10 july 2019
The Israeli occupation army has killed 16 Palestinian children from the Gaza Strip during the first term of 2019, Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights reported on Wednesday.
The center said, in the report, that some 1,233 Palestinian children were injured while participating in the Great March of Return, and 17 others were detained.
The report stressed that Israeli occupation forces continued its systematic violations of Palestinians’ human rights in Gaza Strip, especially on the children.
According to the report, the recorded data pointed to an increase in the number of killed and injured children, as well as in the number of detentions, Al Ray further reports.
The center condemned the restrictions imposed on the people of Gaza as a part of an ongoing and illegal blockade which violates international law and the human rights of the people in Gaza.
It noted that the facts point to children as the most affected sector of direct and indirect Israeli aggressions.
The report also noted that Israel’s continued violation of international and humanitarian law is a natural reflection of the inability of the international community to carry out its moral and legal duties towards civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories, and in the Gaza Strip, in particular.
The center called on the international community for an immediate step to stop these violations.
It also called for the administration of justice in the Palestinian territories, and for prosecution of all those who committed or ordered these violations, and bring them to justice.
The center said, in the report, that some 1,233 Palestinian children were injured while participating in the Great March of Return, and 17 others were detained.
The report stressed that Israeli occupation forces continued its systematic violations of Palestinians’ human rights in Gaza Strip, especially on the children.
According to the report, the recorded data pointed to an increase in the number of killed and injured children, as well as in the number of detentions, Al Ray further reports.
The center condemned the restrictions imposed on the people of Gaza as a part of an ongoing and illegal blockade which violates international law and the human rights of the people in Gaza.
It noted that the facts point to children as the most affected sector of direct and indirect Israeli aggressions.
The report also noted that Israel’s continued violation of international and humanitarian law is a natural reflection of the inability of the international community to carry out its moral and legal duties towards civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories, and in the Gaza Strip, in particular.
The center called on the international community for an immediate step to stop these violations.
It also called for the administration of justice in the Palestinian territories, and for prosecution of all those who committed or ordered these violations, and bring them to justice.
6 july 2019
Thousands of protesters took part Friday, in the weekly Great March of Return, at Israel’s so-called security fence, bordering Gaza, according to Palestinian WAFA Agency.
According to medical sources, some of the injured being treated in field hospitals, while others had to be transferred to hospital for medical care.
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 95 people were injured by Israeli forces, including 33 children, 1 journalist, and 4 women, one of which was a volunteer medic
PCHR has documented that Israeli soldiers have killed 207 Palestinians, including 44 children, 2 women and 9 Palestinians with special needs, in addition to 4 medics and 2 journalists, since March 30th, 2018.
The PCHR added that the number of wounded Palestinians is 13053, including 2638 children, 398 women, 214 medics and 203 journalists.
The Great March of Return protests began on March 30, 2018, in which the nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza started asserting their right to return to their ancestral homes in pre-1948 Palestine, as well as calling for the complete lifting the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza.
According to Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention, it is illegal to target civilians, which Israel has been doing since the outset of the demonstrations.
According to Article 11 of UN Resolution 194, the refugees living in Gaza have the right to return to the land they and their ancestors were forcefully evicted from in 1948, now called Israel.
According to medical sources, some of the injured being treated in field hospitals, while others had to be transferred to hospital for medical care.
According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 95 people were injured by Israeli forces, including 33 children, 1 journalist, and 4 women, one of which was a volunteer medic
PCHR has documented that Israeli soldiers have killed 207 Palestinians, including 44 children, 2 women and 9 Palestinians with special needs, in addition to 4 medics and 2 journalists, since March 30th, 2018.
The PCHR added that the number of wounded Palestinians is 13053, including 2638 children, 398 women, 214 medics and 203 journalists.
The Great March of Return protests began on March 30, 2018, in which the nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza started asserting their right to return to their ancestral homes in pre-1948 Palestine, as well as calling for the complete lifting the illegal Israeli siege of Gaza.
According to Protocol 1 of the Geneva Convention, it is illegal to target civilians, which Israel has been doing since the outset of the demonstrations.
According to Article 11 of UN Resolution 194, the refugees living in Gaza have the right to return to the land they and their ancestors were forcefully evicted from in 1948, now called Israel.
4 july 2019
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened a “large-scale” military offensive against the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu claimed Wednesday that Israel wants to “restore calm,” but “same time we are preparing for a large-scale military operation, if such an action is required.”
“Those are my instructions to the army,” he added.
The hawkish premier made the remarks after a cabinet meeting to discuss the situation in the besieged coastal enclave. Netanyahu also held a meeting with local and regional council heads, some of whom left the meeting in protest.
