Christians in the Gaza Strip will not be allowed to visit holy cities such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem to celebrate Christmas this year, Israeli authorities said on Thursday.

Gazan Christians will be granted permits to travel abroad but none will be allowed to go to Israel and the occupied West Bank, home to many sites holy to Christians, a spokeswoman for Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians said.

Israel tightly restricts movements out of the Gaza Strip, territory controlled by militant group Hamas.

The spokeswoman said that following “security orders,” Gazans would be allowed to travel abroad via Israel’s Allenby Bridge border crossing with Jordan but not to visit cities in Israel or the West Bank.

Gaza has only around 1,000 Christians - most of them Greek Orthodox - among a population of 2 million in the narrow coastal strip.

President Trump signed yesterday an Executive Order empowering the federal government to crack down on campus organizing for Palestinian rights under the guise of combating antisemitism.

“This is our message to universities: If you want to accept the tremendous amount of federal dollars that you get every year, you must reject antisemitism,” Trump stated during a White House Hanukkah reception which doubled as a signing ceremony.

But Trump’s Executive Order has nothing to do with combating the scourge of antisemitism, the revival of which he is greatly responsible for by stoking white supremacy. Instead, it is primarily designed to pressure universities to disallow students to boycott for Palestinian rights.

Christians in the Gaza Strip will not be allowed to visit holy cities such as Bethlehem and Jerusalem to celebrate Christmas this year, Israeli authorities said on Thursday, Reuters reports.

Gazan Christians will be granted permits to travel abroad but none will be allowed to go to Israel and the occupied West Bank, home to many sites holy to Christians, a spokeswoman for Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians said.

Israel tightly restricts movements out of the Gaza Strip, territory controlled by Hamas, an Islamist group that it considers a terrorist organization.

A Palestinian art exhibition was stolen last week during the 18th session of the Assembly of the States Parties of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Hosted by the State of Palestine and Palestinian Human Rights Organisation Al-Haq, the exhibition featured MEMO’s Palestinian cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh’s artwork as part of an initiative on the impact of the criminal policies and practices of the Israeli occupation on the victims in Palestine.

According to the International Middle East Media Centre, Sabaaneh’s graphic political masterpieces were removed without authorisation from the hallways of the World Forum, sparking widespread condemnation.

The State of Palestine has been a member of the ICC since 2015 and has brought several key cases before the court.

Al-Haq and its partners have also submitted a file on crimes committed in the West Bank, including Jerusalem.

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order adopting a controversial definition of antisemitism that free speech advocates say will stifle Palestinian rights activism on college campuses.

The executive order, signed by the president on Wednesday afternoon, extends current anti-discrimination civil rights laws at the Department of Education to cover Judaism.

It also orders the department to adopt the working definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) of antisemitism when considering claims of antisemitic abuse.

Palestinian rights advocates have long rejected IHRA's definition, saying that it could be employed to censor speech critical of Israel's political policies.

In November 2019, following a long legal battle, Israel revoked the work visa and deported Human Rights Watch (HRW) director Omar Shakir. According to HRW, Israel argued that the state, “revoked the work visa of Shakir, a United States citizen, in May 2018 on the assertion that his advocacy violated a 2017 law that bars entry to people who advocate a boycott of Israel or its settlements in the occupied West Bank.”

HRW claims that this is not true and that the organization does not call for the boycott of Israel. On their website, they do claim, however, that, “Human Rights Watch urges businesses to stop operating in illegal settlements as part of their global duty to avoid complicity in human rights abuses.”

Republicans voted overwhelmingly Friday for Israeli apartheid in the West Bank.

They did so by voting against House Resolution 326 which backs the two-state solution and rejects Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

While the so-called two-state solution may be defunct, Republicans’ silence on what would replace it suggests they’re fine with Israel entrenching the apartheid system it has been establishing in the West Bank over the last five decades.

They certainly aren’t bubbling with excitement about the prospect of one person, one vote.

Just days after US President Donald Trump spewed vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric, Israel lobby groups are celebrating his executive order taking aim at supporters of Palestinian rights.

Israel and its most extreme defenders are not bothered by the president’s anti-Jewish rhetoric as long as it comes wrapped in unquestioning support for Israel.

Trump’s order, which he signs today, is evidence of that support. It is also a dangerous escalation of the attack on basic free speech rights.

In the decade since Palestinians first petitioned the International Criminal Court, around 3,500 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Around 800 were children.

Israel has expanded its settlement colonies in the West Bank, encouraged by a Trump administration that has put Washington’s seal of approval on war crimes only tacitly endorsed by previous US governments.

That tacit support has been more than symbolic.

The fate of the Palestinians, always shoved to the end of the line, has not been an issue with any kind of national profile in the course of this wretched election campaign.

