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SvennoJ 4 days ago
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Israeli forces arrest 28 Palestinians in night of raids across the occupied West Bank

Soldiers meted out “severe beatings” to Palestinian detainees during arrest operations across the occupied West Bank that saw 28 Palestinians dragged away by Israeli military forces, a rights group said.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said the overnight and early morning raids on Thursday – part of Israel’s now daily and increasingly violent assault on Palestinian communities in the occupied territories – targeted the governorates of Jenin, Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah and el-Bireh, Nablus and Jerusalem.

Israeli troops feel ‘entitled’ to abuse Palestinian civilians, says military veterans

Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organisation of military veterans working to raise awareness of Israel’s abuses in the occupied Palestinian territory, said Israeli forces do not need “direct orders” to “dehumanise” Palestinian people.

In a series of posts on social media, the advocacy group said the recent incident where Israeli soldiers tied a wounded, innocent, Palestinian civilian to the bonnet of their military vehicle demonstrated how Israeli troops feel “entitled” to carry out such abuses.

“This entitlement can also be seen in Gaza in countless TikToks posted by soldiers where they are seen looting and defacing property,” the group said.

“The soldiers didn’t need direct orders in order to dehumanize an innocent injured man by tying him to the hood of a vehicle,” they said.

“Decades of corrupting occupation have brought us to the point where incidents like these have become an inevitability in the occupied territories.”


Israeli settlers damage Palestinian home northeast of Ramallah: Report

Israeli settlers have attacked a Palestinian residence on the outskirts of Turmus Aya, located northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, causing property damage before fleeing the scene, Wafa news agency reports.

Local sources said a group of settlers hurled stones and other objects at Mohammad Rabi Jabara’s home causing damage to windows, glass, and CCTV cameras installed on the property.

Journalist Hafez Abu Samra shared a video of the attack on Instagram. The video has been verified by Sanad, Al Jazeera’s fact-checking team.

Violent settlers are being protected by the government, says activist

Ayed Abu Eqtaish, a Palestinian rights activist, says the Israeli government’s goals are to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank and to “ethnically cleanse” Palestinians from their land.

“None of the settlers who commit crimes against Palestinians was held to account, and the extremist parties in this government are there to support all the crimes that settlers are committing,” Eqtaish told Al Jazeera.

He added that the sanctions imposed by Western countries on violent settlers are not “enough”.

“At some point, there was a bargain between the US administration and the Israeli government, mainly the settlers, in order to lift this punishment in exchange for releasing some of the Palestinian money. So I believe the international community is complicit with what Israel is committing whether in the Gaza Strip or in the West Bank,” Eqtaish said.

Creating illegal settlements ‘a convenient excuse for Smotrich’ to get what he wants

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said that for every country that unilaterally recognises a Palestinian state, Israel will establish an illegal settlement.

“There are five countries that committed this mistake, so we will establish five settlements. This is our response,” he said in a video.

Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, says this is “a convenient excuse for Smotrich to get what he wanted out of the government agenda passed”.

More importantly, he revoked administration powers from the Palestinian Authority (PA) in about 25 percent of the occupied West Bank covering 440 Palestinian villages and transferred that power to himself, she said.

Israel controls construction, zoning and planning for Palestinians in that territory. The Israeli cabinet also adopted measures against Palestinian officials, saying that some might be expelled or have their movement restricted.

“In exchange for gaining all of that – which was a personal victory for Smotrich – he has released some of the Palestinian tax funds that he’s been holding captive since May, allowing the PA to breathe a little bit easier,” Odeh said.

“It’s still technically on financial life support, but now it will continue to have a chance at the ICU, if you will.”