Mixed reaction in the West Bank as UK sanctions Israeli settlers
We’ve been speaking to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on the UK’s decision to impose sanctions against Israeli settlers in the territory, as well as its move to suspend trade talks with Israel over its war on Gaza.
“This is a serious and tangible change in the British position. We hope that this would be the start of more steps towards imposing sanctions on the state of Israel,” one man told Al Jazeera on video.
“We are already witnessing changes worldwide: in the Netherlands, Norway and others. We hope that these positions gain momentum worldwide and lead towards a boycott of Israel as a protest from its genocide and occupation,” he added.
Another man said that the UK helped create Israel, “so it won’t abandon it in one day”.
“We haven’t seen serious actions by the UK despite all the massacres. We feel that we’ve been left alone by our own people: the Arabs. So I am not holding my breath that the UK will help us.”
A third person said the decision is for “media consumption”. “But they need to stop the war. The Arabs also: They need to threaten military action. Otherwise, it’s all talk. We feel abandoned,” he added.
UN experts slam Israeli attacks on schools in Gaza, East Jerusalem
A group of 22 human rights experts have denounced Israel’s deadly assault on a UNRWA-run school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip on May 7, as well as its forcible closure of all six schools run by the agency in occupied East Jerusalem on May 8.
The experts said, “Attacks on schools are an assault on children.”
They are “also an assault on the right to safe education and a blatant violation of international law, all the more in the context of an unlawful occupation,” the experts added.
The attack on the UNRWA-run school in Gaza involved two strikes on a building that was sheltering 2,000 displaced Palestinians. At least 30 civilians, including women and children, were killed.
In the attacks on occupied East Jerusalem, heavily armed Israeli forces stormed three UNRWA schools in the Shu’fat refugee camp while classes were in session, violently evicting more than 550 Palestinian children, some as young as six, from their classrooms, the experts said. “By the end of the day, all six UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem had been evacuated,” they said.
“Israel has no authority to carry out these actions, when the International Court of Justice has determined that Israel is under an obligation to dismantle its occupation.”
