Palestinians in the West Bank pushed to the brink as Israeli assault on Gaza keeps tensions high

Since Oct. 7, Israeli settlers have carried out 603 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 06 May 2024
Follow

Palestinians in the West Bank pushed to the brink as Israeli assault on Gaza keeps tensions high

  • Jewish settlers in the West Bank together with Israeli troops ramp up hostilities against Palestinians, especially rural communities in Area C
  • Attitude of Israeli authorities blamed for emboldening violent Jewish settlers to attack and expel Palestinians from the West Bank with impunity

LONDON: Shockwaves from Israel’s military operation in Gaza have reverberated into the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where security forces and emboldened Jewish settlers have reportedly ramped up attacks on Palestinian communities.

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack sparked the conflict in Gaza, Israeli settlers have carried out 603 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, expelling 1,222 people from 19 herding communities, according to UN figures.

Armed settlers have also killed at least nine Palestinians, while Israeli security forces have killed 396 others in the past few months.

Likewise, the Israeli army has intensified raids. On May 4, Israeli forces raided Tulkarem and killed five Palestinians, including four Hamas members. On April 20, Israeli forces carried out a raid in the same governorate, home to more than 6,400 refugees, killing 14 Palestinians.

Abeer, who runs a small business in Jenin, has observed a “surge in settler attacks, the proliferation of checkpoints, daily raids on Palestinian homes, infrastructure destruction, killing of Palestinian youths, and increased Israeli military airstrikes.”




The Israeli army has intensified raids in parts of the West Bank. (AFP)

While similar attacks regularly took place before Oct. 7, she told Arab News that “they have doubled and become more horrific” since the onset of the Gaza war.

Jenin “has for about two years been specifically a target for the Israeli military, as it’s home to a few resistance groups,” she added.

According to a report by the UN Human Rights Office published in March, the “drastic acceleration” of long-standing patterns of discrimination, oppression, and violence against Palestinians has pushed the West Bank to the “brink of catastrophe.”

Israel, at “one of the fastest rates on record,” has demolished 917 Palestinian-owned structures in the West Bank since Oct. 7, displacing 1,015 Palestinians. Of these structures, 210 are in East Jerusalem and 285 are residential buildings, the report added.

Yasmeen El-Hasan, international advocacy officer at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, a nongovernmental organisation supporting rural Palestinian communities, described the situation in the West Bank as “absolutely horrendous.”

“The Israeli expansion of its settler colonial enterprise in the West Bank is happening parallel to the genocidal war on Gaza,” she told Arab News.  

“The occupation has established numerous new settler outposts, settler roads within the West Bank,” she said, adding that the Israeli government “has approved thousands of new settler units within the West Bank.”




Since Oct. 7, Israeli settlers have carried out 603 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank (AFP)

While casualties from Israeli violence in the West Bank have not reached the scale of those in Gaza, she said the “intensity of Israeli settler colonial violence in every part of historic Palestine has amplified, increased, been exacerbated in the past six months.”

The “impunity” granted by Israeli authorities has further emboldened Jewish settlers in the West Bank, El-Hasan said.

Settlers attacking Palestinian communities are “increasingly armed by the government of the Israeli occupation and there are no consequences for what they’re doing,” she said.

Addressing the 55th session of the Human Rights Council in March, Nada Al-Nashif, the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights, said that after Oct. 7, the OHCHR documented “cases of settlers wearing full or partial Israeli army uniforms and carrying army rifles, harassing and attacking Palestinians, including shooting at them at point-blank range.”

She also said that by Oct. 31, Israeli security forces had reportedly distributed about 8,000 weapons to “settlement defense squads” and “regional defense battalions” in the West Bank.

INNUMBERS

• 700,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

• 300 Illegal settlements or outposts on Palestinian territory.

Source: OHCHR

An incident in which the Israeli military purportedly enabled settler violence took place in mid-April, when about 50 settlers attacked the northern West Bank village of Aqraba “protected by the Israeli occupation army,” according to WAFA, the Palestinian news agency.

