The Palestinian Authority on Monday warned that Israel was “playing with fire” after clashes erupted at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem over the closure of the Golden Gate site – also known as the Gate of Mercy – to Muslim worshipers. The PA also accused Israel of “waging war on Islam” and called on the intervention of the international community.

The Jerusalem Police detained five east Jerusalem Arabs who tried to enter the premises of the Golden Gate, which has been closed by a court order.

Israeli military police yesterday raided Al-Aqsa Mosque, attacked students and evicted them from the area and closed Al-Rahma Gate which leads to the holy site, witnesses said.

At the same time, the Israeli military police arrested five Palestinian worshippers, including a woman named Nazmiyeh Bkeerat.

Witnesses said Israeli occupation police reopened the gate after several attempts by angry Palestinian worshippers to enter the area through the door.

According to the witnesses, hundreds of Palestinian worshippers also performed prayers in front of the closed gate in an attempt to put pressure on the Israeli occupation to reopen it.

Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights said yesterday it is deeply concerned about the Israeli decision to deduct salaries of Palestinians killed, wounded and arrested by Israeli occupation forces from tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA), a statement said.

Al Mezan added that Israeli’s actions are a violation of the Paris Protocol signed in 1994 between Israel and the PA.

This act, the statement said, “is a violation of international law, national sovereignty, public funds and all other agreements.”

The organisation reiterated that the Palestinian state is independent, as recognised by the UN on 29 November 2012. This entitles the PA to practice its right to regional sovereignty and to run its public funds.

Nineteen Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were wounded on Sunday during clashes in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army and Palestinian medical sources said.

"IDF (Israel Defence Forces) soldier injured when an explosive device was thrown during Gaza riots on Israel's border fence," the army said on Twitter.

It added that Israeli tanks struck "two Hamas military posts in Gaza in response to the explosive device".

In Gaza, the health ministry of the Islamist Hamas movement that runs the enclave said 19 Palestinians were wounded by live ammunition during the clashes.

Israeli forces expelled a Palestinian family from their home in the Muslim Quarter of occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday and handed it to Jewish settlers.

The Abu Asab family received eviction orders earlier this month demanding they vacate the building by 12 February.

Hatem Abu Asab was able to postpone his family’s expulsion until 28 February through his lawyers, but Israeli police paid no heed.

On Sunday, with no prior warning, Israeli forces surrounded the house and blocked the road leading to it, eyewitnesses told Wattan TV.

They then stormed the house to forcibly evacuate it and prevented family members from collecting their belongings.

“They destroyed me. They destroyed my life. They took everything I own here. My entire life is here,” Rania Abu Asab said in a video after she was kicked out of her house.

“They did not give us time to organize our things. They came in barbarically, attacked my husband, attacked my children and beat my aunt,” she added.

Israel’s freezing of millions of dollars in Palestinian tax revenue will cause the dire situation in Gaza to deteriorate even further, Al Mezan, a human rights group in the territory, warned on Monday.

Thousands of civil servants in the coastal enclave, its population of two million plunged into poverty after more than a decade of economic blockade, have already had to contend with salary cuts and late payments due to “discrimination” by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Now Israel is planning to withhold some $138 million in taxes it collects on behalf of the PA as a form of sanctions over stipends to political prisoners.

Jewish Canadians are deeply divided in their opinions on Israel, and many are highly critical of it. Moreover, a majority does not see criticism of Israel as necessarily anti-Semitic.

Those are key findings of the first survey to ask Jewish Canadians about their views on the situation in Palestine.

Israel says it will withhold $138m in tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority (PA) over payments given to Palestinians involved in attacks against Israelis.

The government's security cabinet said on Sunday it was implementing a law passed last year allowing Israel to withhold funds equivalent to those the PA pays in stipends to Palestinians jailed in Israel, their families, and released prisoners.

The money comes from taxes Israel collects on behalf of the PA.

The United Nations Humans Rights Council is expected to release a series of reports critical of Israel next month, including one reportedly accusing the military of war crimes over its response to violent protests by Palestinians on the Gaza border.

According to the pro-Israel watchdog group UN Watch, other reports are set to accuse Israel of alleged human rights violations in the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War war, and in territories claimed by the Palestinians for a future state, Channel 12 news reported Thursday.

Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs has released a report called Terrorists in Suits: The Ties Between NGOs promoting BDS and Terrorist Organisations. The report has a sense of melodrama, especially its pictures of BDS activists pinned to a noticeboard with red pins connected by red thread, like a scene from a crime drama.

The man behind the report is Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan; he clearly has a wild imagination. Names, places, dates, events, meetings and pictures are all jumbled together to present a scenario which is supposed to deter people from supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and wash away all of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. In doing so, it simply peddles more myths and lies.

Heartbreaking. “Get out of my house!” Palestinian woman after being expelled from her home by Israeli settlers in the Old City in occupied Jerusalem.

Palestinians in Hebron are taking new steps for their community’s safety under constant settler attacks.

Virgin Atlantic has changed the name of an in-flight meal after social media backlash from pro-Israel supporters.

The dish – a mix of Maftoul and other couscous, tomatoes and cucumber seasoned with parsley, mint and lemon vinaigrette – was formerly called “Palestinian couscous salad” on the menu.

However, the name has since been changed to “couscous salad” after various complaints. Some social media users threatened to boycott the airline, accusing Virgin of being “terrorist sympathisers”.