“The prime minister had no intention of holding a special meeting on the Gaza envelope area as expected and as requested today,” they said.
The rockets fired from Gaza in response to frequent Israeli acts of aggression have turned into a major challenge for Netanyahu, who is grappling with corruption scandals and whose failure to form an administration has plunged the regime into unprecedented political chaos.
In May, Israeli warplanes struck hundreds sites in Gaza, killing scores of Palestinian people.
Israeli aerial raids on Gaza prompted the most intense fighting between the regime and the Palestinian resistance fighters since Tel Aviv’s bloody war on the blockaded enclave in 2014.
In retaliation, the Palestinian fighters fired around 700 rockets from Gaza into the occupied territories, killing four Israeli settlers and injuring at least 80 others.
Israeli media reported that Israel’s so-called Iron Dome missile system intercepted only 240 of the projectiles, adding that some 35 rockets and mortar shells had struck populated areas.
Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards. Israel has launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
Netanyahu claimed Wednesday that Israel wants to “restore calm,” but “same time we are preparing for a large-scale military operation, if such an action is required.”
“Those are my instructions to the army,” he added.
The hawkish premier made the remarks after a cabinet meeting to discuss the situation in the besieged coastal enclave. Netanyahu also held a meeting with local and regional council heads, some of whom left the meeting in protest.
“The prime minister had no intention of holding a special meeting on the Gaza envelope area as expected and as requested today,” they said.
The rockets fired from Gaza in response to frequent Israeli acts of aggression have turned into a major challenge for Netanyahu, who is grappling with corruption scandals and whose failure to form an administration has plunged the regime into unprecedented political chaos.
In May, Israeli warplanes struck hundreds sites in Gaza, killing scores of Palestinian people.
Israeli aerial raids on Gaza prompted the most intense fighting between the regime and the Palestinian resistance fighters since Tel Aviv’s bloody war on the blockaded enclave in 2014.
In retaliation, the Palestinian fighters fired around 700 rockets from Gaza into the occupied territories, killing four Israeli settlers and injuring at least 80 others.
Israeli media reported that Israel’s so-called Iron Dome missile system intercepted only 240 of the projectiles, adding that some 35 rockets and mortar shells had struck populated areas.
Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards. Israel has launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
30 june 2019
By Asa Winstanley
The Haifa-based Palestinian human rights group Adalah has done a lot of important work over the years. Its name is Arabic for “justice”. Much of Adalah’s work focuses on the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, or the “Palestinians of the 1948 territories” as they often describe themselves.
The group maintains an important database chronicling more than 65 laws in Israel which systematically discriminate against 20 per cent of its population. It is a fact that Israel has always been an apartheid state, not only since the Knesset passed the openly racist “Jewish Nation State Law” last summer.
That new measure did not really change much in terms of the letter of Israeli law. What it did do, though, was to explain clearly, in black and white, the motives behind much of Israel’s existing racist laws. It made things clearer, in other words, sending a signal to the Palestinian people that the historic land of Palestine – what the law terms the “Land of Israel” – belongs to the Jews alone, and no one else.
This clarity explains some of the tactical disagreements with the law that many pro-Zionist liberals had. Liberal Zionists do not disagree on the racist principle that “the right to national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” as the new law claims. Rather, they disagree with spelling this out in such brazen terms, leading to adverse international publicity, and the resultant decline in long term political support.
However, the naked racism of the Jewish Nation State Law is in reality only the latest such measure. As Adalah documents in detail in its database, the trail of these racist laws goes back to the very foundation of the state.
Take Israel’s 1950 “Law of Return,” for example. This law bestows upon any Jewish person in the world the right to migrate to the land of Palestine and automatically become a citizen of Israel. It applies to the children and grandchildren of Jews, as well as to their spouses, and the spouses of their children and grandchildren.
No comparable Israeli law exists guaranteeing the same rights for Palestinians, who are, after all, the indigenous people of the land. On the contrary, Palestinian refugees – expelled by force by Zionist militias over the course of several years starting in 1947 – are still excluded, despite having the right to return under international laws and conventions.
In Israel, though, laws were passed to ensure that the refugees never did or could return, starting with the 1950 “Absentees’ Property Law”. This essentially provided a legal fig leaf for the mass theft of land, homes, bank accounts and other Palestinian property on a grand scale.
The 800,000 or so Palestinian refugees – who were expelled by force, remember – were declared to be “absentees” under Israeli law, and their lands and properties were confiscated. Hundreds of Palestinian villages had in any case already been bulldozed and dynamited, wiping them off the map. Thus Israel always has been, and remains, an intrinsically racist, apartheid state.
