Steps toward ceasefire deal; Israel obstructs search operations for missing medics in Gaza; raid Masafer Yatta; Israel seized 12,800 acres of land in occupied West Bank Since Oct. 7 2023; ICE shady warrants for pro-Palestine students; Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences apologizes re Mahmoud Khalil; US launches 65 airstrikes across northern Yemen in 24 hours.
Advocates say Israel is using the conflict in Gaza to distract from its accelerated drive for full annexation of the West Bank.
The Intercept recently featured an in-depth article describing Israel’s decades-long campaign of discrimination and violence against Palestinians – in a way that begins to capture the magnitude of the injustice. The many forms of mistreatment require a lengthy article. IAK has broken it into four manageable parts which we will release over the next several days.
In Part One, read about the case of the hamlets of Masafer Yatta, where Israeli policy is trying to force Palestinians to leave – either by discriminatory legislation or intimidation and violence.
While he was working on his land, a group of Israeli settlers armed with sticks, metal pipes, and M16s attacked Hafez Huraini and his son Muhammad. Hafez was badly injured, and both of his arms were broken. When a Palestinian ambulance arrived to evacuate him, the settlers slashed the tires, but the Israeli soldiers arrested Huraini, claiming he had hurt one of the settlers.
March 30th is Land Day, an annual commemoration of those killed protesting Israeli theft of Palestinian lands 46 years ago. But even now, there is a Nakba everywhere you look.
Masafer Yatta lies in a remote area of the West Bank, where Israeli soldiers are routinely, ruthlessly demolishing Palestinian homes – and preventing activists from filming their illegal actions. Thousands of demolition orders have been served here, but residents refuse to leave their ancestral lands.
On February 13, 2019, Israeli forces arrived near the village of a-Tuwani in the South Hebron Hills. The forces used excavating equipment to unearth and destroy a five kilometer stretch of pipe, which was laid just months ago and supplied water to over 1,000 Palestinians. Residents say that without the system, “water has become every family’s largest expense.”