Frankly Speaking: Are Palestinian Christians facing extinction?

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Updated 29 January 2024
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Frankly Speaking: Are Palestinian Christians facing extinction?

  • Palestinian pastor describes Israel’s Gaza war as “a genocide,” slams Western governments for failing to protect Palestinians
  • Rev. Munther Isaac insists Christians seek no special treatment, says he does not want to see Israel destroyed or Jews leave

DUBAI: Israel’s brutal war in Gaza is threatening to end the existence of Palestinian Christians in both the enclave and the occupied West Bank, Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem has said.

Appearing on “Frankly Speaking,” the Arab News weekly show, the Palestinian pastor did not mince words while speaking on topics ranging from the Church’s position on the conflict to whether the West has begun turning on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It is a genocide. Israel told the world what it is doing, what it wants to do, and facts speak for themselves,” he said.

“How was the killing of thousands of children self-defense? How is that related to Oct. 7? How was the displacement of close to 2 million people self-defense?”




Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem spoke with Katie Jensen on Frankly Speaking. (Arab News photo)

Militants led by the Palestinian group Hamas killed around 1,300 people, mostly civilians, in an unprecedented attack on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7 last year. Another 250 people were taken hostage, according to Israel.

The events triggered Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and reduced vast swathes of the enclave to rubble.

“It became clear to us, especially as Palestinians, in the very first few weeks of the war, even days, that this is an attempt to end life in Gaza as we know it,” Isaac said.

The war has had a ripple effect beyond Gaza, with the tens of thousands of Christians who live in the West Bank also suffering, Isaac added.




Palestinian Christians march in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on Oct. 23, 2023, in solidarity with the people of Gaza amid Israeli aggression. (AFP)

“Here in the West Bank, many Palestinian Christian families have already left out of fear. They look at what was happening in Gaza and they think, ‘could this happen to us one day?’”

Isaac said it is “impossible to thrive as a community in the midst of conflict, oppression and occupation.

“Life here was so difficult before Oct. 7; it’s even more difficult now. Many have lost their jobs because there is no tourism. Jerusalem is completely blocked now, isolated from us.”




Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem spoke with Katie Jensen on Frankly Speaking. He said Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide and are completely unrelated to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack. (Arab News photo)

Isaac’s community were already a minority dealing with their own challenges even prior to Oct. 7, with just around 1,000 Christians residing in Gaza.

Though Israel often touts itself as a protector of Christians in the Middle East, the bombing campaigns in Gaza have laid waste to homes and churches of Palestinian Christians there.

“There is this illusion that Israel treats Christians favorably or in a special way. And if anything, this war made sure that this is not true,” Isaac told Katie Jensen, the host of “Frankly Speaking.”

The bombing of Gaza’s Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church on Oct. 19 claimed the lives of at least 18 Palestinian civilians who were sheltering in the church. Two months later, Israeli snipers reportedly shot and killed a mother and daughter as they left the sole Catholic Church in Gaza.




This picture taken on January 5, 2024, shows Gaza City's Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, damaged in Israeli bombardment during the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

“Everyone who sees what happened in Gaza realizes that everybody is a target. Churches were not safe. Christians took refuge in the churches thinking that they were safe, but evidently, they were wrong,” Isaac said.

Though the already-small Gazan Christian community has been struck a particularly severe blow with the deaths of many of its members, Isaac made it clear that he did not seek any special treatment for Palestine’s Christians.

“I don’t think we want to be treated in a special way,” he said. “We want an end to the war. We want an end to the occupation.

“We want to contribute in a reality in which there are equal rights to all citizens. We want to feel as equals to everyone else in this land, Muslims and Jews.”




Palestinians search the destroyed annex of the Greek Orthodox Saint Porphyrius Church that was damaged in a strike on Gaza City on October 20, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and Hamas. (AFP)

Moving on to South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Isaac reiterated that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide and are completely unrelated to the Oct. 7 attack.

He expressed shock over “the fact that Western countries that boast all the time about human rights and international law are willing to turn such a blind eye to something like this.”

He praised South Africa’s initiation of the proceedings against Israel, which began at the end of December last year.