Adalah also does lots of important work documenting Israel’s human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the parts of historic Palestine which Israel invaded and has occupied illegally since 1967. Some of this work is detailed in the racist laws database I referred to above, which also lists Israeli laws which discriminate against the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since the June 1967 Six Day War.
Recently, Adalah obtained official Israeli documents revealing the military’s “rules of engagement”, which it uses to justify its violence against Palestinian protesters, specifically in Gaza in this case. The rules show that the Israeli military has officially ordained to itself the right to shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in the back, people it smears and slanders as “rioters”.
Those organizing the Great March of Return protests since March last year can be targeted even when posing no threat to Israeli soldiers; even when walking away. As Adalah points out, “Israeli snipers… may open fire with live ammunition on ‘key instigators’ or ‘key rioters’ even when they are no longer participating in the protest or are resting.”
Many of the protesters in Gaza are children. Adalah says that since the marches began last year, Israel has killed 207 Palestinians during protests, including 44 children. A staggering 16,831 Palestinians have also been injured, 3,905 of them children.
The documents were presented during hearings at Israel’s high court. Disgustingly, the court ruled last year that the army was permitted to use live rounds against unarmed protesters. This is a measure that it would never sanction against Jewish protesters.
Adalah attorney Suhad Bishara explained that Israel’s fictional category of “key instigators” was “created retroactively in order to justify the shootings of people who posed no real and immediate danger to Israeli soldiers or civilians. The military’s document attempts to explain away the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed demonstrators which results from a total disregard for human life.”
The apartheid state of Israel should be held to account for such crimes against humanity.
- Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist living in London who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He has been visiting Palestine since 2004 and is originally from south Wales. He writes for the award-winning Palestinian news site The Electronic Intifada where he is an associate editor and also a weekly column for the Middle East Monitor.
The Haifa-based Palestinian human rights group Adalah has done a lot of important work over the years. Its name is Arabic for “justice”. Much of Adalah’s work focuses on the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, or the “Palestinians of the 1948 territories” as they often describe themselves.
The group maintains an important database chronicling more than 65 laws in Israel which systematically discriminate against 20 per cent of its population. It is a fact that Israel has always been an apartheid state, not only since the Knesset passed the openly racist “Jewish Nation State Law” last summer.
That new measure did not really change much in terms of the letter of Israeli law. What it did do, though, was to explain clearly, in black and white, the motives behind much of Israel’s existing racist laws. It made things clearer, in other words, sending a signal to the Palestinian people that the historic land of Palestine – what the law terms the “Land of Israel” – belongs to the Jews alone, and no one else.
This clarity explains some of the tactical disagreements with the law that many pro-Zionist liberals had. Liberal Zionists do not disagree on the racist principle that “the right to national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” as the new law claims. Rather, they disagree with spelling this out in such brazen terms, leading to adverse international publicity, and the resultant decline in long term political support.
However, the naked racism of the Jewish Nation State Law is in reality only the latest such measure. As Adalah documents in detail in its database, the trail of these racist laws goes back to the very foundation of the state.
Take Israel’s 1950 “Law of Return,” for example. This law bestows upon any Jewish person in the world the right to migrate to the land of Palestine and automatically become a citizen of Israel. It applies to the children and grandchildren of Jews, as well as to their spouses, and the spouses of their children and grandchildren.
No comparable Israeli law exists guaranteeing the same rights for Palestinians, who are, after all, the indigenous people of the land. On the contrary, Palestinian refugees – expelled by force by Zionist militias over the course of several years starting in 1947 – are still excluded, despite having the right to return under international laws and conventions.
In Israel, though, laws were passed to ensure that the refugees never did or could return, starting with the 1950 “Absentees’ Property Law”. This essentially provided a legal fig leaf for the mass theft of land, homes, bank accounts and other Palestinian property on a grand scale.
The 800,000 or so Palestinian refugees – who were expelled by force, remember – were declared to be “absentees” under Israeli law, and their lands and properties were confiscated. Hundreds of Palestinian villages had in any case already been bulldozed and dynamited, wiping them off the map. Thus Israel always has been, and remains, an intrinsically racist, apartheid state.
Adalah also does lots of important work documenting Israel’s human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the parts of historic Palestine which Israel invaded and has occupied illegally since 1967. Some of this work is detailed in the racist laws database I referred to above, which also lists Israeli laws which discriminate against the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since the June 1967 Six Day War.
Recently, Adalah obtained official Israeli documents revealing the military’s “rules of engagement”, which it uses to justify its violence against Palestinian protesters, specifically in Gaza in this case. The rules show that the Israeli military has officially ordained to itself the right to shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in the back, people it smears and slanders as “rioters”.