In part, this is simply because as voters in Britain, we naturally have our own pressing domestic concerns – especially the gradual sell-off of the National Health Service.

But in large part it is also down to a four-year long witch hunt over a non-existent “Labour anti-Semitism crisis.”

This has made many sympathetic Labour politicians fearful to even discuss Palestine. They know the Israel lobby will immediately jump down their throats.

Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces over plans for a new Israeli settlement in the West Bank city of Hebron.

On December 9, 1987, the first intifada began in illegally occupied Palestine in response to the assassination of four Palestinians outside the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza. This fight for freedom has been going on for decades and will not end until Palestine is free. The indignation of the young Palestinians about their hopeless situation has consequently dammed – even after they had long ago noticed that their political leaders did nothing for them, but only appeased and arranged with the occupiers, and more or less under the occupation left their country to their fate. Thus, the desperate Palestinians saw no other possibility than in the refugee camps, in the occupied West Bank and in the annexed East Jerusalem to stand up and fight back.

Proposed destruction of Hebron’s market to make way for a new settlement is Israeli government’s route to refashion its apartheid system as the rule of law

The embattled Prime Minister wants Washington to approve of Israel's further expansion into the Jordan Valley, just days after he urged Donald Trump not to miss a rare chance to back Tel Aviv's territorial.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who fiercely fights for re-election, believes that "the time has come to extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley," a swath of land spanning between the occupied West Bank and neighboring Kingdom of Jordan. On their part, Israel's closest ally should give a final nod to the move.

"I want American recognition of our sovereignty in the Jordan Valley. This is important," he bluntly told an event set up on Sunday by Israel's Makor Rishon newspaper. As part of the proposed annexation, all Jewish settlements in the area would become part of Israel, he insisted.

Five Palestinian workers have been injured after Israeli soldiers opened fire on them in the early hours of this morning near the separation wall in the occupied northern West Bank city of Tulkarem.

Israeli soldiers manning the checkpoint shot tear gas into the large crowd who were attempting to get to work, causing dozens of others to suffocate from excessive tear gas inhalation.

According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, the five wounded victims were rushed to the Thabet Government Hospital in Tulkarem. Medics confirmed the casualties were shot towards their lower extremities and described their situation as “moderate.”

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers situated near the gate through the Israeli Annexation Wall at Dahr Al-Abed, southwest of Jenin, shot and wounded a young man from the Palestinian village of Arabeh.

The Palestinian was identified as Saif Iyad Wajih Al-Ardah.

Israeli occupation has denied permission for British lawmaker, Philippa Whitford, who is a doctor, from entering Gaza to offer help for patients of breast cancer.

Over the past two and half years[1], I have been working with Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) to improve the provision of services and treatment for breast cancer patients in Palestine.

Last year, I travelled out with the specific aim of setting up a project to enable experienced professionals in breast cancer care to provide teaching and training to local Palestinian clinicians working with breast cancer patients.

Since my last visit, I have managed to recruit a team of specialists from all over Scotland to join the project, which will help improve breast cancer care – prevention, diagnosis and treatment – for women in Gaza and the West Bank.

The resolution was intended both to contradict President Trump, whose recent positions have been pro-occupation and pro-annexation, as well as to potentially warn Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against any hasty annexations, something he’s been advocating recently.

The bill was hardly perfect, which meant a lot of the voting on the margins defied conventional wisdom. Some traditional critics of Israel voted against the bill over language, and still others rejected the bill because it proscribed a US-imposed solution.

The “gang of four” stood as four Democrats opposing the resolution, and did so because the bill’s final version removed any mention of settlements, of Israel being an occupying power, and watered down language about the two-state solution at the behest of more centrist Democrats.

The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) is the target of a $90 million lawsuit that accuses the group of engaging in environmental terrorism.

The legal action was brought forward by the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF) and 12 Americans citizens who live in Israel last month. Although they’re identified as the KKL-JNF in Hebrew, the group is widely known as the Jewish National Fund. The complaint alleges that USCPR has funneled money to the Boycott National Committee (BNC) to be used for terrorist activities and that BNC is directly connected to HAMAS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front-General Command and the Palestinian Liberation Front. The group’s press release on the action asserts that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement itself is a “campaign of terror against Israel.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is reported to be planning a run for Senate in Kansas next year and quietly recruiting funders for that race. And surprise– Pompeo has already reached out to Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican donor around, and to other pro-Israel donors– at the very time that he was announcing that the U.S. no longer considers Israeli settlements illegal.

The report by Michael Wilner of McClatchy and Bryan Lowry of the Kansas City Star is frank about the crazy timing here.

