Documents & Data
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Title | | Description | Date |
OCHA Report: West Bank Demolitions and Displacement – July 2020 | | IMEMCnews - "27 inhabited homes demolished since the start of the pandemic,
despite announced moratorium. Ten additional structures demolished using
expedited procedure (Military Order 1797). Four humanitarian aid structures
demolished and another eight placed at risk" [ry] | 31/8/2020 |
... |
‘Betrayal,’ with a personal touch: Why the PA is so angry at the Israel-UAE deal | | AVI ISSACHAROFF - The Times of Israel - The Palestinian Authority is
fuming, incensed at the agreement between Israel and the United Arab
Emirates. It is so angry it reminds one of a three-year-old having a
tantrum, throwing himself on the floor and screaming for no real
reason. Ostensibly this should have been a wonderful week for the PA.
Its number one goal in recent months – thwarting Israeli annexation
of parts of the West Bank – was achieved, with the help of none other
than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, backed by the Trump
administration. Enormous diplomatic effort, demonstrations prepared
weeks in advance, trips abroad to persuade the European Union and
Arab countries — all seem to have borne fruit. (rh)
| 25/8/2020 |
... |
Is Trump planning to dispute election results if Biden wins? | | Rob Reynolds - Aljazeera - For months, US President Donald Trump has
sought to create doubts about the legitimacy of November`s election.
And, as his Republican convention gets under way, there are questions
about what he might do if he is defeated. Al Jazeera`s Rob Reynolds
reports from Los Angeles. (rh)
| 25/8/2020 |
... |
Police launch probe as top cop filmed beating protester | | Gilad Cohen,Yael Freidson - YnetNews - Daniel Lotem, who was arrested
on suspicion of assaulting Guetta, told the court in Jerusalem on
Sunday that that the senior officer "really choked me." He added:
"They kept me down on the ground, they claimed I choked the officer
even though that never happened. I have no cause and no reason to
attack a police officer. "After that they shoved me into a police
car. They beat me while I was handcuffed. They punched me, stood on
my throat and screamed at me to calm down and not resist arrest, even
though I did not resist at any stage. According to Channel 12, Guetta
was being questioned as a suspect.(rh | 25/8/2020 |
... |
The story of Israel’s Ashkenazi supremacy in one river | | Lihi Yona - +972mag - A river that runs through an Israeli kibbutz
has in recent weeks become a seething arena of controversy, violence,
and hatred. Interestingly — and unconventionally — the usual suspects
in the Israeli political landscape have been turned on their heads in
this particular struggle, with prominent Israeli leftists standing in
staunch support of gated communities and against equality and
distributive justice, all while vocalizing harsh opposition to the
enforcement of law. At the risk of recycling a tired cliché: the
story of this struggle can teach you everything you need to know
about Israeli politics, and the growing irrelevance of the Israeli
Zionist left. Nir David is a kibbutz in northern Israel, situated
between the working-class, largely Mizrahi cities of Afula and Beit
She’an. Like other kibbutzim, it is predominantly made up of
Ashkenazim: Jews of European descent who founded the country and
dominated its resources — as well as its economic, cultural, and
military institutions — primarily through the Labor Zionist Mapai
party. The Asi River, a stunning blue waterway with a year-round
temperature of 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit), passes
through the kibbutz. According to Israel’s Water Act, waterways are
public property that must remain accessible and open to all.
Nevertheless, the residents of Nir David decided that access to the
Asi River will not be free, and have erected fences and barriers to
prevent public access to the river. In recent years, a group of
residents from communities around the kibbutz have been waging a
struggle to ensure free, public access to the Asi River. They filed a
lawsuit against the kibbutz in 2015 that resulted in the kibbutz
vowing to open access to sections of the river — a promise they never
kept.(rh) | 25/8/2020 |
... |
Biden’s party just crushed Palestinian rights. But it won’t hold | | Philip Weiss - Mondoweiss - If you care about Palestinian human
rights, the virtual Democratic Convention last week was dispiriting.
