abuse and then deported by Israel earlier this month.

Their experience is part of Israel’s policy to isolate Palestinians from the outside world and obstruct the work of human rights defenders.

Israeli security forces took Lydia de Leeuw for questioning immediately after she landed at Ben Gurion airport on 20 July.

Before the interrogation started, she was handed a file with personal details and other information already completed, including a decision by the interior minister to deny her entry.

Over four hours, de Leeuw was strip searched, deprived of her phone and other property and denied access to the Dutch embassy or legal assistance. She was then deported.

Her colleague Pauline Overeem experienced even more severe treatment.

A vessel belonging to the Freedom Flotilla activist group was “hijacked” by Israeli forces after having been “threatened” via radio, the group said on Sunday. The boat was en route to Gaza with 22 people from 16 nations on board and carrying a cargo of €13,000 ($15,000) worth of medical supplies. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed the interception of the vessel, saying it violated the blockade of Gaza. The IDF added that the boat is now being towed to the port of Ashdod and all the supplies can only be delivered through it.

Two Dutch researchers were detained, subjected to humiliating treatment and abuse and then deported by Israel earlier this month.

Their experience is part of Israel’s policy to isolate Palestinians from the outside world and obstruct the work of human rights defenders.

Israeli security forces took Lydia de Leeuw for questioning immediately after she landed at Ben Gurion airport on 20 July.

Before the interrogation started, she was handed a file with personal details and other information already completed, including a decision by the interior minister to deny her entry.

Fadel Abu al-Qumsan has survived two attacks in the past four years.

Early on 3 August 2014, Israel bombed his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp of northern Gaza. Two of his nieces and his brother-in-law were killed.

In recent months, Fadel, 53, and his family have once again been hurt by Israeli state violence.

On 6 April 2018, Fadel joined the Great March of Return to demand that Palestinians uprooted by Zionist forces in 1948 be allowed to return home.

At approximately 3 pm, he fell to the ground screaming. He had been shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper.

Fadel was roughly 700 meters from the boundary fence between Gaza and Israel at the time.

“I didn’t expect to be injured,” Fadel said. “I’m an old man and I was standing away from the fence. But it seems that Israel does not distinguish between children, young people, the elderly or women. This was a clear message from Israel that anyone who participates in the demonstrations is a target.”

Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was sentenced to five months in prison Tuesday by the Nazareth District court. Tatour, an Israeli citizen, was convicted in May of incitement to violence and supporting terrorist organizations, based on her social media posts.

Following the sentencing, Tatour said she was not surprised. "I expected prison and that's what happened. I didn't expect justice. The prosecution was political to begin with because I'm Palestinian, because it's about free speech and I'm imprisoned because I'm Palestinian."

There is someone responsible for the nation-state law and that someone is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although he usually leaves controversial decisions to his political partners, this time Netanyahu positioned himself front and center in support of the constitutional discrimination against Israeli citizens who are not Jewish.

Netanyahu made it clear Friday to Druze leaders who asked him to amend the law that he was prepared to give the Druze economic benefits but would not change the legislation’s discriminatory wording. On Sunday he attacked the left (“They need to do some soul-searching”), and demanded that Likud ministers “fight for the truth,” a barb at his right-wing rival Naftali Bennett, who suggested amending the law to accommodate the Druze.

Israeli forces have violently boarded a ship, being followed by Consortium News, that was headed to Gaza bringing humanitarian aid. A survivor of the USS Liberty is now in Israeli custody.

Two people from Al Awda (The Return) have been released, but most of the crew and participants are still in unlawful detention at Givon prison in Israel. We are still gravely concerned for their safety and well-being as we had no contact with most of them as of 14:00 CEST today. We continue to demand that our boat and the medical supplies on board reach their rightful recipients, Palestinian civil society in Gaza.

A desperate SOS message was released by crew onboard a Norwegian-flagged flotilla that was intercepted by Israel on Sunday, as activists attempts to break a more than decade-long blockade of the Gaza Strip failed.

National Director of the Unite Union New Zealand representative on the International Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, Mike Treen, announced the hijacking of the boat by Israeli naval forces in a video.