Two Palestinians were killed in the settler attack, according to the mayor of the village, Salah Bani Jaber, who witnessed the incident. He said the Israeli soldiers at the scene “stood idly, watching the settlers.”

“The absence of accountability for settler violence is a key factor in the ongoing coercive environment,” Al-Nashif told the president of the UN Human Rights Council.




The “drastic acceleration” of long-standing patterns of discrimination, oppression, and violence against Palestinians has pushed the West Bank to the “brink of catastrophe,” said a UN report. (AFP)

She described this lack of accountability as a “manifestation of a dual system of criminal justice that has had discriminatory effects on Palestinians.”

Yesh Din, an Israeli NGO that documents abuses by Israeli civilians against Palestinians in the occupied territories, concluded in its December data sheet that “the Israeli-law enforcement system fails in fulfilling its duty to protect Palestinians from Israeli violence.”

The report emphasized that the continuation of “this systemic failure” for at least two decades “evinces that the State of Israel normalizes and supports ideologically motivated violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank.”

The data sheet showed that in the past 20 years, 93.7 percent of all police investigations into settler offenses against Palestinians were closed without an indictment, while only 3 percent led to a full or partial conviction.

Yesh Din also noted that Palestinians tend to mistrust Israeli authorities, making victims of settler violence reluctant to report offenses.




In July last year, at least 3,000 Palestinians fled their homes in the Jenin refugee camp after a large Israeli military operation. (AFP)

Between January and September 2023, more than 57 percent of the victims chose not to file a complaint. Of these, 54 percent said they feared retaliation or did not trust the Israeli authorities to apprehend offenders.

Palestinians in the West Bank’s rural areas are particularly vulnerable to expulsion from their lands by Jewish settlers.

El-Hasan of UAWC said: “Israeli settlers, often accompanied by or protected by the Israeli occupation forces, very frequently target Palestinian agricultural lands and critical infrastructure, as well as the communities.

“This includes vital resources like water wells, roads, greenhouses, sanitary facilities, land where crops are grown, herds, herding enclosures, cars, and houses.”

Opinion

This section contains relevant reference points, placed in (Opinion field)

The OHCHR report found that from January 2022 to early September 2023, 1,105 Palestinians from 28 herding communities (about 12 percent) were forcibly displaced due to settler violence and prevention of access to grazing land.

Palestinian farmers and rural communities in Area C, which constitutes 61 percent of the West Bank territory, have been specifically targeted by Israeli settlers, El-Hasan said.

“Area C is the majority of the West Bank, the most resource rich, and it’s also, according to the Oslo Accords, under Israeli military and civil administration,” she added.




Israeli security forces have killed 396 Palestinians in the West Bank in the past few months. (AFP)

The Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn in September 1993, were the first direct peace agreement between Israeli authorities and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. They sought to pave the way for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

Stressing the importance of talking about Area C in the context of Israeli settlement expansion, El-Hasan pointed out that this “very fertile” area is “directly tied to Palestinian livelihood.”

It is “where most of the settlements are,” she explained, adding that “the Israeli occupation is trying its hardest to take” this area.

“Land and livelihood are directly tied to Palestinian food systems. This targeted disruption and destruction of Palestinian food systems is a tactical strategy of Israeli settler colonialism that is attempting to sever the indigenous relationship with interdependence on the land, no matter the consequences.

“And that includes humanitarian targeting, like the tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians, or environmental, like the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of planet-warming emissions produced by Israel in the past few months.”

On April 29, Washington said five Israeli security force units committed “gross violations of human rights” against Palestinians in the West Bank before Oct. 7, yet it has not barred any of the units from receiving US military support, Reuters reported.




The Oslo Accords sought to pave the way for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. (AFP)

On May 3, two “extremist” groups and four individuals in Israel who it blamed for violence in the West Bank, as part of a fresh package of measures against settlers.

Referring to Jewish settlers living in occupied West Bank, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that “the vast majority of residents of Judea and Samaria are law-abiding citizens ... Israel acts against all violators of the law in all places and therefore there is no place for drastic steps on this matter.”