According to an Israeli media report, the Israeli government has completed work on a massive, far-reaching plan that would expel an estimated 36,000 Palestinians from “unrecognized” villages in the Negev Desert. If the plan is approved by the Knesset, Israel’s legislative body, its implementation could begin as soon as this year and would take four years to complete. News of the plan was first published by Israel Hayom – Israel’s largest Hebrew-language newspaper, funded by Sheldon Adelson, the top donor to both U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Tens of Palestinian protesters were wounded and suffered severe breathing problems due to the heavy use of tear gas by the Israeli army as it cracked down on weekly protests in the West Bank city of Bil’in.

After Friday prayers, the protesters gathered in the centre of the village – which is located to the west of Ramallah – and headed towards the Separation Wall near Um Al-Laimoun, in the southern part of Bil’in.

The Israeli army opened fire at the protesters – who included foreign and Israeli peace activists – and threw gas canisters, leaving tens of them suffocating.

Israeli forces this week opted to cut off water supply lines feeding into more than a dozen communities in the West Bank city of Hebron, according to the Palestine News Network.

In total, the changes will affect 17 Mafasir Yatta communities, where an estimated 1,500 Palestinians reside.

The Wednesday move has been largely criticized by locals as yet another Israeli measure to force Palestinians away from their home in order to expand settlements, PNN reported.

Palestinians run to take cover from tear gas canisters fired by Israeli troops on the Gaza-Israel border, east of Gaza City, on Feb. 15, 2019. At least 20 Palestinians were injured on Friday during clashes between hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers in eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel, medics said. (Xinhua)

As Congress tackles urgent issues of reopening government and setting the budget for the country, it takes the time to prioritize a foreign country: H.R.648 contains assurances that Israel will receive $3.8 billion for arms, and funding for refugee resettlement; the bill also includes threats to de-fund the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and any future state of Palestine–if US demands (dictated by the Israel lobby) are not met.

Israel yesterday attacked participants in the Friday protests taking place in the Gaza Strip.

Taking place under the title “Gaza is unbreakable,” yesterday’s marches formed the 47th Friday of the Great March of Return, which has been taking place on the eastern border of the besieged Gaza Strip since March.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that eight Palestinians were wounded, noting that numerous cases of suffocation were also treated in the field. Israel has repeatedly targeted Great March of Return protesters, shooting live ammunition across the Gaza fence in an attempt to shut down the marches.

US special envoy Jared Kushner confirmed Thursday that US President Donald Trump’s peace plan won’t be based on past international understanding such as the 2002 Saudi initiative, which the international community and the Palestinians have long touted as the basis of a two-state solution.

“I think it was a great initiative, in 2002 when it was done, but it hasn’t produced peace, so if that was the framework under which something would be accomplished then I think that would have been accomplished a long time ago, and then I wouldn’t be doing the duty I’m doing right now to try to bring the people together,” Kushner reportedly said behind closed doors at the Warsaw summit. His words were leaked to the Israeli media.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said in a closed-door meeting at the Warsaw summit that Iran funding violence in the Middle East was the key challenge to overcome for peace.

Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip makes it difficult, if not impossible, for cancer patients to receive treatment.

Over the last decade, Israel has controlled and restricted shipments of medicine, among other basic necessities, into Gaza. This often causes severe drug shortages in Gaza hospitals.

“I come to the hospital to receive treatment and I am surprised that there is no treatment,” Sabreen al-Najjar, 40, told The Electronic Intifada.

Al-Najjar is one of many cancer patients in Gaza turned away by hospitals due to severe drug shortages.

“It is unbelievable. They sentence us to death. A slow death,” she added.

On February 14, Valentine's Day, the corporate capitalism machinery will distract the general population with yet another consumerist "holiday" in which we are made to feel lonely, inadequate and/or obliged to spend money in order to demonstrate affection for loved one.

Apart from enforcing the idea of heteronormative and monogamous relationships, Valentine's Day has also come to represent the gross commodification of love and relationships. For some, the day will pass in spending money, for others - in wishing they were spending money, and still others - in wishing they could be with their beloved.

Indeed, on Valentine's Day, there will be many partners and lovers who will suffer, being forcefully separated by racist policies and colonial borders. For Palestinians, this is just another fact of life that Israel enforces upon them.

Under a debilitating siege for more than a decade, Gaza has been rightfully declared the biggest open-air prison in the world. But there is another, similar, prison in Palestine that is less obvious because it suffers from a different kind of siege, undeclared and indirect: the West Bank. Every Palestinian who resides there and holds official Palestinian identification papers is a prisoner in their own home.

Freedom of movement is non-existent for the vast majority of the population because of a myriad of Israeli policies aimed at restricting it to the bare minimum. The situation is certainly shocking yet seems to be largely ignored by the world, especially by our Israeli neighbours.

Former Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman yesterday warned that the next confrontation with the Gaza Strip must be the last.

“For nearly a year, since the [Great March of Return] started along the Gaza Strip border fence, the most volatile Israeli border [has been] the one it shares with the Gaza Strip,” Lieberman said. He then explained that the military intelligence assessment published on Wednesday- which indicated that Israel is likely to face a major escalation with the Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank within the next 12 months – is consistent with his assessment over the past year.

“The question now is not whether there will be another confrontation with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but when will that happen,” he added.

Lieberman said he believed the Israeli government is responsible for “strengthening” the Palestinian resistance factions by not launching a war on the already-besieged Gaza Strip and by easing sanctions against it.

A Palestinian child was some 150 metres from the perimeter fence of the occupied Gaza Strip when he was killed by Israeli soldiers during protests on 8 February.

According to Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCIP), 16-year-old Hassan Nabil Ahmad Nofal had joined a group of youth participating in Great Return March protests around 3.30pm last Friday.

The group was standing around 150 metres from the fence when Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters directly at the youngsters; Hassan was struck on the right side of his head, fracturing his skull.

Taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital for emergency care, Hassan then underwent surgery in Shifa hospital, “where he remained in critical condition”, DCIP stated.

Dr Hazem Kahil, a neurosurgery specialist at Shifa hospital, told DCIP that the surgery was performed to stop a brain bleed, but Hassan was pronounced dead on 12 February.

A 16-year-old Palestinian died on Tuesday from wounds sustained during protests along Gaza’s eastern boundary last week, the health ministry in the territory stated.

Hasan Nabil Ahmad Nofal, struck in the head by an Israeli-fired tear gas canister east of Bureij in central Gaza, is the third child to have died after being injured during Great March of Return protests on 8 February.

Dozens of Israeli settlers launched an attack on Palestinians in the Old City of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank on Tuesday night, yelling “death to Arabs!” in the street and hurling rocks at Palestinian homes.

According to locals, more than 100 settlers accompanied by over 70 armed Israeli forces began marching down Shuhada street at 9pm in the Old City, heading towards the Palestinian neighborhood of Tel Rumeida.

“They were chanting anti-Arab slogans, calling for the expulsion of all Palestinians from the area, saying this is the land of Israel, and saying we should all die,” Badee Dweik, 46, Co-Founder of the Human Rights Defenders group in Hebron told Mondoweiss.

In the US, just as in Israel, Palestinian suffering is silenced, and any mainstream discussion of pain in Palestine immediately gets redirected towards sympathy with Israel. And as Israel is successfully conflated in mainstream discourse with “the Jewish people,” a supposedly homogeneous global community whose members all embrace Zionism, criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, becomes an act of bad faith, an act of antisemitism.

These are the types of headlines you see every day. Most Americans have no idea this is happening… If any of these things had happened to Israelis, U.S. news media would report on them…

In the Gaza Strip, the Israeli forces continued to use lethal force against the participants in the peaceful protests organized along the Gaza Strip borders, which witnessed the peaceful protests for the 46th week along the eastern and northern border area of the Gaza Strip. They also continued to use armed force as well during the incursions into the West Bank.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces killed Hamza Mohamed Ishtawi (17), from al-Zaytoun neighborhood, and Hasan Eyad Shalabi (14), from Khan Yunis, while participating in the Return and Breaking Siege March, east of Gaza City and Khan Yunis. Eyewitnesses said that the civilians killed did not pose threat to the soldiers’ life and they were wounded while present in varying distances along the border fence with Israel. The civilians killed were among the peaceful demonstrators in the eastern border areas.

A group of illegal Israel fanatic colonists invaded, on Tuesday, a Palestinian home, in the Old City of Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank, and threatened to kill the entire family.

The home owner Emad Eqneibi said the colonists demanded him to leave his property so that they can illegally occupy and annex it, and threatened to kill him and his entire family if he does not leave.

Dozens of Palestinians, including members of Fateh Movement in the Old City and nonviolent activists against the Annexation Wall and Colonies, rushed to the property, and vowed to do whatever it takes to protect the family and their home, in coordination with the local Committee against the Annexation Wall and Colonies.

In related news, Israeli colonists attacked Palestinians in the Shuhada Street, in Hebron, before the soldiers rushed to the area, removed local nonviolent activists, who were documenting the invasion, and declared it a “closed zone” to all Palestinians.

Three members of the BDS movement, which is attempting to undermine the state of Israel financially and opposes its politics, have been decorated with the Copenhagen Courage Award for "having worked tirelessly to reveal the apartheid-like nature of the Israeli regime and its systematic violation of international law".

Copenhagen Mayor for Technology and Environment Ninna Hedeager Olsen has triggered mixed reactions by proudly awarding a prize for courage to three activists from the anti-Israel movement BDS at Copenhagen City Hall, the Danish newspaper Berlingske reported.

BDS (which stands for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) is billed as a "Palestinian-led global movement for freedom, justice, and equality". Much of its work is to encourage boycott of Israeli goods and companies. The movement is also working against Israeli settlements it deems illegal.

The Israeli army has prevented Palestinian activists from documenting Israeli settlers’ crimes against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

This came after a group of Palestinian activists called Youth Against Settlement earlier this week launched a campaign to document settler violations in Hebron after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expelled the TIPH UN monitoring force that has documented Israeli crimes for 22 years, Quds Press reported yesterday.

In a statement, the activists said that settlers had already attacked them, despite the fact that they had been operating for only three days. The activists have already documented numerous violations against Hebron’s Palestinians, including attacks on Palestinian primary school pupils.

Electoral challenger Benny Gantz has praised Israel’s illegal settlements as of being of strategic, security and spiritual value.

Head of the Israel Resilience (Hosen L’Yisrael) party Benny Gantz – who is running in the upcoming Israeli general election on 9 April – praised an illegal Israeli settlement bloc in the occupied West Bank during a visit to a primary school there on Monday, Arab 48 reported.

Visiting the Kfar Etzion Field School in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, Gantz wrote in the school’s visitor book: “The [settlement] bloc was a strategic and spiritual settlement asset and will remain so forever.”

He continued by writing that “we [Israel] will strengthen the settlement blocs and the [occupied Syrian] Golan Heights, from which we will never retreat,” adding: “The Jordan Valley will remain our eastern security border. He concluded:

Hamas has presented its vision of how to solve the Palestinian crisis during a meeting in Russia.

In a speech during the inauguration of a conference held by the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Member of Hamas’ Political Bureau – Musa Abu Marzouq – explained that preserving the Palestinian cause must be based on several issues, including a rejection of the so-called “deal of the century”.

The movement, which governs the besieged Gaza Strip, identified a number of essential steps to seek a way out of the current Palestinian crisis, including preserving Palestinian principles and lifting the 12-year-old Israeli siege on Gaza.