The timing of Pompeo’s exchange with Adelson coincided with the secretary’s on-camera announcement on November 18 that the Trump administration would revoke its longstanding legal determination on the legitimacy of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Adelson supports the settler enterprise.

Last month, over 100 Democratic House members signed a letter that decried the Trump administration’s policy shift on West Bank settlements. The letter was initiated by Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI and was sent to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. On November 18, Pompeo announced that the U.S. government was abandoning a 1978 State Department legal opinion which determined that settlement expansion in the occupied territories were in violation of international law. Just a day after Pompeo’s announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu advanced a bill that would annex the Jordan Valley.

“If the U.S. unilaterally abandons international and human rights law, we can only expect a more chaotic and brutal twenty-first century for Americans and our allies, including the Israeli people,” reads Levin’s letter, “Given these serious implications, we strongly urge you to reverse this policy decision immediately.”

Israel is holding a prominent Palestinian scientist without charge or trial.

Ubai Aboudi, an American citizen, was due to travel to the United States in January for a conference on science and Palestinian rights.

Prominent scholars, including Nobel Prize winner George P. Smith and Noam Chomsky signed a petition demanding Aboudi’s release.

The petition calls on the European Union in particular to demand that Israel free Aboudi. The EU grants Israel huge amounts of money under the guise of research and science partnerships despite Israel’s constant violations of the human rights condition in its agreement with the EU.

European Union (EU) countries’ are taking steps towards boycotting the Israeli apartheid system, using its legal, legislative and parliamentary institutions to oppose the occupation, Palestine News Network reported.

The EU condemned the Trump administration’s positions and policies carried out in the Palestinian Territories, occupied by Israel since 1967, especially in Jerusalem regarding the Israeli settlements, and the two-state solution.

Within this context, the EU’s Supreme Court has approved labeling Israeli goods produced in settlements built in the Palestinian territories, and exported to the EU. It should also be noted that the EU always asserts that settlements are “illegal, and are an obstacle for achieving peace.”

What do Paul Wolfowitz, Dan Kurtzer, Aaron Miller, and Prince Andrew have in common?

These four privileged older white guys have all sought (and been granted) exposure in the corporate media recently. Paul Wolfowitz, one of the prime architects and advocates of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was given this fine platform on the NYT’s opinion page in order to criticize Pres. Trump’s recent decision to withdraw (or later, reduce/redeploy) the U.S. troop presence in Syria. Dan Kurtzer and Aaron Miller, two of the leading “peace processors” guiding U.S. policy on Palestine and other Middle Eastern issues for 24 years, 1992-2016, were given this platform on the Washington Post, to comment on Trump’s policy on Israel’s illegal settlement. As for Prince Andrew, you may have heard he gave this disastrous interview to the BBC, discussing his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

A new Israeli settlement will be built in the heart of the flashpoint city of Hebron, in the southern West Bank, joining a long list of notoriously violent settlements in the area.

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennet, of the ultra nationalist “New Right” party, said on Sunday that a new settlement would be built on top of Hebron’s once bustling fruit and vegetable market, now referred to by locals as a “ghost town.”

According to Bennet, the existing buildings, which belong to the Hebron municipality, will be razed to the ground to make way for new shops and buildings for the settlers.

The new settlement will create a contiguous settlement bloc in the middle of Hebron’s Old City, extending from the Ibrahimi Mosque to the Avraham Avinu settlement, and according to Bennet, will double the Jewish population of the city.

Backed by the Democrats, the US House of Representatives is planning to vote on a resolution reaffirming the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tomorrow.

The resolution was introduced by Representatives Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Karen Bass (D-Calif.).

Originally, this was introduced in April and referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee advocates for a negotiated, long-term solution that ensures Israel’s security as a democratic, Jewish nation while also establishing a Palestinian state.

The Israeli government has increased discretionary spending on settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory by 50 per cent over the last two years, reported the Jerusalem Post.

According to data published by settlement watchdog Peace Now, so-called “discretionary spending” “is expenditure by various ministries outside the general budget, including from the Interior, Housing, Education, and Energy and Water ministries, as well as the National Roads Authority”.

These funds are directed towards the construction of settlement housing units, as well as for roads inside the settlements, “buildings for educational, social and religious purposes, commercial centres and industrial parks”, the report added.

France’s National Assembly on Tuesday passed a resolution conflating support for Palestinian equality with hatred of Jews – an initiative supported by the country’s Israel lobby.

But most lawmakers did not take part in the vote.

On 1 June 2018, 21-year-old Palestinian paramedic Razan al-Najjar was shot and killed by Israeli forces while tending to casualties during the Great March of Return - the unarmed protests that had begun two months earlier along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel and that continue to this day.

In predictable fashion, Israeli officials have cast the protesters - from children to elderly women to disabled persons - as diabolical minions sent by Hamas to lay waste to Israel via “kite and balloon terrorism” and other Scary Stuff.