He claimed the flotilla participants have been kidnapped by Israel, in a pre-recorded message, and alleged that Israel had violated international maritime law by launching the “attack” on the flotilla.

“If you are listening to this message it is because the al-Awda of the international flotilla to Gaza has been hijacked in international waters and the participants kidnapped by the Israeli military forces,” he said in a video message.

Since Friday, Israeli attacks along the Gaza border have killed at least five Palestinians and wounded scores of others. The slain included two teenagers, one a 12-year-old and the other a 17-year-old, who were shot at Friday’s protests near the border.

A group of extremist Jewish settlers have set fire to Palestinian property in the village of Jaloud on the outskirts of the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, Quds Press has reported.

Witnesses said that the settlers set fire to Palestinian farmland as well as a house in the area, which was severely damaged. At least 2.5 acres of wheat was also burnt. The settlers also cut down dozens of Palestinian-owned trees in the area. No fatalities were reported.

This is the latest in a series of attacks by Jewish settlers against Palestinians and their property in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza has confirmed that Israeli soldiers killed, Friday, two Palestinians, including one child, and injured 246 others, among them eleven who suffered serious wounds, 10 women, 4 medics, one journalist and 19 children.

The Health Ministry said an Israeli army sharpshooter shot Majdi Ramzi Kamal Satri, 11,* with a live round in the head, east of Rafah city, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, during the Great Return March procession. The slain child is from the Shaboura refugee camp, in Rafah.

It added that the soldiers also shot Ghazi Mohammad Abu Mustafa, 45, with a live round in the head, east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

Ghazi is the husband of Lamia Abu Mustafa, a nurse who never left the medical tents hundreds of meters away from the parameter fence, providing medical aid to wounded Palestinians.

One might have thought that, in the wake of the Nazi regime’s systematic crimes against humanity last century, dehumanization would have become unthinkable once and for all. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. It has shamefully continued unabated, the assorted perpetrators including, with tragic irony, those who themselves were victims of Nazi dehumanization.

Marah Al-Abadseh was one of 20 child scouts in Khan Yunis city in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, carrying 12 fake coffins to commemorate children killed by the Israeli troops during the 18 weeks of Gaza protests and throughout the years of wars and uprisings.

The terrified 13–year old Marah was shedding tears after carrying a small wooden coffin with a picture of Wesal Sheikh Khalil, a girl who was shot dead by Israeli snipers in May while participating in the weekly protest.

Chairman of the International Committee for Breaking the Siege of Gaza, Zaher Birawi, has called on all countries with citizens on board the Freedom Flotilla to protect the lives of their nationals and ensure the delivery of medical aid and fishing boats to the besieged Gaza Strip.

In a press statement issued yesterday, Birawi condemned the Israeli aggression on the flotilla ships in international waters which saw activists arrested and medical supplies seized.

“The legal committee and lawyers of the Freedom Flotilla will do everything necessary to ensure the participants’ safety and their release,” he said.

Birawi stressed that the Israeli navy forces’ interception of the ships in international waters is “piracy in violation of international laws, and an aggression on peaceful activists who do not constitute any threat to the occupying power”.

Israeli occupation authorities have banned, for the 19th day in a row, the entry of basic goods and humanitarian aid, via Kerem Shalom crossing, the sole commercial crossing with Gaza, MP Jamal al-Khudari, head of the People’s Committee to Face the Siege, stated on Sunday.

Khudari said that the most recent truck was loaded with thousands of daily-needed basic goods, in addition to raw materials for industry, building materials, clothing, textiles, wood, household items, stationery and other essentials.

Al-Khudari said, in a press statement, that this prohibition is causing the Palestinian economy, which is already deteriorating due to the blockade, and Israeli policies, direct and indirect losses of millions of dollars.

Freedom Flotilla was intercepted by the Israeli navy on Sunday afternoon, approximately 70 miles from the Gaza Strip shore. Israeli Navy Forces stopped the ship in international waters in violation of international maritime law, after shouting toward the boat via loudspeaker and asking for the boat’s destination.