As reported by Hamas’ official English website, Abu Marzouq rejected any proposal aimed at establishing a state in Gaza that separates it from the occupied West Bank.

An Israeli intelligence company pursued activists affiliated with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

An investigation published by the New Yorker on Monday revealed that Psy Group Company – which had been involved in an investigation by US special investigator Robert Mueller into allegations of interference in the 2016 US presidential elections – had offered its services to a group of Israeli donors in New York within the framework of a campaign against the BDS movement.

The New Yorker’s investigation showed Psy Group was involved in a campaign devoted to defaming BDS activists at US universities. The Israeli intelligence company offered pro-Israel donors the chance to gather information about the activists and cause “internal instability” in allegedly anti-Israel organisations.

Adalah and Al Mezan appeal to Israeli Supreme Court against lower court ruling finding that Gazans may be denied compensation for damages because Gaza is defined by law as an ‘enemy territory’.

Israeli military forces shot Palestinian high school student Attiya Nabaheen on his 15th birthday in the front yard of his family home in the Gaza Strip on 16 November 2014. Nabaheen was returning from school. He was not armed and was not involved in any violence.

As a result of the shooting, Nabaheen was paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

You might imagine that a report by a multinational observer force documenting a 20-year reign of terror by Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers against Palestinians, in a city under occupation, would provoke condemnation from European and US politicians.

But you would be wrong. The leaking in December of the report on conditions in the city of Hebron, home to 200,000 Palestinians, barely caused a ripple.

About 40,000 separate cases of abuse had been quietly recorded since 1997 by dozens of monitors from Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Italy and Turkey. Some incidents constituted war crimes.

Exposure of the confidential report has now provided the pretext for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expel the international observers. He shuttered their mission in Hebron this month, in apparent violation of Israel’s obligations under the 25-year-old Oslo peace accords.

Last month, Israel opened what has been dubbed by locals and activists as the ‘Apartheid Road’. The four-lane highway features two separate roads divided by a concrete wall – one for Israeli settlers and the other for Palestinians.While the Israeli lane allows settlers quick and easy access to the center of Jerusalem, the Palestinian lane is designed to separate Palestinians off through an underpass, diverging to different areas of the West Bank. Despite Israeli claims that the road “eases traffic congestion” for both Palestinians and Israelis, locals maintain that it is just another step by authorities to further divide the occupied Palestinian territory.

While “alleged” anti-Semitism is becoming more and more exaggerated in the media, and anti-Semitism officials will soon be sitting in every town hall, but in fact the racist attacks against Muslims are on the rise.

Israel has long felt unbound by any strictures of the peace process and sits unchallenged and unaffected, with both the Oslo negotiations strategy of Fatah and the armed resistance of Hamas failing to make an impact. Indeed, in a few months Israelis go to a general election with the issue of the Palestinians only a priority for minor parties.

And on the international front, actors both regional and beyond have failed to step into a breach left by the US, which has ceded any credible mediation role (now even conducting its diplomacy by Twitter) as its longstanding bias toward Israel has become paralyzing policy orthodoxy under Donald Trump.

Four months after her release from an Israeli prison, Palestinian poet and photographer Dareen Tatour received the Oxfam Novib PEN Award for Freedom of Expression in The Hague in January.

Oxfam Novib, the Dutch affiliate of the international charity Oxfam, said it awarded Tatour the prize to highlight “the growing repression of critical voices in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.”

Israeli private intelligence companies Psy-Group, Black Cube, & others specialize in fake online identities known as “avatars,” some work with the neocon group Foundation for Defense of Democracies – the aim is to “destabilize and disrupt anti-Israel movements from within…”

Psy-Group operatives scoured the Internet, social-media accounts, & the “deep” Web for derogatory information about BDS. activists…

They would then release the information online using avatars and web sites that couldn’t be traced back to the company or its American donors…

As a progressive Jew, I find that many of my family members and friends are still what we call “PEP,” progressive except Palestine. Amid ever-worsening injustices created by the Israeli system of apartheid and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, it is past time for this to change.

I am hopeful that the firestorm sparked by Michelle Alexander’s recent New York Times column, “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine,” will finally generate the heat necessary to force more people and groups on the left to overcome the fundamental hypocrisy of the “progressive except Palestine” approach.

I was deeply inspired by Alexander’s column and her decision to speak so honestly about the difficulty of overcoming the fear of backlash over taking a public stand against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The first two Muslim women in the US Congress have angered the pro-Israel lobby by openly supporting the internationally-recognized Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who became the first Muslim members of the House of Representatives in January, have been outspoken about their criticism of Israel’s crimes against the people of Palestine.

Omar has accused the Tel Aviv regime of discrimination against Palestinians similar to apartheid.

In January, she enraged the large pro-Israel contingent in Congress, particularly the largely Democratic US Jewish community, by mocking America’s branding of Israel as a democracy.

“When I see Israeli institute laws that recognize it as a Jewish state and does not recognize the other religions that are living in it, and we still hold it as a democracy in the Middle East, I almost chuckle,” Omar told Yahoo News.

As the Israeli campaign trail moves full speed ahead to the upcoming April 9th elections, rights groups are demanding authorities provide thousands of Palestinian Bedouin citizens of Israel with adequate access to polling stations.

Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel released a statement Monday saying the group is appealing to the Israeli Central Elections Committee Chairman and Interior Minister, demanding that polling stations be placed in 11 “unrecognized” Bedouin villages in the Negev desert.

The 11 villages, which are home to some 40,000 Palestinian Bedouins who have Israeli citizenship, currently have no polling stations or public transportation to reach existing stations.