In July last year, at least 3,000 Palestinians fled their homes in the Jenin refugee camp, home to about 18,000 people, after the Israeli military launched what Palestinian officials described as the largest operation in the area in two decades.




Israel has proved over the past 76 years that it “will do whatever it takes to forcibly take that land,” said Yasmeen El-Hasan. (AFP)

Israel said it was targeting a Palestinian militant command center.

Saying that “the basis of settler colonialism is land theft,” El-Hasan accused Israel of proving over the past 76 years that it “will do whatever it takes to forcibly take that land, and that includes destroying it, exploiting it, and committing genocide.”

“Palestinian communities are physically rooted in our land,” she told Arab News. “Our relationship with this land is not just symbolic, it’s symbiotic. It’s not transactional, it’s reciprocal. And as the indigenous people to this land, we are its caretakers.”

 


Donkeys offer Gazans lifeline amid war shortages

Updated 4 sec ago
Follow

Donkeys offer Gazans lifeline amid war shortages

  • Donkey-pulled carts were a fairly common sight in pre-war Gaza
  • Displaced Gazans fleeing fighting or air strikes pile aboard them to rush to safety with their belongings
Deir el-Balah: Amina Abu Maghasib’s livelihood rests on one animal: a donkey that pulls the cart she uses to transport people around Gaza, where more than a year of war has led to a widespread shortage of fuel for cars.
“Before the war, I used to sell milk and yoghurt, and the factory used to take the milk from me,” she said from the central Gaza city of Deir el-Balah, holding reins in one hand and a rubber stick in the other that she uses to maneuver her cart.
“Now, I have no income other than the donkey and the cart.”
Donkey-pulled carts were a fairly common sight in pre-war Gaza. But the lack of fuel and destruction in the territory since the conflict began between Israel and Hamas last year have made them one of the few remaining forms of transport.
Displaced Gazans fleeing fighting or air strikes pile aboard them to rush to safety with their belongings.
For others, a donkey cart is virtually the only form of transportation.
Marwa Yess uses a donkey cart to get around with her family.
“I pay 20 shekels ($5.40) for the cart to take me from Deir el-Balah to Nuseirat. The price is outrageous, but under these circumstances, everything seems reasonable,” she said. The distance is about five kilometers (three miles).
“I used to feel embarrassed to ride a donkey cart at the beginning of the war, but now there’s no other option,” the teacher and mother of three told AFP.

Soaring prices
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 43 percent of Gaza’s working animals — a category that includes donkeys, horses and mules — had been killed in the war by August 2024, leaving only 2,627 alive.
Abu Maghasib’s only running costs are fodder, she told AFP sitting on her cart, a few planks of wood held together by a metal frame and mounted on four wheels.
But the price of food for people and animals has soared.
After costs, Abu Maghasib has made a profit of 20 shekels at the end of the day from the clients who hop on and off from the roadside.
“I bought this donkey on credit, and the first donkey died in the war in Deir el-Balah after being hit by shrapnel,” she said.
The new one cost her 2,500 shekels.
Abdel Misbah, a 32-year-old man displaced with his family of 20 from Gaza City to the territory’s south, also made the livelihood switch to donkey transportation.
“I used to sell vegetables on a cart before the war. Now, I work in delivery,” he said, lamenting that “the donkey panics when the bombing gets too close.”
He too feels the pain of skyrocketing fodder prices.
“I make sure to feed it well, even though the price of barley (per sack) has gone up from three shekels to 50 shekels,” he said.