As with every other manifestation of the Palestinian demand for dignity, Israel has used the Great March of Return as an opportunity to engage in mass slaughter: on a single day in May 2018, some 59 protesters were killed, including children.

Having slipped through Israel's security fence, Emad Khalil Ibrahim Shahin and his friends sneaked into an abandoned barracks and lit a fire. Anxious they were about to be discovered, they fled the scene.

“We ran until we found a sand dune to hide behind on the other side of the fence, but then noticed Emad was not with us. He ran slower because he was on crutches,” one of his companions, who wished to remain anonymous, told Middle East Eye.

“We saw him on the ground and told him to crawl. But then a military vehicle raced up and a soldier fired at him, shooting him in the right leg. Soon a helicopter came and took him away.”

It would be 355 days until Shahin returned to Gaza. He arrived on 23 October in a body bag.

Israeli Minister of Defense, Naftali Bennett, on Tuesday, issued a written order imposing international economic sanctions on Palestinian militants abroad, The Palestinian News and Info Agency reported.

How does Chancellor Merkel intend to explain it during her first visit to Auschwitz on December 6, 2019, that she and her government – given the historical responsibility for the Holocaust and 74 years after the liberation of Auschwitz from the National Socialist concentration and extermination camp by the soldiers of the Red Army – miss any respect when it comes to the permanent break of international law in the “Jewish state”. Does not it respect the respect for international law, as a compelling doctrine from German history, to finally take back the raison d’etat for the security of the “Jewish state”? How can a German government ignore the constant violations of international law simply because they are committed by a Jewish regime, descendants of the victims of the Holocaust? The clear rules, which international law has, Merkel can not simply sweep her “Christian Zionism” under the table.

An advisory committee set up to monitor and recommend the investment policies of Brown University in Rhode Island has voted to divest from companies participating in the continued subjugation of Palestinians.

The successful passing of the resolution by the university’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies (ACCRIP) on Monday paves the way for activists to pressure the university to withdraw support for companies "facilitating the [Israeli] occupation and its human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza".

In a statement released by Brown Divest, a coalition of undergraduate students that has been at the forefront of the call to divest from companies operating in the occupied territories, the group said they were "elated that the university committee responsible for divestment has finally joined the calls for divestment from human rights violations in Palestine".

New details have emerged about a botched Israeli intelligence operation in the Gaza Strip in November 2018 that sparked deadly Israeli air strikes and Palestinian rocket fire.

Eight undercover Israeli agents - who were disguised as Palestinians and had taken the aliases of a real family in Gaza - entered the coastal enclave on November 11 last year with the objective of planting listening devices on Hamas's private communications system, an investigation by Al Jazeera Arabic's Ma Khafia Aazam (Tip of the Iceberg) programme revealed.

However, the Israelis were stopped and questioned by a Hamas patrol unit in Khan Younis for 40 minutes and became suspicious of their answers. A firefight broke out and the Israeli operatives used guns with silencers, immediately killing Hamas commander Nour Baraka and one of his aides, Mohammed al-Qarra.

Forty-seven incidents of violence toward Palestinians and their property took place over the past tree months ? Israel Police closed most cases because perpetrators were not identified

Two weeks since the air force attack in Deir el-Balah that killed nine members of the Sawarkah family, who were living in a structure that the army had defined as an Islamic Jihad “terror infrastructure,” the Israel Defense Forces are still investigating why the green light to bomb the building wasn’t based on updated information.

But an inquiry conducted by Haaretz shows that this conduct isn’t unusual. According to sources in the defense establishment, the IDF often bombs terror targets in Gaza that were included in its target bank long before the strike without checking in real time whether there are civilians at the site or whether the site has been converted into residences.

Children being made to endure lengthy medical treatments alone is a particularly cruel feature of Israel’s permit regime imposed on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It is a shameful reality that COGAT, the Israeli military body that handles such permits, tries to obscure with liberal use of emojis on its social media pages.

I have previously written about how COGAT tries to present itself as a humanitarian body in its social media propaganda while it plays a central role in Israel’s complete and unjust system of control over Palestinian movement.

For example, COGAT describes its restrictions on the movement of millions of Palestinians, such as military checkpoints, as projects which “improve the quality of life of the region’s population.”

It even put out a video last week boasting of a “service revolution” following the launch of “an advanced call center” through which its Civil Administration “provides clear responses on all topics, to everyone”:

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
The Israeli government is aiming to increase the volume of Israel’s defence exports, reported Globes, which has revealed the main points of the plan for the first time.

The project, being overseen by the Defence Ministry’s International Defence Cooperation Directorate (SIBAT) led by Brigadier General (Res.) Yair Kulas, will begin to be rolled out in early 2020.