US-Israeli support for overthrowing Maduro is part of a broader regional agenda targeting Palestinian solidarity

Later this year, Israel’s Supreme Court will hear a petition filed on behalf of a 70-year-old Palestinian citizen who has one simple request: to visit her father’s grave.

The story of Salwa Salem Copty, of her family’s village and her quest to visit the grave of her father, will, unfortunately, not get the attention from journalists and diplomats that it deserves.

Yet, in addition to the human aspect, this is a microcosm of Israel’s institutionalised discrimination against those Palestinians with citizenship - and an insight into the heart of the so-called “conflict”.

The resignation of a government and dismissal of parliament – all to bolster the position of a president – doesn’t inspire confidence.

In fact, the Palestinian Authority finds itself in its weakest position in 25 years of existence. Its head, Mahmoud Abbas, struggles for both relevance and legitimacy. The Palestinian political division between Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas is deeper than ever, and no viable alternatives have risen in their stead.

Israel has long felt unbound by any strictures of the peace process and sits unchallenged and unaffected, with both the Oslo negotiations strategy of Fatah and the armed resistance of Hamas failing to make an impact. Indeed, in a few months Israelis go to a general election with the issue of the Palestinians only a priority for minor parties.

At a time when Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel are being punished by Israel-apologists, an award for the courage of these activists from the Copenhagen Municipality comes as a fresh wind.

The award was presented to BDS activists Ronnie Barkan, Majed Abusalama and Stavit Sinai (known as “Humboldt 3”) by Copenhagen’s Mayor for Technical and Environmental Affairs, Ninna Hedeager Olsen, at a ceremony in Copenhagen’s City Hall Thursday. It stated that

Mr. Barkan and his colleagues have worked tirelessly to reveal the Apartheid-like nature of the Israeli regime and its systematic violation of international law. By doing so, the Copenhagen Courageous laureates have sown the seeds for a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians based on truth and justice.

The Israeli government will approve a law to confiscate funds allocated by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to Palestinians it claims are involved in attacks against Israeli targets, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.

Israel collects tariffs and duties on behalf of the Ramallah-based PA under 1994 Oslo Accords

“Next Sunday, I will convene the security cabinet and we will make the necessary decision to offset the funds,” Netanyahu said during the weekly cabinet meeting.

A group of illegal fanatic Israeli colonists attacked, on Saturday at night, many Palestinian homes in Tel Rumeida neighborhood, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

Media sources said the colonists attacked many homes and attempted to invade them and assault the families.

Local Palestinians intercepted the assailants and forced them to escape, before they were able to physically hurt the families.

Some prominent Democrats have launched yet another Israel advocacy organization. The new “Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI)” intends to counter growing support among Democrats for Palestinian rights – only 19 percent of progressive Democrats now support Israel over Palestinians.

UNICEF said that it is deeply saddened by the killing of two children, aged 13 and 17 years old, shot on Friday, by the Israeli occupation army, near the border fence of the blockaded Gaza Strip.

“The exact circumstances of their death are under verification”, said UNICEF in a Saturday statement. “This brings the number of Palestinian children killed this year to four.”

Israeli forces raided water pump rooms in the village of at-Tiwani, east of Masafer Yatta, south of the southern West Bank district of Hebron, said a local official.

Head of at-Tiwani village council, Mohammed Rabe’, told WAFA that Israeli forces, accompanied by staff from the Israeli civil administration, raided the water pump rooms in the village, and conducted search operations for the pipelines supplying the eastern part of Masafer Yatta with water, in an apparent prelude to cut off water supply to residents.

The administration of Orif Secondary School, in Orif town, southwest of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, had to shut the school down, and sent the students to their homes when illegal Israeli colonialist settlers attacked it, and Israeli soldiers fire live rounds into the education facility.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors Israel’s colonialist activities in northern West Bank, said a group of colonists attacked the school, in addition to attempting to assault schoolchildren trying to enter the facility.

Daghlas added that Israeli soldiers, who arrived at the scene, fired many live rounds into the school campus, apparently to stop the schoolchildren from protesting the invasion.

Fearing for the lives of the students, and further escalation, the school had to shut down for the day, and sent the students to their homes.

The latest casualties in the war on the environment in Palestine were 450 olive trees destroyed last week by Israeli army bulldozers. The destruction of the Palestinian-owned trees took place in the villages of Bardala, in the Jordan Valley, and Yatta in the southern West Bank. Dozens more were also destroyed by illegal Jewish settlers.

It is a myth that only Zionist Israel “made the desert bloom.” On the contrary, since its establishment on the ruins of more than five hundred Palestinian villages and cities that it has destroyed and wiped off the map, Israel has done the exact opposite. The land inhabited by Palestinian Muslims, Christians and Jews for thousands of years has been disfigured beyond belief by Israel in the matter of a few decades.

Palestinian group Fatah on Sunday decried calls by Israeli settlers for the assassination of President Mahmoud Abbas.

“The Israeli incitement is the result of the policy of hatred practiced by the Israeli government against the Palestinians,” Fatah spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi said in a statement.

He accused Israel of fomenting terrorism by “pursuing its occupation, building an Apartheid barrier, preventing the freedom of movement, [carrying out] field executions and home demolitions and killing and arresting children”.

“It is not President Abbas, who is defending the rights of our people in accordance with international legitimacy,” the spokesman said.

The Dutch government has announced it will begin recognising the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as official birthplaces for Palestinians who were born in the country after the establishment of Israel.

While the Netherlands does not yet recognise the State of Palestine, it will recognise those Palestinian territories as the origin of birth for those born after May 15, 1948, when the British Mandate officially ended.