In a statement, the High Committee for Return and Breaking the Siege called upon the international community to take its responsibility and provide the necessary protection for the Freedom Flotilla Fleet, while also promising increased efforts to break the siege.

“We will move in all directions until the world is convinced that there is no alternative to breaking the siege,” the Committee said.

The Israeli propaganda machine works internationally to undermine the role of Palestinian NGOs which disclose Israeli violations of international law, and maintain the well-being of Palestinian people.

Imagine the following: a toxic op-ed is published that defames your organisation. You contact the website on which it features and are invited to publish a rebuttal.

The next day, you submit your article. As the editors are about to put it online, they are targeted by a sophisticated disinformation campaign.

More than a dozen people call the editors, seemingly on your behalf, and apply heavy pressure to publish the article. One of the callers even tries to bribe them to get it published.

This confuses and intimidates the editors, who have never experienced anything like it.

They fear that publishing under pressure may damage the independence and reputation of their website, which is a news magazine for the European Parliament.

After eight months in Israeli prison, 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi returned home on Sunday morning to a hero’s welcome in her village of Nabi Saleh, in the central occupied West Bank. Arm in arm with her father Bassem and mother Nariman, who was also released on Sunday along with her daughter, the teenager broke down in tears as she was embraced by her younger brothers, extended family, and fellow residents of Nabi Saleh.

Ahed Tamimi, center, and her mother Nariman speak at a press conference in the occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah on 29 July, upon their release after spending eight months in Israeli prison.

Israeli military forces released Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi and her mother Nariman from prison on Sunday.

The pair were given a hero’s welcome in their occupied West Bank village of Nabi Saleh and their release was covered by world media:

Israeli military confirmed on Sunday that they had seized a ship with pro-Palestinian activists sailing from Europe to break the Gaza Strip blockade in the Mediterranean Sea.

Earlier in the day, the Freedom Flotilla activist group said that the al-Awda ("Return") boat under the Norwegian flag carrying medical supplies had been seized, adding that the ship received a warning from the navy prior to the interception.

"The Israeli Navy intercepted a ship that followed from Europe with the intention of violating a legal naval blockade of the Gaza Strip…. The ship is being transferred to the port of Ashdod," the Israeli army said in a press release.

Jail bars won’t silence the truth! Ahed Tamimi is FREE

Images by Latuff

Israeli border police on Saturday arrested two Italian graffiti artists who were painting a mural of a jailed Palestinian teenager, Ahed Tamimi, on the Israeli separation barrier in Bethlehem in the West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.

Tamimi, now 17, was sent to prison for assault after being filmed kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier late last year, when she was 16. She is due to be released on Sunday.

Tamimi became a heroine to Palestinians after the Dec. 15 incident outside her home in the village of Nabi Saleh was streamed live on Facebook by her mother and went viral.

An Israeli police spokesman did not return a call for comment.

Remarkably mature for her age, extraordinary teenager Ahed symbolizes heroic Palestinian resistance against brutal Israeli occupation.

She was unlawfully sentenced to eight months in prison for slapping a heavily armed abusive Israeli soldier in response to being slapped after demanding IDF forces leave her family property where they don’t belong.

She’s a redoubtable freedom fighter, her father Bassem proudly explained, earlier saying she’ll “lead the resistance to (oppressive) Israeli rule,” adding:

Though never arrested until last December, she’s “no stranger to (Israeli) prisons.”

Israeli troopers entered Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest shrine in Islam, and carried out arrests on Friday in what police described as a pursuit of youths who had lobbed rocks and fireworks during clashes with its forces outside.

The rare raid, on a site that is an emblem of Palestinians' statehood hopes and a frequent catalyst of their conflict with Israel, came as medics in Gaza said Israeli army gunfire killed two people - including a boy - during a weekly border protest.

A police spokesman said the troopers were sent into al-Aqsa after suspects who had barricaded themselves in after running confrontations in the surrounding compound, during which masked men launched firecrackers from handheld canisters.