The ICJ handed down its ruling on Jan. 26, ordering Israel to “prevent genocide and desist from killing, injuring, destroying life and preventing births,” enable the provision of humanitarian services, and submit regular reports to the court.

Despite ruling in South Africa’s favor on many accounts, the judgement stopped short of ordering an immediate ceasefire — and many are skeptical that the ruling will be enforceable or anything more than symbolic.




Members of the South African legal team talks to journalists at Tambo International Airport in Ekurhuleni, South Africa, on January 14, 2024, upon their return from The Netherlands, where they represented their country in a two-day hearing against Isreal at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. (AFP)

However, for Isaac, it is important that “Israel realize that there are countries (and) leaders willing to stand firm and take courageous positions. Israel has been doing what it’s been doing because no one ever held Israel accountable.”

He said: “I was pleased just with the idea that all the crimes of Israel have been displayed in front of the whole world to see.

“I am very pleased that it’s a country like South Africa that led the efforts, because they have the moral credibility and authority to speak about such issues. A country that endured colonization and apartheid has the credibility to speak against colonization and apartheid, and a genocide.”

During his Christmas sermon last year, an emotional plea titled “Christ in the Rubble,” Isaac delivered a scathing condemnation of what he viewed as hypocrisy, double standards and silence practiced by both Western nations and the church.

“In the shadow of the empire they turn the colonizer into the victim and the colonized into the oppressor,” he said.

 

 

In his now-viral sermon, Isaac slammed what he saw as the hypocrisy of Western states, saying: “To our European friends, I never, ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again. And I mean this.”

While Palestinians have witnessed the world’s support, from the ICJ ruling to mass protests and outpourings of solidarity across the world, others were not so keen to criticize Israel for its actions. The US, UK and Germany, among others, opposed the judgment.

With more and more civilians dying as a result of its bombardment and military operations in Gaza, there are signs that even Israel’s strongest allies are beginning to distance themselves. Isaac, though, sees any signs of support from major Western powers so far as empty words.

“For months now, we’ve heard that America has put some red lines to Israel as to what it can do and what it cannot do. And all these red lines have been crossed,” he said.

For Isaac, “anything America says about the war comes to us as empty words. Until we see it, we will (not) believe it. And to be honest, this has been the most important element that empowered Israel and enabled Israel to commit such war crimes, because no one is holding them accountable. You can say whatever you want in press conferences, but it’s what facts on the ground are that matters to us.”




Jewish Americans march in midtown Manhattan, New York City, on December 28, 2023, against the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza amid Israeli bombardment. (Getty Images via AFP)

Deploring what he called Christian-majority countries’ failure to support Palestinian rights, he said: “It’s very disappointing, and disheartening, to be honest, especially when you combine that with public statements from many of these countries about their concern about the Christian presence in the Middle East.

“Yet all they do is support policies that endanger our presence. It’s so hypocritical and it’s so dismissive of our plights, our opinions, and our perspectives. They never talk to us.”

“They don’t look at us Palestinians as equals, whether we are Christians or Muslims. This is the heart of the issue,” he said.

“They have other plans. They have political ambitions. They have political alliances, and that is what they care about the most (at) the expense of our presence, our reality on the ground.”

 

 

In addition to calling out the silence or double standards of governments, Isaac criticized the stance of churches, many of whom as institutions remain silent even if congregants express their support.

“Church leaders are not speaking for their people. I think the people clearly realize there is severe injustice, and they’re very concerned about what is happening in Gaza. Yet church leaders are paralyzed to speak and to challenge Israel for what it’s doing.”

He was asked if religious position really matters in a largely secular world, where politics and upcoming elections clearly have the upper hand.

“I hope it does, and the question is, which religious position matters,” he said. “Let us not forget that Israel uses the Bible to justify what it’s doing.

“Many Christians support Israel for theological beliefs and certainly many, not just Jewish groups, use religion to justify exclusivity and fundamentalism and the denial of the rights of the other.”