I dream someday that our living nightmare will end. Images like a sister
crying over the body of her 14 year old brother Hasan Shalabi who was shot
in the heart simply for wanting to have a life. The video of the same kid
so full of life saying he dreams of getting a job to help his family of
nine in Gaza haunt me. He is just a kid and I cannot imagine the pain of
his family. I imagine someday I will not hear about destruction of the
Amazon rain forest or bleeching of coral reefs or another “trophy hunt” or
of a girl murdered (like Palestinian Swar murdered by cruel men for “honor”
or the 5 year old raped and murderedin India). I dream of India going back
to its anti-colonial days instead of buying billions in weapons it does not
need from Israel (a colonial state). I dream of days like when my
grandfather’s friend in school was a Jewish student (i.e. I dream of the
end of apartheid and all of us living together in one country in friendship
as before).

I don’t fear the snipers’ shots.” This Palestinian rapper filmed this music video under live Israeli fire.

The first clip – the one we watched – was the election campaign spot produced by Benny Gantz, leader of the newly formed Hosen LeYisrael party (Israel Resilience Party), with its much-mocked slogan: “No more right-wing or left-wing; it is just Israel first.”

The second clip – the one we didn’t watch – was recorded on the phone of a soldier in the Netzah Yehuda Battalion of the Kfir Brigade. In it, Israeli soldiers filmed themselves abusing two Palestinian detainees, a father and son. The son was forced to watch as the soldiers broke his father’s ribs.

Well, that’s certainly one clip we’d rather not watch: images of soldiers mocking and beating a father and son. Who would want to see something so horrific? Or to hear it, for that matter: did the soldier’s smartphone also record the son’s voice crying out his father’s name? Did it capture the sound of the father’s ribs breaking, one by one?

Israeli occupation forces killed two protesters in Gaza on Friday, both of them children, according to Al Mezan, a human rights group in the territory.

The deaths bring to three the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during the week. Abdallah Faisal Tawalbeh, 21, was shot dead by soldiers in the northern West Bank on Monday.

Also on Friday, Yasir Hamid Ishtayeh, from the West Bank city of Nablus, was reported to have died in Israeli prison, two days after the death of Faris Baroud in his 28th year of imprisonment.

On Friday, Hasan Iyad Abd al-Fattah Shalabi, 14, died after he was shot in the chest while 60 meters from the boundary fence with Israel in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

Israel has launched a smear campaign against activists affiliated with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, labeling them “terrorists in suits”.

Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry launched the campaign last weekend with a series of posters depicting prominent BDS activists as “terrorists”, using the hashtag #TerroristsInSuits to smear the individuals’ professional credibility and the BDS movement as a whole.

Kuwait and Indonesia urged the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 6 to call for protection of Palestinians following Israel’s decision to suspend an international observer mission in Hebron, where hundreds of hard-line Jewish settlers live alongside more than 200,000 Palestinians, but diplomats said the United States objected.

The two predominantly Muslim nations on the council called closed-door discussions on the Israeli announcement and then circulated a draft press statement that would recognize the mission’s “efforts to foster calm in a highly sensitive area and fragile situation on the ground.” But the U.S., Israel’s closest ally, rejected the proposed statement, diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because consultations were private.

The US has said that Israel had “every right” to expel a UN monitoring force from the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

US State Department spokesman Robert Palladino yesterday said that it was Israel’s right not to renew the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), a UN body which monitors the situation in Hebron in the occupied West Bank. TIPH’s mandate must be renewed every six months by Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) under the 1997 Interim Agreement, which was signed in the wake of the Oslo Accords.

Palladino told a US press briefing that:

Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the Israeli decision not to renew [TIPH’s mandate], it would be inaccurate to accuse Israel of not having the right to make this decision under the 1997 agreement. This is a sovereign decision and it’s the right of either party to make that agreement.

Israeli authorities have defended the actions of a police officer who opened fire on a Palestinian couple as they stood in their own home behind a closed window, reported Haaretz.

The incident occurred on 1 November, 2015, when “municipal inspectors backed by a large group of policemen” entered Issawiya in occupied East Jerusalem “to collect debts”.

The couple, Nadia and Mazen Abu Humus, “were watching from a first-floor window, which Nadia asked Mazen to close”, reported Haaretz.

“Sometime after he did so,” the paper continued, “a black, sponge-tipped bullet shattered the window and hit him in the face. Fragments of glass hit Nadia in the face and inflicted deep cuts in her eye, which needed stitches.”

After the couple sued the state for $28,000 in damages, the state told the court this week that the police officer’s conduct was “proportionate and reasonable”.

Israeli forces continued to use excessive force against the peaceful protestors in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. A Palestinian civilian succumbed to his wound while participating in a protest organized in Zikim” military base. 100 civilians, including 29 children, 3 women, a journalist, and a female paramedic, were wounded.

9 civilians were wounded in the West Bank. A Palestinian civilian were killed and a child was wounded near a military checkpoint in the northern West Bank, under the pretext of throwing a homemade pipe bomb at the soldiers. 7 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children, were wounded in separate incidents in the West Bank.

On Sunday afternoon, seventy New York human rights advocates gathered in a noisy, musical protest in front of Carnegie Hall to demonstrate against an extravagant fundraising brunch and performance by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO).

The IPO, a self-proclaimed “cultural ambassador” representing the state of Israel, orchestrates a positive image of Israel to divert attention from its human rights abuses, as part of the “Brand Israel” initiative launched in 2006. An Israeli Foreign Ministry official explained Israeli government efforts to rebrand Israel through the arts in 2009, saying, “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits” to “show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.” The IPO website proudly states that the Orchestra “represent[s] the State of Israel across the world.”

