Israel-Palestine

1 April 2019Feature

UN Commission finds Israeli forces 'killed and gravely injured civilians who were neither participating directly in hostilities nor posing an imminent threat to life'

Great March of Return protest by the Gaza-Israel border, El Bureij, 6 July 2018. Photo: MinoZig via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Below is the official summary of the UN human rights council’s independent international commission of inquiry into the weekly demonstrations in Gaza, named ‘the Great March of Return’, that began on 30 March, 2018. It is followed by an extract on the events of 14 May 2018.

Summary

The Commission found reasonable grounds…

1 February 2019News in Brief

Palestinians are being forced from their homes throughout the Occupied Territories and in Israel itself.

Some 13 Palestinian families were ordered to abandon their homes in the village of Khirbet Ibzik, in the fertile Jordan Valley, on four occasions in one month. The Israeli army displaced the 70 residents (including 38 children) for 24 hours at a time, on 16, 23 and 26 December and then again on 13 January.

The reason? The army said it was carrying out manoeuvres in…

1 February 2019News in Brief

In December and January, two Israeli Jewish teenagers won exemption from military service in the Israeli army after serving over 100 days in prison each for their conscientious objection.

On 28 December, following seven periods of imprisonment, Hillel Garmi, 19, was granted exemption from service by the army’s ‘conscience committee’.

Garmi, who served 107 days in prison in total, was one of the initiators of the ‘High School Students’ Letter against Occupation’ in…

1 December 2018News

Palestinian village to 'will be demolished very soon'

On 19 November, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Palestinian village of Khan al-Ahmar, which has become an international cause célèbre, ‘will be demolished very soon’. The removal of the village would enable the Israeli government to cut the occupied West Bank in two, making a Palestinian state impossible.

The Israeli security cabinet had delayed the demolition by ‘several weeks’ on 21 October to provide time for negotiations for an agreed-upon evacuation of the…

1 December 2018News in Brief

Since Palestinians began their largely nonviolent Great March of Return protests at the Gaza-Israel border fence in March, Israeli security forces have shot dead over 180 Palestinians, and injured 24,000, said the World Health Organisation on 16 November. 5,800 demonstrators have been injured by live gunfire.

According to a survey by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem of 406 Palestinians injured by live fire, most were over 30 feet from the fence when they were shot.

1 October 2018News

Over 130 killed and 20,000 injured in ongoing protests

The Great March of Return demonstrations at the Gaza-Israel border fence have not only continued every Friday since March, they are escalating. Protests now happen on other days of the week as well, after ceasefire talks between the Hamas government in Gaza and the Israeli government broke down.

During these demos, Israeli forces have killed over 130 unarmed Palestinians, including 29 children and three medics. Around 20,000 Gazans have been injured, nearly 5,000 by live…

1 October 2018News

Aberystwyth anti-torture fundraiser packed

Aberystwyth tells HSBC to Stop Arming Israel, 15 September. Photo: Janice de Haaff

The Friendship Inn in Borth, near Aberystwyth, was packed to the rafters on 8 September as people gathered for the potentially solemn purpose of raising funds in support of ‘Freedom from Torture’. This organisation dreams of a world free from torture but, until such time, it supports survivors of torture in rebuilding their lives and it works to bring perpetrators to account.

The vision for the…

1 August 2018News

20,000 Palestinian women march for end to illegal siege

On 7 July, the Palestine Chronicle reported that the Palestinian ‘Great March of Return’ had taken place near the Gaza-Israel border for the 15th consecutive Friday. A Palestinian man was shot dead by an Israeli soldier, bringing the overall Great March death toll to 135.

Nearly 400 Palestinians were injured on 7 July, according to the Palestinian ministry of health. Overall, some 5,000 Palestinians have been injured by Israeli live fire and tear gas during the largely…

1 August 2018Letter

Today, 25 June, prince William will arrive in Israel and the occupied West Bank as part of a regional trip.

This visit is the first since the creation of the state of Israel, 70 years ago, and breaks with British foreign office policy that the royal family should not make official visits to Israel due to its historic and grave violations of human rights, international law and UN resolutions

Palestine Solidarity Campaign is deeply concerned that prince William’s visit,…

1 June 2018News

Swedish ships begin two-month journey

On 15 May, boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla set out from Gothenburg, Sweden on a two-month journey to the besieged Palestinian territory. Three Swedish ships, the Mairead, the Falestine/Palestine and Freedom to Gaza, were joined by a converted Norwegian fishing boat, Al Awda/The Return. The Mairead is named after Mairead Maguire, the Peace People activist from Belfast, northern Ireland, who was joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.…

1 June 2018News

Vigils held in support of 'The Great Return March'

Sawiya Friendship Association’s vigil for Gaza in Llanidloes. Photo: Elwyn Vaughan
 

Vigils were held across Wales after Palestinian authorities declared 31 March a national day of mourning. 17 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza as the Israeli Defence Forces cracked down on ‘The Great Return March’ starting on Land Day, 30 March.

On 31 March, Aberystwyth’s street choir Côr Gobaith fundraised for Medical Aid for Palestinians. In Llanidloes, about 20 protesters pinned…

1 April 2018News

Israel’s military justice system characterised by prolonged pre-trial detention, abuse of kids and sham trials, says Amnesty

On 21 March, an Israeli military juvenile court in Ofer in the Occupied Territories sentenced Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi to eight months in prison (with a further eight months suspended) and fined her 5,000 shekels ($1,440). She had agreed to a deal where she pleaded guilty to four of the 12 charges she faced, according to her lawyer.

Ahed, then 16, had been filmed slapping and kicking armed Israeli soldiers at the entrance to her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the…

1 February 2018News

Palestinian teen arrested for slapping Israeli soldier

On 5 February, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, visited Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi in an Israeli prison.

Ahed, then 16, was filmed slapping and kicking armed Israeli soldiers at the entrance to her home in the village of Nabi Saleh in the occupied West Bank on 15 December. Just an hour earlier, she’d learned that her 14-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi, had been shot in the face at close range by Israeli soldiers with a rubber-coated metal bullet.…

1 February 2018News in Brief

On 28 December, 63 Israeli teenagers signed an open letter to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring that they will refuse military service because the Israeli army ‘carries out a racist government policy that enforces one legal system for Israelis and another for Palestinian in the same territory’. The 63 say they will not take any part in ‘the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people’.

As the Israeli army does not recognise conscientious objection based…

23 November 2017Blog

Three Palestinian communities face immediate expulsion from their homes in the Jordan Valley and near Jerusalem, and two more in the coming months, warns the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem.

On 22 November, B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, issued a press release detailing the continuing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.

The release…