The issue was never mentioned in any of the primetime speeches; the
party leadership crushed the party’s leftwing base on the question.
It was all but removed from the platform, per the instructions of Joe
Biden himself reportedly… Kamala Harris is an AIPAC-style Israel
supporter who famously was dumbfounded when the New York Times asked
her about problems with Israel’s human rights record… Joe Biden has
been visiting Israel for nearly 50 years and counts every Israeli
prime minister including Netanyahu as a dear friend, and he went out
of his way to stomp on Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour. The Dems’
message is clear. Joe Biden is the most pro-Israel nominee for
president, ever. We will not be out-Israel’d by Donald Trump. Joe
Biden is no Barack Obama who is going to be a “troublemaker” on
Israel–why he just penned a platform to the right of Likud! Reports
that the Democratic Party is fracturing over the issue are the
fantasies of a few hotheads on the left, as Ted Deutch and Nancy
Pelosi continually assure us. (Or as Pelosi told an Israel lobby
group during the last cycle, the Capitol will crumble and fall before
the Democrats walk away from Israel.)(rh) | 25/8/2020 |
... |
Who are the winners and losers in UAE-Israel agreement? | | Associated Press - YnetNews - Israel and the United Arab Emirates
announced Thursday they are establishing full diplomatic relations in
a U.S.-brokered deal that required Israel to halt its contentious
plan to annex West Bank land sought by the Palestinians. The historic
deal delivered a key foreign policy victory to U.S. President Donald
Trump as he seeks re-election and reflected a changing Middle East in
which shared concerns about archenemy Iran have largely overtaken
traditional Arab support for the Palestinians. A spokesman for
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the deal amounts to
“treason,” and should be reversed. The agreement makes the UAE the
third Arab country, after Egypt and Jordan, to have full diplomatic
ties with Israel. They announced it in a joint statement, saying
deals between Israel and the UAE were expected in the coming weeks in
such areas as tourism, direct flights and embassies.(rh) | 25/8/2020 |
... |
Revenge against Palestinians is understandable, Israeli judge says in acquitting two security officers who attacked innocent man | | Jonathan Ofir - Mondoweiss - Yesterday, an unbelievable verdict came
down at the Beersheba District Court in Israel: Two Israeli security
officers were acquitted in a case involving the lynching of Haftom
Zarhum, an Eritrean refugee, although they were filmed beating him
and repeatedly dropping a bench on his head. The judge cited
“reasonable doubt”. The bloodthirsty mob lynching in October 2015 was
part of a string of “mistaken identity” incidents in Israel. A terror
attack had in fact taken place earlier at the Beersheba central bus
station; a man from an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev
opened fire, killing a soldier and wounding 11 others.