But the conflict in the region is not taking place on the Israeli-Lebanese border, but in every inch of occupied Palestine. Can the UN ambassadors carry out tours to see the daily violations against Palestinians and the suffering inflicting on them?

Can the UN ambassadors visit the historical Palestinian city of Tiberias in Israel and see how the Israeli occupation has been preventing the Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel from performing prayers at Al-Bahr Mosque since 1948? Can they visit the mosque and see what is happening there and report what they see to the UN? Can they visit dozens of mosques which have been turned into bars, nightclubs or museums in a complete disrespect to their religious status?

A day after the US Senate passed a bill that would encourage state and local governments to sanction contractors who boycott Israel, advocates for Palestinian rights in the United States say the vote nonetheless displays a shift in how Israel is viewed in Washington.

All the Democratic Party's presidential hopefuls in the Senate voted against the bill on Tuesday, including Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren, who have formally announced their intention to run for the Democratic nomination in 2020.

Other Democratic senators who have not yet formally thrown their names into the running - such as Sherrod Brown, Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley - also voted against the legislation, which ultimately passed in a 77-23 vote.

The United States has blocked a draft United Nations Security Council statement on Wednesday that would have expressed regret at Israel's decision to eject a foreign observer force from the Palestinian city of Hebron, diplomats said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week he would not renew the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), accusing the observers of unspecified anti-Israel activity.

Norway, which has headed the multi-country observer mission for the past 22 years, said: "The one-sided Israeli decision can mean that the implementation of an important part of the Oslo accords is discontinued."

Israel's top court enables and validates the disposition of Palestinians and the demolition of their homes in the occupied West Bank, a new report has found.

According to the report, which was released on Wednesday by Israeli rights group B'tselem, Israel's Supreme Court has been enabling the state to continue implementing illegal policies while ignoring the defects in Israel's "planning policy" in the West Bank.

The report, "Fake Justice", details how the state's policy minimises Palestinian construction and aims to expand the building of illegal Jewish settlements.

"When, faced with no other option, Palestinians are forced to build without permits, the structures are deemed 'unlawful' and Israel issues demolition orders," B'Tselem said.

A bipartisan slate of House members introduced a bill that would grant money to Holocaust education in schools.

The Never Again Education Act would establish the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund in the US Treasury. The bill would combine appropriated funds and private donations.

Time and again, when Holocaust survivors, such as the Israeli historian Saul Friedlander on the occasion of the anniversary for the victims of National Socialism, believe that “defending Israel’s right to exist … is a fundamental moral obligation” makes me stunned, and so on I am appalled by the one-sidedness of the historian and contemporary witnesses. (1) I find it simply absurd for Holocaust survivors, of all people, to defend a state that has lost all moral integrity through its decade-long occupation of Palestine and the constant onslaught of land. In fact Friedlander was lucky enough to find his home in 1948 in the “Jewish State”. Like many others, he has obviously never wondered what this “happiness” was! For he too, like many others, has repressed the fact that this “happiness” was created on the misfortune of the more than 750,000 Palestinians expelled from their ancestral home, homeless to this day.

While the details of President Trump’s “deal of the century” peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians are still secret, officials offered some spoiler alerts, saying that the White House feels no need to try to offer a balanced plan, or do anything to show themselves to be honest brokers.

Instead, they say the administration wants to underscore that it is “proudly supportive of Israel,” and feels no need to balance the peace proposal with anything that the Palestinians might want, because they don’t see an “equivalency” between the two.

The Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) supports the faculty at Pitzer College calling to suspend a complicit study abroad program in Israel over its discriminatory practices.

PFUUPE, which represents more than 6,000 Palestinian university staff at 13 higher education institutions in the occupied Palestinian territory, commends our colleagues at Pitzer College for overwhelmingly supporting this principled stand for Palestinian human rights and for equality.

Most importantly, we thank you for listening to us and acting upon the call from the vast majority of Palestinians, including academics and students, to refrain from business-as-usual academic relations with Israeli institutions while we are forced to live under oppression.

We hold dear the universal right to academic freedom, on principle and because Palestinians are obliged to fight for it every day, along with our right to education.

When Israeli occupation forces shot three secondary school students, critically injuring two of them, last week, it was hardly an isolated incident.

The students were injured after soldiers raided Tuqu village near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, surrounding a high school. The military fired tear gas and live ammunition after being confronted by youths.

The frequency of such violence in or near Palestinian schools in the West Bank has increased during the current academic year.

“Incidents of interference in schools by Israeli forces” include “threats of demolition, clashes on the way to school between students and security forces, teachers stopped at checkpoints, and the violent actions of Israeli forces and settlers on some occasions,” according to a statement by United Nations officials.

The bulk of the 111 “interferences to education” in the West Bank documented by the UN in 2018 took place in the last four months of the year.

Israeli settlers vandalized a mosque with Hebrew-language graffiti on Monday in the occupied West Bank village of Deir Dibwan near Ramallah.

Settlers also poured flammable material on the shoe rack placed at the entrance of the mosque.

Among the anti-Palestinian slogans were, “Here they incite to murder Jews” and “The Jewish nation lives,” as well as the Star of David symbol.

Pro-Israel groups are responding to what they call anti-Israel ads popping up around Los Angeles with billboards of their own.

Two billboard trucks featuring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s image cruised the streets of Hollywood and other parts of Los Angeles during the holiday weekend. The billboards include a quote from King, saying, "Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world."

"In 1968, he made a very strong statement about Israel's right to exist, in security, as a Jewish state," said Gary Ratner, senior executive of StandWithUs.

StandWithUs, a pro-Israel education and advocacy group, says it started this campaign to counter what it considers anti-Israel billboards being circulated by a pro-Palestinian group.

