Israeli forces demolish another Palestinian home
Israeli authorities have demolished a Palestinian house in the city of Rahat, in the Negev region of southern Israel, citing the lack of a building permit.
According to local sources, hundreds of Israeli troops and demolition machinery arrived in the area on Monday morning and surrounded the home of the Sheikh al-Eid family.
Last week also, Israeli forces demolished a home in the village of Saffuriya, northwest of Nazareth, after forcibly evicting the family following physical confrontations. The home was destroyed despite legal action in progress and a court session scheduled for January 27.
Israeli soldier killed, 4 wounded in West Bank blast
An Israeli soldier was killed and four others wounded by an improvised explosive device during a raid in the occupied West Bank.
The blast occurred in the town of Tammun, south of Jenin, Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported. The soldiers were in an armoured vehicle when the bomb detonated.
Israel intensified incursions in the West Bank since the beginning of its war on Gaza. Last week, an Israeli drone fired three missiles at people in the Jenin refugee camp, killing six Palestinians.
Call for sanctions over Israel’s ‘colonial settlement system’ in West Bank
Countries must impose “deterrent international sanctions” against Israel for its “colonial settlement system” in the occupied West Bank, Palestine’s Foreign Ministry says.
The international community has been “consistently warned” about the dangers of “escalating settler attacks against Palestinian citizens”, a statement said.
“While [the Palestinian Authority] holds the Israeli government fully and directly responsible for these attacks, it also holds the international community accountable for its failure to stop them and compel the occupying state and its forces to dismantle these militias and remove their protection,” it added.
The ministry “strongly condemns the policy of imposing collective punishment” on the Palestinian people and hindering the movement of its citizens, as well as allowing Israeli settlers to “consistently violate Palestinian rights”.
Securing Palestinian leaders from Israeli jails key to national unity
Mustafa Barghouti, general-secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, says Israeli will be under pressure to free senior Palestinian politicians held in prison if it wants to secure the release of high-ranking military officials captured by Hamas.
“This will have a useful impact because those leaders are some of the ones very much for Palestinian national unity. A person like Marwan Barghouti, who is a friend of mine, would be very conducive to pushing our efforts towards national unity, especially because he’s from Fatah,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The big question is whether they’ll be able to stay in Palestine or be forced to leave. As you can see, Israel is forcing so many people to be deported, which is like adding insult to injury. Not only are they holding and torturing them in prison for a very long time, in addition they deport them out of their country.”
Barghouti said national unity should not be just negotiated between Fatah and Hamas but all Palestinian groups, followed by national democratic elections that haven’t been held in more than 20 years.
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