Zarhum was a passerby, who was mistaken for the shooter by a security
guard because he was dark skinned. A police spokesman in the wake of
the incident said that it was “not clear if [Zarhum] is involved with
the event or if he was shot due to his exterior appearance.” Zarhum
was shot 8 times. Though he had been incapacitated, the mob continued
to beat him heavily, shouting “terrorist!”, “Kill him!”, “break his
head, son of a bitch!”. The two officers were in that mob. The Times
of Israel notes: “The indictment said that in the aftermath of the
attack, [combat soldier Yaakov] Shimba kicked Zarhum in the head and
upper body with force. It said [Prison Services officer Ronen] Cohen
threw a bench onto him, and after another man removed the bench he
took it and again dropped it on the prone man.” The indictment states
that although Zarhum was one of the most seriously wounded in the
fracas, he was evacuated to hospital only after all other wounded
were evacuated (per Haaretz). The lynchers celebrated the killing on
live TV broadcast, when they still believed that Zarhum was the
shooter. (rh) | 18/8/2020 |
... |
Two-state solution: The worst and only way to solve Israeli-Palestinian conflict | | DAVID HOROVITZ - Al-Monitor - From the left, Israel is increasingly
being told by opponents, critics and self-styled supporters at home
and abroad that it has wrecked its foundational commitment to
maintaining both a Jewish majority and a democracy by expanding the
settlement enterprise deep and wide across the West Bank. Since it
can no longer disentangle itself from the Palestinians, and has thus
destroyed the option of the two-state solution on whose basis Jewish
statehood was revived, it has no choice now but to consent to a kind
of sovereign suicide — and usher in a single binational state between
the river and the sea, in which a higher Arab birthrate means Jews
will become an increasingly small minority as the decades pass. From
the right, here and overseas, by contrast, Israel is loudly
encouraged to expand its presence still farther into the biblical
Judea and Samaria, to realize its historical rights and connections,
punish the Palestinians for their perennial rejectionism, and put an
end to the dangerous delusion that a tiny country in a toxic region
can ever safely withdraw from an adjacent territory whose residents
dream of its destruction. If expanding sovereignty can somehow be
presented as according with democratic principles, so much the
better, but if not, so be it.(rh) | 18/8/2020 |
... |
Beirut`s tragedy may befall Israel as well | | Lior El-Hai - YnetNews - The horrendous images of the explosion at
Beirut`s port, especially the enormous mushroom cloud enveloping
Lebanon`s capital all as it slowly rises, should terrify many around
the globe. For the residents of the city of Haifa- where Israel`s
largest seaport is located - these sights represent a nightmare that
one day might actually come to live. There is hardly a single person
living in Haifa, whose body did not tremble at the sight of the
footage emerging from Lebanon. The word ammonia is the single most
terrifying word for the residents of the cities of Haifa, the Krayot,
Neshser and the town of Kiryat Tiv`on, which is connected to Haifa`s
port. (rh) | 18/8/2020 |
... |
America’s death march: Even beating Trump won’t stop the empire’s terminal decline | | Chris Hedges - Alter Net - The terminal decline of the United States
will not be solved by elections. The political rot and depravity will
continue to eat away at the soul of the nation, spawning what
anthropologists call crisis cults — movements led by demagogues that
prey on an unbearable psychological and financial distress. These
crisis cults, already well established among followers of the
Christian Right and Donald Trump, peddle magical thinking and an
infantilism that promises — in exchange for all autonomy —
prosperity, a return to a mythical past, order and security. The dark
yearnings among the white working class for vengeance and moral
renewal through violence, the unchecked greed and corruption of the
corporate oligarchs and billionaires who manage our failed democracy,
which has already instituted wholesale government surveillance and
revoked most civil liberties, are part of the twisted pathologies
that infect all civilizations sputtering towards oblivion. I
witnessed the deaths of other nations during the collapse of the
communist regimes in Eastern Europe and later in the former
Yugoslavia. I have smelled this stench before.(rh) | 18/8/2020 |
... |
Erekat: I never expected this poison dagger to come from an Arab country | | JOSEF FEDERMAN - The Times of Israel - AP — Israel’s agreement to
establish diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates marks a
watershed moment in its relations with Arab countries, but the
Palestinians say it puts a just resolution of the Middle East
conflict even farther out of reach. The UAE presented its decision to
upgrade longstanding ties to Israel as a way of encouraging peace
efforts by taking Israel’s planned annexation of parts of the
occupied West Bank off the table, something Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu swiftly rebuffed by insisting the pause was “temporary.”