’More valuable than gold’
Israel imposed a near-total siege on Gaza in the early stages of the war last year, complicating aid and goods distribution.
The lack of fuel, war-damaged roads and looting, as well as fighting in densely populated areas and the repeated displacement of much of Gaza’s 2.4 million people, also contribute to the shortages.
A UN-backed assessment this month said famine looms in northern Gaza, and the United Nations agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said aid entering the territory had reached its lowest level in months.
Yusef Muhammad, a 23-year-old displaced from Gaza’s north to Khan Yunis in the south, said his donkey has become a “lifeline” for his family.
“When the war started, car fares were too expensive. I had no choice but to rely on a donkey. Thank God I had it when we were forced to evacuate.”
Beyond the widespread destruction, Israel’s military campaign has killed at least 44,211 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas government’s health ministry, which the UN considers reliable.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
When Israeli military evacuation orders, which usually precede fighting and bombing, send thousands of people and their belongings onto the road in an instant, donkey carts can be one of the only ways out of danger.
Hosni Abu Warda, 62, said his home was destroyed in the northern area of Jabalia, the scene of an intense Israeli military operation since early October.
When he fled, Abu Warda said he had no choice but to turn to four-hoofed transportation. He waited 14 hours for a cart before escaping with his family “packed like sardines.”
In times like these, “the donkey is more valuable than gold and even more valuable than modern cars,” Abu Warda said.

Mikati warns Israeli military action in Lebanon a rejection of political solution

Updated 59 min 40 sec ago
Follow

Mikati warns Israeli military action in Lebanon a rejection of political solution

  • Borrell in Beirut: Pressure must be exerted on Israel, Hezbollah to accept US proposal
  • Israel steps up bombardment of capital’s southern suburbs

BEIRUT: An Israeli strike on a Lebanese army center on Sunday killed a soldier and wounded 18 others, the Lebanese military said, with the caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, calling the attack “a direct bloody message rejecting all efforts to reach a ceasefire.”

The attack came as top EU diplomat Josep Borrell called for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war while on a visit to Lebanon.

According to the Lebanese Army Command, the first adjutant, Diab Mohammed Jaafar, was killed when Israel targeted Al-Amariyeh checkpoint on the road between Tyre and the town of Naqoura.

In a statement, Mikati said: “Israel’s messages rejecting a solution are ongoing, and just as it turned against the US-French call for a ceasefire in September, here it is once again responding with Lebanese blood, blatantly rejecting the solution that is being discussed.”

He called on “the countries of the world and the relevant international institutions to assume their responsibilities on the issue.”

Mikati’s condemnation came amid growing concerns that the Israeli military is trying to solidify its westward incursion in the coastal town of Al-Bayada, located between Tyre and Naqoura, while facing strong resistance from the eastern side of the border area in its positions in Khiyam.

Israeli forces are trying to encircle the South Litani area from both sides.

Hezbollah said it “targeted a gathering of the enemy army s forces east of the city of Khiyam with a salvo of rockets,” and “a gathering of Israeli forces at the Metula site (Israel’s outlet toward Khiyam) was targeted with a volley of rockets followed by an aerial attack with a squadron of assault drones … hitting its targets accurately.”

The Israeli military said Hezbollah launched 160 projectiles toward Israel on Sunday.

Sirens sounded across northern and central Israel, reaching Tel Aviv at successive intervals, forcing thousands of Israelis to head toward shelters.

Footage from central Israel showed extensive material damage and fires.

The Israeli military issued further warnings to residents of Beirut’s southern suburbs to evacuate, targeting Bourj Al-Barajneh and Hadath.

Former Israeli minister Benny Gantz claimed that the Lebanese government “is leaving Hezbollah unchecked,” adding: “It is time to act against its assets forcefully.”

These developments came during a round of discussions conducted by Borrell, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy, in Beirut with Mikati and Speaker Nabih Berry.

In a statement, Borrell stressed the need for exerting pressure on Israel and Hezbollah to accept the US proposal for a ceasefire.

Borrell emphasized that “the situation in the Middle East, particularly here in Beirut, presents a significant challenge to the international community. The international community cannot remain inactive in the face of these events. The absence of peace in the Middle East has reached an intolerable level, and people are dying under bombardment.”

He added that two months on from his last visit to Beirut, he now views Lebanon as on the verge of collapse due to the conflict, which has led to the devastation of numerous villages, as well as airstrikes aimed at Beirut and Baalbek. He also reiterated that “the human cost is exceedingly high.”

