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SvennoJ on 29 August 2024
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Israeli air attacks have killed 136 Palestinians in the West Bank since October

The UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA) has released its weekly update on the situation in the occupied West Bank. It said from August 20 to 26, some 13 Palestinians, including four children, were killed in the territory. Of these eight were killed in Israeli air attacks.

The update did not include the 11 Palestinians killed in the Israeli attacks on August 28 as it was outside of the reporting period.

OCHA noted that some 136 Palestinians have been killed and 41 wounded in Israeli air attacks since October 2023. All of the killings except one occurred in the West Bank’s northern governorates.

In contrast, between 2020 and October 2023, just six Palestinians were killed in Israeli air strikes, all in 2023, it added.


Israeli foreign minister doubles down on forced displacement in West Bank

In a post on social media, Foreign Minister Israel Katz reiterated that Palestinians “in some cases” will be forcibly displaced from the occupied West Bank as Israel’s military continues its largest incursion into the Palestinian territory in decades.

Katz described the forced removal of Palestinians in the West Bank in terms of “temporary evacuation from one neighbourhood to another … to prevent civilian harm” amid “intense combat”.

The forced removal of Palestinians in the West Bank was necessary to enable Israel’s “dismantling of terror infrastructures”, he said. “We must address this threat by all necessary means,” he wrote on X.

Katz’s notice that Palestinians will be forcibly removed from their homes in the West Bank appears to mirror Israel’s dislocation of around 90 percent of Gaza’s some 2.1 million people under so-called military “evacuation orders”, and which have been described as a war crime by rights groups.


Palestinians face escalation in ‘unlawful killings’ by Israel in West Bank: Amnesty

Israeli forces have followed their “escalation in unlawful killings” in the occupied West Bank with a major military assault on the Palestinian territory that puts “more Palestinians at risk”, Amnesty International said.

Describing an already “horrifying spike in lethal force” against Palestinians by Israeli soldiers and armed settlers, Amnesty said the new military operation will result “in further loss of Palestinian lives” as well as “an increase in forced displacement, destruction of critical infrastructure and measures of collective punishment”.

“Amid alarming reports that Israeli forces have encircled and blocked off access to hospitals, Amnesty International urges the Israeli authorities to take action to safeguard health facilities and personnel,” Amnesty’s Erika Guevara Rosas said in a statement.

“As the occupying power, Israel has a clear obligation to protect Palestinians, their homes and the infrastructure throughout the occupied Palestinian territory,” Guevara Rosas said.