On the Agenda

The magnitude of the crimes Israel is currently committing in the northern Gaza Strip in its campaign to empty it of however many residents are left is impossible to describe, not just because hundreds of thousands of people enduring starvation, disease without access to medical care and incessant bombardments and gunfire defies comprehension, but because Israel has cut them off from the world. Ever since Israel’s current operation in the northern Gaza Strip began on 5 October, the area has been under a near complete siege, relentlessly pummeled by the military...

Human rights NGOs based in Israel today called on the international community to take action now to prevent Israel from forcibly transferring hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have remained in the Northern Gaza Strip, including by denying entry of essential humanitarian aid and fuel. The Israeli ceasefire coalition, Gisha, B’Tselem, PHR-I and Yesh Din, said that there are alarming signs that the Israeli military is beginning to quietly implement the Generals’ Plan, also referred to as the Eiland Plan, which calls for complete forcible transfer of the civilians of the northern Gaza Strip through tightening the siege on the area and starving the population.

Over the past decade, settlement outposts and “agricultural farms” have become one of Israel’s primary methods for taking over land in the West Bank and driving Palestinian communities out. Unlike the bureaucratic process involved in establishing an official settlement, ‘pirate’ outposts can be set up quickly, with relatively few resources and laborers. Taking control of farmland via setting up outposts also allows the state to evade direct responsibility for land seizure and shrug off the violent, illegal acts by settlers involved in the process, while effectively supporting them in various ways. By using these settlers as proxies, the state frames the establishment of outposts as an issue of law enforcement rather than policy.

On Tuesday, 10 September 2024, at around 11:00 AM, Samir Safi was driving his car in the eastern part of the village of Deir Dobwan when a civilian pickup truck entered his lane and blocked his way. In the truck were a soldier and two settlers. Safi reversed and tried to turn around, at which point the soldier got out of the truck, ran over to Safi's car, opened the door and ordered him to get out. The settler driving the truck turned it around and stopped, and then got out with the other settler, both of them carrying clubs. Safi got out of his car, and the soldier ordered him to leave. Safi moved away, and the soldier got in the car and drove off. Safi reported the theft to the Palestinian DCO.

On Wednesday, 24 July 2024, at around 6:30 A.M., military jeeps and a white van with Palestinian license plates drove into the town of Tubas. Inside were soldiers, some of them masked and some wearing civilian clothes. The van drove into a dirt parking lot next to a Palestinian Authority customs office and stopped. Two soldiers in civilian clothes got out and greeted customs officers who were standing at the entrance to the building. Three soldiers in uniforms then got out of the van. 

[...] At around 5:10 P.M., about 20 to 30 children and youths gathered in an alley in al-Am'ari Refugee Camp, which is adjacent to al-Birah. Some of them threw stones at the forces by the fire station, and the latter responded by shooting live bullets, tear gas canisters and stun grenades. Shortly before the shooting, 12-year-old Muhammad Hushiyeh set out home from the soccer field in al-Am’ari R.C. At around 5:15, he came out of an alley about 15 meters from the jeeps and turned west on Haifa Street. He heard the shots and started running west, away from the carwash. In video footage captured from the west, he is seen running away from the soldiers, and then several more shots are heard. Muhammad is then seen lying wounded on the sidewalk, about 70-75 meters from the soldiers who shot him, who were likely across the street from him...

On the night between 20 and 21 March 2024, Israeli military, Border Police and Israel Police forces entered the neighborhoods of Umm a-Sharayet and Kafr ‘Aqab northeast of Jerusalem and carried out an arrest. At around 5:00 A.M., as the armed forces made their way out of the area on the Ramallah-Jerusalem main road, about 15 young men waited for them by the road, on the outskirts of the Sateh Marhaba neighborhood in al-Birah. Once the forces turned into the Sateh Marhaba neighborhood, the young men also entered the neighborhood through alleyways and threw stones at the armored vehicles from about 10 meters away. The convoy kept driving towards the settlement of Kochav Ya’akov.

On Sunday, we woke up to the news that six Israeli hostages were executed by Hamas, just before soldiers reached them in a tunnel in Gaza. Another six, added to tens of thousands of people in this land who should not have died over the past year. During this week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets. They feel angry, desperate and betrayed by their government. They have understood, perhaps for the first time, that the Israeli government does not want to return the hostages in a deal, but to continue the war indefinitely. They see that the occupation and the settlements matter more than human life - and not only of Palestinians, said B'Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak, who addressed the UN Security Council last night (Wednesday) . B’Tselem - the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories was invited by the Slovenian President of the Security Council to provide an expert review of the state of human rights in Israel/Palestine following the war. Watch Yuli Novak’s address to the UNSC.

The Mitzpe Yehuda/Tzon Kedar outpost was established in September 2019 in Bariyet a-Sawahrah a-Sharqiyah, arid pastureland east of the town of the same name in al-Quds District. This area had long been used by farmers from a-Sawahrah a-Sharqiyah to grow crops and graze flocks. Some of the land is privately owned by residents of the town. Immediately after the outpost was set up there was a significant increase in harassment suffered by Palestinian residents. Settlers began invading their lands and damaging fences and crops, sometimes escorted by soldiers.

On Wednesday, 3 July 2024, at around 2:00 P.M., soldiers and undercover Border Police officers entered the industrial zone in the city of Jenin, riding in four civilian jeeps with Palestinian license plates. They drove against traffic until they reached a car wash, where the first jeep crashed into a customer, Nidal ‘Amer (22), an operative of the Jenin Brigade. The jeeps then stopped. ‘Amer, who was standing and talking to people at the car wash, fell to the ground. Two members of the force emerged from the jeep that hit him and stated in Arabic that they were special forces. Immediately afterwards, one of them fired at least two shots at ‘Amer, and then a third shot that hit his head. Then they both got back into the jeep and all the jeeps drove off...

Over the last decade, outposts and “agricultural farms” have become one of the primary methods employed by Israel to take over areas in the West Bank and to expel Palestinian communities. One of these outposts is Meged Ha’aretz, which was founded in 2018 in the Tulkarm district, west of the settlement of Avnei Hefetz, northwest of the village of Shufah—which, with the establishment of Avnei Hefetz, had already lost a significant portion of its land —and east of the village of Kafa. Since the establishment of the outpost, there has been a significant increase in the harassment of farmers whose agricultural plots are located a few hundred meters from the outpost and the settlement fence. Settlers have harassed farmers working on their lands, provoked them.

On 6 June 2024, during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp, an exchange of fire broke out between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli soldiers, resulting in the fatal shooting of an armed Palestinian man and the arrest of another. Before withdrawing from the area, soldiers in a military jeep were documented fatally shooting two men, Ibrahim a-S’adi (20) and ‘Issa Jallad (16), who were riding a motorcycle in the city of Jenin, far from the clashes. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of Jalad and a-Sa'di mirror dozens of other cases where security forces have fatally shot Palestinians who posed no threat.