Borrell said Israeli airstrikes had claimed the lives of over 3,500 people in Lebanon, a figure three times greater than the casualties recorded in 2006.

The only viable path forward, Borrell said, is an immediate ceasefire and the full implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701.

Borrell praised the UNIFIL forces and confirmed the EU’s readiness to allocate €200 million ($208.3 million) to the Lebanese Armed Forces.

He emphasized the Lebanese need to “assume their political responsibilities by electing a president and putting an end to this prolonged power vacuum that has exceeded two years.”

Borrell said a ceasefire proposal for Gaza is pending Israeli government approval, and “we, as the international community, need to work to ensure the respect of international law, as we see famine being used as a weapon of war through international law violations, the complete siege imposed on Gaza and the number of people that are dying in Lebanon.”

He added that in his view the decisions of the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for Israel’s activities in Gaza were not politically motivated and had been made under international law, which applied to everyone. “We strongly support the court,” he said.


15 Turkish-backed fighters killed in north Syria clashes with Kurdish-led forces

Updated 25 November 2024
Follow

15 Turkish-backed fighters killed in north Syria clashes with Kurdish-led forces

  • SDF fighters “infiltrated positions of the Turkish-backed” troops in the Aleppo countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said
  • The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019

BEIRUT: At least 15 Ankara-backed Syrian fighters were killed Sunday after Kurdish-led forces infiltrated their territory in the country’s north, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said.
Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who controls swathes of the country’s northeast, “infiltrated positions of the Turkish-backed” fighters in the Aleppo countryside, said the Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
“The two sides engaged in violent clashes” that killed 15 of the Ankara-backed fighters, the monitor said.
An AFP correspondent in Syria’s north said the clashes had taken place near the city of Al-Bab, where authorities said schools would be suspended on Monday due to the violence.
The SDF is a US-backed force that spearheaded the fighting against the Daesh group in its last Syria strongholds before its territorial defeat in 2019.
It is dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), viewed by Ankara as an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) which claimed the attack on Ankara.
Turkish troops and allied rebel factions control swathes of northern Syria following successive cross-border offensives since 2016, most of them targeting the SDF.


Israel moving towards a ceasefire deal in Lebanon, Axios reports

Updated 25 November 2024
Follow

Israel moving towards a ceasefire deal in Lebanon, Axios reports

BEIRUT: Israel is moving towards a ceasefire agreement in Lebanon with the Hezbollah militant group, Axios reporter Barak Ravid posted on X on Sunday, citing a senior Israeli official.
A separate report from Israel's public broadcaster Kan, citing an Israeli official, said there was no green light given on an agreement in Lebanon, with issues still yet to be resolved.

 


Russian plane catches fire after landing in Turkiye but passengers and crew are safely evacuated

Updated 25 November 2024
Follow

Russian plane catches fire after landing in Turkiye but passengers and crew are safely evacuated

  • “Eighty nine passengers and six crew members on board were safely evacuated at 9:43 p.m. (1843 GMT) and there were no injuries”

ANKARA, Turkiye: The engine of a Russian plane with 95 people on board caught fire after landing at Antalya airport in southern Turkiye on Sunday, Turkiye’s transportation ministry said. All passengers and crew were safely evacuated.
The Sukhoi Superjet 100 type aircraft run by Azimuth Airlines had taken off from Sochi and was carrying 89 passengers and six crew members, the ministry said in a statement.
The pilot made an emergency call after the aircraft landed at 9:34 p.m. local time, and airport rescue and firefighting crews quickly extinguished the fire, according to the statement.
No one was hurt, the statement said.
The cause of the fire was not immediately known.
A video of the incident posted by the aviation news website, Airport Haber, showed flames coming out from the left side of the plane as emergency crews doused the aircraft. Passengers were seen evacuating the plane through an emergency slide, some carrying belongings.
The transportation ministry said efforts were underway to remove the aircraft from the runway. Arrivals at the airport were temporarily suspended while departures were taking place from a military-run runway.