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SvennoJ on 23 May 2024
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Israeli rights group exposes violent settler ‘take over’ of Palestinian pastureland

B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, has released video footage documenting how Israeli settlers “take over” land belonging to Palestinian shepherds as “part of a state policy to drive out pastoral communities”.

The rights organisation said it had documented some 20 incidents where settlers and Israeli soldiers “drove Palestinian shepherds out of pastureland” in the occupied West Bank’s South Hebron Hills.

“The State of Israel is working to drive Palestinian pastoral communities out of their homes in the West Bank in order to take over their areas of habitation, including farmland and pastureland,” the rights organisation said.

Since the October 7 attack on Israel, settlers involved in “violent acts” of land expulsion are part of Israeli “territorial defence” units and have been issued military weapons and uniforms.

“This makes it impossible to distinguish when they are operating under military orders and when they are acting independently while in uniform,” B’Tselem said.

Since Israel’s Rafah operation, only 150 trucks of aid reached Gaza in two weeks

Sam Rose, planning director for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), has sounded the alarm about the dire aid situation in Gaza, saying there has been a significant decrease in humanitarian supplies entering the territory since Israel seized the Rafah crossing with Egypt two weeks ago.

“We’re going back to levels of aid that we were getting in October when the war first started,” Rose said, adding that the UN has received fewer than 150 trucks carrying aid since May 6.

With only a fraction of the usual aid reaching Gaza, UNRWA has had to suspend distribution due to insufficient supplies, Rose said.


Pentagon says aid from US-built Gaza pier reaching people, but still ‘a drop in the bucket’

A Pentagon spokesperson said the amount of food that has been distributed or is in the process of being distributed is 506 metric tonnes of food. That’s since this pier opened about a week ago today.

That is enough, according to the Pentagon, to feed ‘tens of thousands for a month’.

But, in the greater context of the need in Gaza, this is merely a drop in the bucket, and not nearly as much food as what once came over the land borders into Gaza – and, of course, at a time when the need and extreme hunger is only growing.

Since the pier opened, it started with almost no success in the first few days. There was so much insecurity in the distribution of the food that the World Food Programme halted its operations for two days.

Israel was asked to help more in assisting in the safe delivery of this food. Israel apparently responded and there are apparently alternate routes on land for these trucks once they’ve got the food from the pier to go to the storage warehouse.

And that apparently has been somewhat successful, because 27 trucks were able to deliver food to that warehouse. That’s still not nearly the amount the Pentagon had envisioned. Ninety trucks, they said initially, and up to 150 trucks a day from this pier alone.


Needed to sustain 500 a day
Needed to recover 800 a day
Before Rafah invasion avg 190 a day
Since Rafah invasion less than 30 a day (probably much less, 147 recorded from Kerem Shalom over the last 18 days, 27 from the pier, unknown from the Erez crossing but that's not expected to be much)