Pro-Palestinian supporters wearing masks picturing Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L), as well as US and British leaders march by the Houses of Parliament in London during a demonstration on Jan. 6, 2024, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. (AFP)

Isaac did not shy away from calling on faith leaders to take a strong stance on Gaza, saying “it’s time that the voices that believe in inclusivity, in peace, in justice and equality make their voices heard, and not in a diplomatic nice way.

“I’m tired, to be honest, of faith leaders just calling for peace and praying for peace,” he said.

“We need to call things out by their name. There is a system of apartheid in our country. It is time to speak to uphold these principles.”

As a religious figure, what is Isaac’s position on the right of Jews to be able to live in peace, particularly given that Jerusalem is a shared holy site for the three Abrahamic faiths?

“Everybody has the right to live in peace everywhere,” he said. “When Western Christian leaders press us on this, I say Jews should have the right and freedom to live in peace everywhere, in the United States, in Europe, even in Arab countries.

“We should be in a position where Jews don’t feel threatened anywhere.”

Elaborating on the point, he said: “It seems that the whole world is determined to make sure Jews are safe, but not in their land, in our land. And then they blame us for it as if we are antisemites, whereas antisemitism is what drove Jews from Europe to begin with, to come to our land.”




Israeli soldiers restrain Jewish settlers after they stormed the Palestinian West Bank village of Dayr Sharaf, located about seven kilometers from the Jewish Einav settlement following the death of an Israeli man on November 2, 2023. (AFP)

Isaac said he does not “want to see Israel destroyed or Jews leave,” adding that he desired a future in which his children “will have Israeli friends.

“It’s not just to end the conflict, but to live in a reality in which we are friends and neighbors with the Israelis,” he said.

While safety and equality for all is a priority, Isaac said Palestinians’ right to exist should not be negated.

“The world was okay with Israel shifting more and more and more to the right, openly saying there will never be a Palestinian state, openly saying only Jews have a right to the land, and then electing openly racist leaders, continuing with the building of settlements for all these years, making sure there can never be a Palestinian state, and then blaming the Palestinians for it,” he said.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me. So, unless we as an international community, as faith leaders, unite and call for this idea of justice and equal rights, it will not happen.”

 

 


Hezbollah says launched drones at ‘sensitive military targets’ in Tel Aviv

Updated 27 November 2024
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Hezbollah says launched drones at ‘sensitive military targets’ in Tel Aviv

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched drones at “sensitive military targets” in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening, after deadly Israeli strikes in Beirut and as news of a ceasefire deal was announced.
“In response to the targeting of the capital Beirut and the massacres committed by the Israeli enemy against civilians,” Hezbollah launched “drones at a group of sensitive military targets in the city of Tel Aviv and its suburbs,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement.
 

 


What does the US-brokered truce ending Israel-Hezbollah fighting include?

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024. (AP)
Updated 27 November 2024
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What does the US-brokered truce ending Israel-Hezbollah fighting include?

  • The Lebanese army would deploy troops to south of the Litani to have around 5,000 soldiers there, including at 33 posts along the border with Israel, a Lebanese security source told Reuters

BEIRUT: Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah are set to implement a ceasefire early on Wednesday as part of a US-proposed deal for a 60-day truce to end more than a year of hostilities.
The text of the deal has not been published and Reuters has not seen a draft.
US President Joe Biden announced the deal, saying it was designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities. Israel’s security cabinet has approved it and it will be put to the whole cabinet for review. Lebanon Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed the deal, which Hezbollah approved last week.
The agreement, negotiated by US mediator Amos Hochstein, is five pages long and includes 13 sections, according to a senior Lebanese political source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Here is a summary of its key provisions.

HALT TO HOSTILITIES
The halt to hostilities is set to begin at 4 a.m local time (0200 GMT) on Wednesday, Biden announced, with both sides expected to cease fire by Wednesday morning.
The senior Lebanese source said Israel was expected to “stop carrying out any military operations against Lebanese territory, including against civilian and military targets, and Lebanese state institutions, through land, sea and air.”
All armed groups in Lebanon — meaning Hezbollah and its allies — would halt operations against Israel, the source said.