Those organizing the Great March of Return protests since March last year can be targeted even when posing no threat to Israeli soldiers; even when walking away. As Adalah points out, “Israeli snipers… may open fire with live ammunition on ‘key instigators’ or ‘key rioters’ even when they are no longer participating in the protest or are resting.”
Many of the protesters in Gaza are children. Adalah says that since the marches began last year, Israel has killed 207 Palestinians during protests, including 44 children. A staggering 16,831 Palestinians have also been injured, 3,905 of them children.
The documents were presented during hearings at Israel’s high court. Disgustingly, the court ruled last year that the army was permitted to use live rounds against unarmed protesters. This is a measure that it would never sanction against Jewish protesters.
Adalah attorney Suhad Bishara explained that Israel’s fictional category of “key instigators” was “created retroactively in order to justify the shootings of people who posed no real and immediate danger to Israeli soldiers or civilians. The military’s document attempts to explain away the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed demonstrators which results from a total disregard for human life.”
The apartheid state of Israel should be held to account for such crimes against humanity.
- Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist living in London who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He has been visiting Palestine since 2004 and is originally from south Wales. He writes for the award-winning Palestinian news site The Electronic Intifada where he is an associate editor and also a weekly column for the Middle East Monitor.
Expressing deep concern over the British Government’s decision to continue to exporting arms and ammunition to Israel, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor (Euro-Med) wrote a letter to members of the British parliament, WAFA News reported.
The Geneva-based rights organization noted that in May of 2018, the United Kingdom earned £14 million in arms sales to Israel, while the Israeli regime was simultaneously using lethal force in response to the Great Return March protests in the Gaza Strip.
Addressed to Jeremy Hunt, MP, UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Tom Tugendhat, MP, Chairman of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the letter claims that the U.K. has not stopped the export of arms, despite knowing that the weapons sold may be used in war crimes or crimes against humanity. The letter went on to say that arms exporting countries are either unaware of the full consequences of the use of these weapons, or deliberately ignore the consequences.
Selin Dyson, Euro-Med’s media and communications officer, declared that arms sales to countries, like Israel, accused of war crimes should be prohibited. Furthermore, she declared that an arms embargo should be applied to Israel, citing the UN investigation published in February 2019, which proclaimed that Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes in the context of the Great March of Return demonstrations.
Euro-Med’s letter to British parliamentarians calls attention to Article 2-4 of the 1945 Charter of the United Nations, which states ; ‘all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state’. The only exception to the rule is in the case of self-defence from an armed attack, as stated in Article 51 of the Charter. Palestinian protestors at the Gaza/Israel border are fully unarmed, therefore Israel has no defence.
Euro-Med demanded that the British Government consider the recent ruling in the UK Court of Appeal, which concluded that the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia is ‘irrational and therefore unlawful’ in light of Saudi Arabia’s repeated violation of international humanitarian law during military operations in Yemen.
The letter Euro-Med stated that it believes that Israel’s use of British-made weapons, to shoot unarmed Palestinians in the occupied territories, necessitates an arms embargo.
The Geneva-based rights organization noted that in May of 2018, the United Kingdom earned £14 million in arms sales to Israel, while the Israeli regime was simultaneously using lethal force in response to the Great Return March protests in the Gaza Strip.
Addressed to Jeremy Hunt, MP, UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and Tom Tugendhat, MP, Chairman of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the letter claims that the U.K. has not stopped the export of arms, despite knowing that the weapons sold may be used in war crimes or crimes against humanity. The letter went on to say that arms exporting countries are either unaware of the full consequences of the use of these weapons, or deliberately ignore the consequences.
Selin Dyson, Euro-Med’s media and communications officer, declared that arms sales to countries, like Israel, accused of war crimes should be prohibited. Furthermore, she declared that an arms embargo should be applied to Israel, citing the UN investigation published in February 2019, which proclaimed that Israeli soldiers may have committed war crimes in the context of the Great March of Return demonstrations.
Euro-Med’s letter to British parliamentarians calls attention to Article 2-4 of the 1945 Charter of the United Nations, which states ; ‘all Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state’. The only exception to the rule is in the case of self-defence from an armed attack, as stated in Article 51 of the Charter. Palestinian protestors at the Gaza/Israel border are fully unarmed, therefore Israel has no defence.
Euro-Med demanded that the British Government consider the recent ruling in the UK Court of Appeal, which concluded that the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia is ‘irrational and therefore unlawful’ in light of Saudi Arabia’s repeated violation of international humanitarian law during military operations in Yemen.
The letter Euro-Med stated that it believes that Israel’s use of British-made weapons, to shoot unarmed Palestinians in the occupied territories, necessitates an arms embargo.