Last Monday, Israeli authorities announced a plan to “forcibly transfer 36,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel living in unrecognized villages in the country’s southern Naqab (Negev) region in order to expand military training areas and implement what it called ‘economic development’ projects,” according to Adalah (The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel).

The American Jewish group IfNotNow noticed this, and posted the article with the heading:

This is ethnic cleansing.

IfNotNow are now making it clear that when they speak of opposition to “occupation”, they are not just speaking about the 1967 occupation, but also the 1948 occupation. Or as they formulate it:

And this is part of what, when we demand that the Occupation end, we are talking about.

Israeli settlers in the southern occupied West Bank have “posted flyers warning Palestinian labourers not to cooperate with Israeli human rights activists or organisations if they want to keep their jobs”, reported +972 Magazine.

Settlers based in the so-called Gush Etzion bloc “have been posting these intimidating flyers around Palestinian villages nearby”, stated the article. “The flyers threaten to ban Palestinians who cooperate with human rights groups from working in settlements there.”

The flyer includes photos and names of prominent Israeli and Palestinian activists, and singles out Ta’ayush and Rabbis for Human Rights, “two organisations that accompany and protect Palestinians in the occupied West Bank from threats of settler violence”, +972 Magazine reported.

Israel began construction on the over-ground portion of the Gaza border barrier that will connect to the under-construction sea barrier aimed at preventing the movement of the Hamas military wing out of the coastal enclave and into Israel.

The Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed, on Sunday, that the over-ground section of the barrier will be 65 kilometers (40 miles) long and will be six meters (20 feet) high.

The Israeli Defense Ministry’s border administration said, “The border is uniquely suited to the threats from the Gaza Strip and will give a comprehensive solution to preventing entry into Israel.”

The barrier is meant to prevent underground tunnels from Gaza, Ma’an News Agency reports. The barrier, estimated to cost 3 billion shekels ($833 million), will include a concrete wall fitted with sensors and reaching dozens of meters deep into the ground and standing six meters high from ground level.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has officially ceased all assistance to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

According to Reuters, the move came in line with a January 31st deadline set by the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA), a new US legislation that allows Americans to sue foreign aid recipients in US court over alleged complicity in “acts of war.”

Reuters quoted a senior US official who confirmed that all USAID operations were ceased in the Palestinian Territory, including the end of some $60 million in U.S. aid for Palestinian security forces.

Following the passage of the ATCA, the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to Reuters, declined further US funding for its security forces and other branches of government, over concerns they could be exposed to anti-terrorism lawsuits.

Hundreds of orphans from the besieged Gaza Strip gathered near the Erez Crosing, in the northern Gaza Strip, to protest the cutting of their families’ salaries.

The orphans, victims of decades of living under Israel’s illegal draconian siege, have been left under miserable conditions in the coastal enclave, without any source of income, a local source reported, according to Days of Palestine.

They are calling for ending the 12 year-old blockade imposed on Gaza. They are also protesting the measures that have been taken by PA president Mahmoud Abbas, and calling on him not to hinder the struggle for their basic needs, and to not stand beside Israel in punishing them, the source added.

Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister described Arab-Israeli parliamentarians on Sunday as a “Trojan horse” seeking to destroy Israel. Miri Regev made her comment after the MKs had a meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Their place is in Gaza,” added Regev, “and not in Jerusalem.”

The MKs Ahmed Tibi, Talen Abu Arar and Masud Ghnaim were among a group of Israeli Arabs who met President Erdogan at the Tarabya Presidential Campus in Istanbul recently. They were told by Erdogan that Turkey will not turn its back on the Palestinian cause or the Palestinian people. He stressed that his country would share “all means available” for ending the Israeli occupation and establishing peace.

“Time and time again,” complained Regev, “[Arab MK Ahmad] Tibi and his group insist on proving to everyone that they are not really worthy of being members of the Israeli Knesset, they are [a Trojan horse] who seek the end of the State of Israel.”

Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin has revealed that the goal of the upcoming Israeli government is to settle an additional one million Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, Quds Press reported yesterday.

The Arabic site said Israeli news website 0404 revealed that Levin made his remarks during a meeting with the Chairman of Samaria Regional Council Yossi Dagan in the occupied West Bank.

“We agreed on reinforcing settlement, accelerating building and creating a situation where settlement does not grow, but develop very fast in order not to meet the needs of the settlers, but to meet the developing settlement,” Levin said.

Israel’s Prime Minister said on Sunday that the General Election campaign would not stop his government from bombing the Gaza Strip or Iran, Anadolu has reported. The election is due to be held in April.

“If calm is not maintained in Gaza, Israel will not hesitate to move against it even during the election period,” Benjamin Netanyahu told his weekly Cabinet meeting. “I [also] have a message to the tyrants in Tehran: Israel will continue moving overtly to protect its future.”

The Israeli occupation authorities continue to fear any Palestinian retaliation for the Israel Defence Forces’ ongoing aggression and killing of unarmed demonstrators taking part in the Great March of Return protests along the nominal border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. Protesters are calling for an end to the 12-year siege of Gaza led by Israel, and to reinforce their legitimate right to return to their homes and land occupied since Israel was created in 1948.

Israeli authorities impose “systematic legal discrimination” on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, an internal European Union (EU) report has acknowledged.

The confidential diplomats’ report, published last July, was seen by EUobserver.

The document, put together by EU ambassadors in Jerusalem and Ramallah, is intended to “serve as input for Brussels and [EU] capitals” in forming Middle East policy.

According to the report, the 2.7 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank “face systematic legal discrimination” under Israel’s “quasi-permanent occupation”.