ISRAELI TROOPS WITHDRAW
Two Israeli officials said the Israeli military would withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days. Biden said the troops would gradually pull out and civilians on both sides would be able to return home.
Lebanon had earlier pushed for Israeli troops to withdraw as quickly as possible within the truce period, Lebanese officials told Reuters. They now expect Israeli troops to withdraw within the first month, the senior Lebanese political source said.
A Lebanese official told Reuters the deal included language that preserved both Lebanon’s and Israel’s rights to self-defense.

HEZBOLLAH PULLS NORTH, LEBANESE ARMY DEPLOYS
Hezbollah fighters will leave their positions in southern Lebanon to move north of the Litani River, which runs about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the border with Israel.
Their withdrawal will not be public, the senior Lebanese political source said. He said the group’s military facilities “will be dismantled” but it was not immediately clear whether the group would take them apart itself, or whether the fighters would take their weapons with them as they withdrew.
The Lebanese army would deploy troops to south of the Litani to have around 5,000 soldiers there, including at 33 posts along the border with Israel, a Lebanese security source told Reuters.
“The deployment is the first challenge — then how to deal with the locals that want to return home,” given the risks of unexploded ordnance, the source said.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israeli strikes on Lebanon, many of them from south Lebanon. Hezbollah sees the return of the displaced to their homes as a priority, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah told Reuters.
Tens of thousands displaced from northern Israel are also expected to return home.

MONITORING MECHANISM
One of the sticking points in the final days leading to the ceasefire’s conclusion was how it would be monitored, Lebanon’s deputy speaker of parliament Elias Bou Saab told Reuters.
A pre-existing tripartite mechanism between the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), the Lebanese army and the Israeli army would be expanded to include the US and France, with the US chairing the group, Bou Saab said.
Israel would be expected to flag possible breaches to the monitoring mechanism, and France and the US together would determine whether a violation had taken place, an Israeli official and a Western diplomat told Reuters.
A joint statement by Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron said France and the US would work together to ensure the deal is applied fully.

UNILATERAL ISRAELI STRIKES
Israeli officials have insisted that the Israeli army would continue to strike Hezbollah if it identified threats to its security, including transfers of weapons and military equipment to the group.
An Israeli official told Reuters that US envoy Amos Hochstein, who negotiated the agreement, had given assurances directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel could carry out such strikes on Lebanon.
Netanyahu said in a televised address after the security cabinet met that Israel would strike Hezbollah if it violated the deal.
The official said Israel would use drones to monitor movements on the ground in Lebanon.
Lebanese officials say that provision is not in the deal that it agreed, and that it would oppose any violations of its sovereignty.

 


3 dead in Israel strikes on Syria border crossings with Lebanon: monitor, authorities

Updated 27 November 2024
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3 dead in Israel strikes on Syria border crossings with Lebanon: monitor, authorities

BEIRUT, Lebanon: A Syria war monitor said Israeli strikes on the Lebanon-Syria border late Tuesday killed two soldiers as Lebanon also reported one dead, the latest frontier raids amid news of a Hezbollah and Israel truce.
“Israeli warplanes targeted the Al-Arida crossing in Tartus province for the first time, and the Dabussiyeh and Jussiyeh crossings in Homs province,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reporting “two regime forces killed” at Dabussiyeh.
Lebanon’s health ministry said an “Israeli enemy strike” on the Al-Arida crossing killed “one person,” adding that the toll was provisional.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, also reported other strikes on unofficial crossings and bridges between the two countries.
State news agency SANA reported “Israeli aggression that targeted the Al-Arida and Dabussiyeh border crossings with Lebanon,” without reporting casualties.
On Monday, Israel also struck a crossing on the Syria-Lebanon border, the latest in a wave of attacks targeting such routes since September.
Syrian state television reported Israeli strikes on several bridges in the Qusayr region near the border.
Israel’s military said strikes that day targeted “smuggling routes to transfer weapons” to Hezbollah, and followed other operations against “Syrian regime smuggling routes” in recent weeks.
Israel intensified its strikes against Syria from September 26, days after launching an intense bombing campaign mainly targeting Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, after almost a year of clashes with the group across the Lebanon border.
Since Syria’s war broke out in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting the army and groups including Hezbollah.
 