According to Globes, the plan is based on “focused seminars for senior commanders in foreign armies”, Israeli military “assistance for promoting sales of Israeli weapons”, and “subsidising small and medium-sized defence companies seeking to sell arms around the world”.

Speaking this week, Kulas said that SIBAT favours a major expansion of agreements between countries, resulting in significant deals for the large defence companies, especially Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.

The good thing about the Secretary of State’s declaration that the U.S. does not regard settlements as illegal is that it is a naked expression of the power of the Israel lobby in U.S. policy making. Even the Associated Press chalked the decision up to Trump’s biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson.

For 20 years Sheldon Adelson has been pouring money into Republican politics to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and he has succeeded. Trump has proved to be Adelson’s “perfect little puppet” (to quote the president on Adelson’s former favorite in 2015), giving the casino mogul everything on his wish list, from recognition of Jerusalem as the capital to recognizing the Golan annexation to tearing up the Iran deal. “A huge check from Sheldon Adelson” and winning Jewish votes in Florida, is how Thomas Friedman explained Trump’s policy last summer. Adelson has more power than the secretary of State, writes Tim Egan of the Times.

Israeli warplanes carried out fresh air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday following a rocket fire, according to the military, reports Anadolu Agency.

The army said fighter jets struck a number of targets belonging to Palestinian groups Hamas, which rules the seaside territory.

No injuries were reported.

The air strikes came shortly after the Israeli army attacked a number of Hamas sites in the southern Gaza Strip after two rockets were fired from the enclave into southern Israel.

My short visit to Palestine in early November began around the time of the commemoration of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, went through the assassination by Israel of Islamic Jihad leader, Bahaa Abu Al-Atta and his wife in Gaza, and ended as Prime Minister Netanyahu, who should be indicted for his countless crimes against the Palestinian people, was indicted for low grade corruption (valued at about $200,000), pulling strings and lying. And as always, Palestinians continue to bury their dead as Israelis bury their heads in the sand.

It is only a matter of time before the next terrible massacre in Gaza or elsewhere in illegally occupied Palestine will take place. The Zionist regime needs wars both internally and externally to survive.

Sirens went off in Gaza Strip and Sderot, Israeli Defence Forces reported on their twitter page on Tuesday.

Following the sirens, two launches from Gaza Strip at Israeli territory were identified, according to the IDF. The military added the Iron Dome air defence system managed to intercept one projectile.

"2 rockets were just fired from #Gaza at Israeli civilians. 1 rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome Aerial Defense System," the IDF wrote on its Twitter page.

Normalising Israel as a Jewish state absents “Palestinian experience, history and identity claims”. Yasmeen Abu Laban and Abigail Bakan, Palestinian and Jewish authors of “Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race” have constructed a detailed analysis of race and power relations which has been sustained and adopted by the international community. By dispelling the conflations associated with race, the book delves into the political implications, showing how the exclusion of Palestinians on all levels – politics, land and environment – are all sites in which Israel is able to manipulate, thus constructing the apartheid state in full view of, and with no obstruction from, the international community.

A disgraced Israeli businessman who is said to have received billions of dollars in backing from Saudi investment funds, has admitted to working with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, to draft the controversial “peace plan” commonly known as “the deal of the century”.

The surprise revelation was reported in a Vanity Fair article on the rise and catastrophic downfall of WeWork founder and former CEO Adam Neumann. The 40-year-old Israeli entrepreneur raised on a kibbutz in southern Israel, not far from the Gaza Strip, is said to have assigned one of the directors of WeWork to produce a slick video for Kushner that would showcase what an economically transformed West Bank and Gaza would look like. The video was shown by Kushner during his speech at the White House’s peace conference in Bahrain during the summer.

Palestinian officials say Israeli settlers attacked five villages in the occupied West Bank overnight, torching vehicles and olive trees, and leaving graffiti on the walls of homes.

Ghassan Daghlas, a spokesman for the Nablus governorate, says the Jewish settlers set fire to five cars and spray-painted graffiti on more than 20 others. Villagers circulated photos of the damage on social media.

Israel has occupied the West Bank illegally since 1967, and commits various abuses against Palestinian civilians, human rights groups say.

More than 600,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, in constructions considered illegal under international law.

Hundreds of Israeli settlers have stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank after the Israeli army closed off the mosque to Palestinians.

Settlers also attacked Palestinians in Hebron, injuring at least eight people.

The settlers performed a Jewish religious ritual in the mosque to celebrate the Chayevi Sarah holiday.

Dozens of Israeli troops deployed in the alleys leading up to the mosque in order to prevent Palestinians approaching it.

According to the Palestinian News and Info Agency (WAFA), 50 Palestinian vehicles were vandalized in the latest series of Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank district of Salfit.