From the Palestinian perspective, the UAE not only failed to stop
annexation, which would dash any remaining hopes of establishing a
viable, independent state (rh) | 18/8/2020 |
... |
Attention UAE Leaders: Israel Is Advancing De Facto Annexation | | Amira Hass - HAARETZ - So there’s no official annexation. However,
one should bring to the attention of Hend al-Otaiba, spokeswoman of
the UAE Foreign Ministry, and Yousef al-Otaiba, the country’s
ambassador to the U.S., who are so proud of their diplomatic
achievement, that at any given moment Israel is advancing de facto
annexation. You didn’t know? When you come visiting, members of the
Otaiba family, drive eastward towards the West Bank (including East
Jerusalem). You’ll see that it’s hard to tell where sovereign Israel
ends and where the West Bank begins. Route 443, the Shiloh valley,
the western and eastern Etzion blocs, the “tunnel road,” the Binyamin
district, the “sovereignty road,” the Jordan Valley, the Trans-
Samaria highway, the Givat Ze’ev bloc, the Adumim bloc, the Talmonim
bloc, the Gilo bloc, the Karnei Shomron bloc and its environs, the
City of David, the Har Homa neighborhood, the seam line area, etc.
etc. All of these are emblematic of the way Israel has encroached on
Palestinian space that was intended to be part of their state under a
peace agreement. All of these have become ever-expanding Israeli-
Jewish areas – arrogant, imperious, enclosing Palestinian enclaves
that are becoming less and less visible.(rh) | 18/8/2020 |
... |
Shalom, Abu Dhabi! Why the Israel-UAE agreement changes (almost) everything | | DAVID HOROVITZ - The Times of Israel - It was always widely believed
in Israel that much of the Arab world, and certainly many in the
Gulf, were fairly indifferent to the plight of the Palestinians, and,
at worst, not particularly ill-willed toward Israel. My trip in 2016
anecdotally indicated the same, though I stress it was a brief visit,
I was speaking with local citizens as opposed to foreign workers, and
I know other Israelis have had less pleasant interactions. It was
also widely believed in Israel that much of the Arab world, including
the Gulf, would nonetheless not overtly partner with Israel, much
less fully normalize relations with Israel, so long as the Israel-
Palestinian conflict went unresolved. And so it proved. Until
Thursday. The UAE-Israel deal has not yet even formally been
consummated, but we have already entered the honeymoon period. After
endless domestic political deadlock, and months of a pandemic and a
collapsing economy, Israeli media is understandably delighted to be
reporting some good news, and the coverage is downright giddy —
thanks, in great part, to interviewees in the UAE itself mirroring
the Israeli delight.///A complex process led to Thursday’s
extraordinary diplomatic bombshell. In the mix was the Gulf’s shared
concern with Israel at the ongoing strengthening of Iran, and the
awareness that Israel simply cannot and will not allow itself to be
cowed by an Islamist regime aiming for our demise and bent on
achieving nuclear weapon capability. Somewhere in the mix, too, was
that indifference to the Palestinians, or at least impatience with
them, and ultimately a decision no longer to be constricted by the
Palestinian conflict in their dealings with Israel.(rh)
| 18/8/2020 |
... |
Israel will have to reckon with the occupation one way or another | | Henry Siegman - Responsible Statecraft - Far from being an
unprecedented breakthrough, the UAE initiative is a pale repeat of an
initiative by the Saudis and by the entire Arab League already in
2002. The difference between the two is that the earlier one required
Israel to accept UN decisions and international law regarding
Palestinian rights, and that negotiations between the parties begin
at the pre 1967 armistice internationally recognized borders, while
the UAE’s offer was made contemporaneously with Netanyahu’s defiant
declaration that Israel intends to annex parts of the West Bank
whenever it chooses to do so. Saudi Arabia and the Arab League were
in constant consultation with the Palestinians, but the UAE never
even bothered to inform the Palestinians of their intentions.