 


Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war

Updated 27 November 2024
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Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war

  • ACRI accuses Netanyahu govt. of “excessive, unrestrained and illegal use of force” in occupied territory in a new report
  • Says govt. is “implementing profound changes to all aspects of control, most of which are flying under the radar”

LONDON: On Oct. 12 last year, a group of armed settlers and Israeli soldiers drove into the West Bank village of Wadi Al-Seeq, 10 kilometers east of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

There, they seized and handcuffed three Palestinian men, subjecting them to hours of abuse and violence, later compared by one of the victims to the treatment meted out by rogue US soldiers to prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.

The abuses in Wadi Al-Seeq were led by members of the IDF’s Sfar Hamidbar (Desert Frontier) unit, notorious for recruiting into its ranks violent “hilltop youth” from the illegal farming settlements that are proliferating in the West Bank with the blessing of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, which includes, and is dependent on the support of, far-right parties.

“For hours,” as an Israeli newspaper reported on Oct. 21, 2023, the Palestinians “were severely beaten, stripped to their underwear, and photographed handcuffed.

“Their captors urinated on two of them and extinguished burning cigarettes on them. There was even an attempt to penetrate one of them with an object.”

Palestinians bound and stripped after being apprehended by IDF soldiers and settlers in the central West Bank village of Wadi Al-Seeq on October 12, 2023. (The Times of Israel)

Israeli human rights activists who arrived at the scene were also arrested, cuffed, beaten, threatened with death and, like the Palestinians, robbed.

At the time, many in Israel were shocked to read the reports of the joint operation between the IDF and settlers, exposed by the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

But as a new report from an Israeli human rights group makes clear, such events have become commonplace as, under cover of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli government and its agencies have been pursuing the ultimate goal of “realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.”

In the report, “One year of war: the collapse of human and civil rights in Israel and the West Bank,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) accuses the government of “excessive, unrestrained, and illegal use of force.”

Furthermore, it says, Netanyahu’s government is “demolishing the judicial system and the civil service with the aim of accumulating unlimited power; increasing the use of force in the West Bank and granting tacit permission for unrestrained settler violence; using force to limit freedom of expression and protest; and systematically violating the rights of detainees and prisoners.”

Israeli settlers march towards the outpost of Eviatar, near the Palestinian village of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)

The list of charges levelled against the government is long, including institutionalized discrimination against Arab society, “unprecedented” infringement of the rights of suspects and prisoners, the “mass armament and creation of untrained forces” of settlers, the “destruction of democratic foundations,” attacks on freedom of expression and “normalization of citizen surveillance and disregard for privacy.”

Legislative steps are being taken with the aim of excluding certain parties from running for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Last month a controversial bill was passed to change the rules for banning individuals or parties from membership of the Knesset if they have “supported terror,” a definition which now includes visiting the family of someone accused of an act of terrorism.

Likud, Netanyahu’s party, has even accused Arab members of the Knesset of supporting terror simply on the ground of their support for Palestinian statehood.

“Depriving a population of the right to protest politically and the right to political representation” is “a very slippery slope,” said Noa Sattath, the CEO of ACRI.

“When there’s no political representation of a minority, then there's a radicalization of that minority.”

IN NUMBERS

  • 733 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.
  • 40 Israelis killed during the same period.
  • 3,340 Palestinians in administrative detention as of last June.
  • 11,800 Palestinians arrested since current conflict erupted.

What the ACRI report exposes on a grand scale, says Sattath, is “the excessive use of power. Of course, we see it in Gaza, and in Lebanon now, but we also see it in the West Bank.

“We also see it being used against Israeli protesters. We’re also seeing it in the treatment of prisoners. In all walks of life, basically, the Israeli government has moved to using excessive power against the different players, rather than making more complicated decisions.”

The headline scandal of the past year is what ACRI describes as “the quiet coup” in the West Bank.

“With public attention focused elsewhere,” says the report, “the government is implementing profound changes to all aspects of control in the West Bank, most of which are flying under the radar.

“In the last two years, the government has made giant strides in advancing policies aimed at accelerating the annexation process of the West Bank, while establishing Jewish supremacy and marginalizing the Palestinian population, all in pursuit of realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.”