Mayor of Kufur Ad-Dik, Ibrahim Issa Ad-Dik stated that a group of Israeli settlers sneaked their way into the Palestinian village, slashed the tires of 50 vehicles, and scrawled anti-Palestinian hate graffiti on several vehicles and the walls of houses.

Graffiti reading “A closed military zone” was scrawled across the wall of a villager’s house, in Hebrew, according to Ad-Dik, who noted that this was the second time the village was targeted by settlers in a year.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced yesterday that the US is softening its position on Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Secretary Pompeo repudiated the 1978 State Department legal opinion that stated that Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are “inconsistent with international law.”

It is hard to determine whether the move was intended to rescue Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career or to buy the Jewish Lobby’s support for President Trump at a critical time. It is reasonable to assume that the policy was put forth to advance both aims.

Monday’s announcement was the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration — declaring occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, and the movement of the US embassy to Jeruaslem — aimed at weaking Palestinian claims of statehood.

“The announcement marks a continuation of the Trump Administration’s efforts to undermine years of progress on refining parameters for an agreed-upon resolution of the core issues of the conflict,” Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said in a statement.

The group called the announcement “an Orwellian absurdity,” saying “no declaration will change the fact that the settlements were built on occupied territory, in contravention of international law, and that they pose among the greatest obstacles to peace.”

Two dozen Christian leaders are calling on the US Congress to support a bill to curb Israeli torture of Palestinian children.

This comes as progressive lawmakers are being challenged over their failure to uphold Palestinian rights. In Chicago, activists occupied the office of Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky to demand she back the bill.

In a Monday statement, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Washington no longer regards Israeli settlements in the West Bank as violating international law, reversing the Obama administration’s position and taking no legal position on the question or that of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank itself.

Israel has said it carried out fresh air raids on the Gaza Strip in response to rocket fire from the besieged enclave, two days after a precarious ceasefire went into force following a round of fighting that killed dozens of Palestinians.

The Israeli army said its attacks early on Saturday did not target positions of the Islamic Jihad group but sites belonging to Hamas, which administers the Gaza Strip. There was no immediate comment by Hamas.

Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations Riyad Mansour on Friday criticized Israel's killing of civilians and called on the international community to condemn this aggression.

"Today is our national day... we bury our martyrs, the civilians killed by the Israeli occupying forces during this current aggression, which we condemn," the ambassador told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York.

"We demand from the international community, especially the Security Council, to condemn this aggression and to stop it, to shoulder its responsibility in connection with international peace and security," the envoy added.

Mansour said he was grateful to countries and parties that called for an "independent, transparent" investigation on this crime and to hold "in an accountable way" the criminals who have committed this crime and to bring them to justice from the Israeli side.

Act.IL is a global pro-Israel campaign at least partially funded by the country’s government. The project includes an app that enables users to earn points and prizes for promoting the state of Israel online, by attacking BDS and other pro-Palestinian movements. According to Electronic Intifada reporting from earlier this year, it’s operating with a budget of a more than a million dollars.

WhatsApp yesterday blocked access to hundreds of Palestinian journalists and activists who were providing live updates during the Israeli offensive on Gaza, Safa news agency reported.

This came less than 24 hours after the end of the two-day Israeli offensive which resulted in the death of 34 Palestinians and wounded 111 others.

Palestinian journalists and activists, who were active during the Israeli offensive, reported that their accounts were blocked and they were unable to use them.

An Israeli attack on Gaza was imminent, and not because of any provocations by Palestinian groups in the besieged, impoverished Gaza Strip. The Israeli military escalation was foreseeable because it factors neatly in Israel’s contentious political scene. The war was not a question of “if”, but “when”.

The answer came on November 12, when the Israeli military launched a major strike against Gaza, killing an Islamic Jihad Commander, Bahaa Abu al-Ata, along with his wife Asma.

More strikes followed, targeting what the Israeli military described as Islamic Jihad installations. However, the identities of the victims, along with damning social media footage, pictures, and eyewitness accounts indicate that civilians and civilian infrastructure were bombed and destroyed as well.

On 1 June 2018, 21-year-old Palestinian paramedic Razan al-Najjar was shot and killed by Israeli forces while tending to casualties during the Great March of Return - the unarmed protests that had begun two months earlier along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel and that continue to this day.

In predictable fashion, Israeli officials have cast the protesters - from children to elderly women to disabled persons - as diabolical minions sent by Hamas to lay waste to Israel via “kite and balloon terrorism” and other Scary Stuff.

As with every other manifestation of the Palestinian demand for dignity, Israel has used the Great March of Return as an opportunity to engage in mass slaughter: on a single day in May 2018, some 59 protesters were killed, including children.