There was no immediate word of any violence in the mosque, whose older male worshippers said they had been allowed to exit after being searched. Witnesses later saw around 20 younger men detained by police, and said mosque prayers later resumed.

A Palestinian teenage girl, who was shot by Israeli soldiers during anti-occupation rallies on Gaza Strip, will be able to walk again, her doctor said.

Meryem Abu-Matar, 16, who lives in Gaza’s Rafah city, was brought to Istanbul for medical treatment.

Since March, Abu-Matar has been through 42 phases of surgery, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) said on Thursday.

The girl can now walk with the support of a walker.

She will soon be able to move without any support, said Dr. Mehmet Veli Karaaltin, her surgeon, who identified her wound as "severe".

He added that the treatment will last a year.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Abu Matar said: “I was targeted because I carry a Palestinian flag. I will continue my struggle."

“My message to the world is that the Palestinian people are unfairly under blockade. We will continue this struggle until we are free," she added.

A long-awaited Middle East peace plan from the Trump administration will include what the White House is calling a robust economic plan to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an official has said.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoys are also working on the most detailed set of proposals to date for the overall plan, the White House official said in a briefing with reporters on Monday.

The plan thus far has no release date. Trump had hoped to reveal it early this year but his decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the embassy there, reversing decades of U.S. policy, inflamed tensions in the region.

The Palestinians have said that they have lost faith in the Trump administration to act as a fair mediator and have boycotted the process since last December’s Jerusalem announcement.

The White House has offered few details on a peace plan that has drawn widespread scepticism even before its unveiling.

My name is Ibrahim Ghunaim. I’m 26 years old rapper from the Gaza Strip. I perform under the moniker MC Gaza.

You may have seen this video of me performing near the front lines of the Great March of Return as Israeli snipers gunned down our youth and rained torrents of tear gas upon us. It’s with a heavy heart that I inform you that was the last video I recorded before in the Gaza Strip before leaving – likely permanently.

Israeli occupation forces closed the entrance gate of the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh, in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah, yesterday evening, preventing the entry and exit of residents.

According to local sources, a large number of Israeli occupation forces was deployed in the village and completely closed its entrance forcefully preventing residents from entering or exiting.

Locals added that the closed gate forced them to take longer, alternative routes.

With less than a thousand residents, Nabi Saleh is one of the smaller villages in the occupied West Bank.

Since 2009, the village has held weekly Friday demonstrations, along with a dozen other villages in the occupied West Bank in protest against Israeli occupation policies.

Israeli forces continued to use lethal force against Palestinian civilians, who participated in peaceful demonstrations organized within the activities of the “Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege” in the Gaza Strip, which witnessed for the 17th week in a row peaceful demonstrations along the eastern and northern Gaza Strip border area. During the reporting period in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces killed a Palestinian civilian while 2 civilians succumbed to their previous wounds. Moreover, the Israeli forces wounded 124 others, including 30 children, 4 women, a male journalist, and a female journalist. 3 of those wounded sustained serious wounds. In the West Bank, the Israeli forces killed a Palestinian civilian and wounded 5 others, including 2 children.

Birthright, arguably the most influential Jewish educator of American Jews, sends 50,000 young Jews to Israel on “apolitical” tours that deny them access to the truth about the occupation. A recent slew of public walk-outs from these trips have resulted lawsuit threats.

Birthright leaders know that if masses of Jews actually see the reality of Israel’s military rule over millions of Palestinians for themselves, they will not only be unable to support it — they will also join the growing movement to end the occupation.

Israel has completely shut down a Palestinian university in Jerusalem amid a series of assaults on academic freedom.

On 14 July, Israeli police raided and shut down the Hind al-Husseini college in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, prohibited an academic conference from taking place and detained 15 participants of the conference.

Police acted on the order of Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of public security and strategic affairs, who claimed that the conference promoted “incitement” against the Israeli state.

As well as being in charge of policing, Erdan leads Israel’s global effort to thwart activism in support of Palestinian rights.

The internal investigation supposedly finds that the deaths of “innocent” protesters were caused by ricocheted bullets or as a result of demonstrators walking into the paths of already fired live ammunition.