A member of the Israeli security forces walks past a bulldozer demolishing a house belonging to Palestinians in the southern area of the occupied West Bank on November 6, 2024. (AFP)

The annexation of the West Bank has long been on the agenda, said Sattath, “but the war has given cover and enabled this to happen.

“Basically, they’re creating a new reality on the ground, behind the scenes, without a lot of public scrutiny, without a lot of international discourse on this new reality that they’re manufacturing.”

The Israeli government has, in certain instances, issued statements that aim to distance itself from the violent actions of settlers in the West Bank. Netanyahu has occasionally called for calm and condemned settler attacks on Palestinians, especially after high-profile incidents.

However, ACRI fears that under the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, whose election has been welcomed so enthusiastically by far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, things are only going to get worse.

A member of the Israeli security forces scuffles with a protestor as Palestinian and Israeli peace activists demonstrate at the entrance of Huwara in the occupied West Bank, on March 3, 2023. (AFP)

“I think that the next years are going to be very difficult,” said Sattath.

“The US government is one of the only checks and balances on the behavior of the Israeli government behavior and, even if we would have liked them to be more forceful in the way that they do it, we're very worried that the disappearance of that will have grave implications for the lives of Palestinians, both in Gaza, where the US is currently so involved in the humanitarian aid efforts there, and in the West Bank.”

Disturbingly, she says, Israel is manoeuvring behind the scenes to end the status of the West Bank as an occupied territory under military occupation, which is how it has been defined by international law since the occupation of the West Bank by Israel in 1967.

A picture shows burnt cars, which were set ablaze by Israeli settlers, in the area of in Al-Lubban Al-Sharqiya in the occupied West Bank on June 21, 2023. (AFP)

“It seems a little strange that an organization like ACRI would be advocating for military occupation,” she said. 

“But under international conventions military occupation gives the protected citizens of that area many different rights and gives the occupiers obligations. 

“Residents in occupied territories cannot be moved. You cannot build on their territory and the occupying force has all sorts of obligations toward them, in terms of humanitarian aid. 

“Now, what the settler movement, through its ministers in the government, is trying to do is erase the military occupation, replacing it with government agencies and officials to facilitate the settlement enterprise.” 

A Palestinian man walks at the village of Khallet Al-Daba, in the occupied West Bank on October 26, 2023, after it was attacked by Israeli settlers. (AFP)

The process began in February 2023 when, despite disquiet among some members of Netanyahu’s government, authority over many civilian issues in the West Bank was stripped from Defense Ministry agency COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) and transferred to Bezalel Smotrich, the religious Zionism leader and finance minister. 

According to a Times of Israel report, the agreement “appears to give the ultranationalist leader sweeping powers over the territory, and allows him to advance his goal of thwarting Palestinian aspirations for a state in the West Bank by enabling the Israeli population there to substantially expand.”

Anti-settlement organizations denounced the agreement, with one, Breaking the Silence, saying it amounted to “legal, de jure annexation,” of the West Bank.

The importance of ACRI’s report, says Sattath, lies in the sheer breadth of abuses by the Israeli government it exposes.

Israeli security forces fire tear gas at Palestinians demonstrating in the village of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)

ACRI, founded in 1972 and the oldest civil and human rights organization in Israel, has been publishing reports on the state of human rights in Israel and the West Bank for decades. But, she says, “we have never published a report showing such a severe and comprehensive deterioration as we have seen over the past year.”

ACRI says it hopes its report “will deepen the public’s understanding of the damage being done to human rights and democratic institutions, and that it will stir the public to action and resistance.”

It added: “Monitoring human rights violation processes is also critical for there to be any hope of correction under a different government and reality.”

 


Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army

Updated 26 November 2024
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Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army

  • Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central and northern Israel following projectiles that crossed from Lebanon

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said sirens sounded across central and northern Israel Tuesday, with three projectiles fired from Lebanon after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his cabinet would vote for a ceasefire.
“Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central and northern Israel following projectiles that crossed from Lebanon,” the military said in a statement. “Three projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory were successfully intercepted by the IAF (Israeli air force).”