The Palestinian Center for Human Rights documents crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories in weekly reports. We summarize their reports and stories from other news agencies with the goal of informing Americans of the ongoing violence that Palestinian families face each day under Israel’s occupation of their ancestral lands. The Israeli government receives $3 billion per year in direct military aid from U.S. taxpayers.
May 4, 2017 – May 10, 2017
West Bank
- The Israeli military continued its 50-year long military occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, under which the 2.8 million Palestinians living there are subjected to a different set of laws and treatment than Jewish settlers (numbering 588,000) are.
- Israeli soldiers killed a Palestinian girl in Jerusalem. According to witnesses, Fatima Hajiji, 16, was standing at least ten meters away from the nearest Israeli officer when a soldier shouted “knife, knife,” and five soldiers fired a barrage of bullets at her chest. Israeli forces pepper sprayed Palestinians who gathered nearby, closed off the area, and injured a 9-year-old child after chasing him away from the scene.
- One thousand Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails continued their mass hunger strike for humane conditions. The Israeli prison service attempted to demoralize the hunger strikers by planting candy in their cells to tempt them and released an undated video showing the movement’s leader, Marwan Barghouti, eating a cookie; the hunger strikers were not deterred.
- Israeli forces attacked Palestinians who demonstrated in support of the hunger striker, shooting them with live bullets and gas canisters, injuring 24 people, including 2 children and 5 journalists.
- Israeli forces attacked the weekly demonstrations against Israeli’s Separation Wall in Bil’in and Nil’in villages, shooting live bullets and injuring 6 people, including 2 children.
- Israeli forces carried out 64 invasions into Palestinian communities, raiding and searching homes, and arrested 58 civilians, 12 of them children.
- Israeli forces demolished 6 Palestinian homes, 2 commercial facilities, and a barn. The goal of these demolitions is to displace Palestinians in order to create a Jewish majority.
- Israeli forces erected dozens of temporary checkpoints, restricting movement for even more Palestinians. (There are 27 permanent checkpoints and hundreds of physical roadblocks placed by Israeli forces. Palestinians are prohibited from using 41 roads totaling 700 kilometers in the West Bank; only Israelis can travel on them.)
- Israeli forces arrested 7 Palestinians at their military checkpoints, including a child.
- Jewish settlers in the fundamentalist “Price Tag” movement vandalized Palestinian property with racist and Islamophobic slogans and slashed the tires of 17 cars.
Gaza Strip
- Israel continued its 10-year illegal land, sea, and air blockade of the Gaza Strip, strictly controlling the movement of all 2 million Palestinians living there.
- Israeli forces continued to prevent most Gazans from entering or exiting the Strip (via the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing).
- Israeli forces continued to prevent most exports from Gaza, allowing only some fruits, vegetables, and spices. There is just one Israeli-controlled crossing (Kerem Shalom) for the movement of goods. Israel’s strict limits continue to severely cripple Gaza’s economy. Israeli officials told the U.S. that their goal is to keep Gaza “on the brink of collapse” and “‘functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.”
- Israeli forces opened fire at fishing boats off the coast of the Gaza Strip each day, forcing fisherman to flee, and in some cases chased the fisherman.