Consequently, the self-righteous indignation of Beinart’s critics,
most of whom are also outraged by any proposed punishment of Israel
for its transgressions, are entirely hypocritical. For his critics
know that no future Israeli government is prepared to agree to a
Palestinian state that would end Israel’s current de facto apartheid
rule in the West Bank. (rh) | 18/8/2020 |
... |
10,000 maniacs: What the press is talking about on August 2 | | JOSHUA DAVIDOVICH - The Times of Israel - 1. Bibi, I got your
numbers: Ten thousand people at a protest is not an especially
impressive turnout in normal times. But pack those 10,000 into
central Jerusalem — where there are no big squares like in Tel Aviv
or any other world capital — amid a raging pandemic that keeps many
at home, sprinkle a few thousand more at ancillary rallies around the
country and mix in a press many of whose members (let’s face it)
share at least some of the protesters’ amorphous goals, and you have
a media landscape that regards the 10,000 the same way it might a
rally 40 times its size.(rh) | 4/8/2020 |
... |
Naftali Bennett wants to be the right’s anti-Netanyahu — and it’s working | | HAVIV RETTIG GUR - The Times of Israel - It’s been obvious for months
that the right-wing Yamina party would benefit from spending some
time in the opposition. But no one imagined just how much. The last
four months have been the first time Yamina leader Naftali Bennett —
or any Yamina MK, for that matter — has actually sat in the
opposition. And support for the party has more than doubled.(rh)
| 4/8/2020 |
... |
Israeli artist takes aim at Netanyahu with life-size statue | | Associated Press - Ynetnews - Installation, depicting a disheveled
premier in a mock re-enactment of the Last Supper and in Tel Aviv
Rabin Square, is the latest twist in a summer of protests against the
PM and his conduct. The installation, displayed in the city`s central
Rabin Square, is the latest twist in a summer of demonstrations
against Netanyahu. In recent weeks, thousands of people have taken to
the streets, calling on Netanyahu to resign, angry over what they say
is his bungled response to an economic crisis caused by the
coronavirus and depicting him as a hedonist out of touch with common
people. (rh) | 4/8/2020 |
... |
Can Israelis broaden their protests beyond Netanyahu? | | Jonathan Cook - Countercurrents - Demonstrations have yet to draw a
connection between Netanyahu’s personal abuses of office and the
systemic corruption of Israeli politics, with the occupation its
beating heart. The target of the anger and frustration is decidedly
personal at this stage – focused on the figure of Netanyahu, who is
now Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Protesters have renamed
him Israel’s “crime minister”. But also fuelling the protests is a
larger mood of disenchantment as doubts grow about the state’s
competence to deal with multiple crises unfolding in Israel. The
virus has caused untold social and economic misery for many, with as
much as one fifth of the labour force out of work. Netanyahu’s
supporters in the lower middle-classes have been hit hardest.(rh)
| 4/8/2020 |
... |
Netanyahu’s annexation effort stalls /// Fatah and Hamas jointly oppose annexation /// Israelis, Palestinians and COVID-19 second wave /// New US Democratic Party platform on Israel-Palestine: | | Two-State Index - Geneva Initiative - Netanyahu’s annexation effort
stalls: The resurgence of coronavirus cases and shifting US
political dynamics put Israelimoves on hold as international
community continues push-back. /// Second wave of COVID-19 met by
little Israeli-Palestinian cooperation: The effects of Israel’s push
for annexation and the Palestinian response take a toll on efforts
to combat the pandemic in the West Bank. /// Fatah and Hamas
announce plans to jointly fight annexation: Press conference with
leaders from both factions signals possible thawing of relations.
/// US Democratic Party adopts new platform language on Israel-
Palestine: While not seen as a radical shift, platform now goes
further on policies related to advancing and preserving the option
of a two-state solution. /// The above developments led to a slight
rise in the Geneva Initiative`s painstakingly researched Two-State
Index. [ak] | 4/8/2020 |
|
Palestine in Pictures: July 2020 | | EI - "One Palestinian was killed by Israeli occupation forces during the month of
July. Ibrahim Abu Yaqoub, 29, was shot in the neck by soldiers, who claimed that
the slain man and a companion were throwing Molotov cocktails at an army post"
[ry] | 3/8/2020 |
... |
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