There is much speculation about the timing of Israel’s assassination of an Islamic Jihad leader, Baha Abu al-Ata and his wife, Asma.

Why rock the boat now? The killing came in the middle of Israeli coalition negotiations, that – if they fail – could lead to an unprecedented third election in a year.

It came during a period of Egyptian-mediated calm between Israel and Hamas that had raised hopes that not only would Israel’s draconian siege on Gaza be eased a little, it could secure a longer-term cessation of hostilities, as well as pave the way for Palestinian elections, long overdue.

And finally, and with a more or less simultaneous attack on an Islamic Jihad leader in Damascus (which missed its apparent target, Akram al-Ajouri, but killed a son, Muath, and a granddaughter, Batoul) it came at a time when there are plenty of other hotspots in a region that seems perpetually poised on some disastrous precipice.

Why escalate at this time?

Hundreds of people took to the streets in Times Square in New York City on Friday, 15 November to protest Israeli attacks on Gaza and support the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

Provoking a conflict with Gaza led to the deaths of 32 Palestinians. But, was the real objective the creation of an emergency government so Netanyahu can remain in power?

Progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders should be credited for finally offering solutions to decades-old Israeli Human rights violations, but those solutions are often little more than talking points designed to placate their base and appease Israel.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu attacked publicly the possibility of a minority government of his rival Blue-White that would be dependent on the Joint List of Palestinians parties, crying (Hebrew) that the Blue White leadership “has lost its mind, stop this madness.”

Netanyahu said this in a video on his Facebook page. There is to be an emergency rally against the inclusion of Palestinian parties tonight in Israel.

Israel’s threat to Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Rahma Gate have been getting worse, the Deputy Director of Jerusalem Religious Endowment Department, said on Sunday. Najeh Bkeerat told the Palestinian Information Centre that the rising threat is due to Israeli aggression and the lack of Arab, regional, international and Islamic deterrence in response to this.

Bkeerat added that the lack of awareness about the importance of the Palestinian cause, Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque among Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims is another reason for the increasing Israeli danger. Bab Al-Rahma was re-opened in February for the first time since 2003, before being closed again by the Israelis a month or so later.

The Conservative Party will include in its election manifesto a ban on public bodies from boycotting or sanctioning foreign states, reported the Sunday Telegraph.

The report noted that “the policy will cover boycotts of products or divestment from pension funds connected to foreign states.”

However, the ban is primarily aimed at the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which seeks to pressure Israel to abide by international law and respect Palestinian rights.

A ceasefire has been reached between Israel and groups in Gaza, after two days of violence that left 34 Palestinians dead. Many of the Democratic candidates have tweeted about the events, defending Israel’s actions while condemning rocket fire from Palestine. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders expressed concern for Israelis and Palestinians, while Warren was the only candidate to acknowledge that multiple Palestinians have been killed.

2020 presidential candidates Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday condemned recent violence between Israelis and Palestinians following the announcement of a cease-fire earlier in the day.

The two candidates took to Twitter to condemn acts of violence from Palestinian militant groups accused of firing rockets at Israel, while also calling for an end to the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.

"Israelis should not have to live in fear of rocket fire. Palestinians should not have to live under occupation and blockade," Sanders tweeted.

Israel Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Tel Aviv will continue with its policy of assassinations against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip despite an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

“Israel will harm anyone who tries to harm it,” Katz told Army Radio yesterday, adding that Islamic Jihad “was beaten in an unprecedented manner in our offensive.”

Israel’s targeted assassination of Islamic Jihad leader Bahaa Abu Al-Ata on Tuesday led to a new round of violence that killed 34 Palestinians and injured 111 others.

Egypt and the UN brokered a ceasefire between Palestinian faction in Gaza and Israel which came in to affect yesterday morning. Israel has, however, struck Gaza a number of times since the truce came in to affect bringing into question how long it will hold.

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad and Israel declared a halt to hostilities across the Gaza Strip border on Thursday but a lasting ceasefire appeared tenuous as they differed on terms.

Islamic Jihad said an Egyptian-mediated truce went into effect at 0330 GMT, about 48 hours after Israel triggered the exchange of fire by killing the Iranian-backed faction’s top Gaza commander in an air strike, deeming him an imminent threat.

Occasional rocket fire from Gaza and a retaliatory Israeli air strike broke the calm, but the ceasefire largely held.

Israel's temporary security minister Naftali Bennett threatened yet more Palestinian leaders after the killing of an Islamic Jihad commander in the besieged Gaza Strip.

Far-right Naftali Bennet on Wednesday morning sent a threat to Palestinian officials as Israel's military continues to bomb civilians in Gaza.

"This morning we send a clear message to all our enemies on all fronts: whoever plans to target us in the daytime will never be safe for the night to pass," he said.

