On the Agenda

On Thursday, 28 December 2023, at around 1:00 A.M., dozens of soldiers and Border Police officers entered the city of Ramallah. According to the media, the goal of the raid was to seize funds Israel alleges were meant for Hamas and Islamic Jihad...

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has stepped up its efforts to drive dozens of Palestinian shepherding communities in the northern Jordan Valley out of their homes and lands. Through cooperation and collaboration among the military, police, settlers and the Jordan Valley Regional Council, Israel has reduced grazing areas available to Palestinians, blocked regular water supply and took measures to isolate the Jordan Valley from the rest of the West Bank...

Since 7 October 2023, Israel has extremely tightened the restrictions, using its network of checkpoints to tighten supervision, setting up dozens of new checkpoints, blocking access from dozens of villages to main roads, and revoking all permits for Palestinians to enter Israel for work or other reasons. Click to view map and a description of the movement restrictions in Nablus and Ramallah...

On Tuesday, 30 January 2024, at 5:30 A.M., security cameras at Jenin’s Ibn Sina Hospital captured 12 soldiers, Special Police Unit officers and Shin Bet agents entering the hospital disguised as medical staff, women and patients. They went up to the third floor and one of them, in a white doctor’s coat, rang the bell of the rehabilitation department...

On 4 February 2024, around 7:00 A.M., a military force entered the al-Jamasin neighborhood of Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus District. The soldiers entered a building and went up to the third floor, where Amani and Jamal Hashash live with their five children. Jamal was at work in the Nablus Municipality and Amani was home with four of their children. When she realized soldiers were in the building, she sat the three older children down on her bed and sat next to them holding Ibrahim, 3, who was still asleep, in her arms...

On Thursday, 23 November 2023, around 1:00 P.M., Khader ‘Alwan, 46, was shot and killed near Route 60 in the Ramallah area. The IDF Spokesperson said soldiers “identified the suspect, who was carrying a large rock and approaching the road in order to throw it. Fearing for the safety of passengers on the road, the soldiers fired and neutralized him.” The findings of B’Tselem’s investigation indicate otherwise...

In Nov. 2023, Israel started work on a buffer zone inside the Gaza Strip. The media reported it will be about 1 km wide and run along the border, with military posts, paved roads and surveillance devices. Israel is demolishing almost everything in the designated area, which will be off limits to Palestinians – even those who lived or worked fields there before. The need to defend southern Israeli communities cannot justify this massive demolition, which is prohibited under international law, and the creation of a “security zone”.

The annual olive harvest in the West Bank is a key element of the Palestinian economy and a crucial source of income for tens of thousands of families. The World Bank and the Palestine Trade Center estimate that in good years, it injects almost 200 million dollars into the Palestinian economy. However, every year, Israel extensively restricts Palestinians’ ability to carry out the harvest, using official and unofficial means. In 2023, while the war in the Gaza Strip was underway, these restrictions reached new heights, leaving about 50% of Palestinian farmers unable to harvest their trees, according to estimates of the Palestinian Farmers’ Union...

From the start of the war in Gaza Strip to the end of 2023, Israel arrested about 5,500 Palestinians, including 184 women, some of them Palestinian citizens of Israel. B’Tselem collected testimonies from three women who were arrested in the Hebron area on 26 October 2023. All three were released in late November along with other female detainees and prisoners, as part of a deal with Hamas, which released women and minors abducted on 7 October 2023. The testimonies paint a picture of extreme violence against these women , from the moment soldiers barged into their homes and arrested them to the day they were released....

We, the undersigned Israel-based civil society and human rights organizations, call for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and demand the immediate release of hostages held in the Gaza Strip. An immediate ceasefire will prevent further loss of civilian lives and facilitate access to vital aid for Gaza to address the unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe there...

On 21 November 2023, Hamas and Israel agreed on a deal in which Hamas would release women and minors abducted from Israel on 7 October 2023 in exchange for Palestinian women and minors jailed by Israel. The swap was carried out in several phases. In every phase, Israel transferred the Palestinians released from Ofer Prison to an ICRC (Red Cross) bus. The bus then drove through the town of Bitunya, with residents gathering along the main street to welcome the released prisoners. Every evening, Border Police officers entered the town to disperse the crowd, leading to clashes with local residents...

On Saturday, 25 November 2023, at around 10:00 P.M., Muhammad Saleh, 15, a resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr ‘Aqab, went to the Jabal a-Tawil neighborhood of al-Birah, near which the settlement of Psagot was established. He parked his moped dozens of meters away from the military gate at the entrance to the settlement, and then walked towards the gate and threw an empty glass bottle at it. The bottle landed a few meters away from the gate. Saleh turned around and ran. Just then, live rounds were fired at him from the military post at the gate...