September 2021
Shin Bet to target Arab-Israeli society Afif Abu Much al Monitor 02/09/2021
In contrast, there are those concerned about the implications of such a move. Attorney Reda Jaber, director of Aman: The Arab Center for a Secure Society, expressed his reservations to Al-Monitor, saying, “A national minority — whose relationship with the state representing the majority — would never agree or demand that the majority’s intelligence services operate within that minority. This is especially true of the Shin Bet. Activating them in the Arab society would be disastrous. Introducing the Shin Bet into the Arab society means determining that the Arab community as a whole poses a security threat. This would lead to infringements of their rights and freedoms, and turn their citizenship into collateral for certain security approaches, while eliminating certain rights, which Arabs currently enjoy. The boundaries of civic rights should be sharp and clear, even when combatting crime. Crossing that boundary would be irreversible.”
Border violence Rina Bassist al monitor 03/09/2021
Israeli press reports said that the two Israeli officials asked their Egyptian interlocutors to pressure Hamas to stop the ongoing nightly demonstrations at the Gaza border. For the past few days, Gazans have been gathering near the security fence, burning tires and hurling explosives at Israeli troops stationed along the border. The escalation was apparently prompted by frustration in Hamas over the deadlock in the Egypt-mediated talks with Israel for a long-term arrangement. Gaza health authorities reported that one Palestinian man died and four were injured by live fire in violent clashes last night. Hamas sources said the Israel Defense Forces used sniper fire at specific targets and a drone that dropped tear-gas grenades on the rioters as means to disperse the demonstrations.
Palestinian Great Escape Tamara Nassar EI 08/09/2021
Israeli authorities have grown increasingly frustrated, embarrassed and perplexed in the days since six Palestinians escaped from one of Israel’s most fortified prisons. Amid speculation that the men might be hiding out in the West Bank, or could have crossed the border to Jordan, Palestinians are praying for their safety and hailing them as heroes. Their escape is a huge morale boost for Palestinians, as it once again shatters Israel’s image of strength and invincibility in the face of an occupied people struggling for its freedom.From the bathroom of their cell in Gilboa prison in northern Israel, the jailed Palestinians dug a 20-meter underground tunnel that emerged just outside the prison walls under a watchtower.
Could ICC try Palestinians while Israel gets away with murder? Maureen Clare Murphy EI 10/09/2021
Human Rights Watch probed several deadly attacks on Israeli civilians and a Palestinian rocket strike that misfired above Jabaliya, northern Gaza, killing seven Palestinian civilians. “Palestinian armed groups during the May fighting flagrantly violated the laws-of-war prohibition on indiscriminate attacks by launching thousands of unguided rockets towards Israeli cities,” Eric Goldstein, a project director at Human Rights Watch, is quoted as saying in the report.
In an earlier report examining Israel’s targeting of residential towers in May, which massacred families in their homes, Human Rights Watch employed qualifying language. It said these attacks, as well as those waged by armed groups, “violated the laws of war and amount to apparent war crimes” (emphasis added). By contrast, in its follow-up investigation of Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, Human Rights Watch unequivocally states that such activities “violated the laws of war and amount to war crimes.”
Arab-Israeli soccer player booed by Jewish fans al monitor 13/09/2021
Feelings are mixed among the fans and players. Dabbur had only recently resumed playing and during the home game against Austria on Sept. 4, he was subjected to booing and insults not from the opposing side but from the Israeli fans.
Dabbur had been invited to play for the Israeli team in matches against the Faroe Islands, Austria and Denmark for the first time since the May Instagram affair. During the riots that erupted in Israel’s mixed cities and Jerusalem, while the Israel Defense Forces was conducting its Gaza Guardian of the Walls operation, Dabour posted an image of Al-Aqsa with a Quranic verse: “Don’t think that God will ignore the acts of evil men. He will only delay their judgement until the day the gaze is frozen.”
Israel captures last two escaped Palestinians Tamara Nassar EI 20/09/2021
In an interview with local media, Kamamji’s father said his son called him in the early hours of Sunday and explained that he had decided to turn himself in to protect the residents of the building. It is not unreasonable, given Israel has regularly used the so-called pressure cooker procedure to compel wanted Palestinians to surrender from a building in which they are hiding, or else be extrajudicially executed. Israeli forces do this by using construction machines as weapons, along with firearms and explosives, to gradually destroy the building on top of those hiding inside if they refuse to surrender.
Israel prepares for possible escalation Ahmad Melhem almonitor 21/09/2021
In the city of Jenin, in the northern West Bank, dozens of shootings targeted al-Jalama checkpoint, homemade bombs were thrown, and bullets targeted an Israeli military camp in Mount Gerizim in Nablus. Also, dozens of clashes involving stones and Molotov cocktails took place in different parts of the West Bank. Anger mounted in the Palestinian street after Israel captured and allegedly tortured four of the jailbreakers, specially Zakaria Zubeidi, the former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The Palestinian factions praised the escalated confrontations in Jerusalem and the West Bank, considering them as the only option to force Israel to end its violations against the Palestinians and prisoners. Following the second stabbing attack in Jerusalem on Sept. 13, the chief of the Israeli police said that he fears new operations, and noted that the Israeli police decided to deploy an additional 2,000 policemen in the city of Jerusalem.
EU forced to admit it can block trade with Israeli colonies Ali Abunimah EI 23/09/2021
The European Union has been forced this month to register a European Citizens’ Initiative that seeks to block trade with settlements in occupied territories The measure could potentially close off the lucrative access to EU markets enjoyed by businesses operating in Israeli colonial settlements built on Palestinian land in violation of international law. This comes after the Commission – the EU’s executive body – suffered a legal defeat earlier this year. European Citizens’ Initiatives are supposed to provide a mechanism for ordinary people to influence the policy and legislative agenda of the notoriously undemocratic and opaque Brussels bureaucracy.
In 2019, seven nationals of EU states filed an initiative seeking to stop settlement trade which helps fuel Israeli colonization and contributes to massive violations of Palestinian human rights. But the Commission rejected the initiative, claiming that it did not have authority to consider what would amount to imposing sanctions. It argued that only member governments could decide on sanctions.
Students return to Gaza classrooms Tareq Hajjaj Mondoweiss 27/09/2021
Her son Moaaz, who is in the seventh grade, chimed in, “The moment I entered the school and saw the damages on the walls, I remembered the sound of bombs.”
Other students are returning to school for the first time after sustaining injuries last May. Saleh Hamed, a third-grader from the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza, insisted on using crutches instead of his wheelchair, which he uses after his foot was amputated following a shrapnel injury. During the fighting with Israel, he was walking by a cemetery that was hit in an airstrike, along with his father and brother. In the blast, his hand was also damaged and he now has a metal implant.
Israel kills six Palestinians in 48 hours Tamara Nassar EI 28/09/2021
Israeli occupation forces ran over a Palestinian child with a military vehicle after shooting him, a human rights group stated on Monday. Yousef Muhammad Odeh, 15, was among six Palestinians killed in multiple areas in the West Bank in recent days. All but one were killed by Israeli forces during a major arrest operation in different areas of the occupied West Bank on Sunday. The military targeted Hamas “military infrastructure” in the Ramallah and Jenin areas “after intelligence showed the group was planning to carry out attacks in Israel,” according to the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz.
The operation involved two death squads: Duvdevan, an elite Israeli military unit whose members often disguise themselves as Palestinians in order to carry out extrajudicial executions, and Yamam, a unit of Israel’s paramilitary Border Police whose members shot and killed two Palestinian police officers in Jenin earlier this year
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