A truce was declared by Israel and Islamic Jihad early Thursday, bringing an end to 48 hours of violence across the Gaza-Israel boundary that teetered on the brink of a full-blown war.

Gaza’s health ministry stated that Israeli forces killed 34 Palestinians during the fighting, nearly half of them civilians, including eight children and three women. No Israeli fatalities were reported.

Three members of the Ayyad family, among them a 7-year-old child, were killed as they were on a motorcycle in front of their Gaza City home on Wednesday, 13 November.

They were targeted as they were rushing to a hospital after a relative had been injured in a separate attack.

Residents of the Gaza Strip spent three days and nights under bombardment by Israeli forces between Tuesday and Thursday, after the Israeli army assassinated Islamic Jihad commander Bahaa Abu al-Atta on Tuesday, prompting the Palestinian resistance group to launch a barrage of rockets at Israel.

For three days, Islamic Jihad and the Israeli army exchanged fire, with the Israeli army killing at least 34 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.

These days put Gaza residents under intense pressure, stoking fears that they might be reliving the devastation of the month-long 2014 war, whose consequences are still visible across the besieged Palestinian enclave.

The government information office in Gaza reported that 48 housing units were completely or partially damaged by Israeli air strikes over the span of those three days. (MEE/Mohammed al-Hajjar)

A third of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the 3-day offensive on Gaza were women and children. 111 Palestinians, including 46 children and 20 women, were injured. The bombardment damaged dozens of homes, 15 schools, farmland. 8 members of one family were killed in their home. No Israelis were killed

The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, said today that “the indiscriminate launching of rockets and mortars against population centres is absolutely unacceptable and must stop immediately.”

In a statement he ignored the continuous Israeli strikes in Gaza, which have resulted in the death of 24 and injured 69 over the past two days, in addition to demolition and damaging residential buildings in the besieged enclave.

“I am very concerned about the ongoing and serious escalation between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel, following the targeted killing of one of the group’s leaders inside Gaza yesterday,” Mladenov said.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s motivation in killing a Palestinian commander in Gaza was partly political, a former Israeli negotiator said today: Netanyahu aims to show that his chief rival to be prime minister, Benny Gantz, cannot be counted on to provide security to the country.

It is to be thanked for the criticism of the left-wing town councilor Simon Aulepp that finally a dispute and a basis for discussion arise in Germany. Who is Jewish and what does Judaism mean in Germany? (1) He asks the legitimate question of whether the city council would raise the flag of Saudi Arabia at the town hall, if Muslims were killed in an attack in Germany? However, in this context, Saudi Arabia seems unhelpful. I would find Turkey the right state in this context when it comes to expressing sympathy in racist murders. After all, about 3.5 million Turkish citizens live in Germany.

The number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip rose to at least 25 on Wednesday as Israel escalated its lethal attacks on the territory that began on Tuesday morning.

Three children are among those slain.

Gaza’s health ministry said that more than 85 Palestinians have been injured, including 30 children.

Israel extrajudicially executed Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu al-Ata early Tuesday along with his wife, provoking an exchange of Israeli missile strikes on Gaza and rocket fire from the territory.

Israel is targeting civilian areas, homes, vehicles, stores, security sites and fields, the human rights group Al Mezan stated on Wednesday.

The “pinpoint” strike or “targeted killing” is back. Mainstream media simply can’t resist such terms even when the wording is clearly misleading.

The New York Times described Baha Abu al-Ata, who was killed in an Israeli air strike early Tuesday, as a senior commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Adopting the language of the Israeli army, The Times wrote that “Targeted strikes against militant leaders have led to war before, and Israel has sworn them off in the past.”

But this was no “targeted” strike.

In the third paragraph, the newspaper of record notes that Asma Abu al-Ata, the commander’s wife, was also killed in the attack on their home in the Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City.

Not until the 24th paragraph is it noted that one of Abu al-Ata’s young sons was injured as well.

At least 50 Israeli airstrikes & artillery shelling over the past 2 days have killed 23 Gazans, injured 69, and destroyed homes and farmland. Israeli peace group Gush Shalom opposes ‘a war that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is dragging Israel into… a war that will only bring death, suffering, and pain on both sides…’

Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed eight members of the same family, the Ministry of Health announced today.

Witnesses said Israeli occupation fighters targeted the Al-Sawarka family home at 1:15am local time today, destroying it.

The house is located east of the city of Deir Al-Balah, in the middle of the Gaza Strip.

Protected by the Israeli police, 244 Israelis today raided Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Palestinian Ministry of Religious Endowment said.

According to a statement issued by the ministry, 99 settlers, 97 students from religious schools, 40 government employees and eight intelligence officers raided the holy site.