What’s happening in the occupied West Bank?
- Israeli forces have raided several homes in Bethlehem.
- They also stormed the town of Sa’ir, northeast of Hebron, where fighting was reported with Palestinian youth. During the raid, forces fired live ammunition, stun grenades and tear gas.
- Israeli forces also stormed the city of Dura, south of Hebron, detaining and assaulting a Palestinian woman and vandalising a vehicle.
- Settlers stormed Palestinian homes in the village of Fasayil, north of Jericho city.
- Settlers also attacked Palestinian vehicles with stones near the Shilo settlement on the main road between Ramallah and Nablus.
- A young Palestinian was arrested during an Israeli raid on the American University housing area south of Jenin last night.
- Settlers sabotaged the electricity line feeding the Shakara community and attempted to cut off power from Palestinians near the town of Duma, southeast of Nablus.
New occupied West Bank law ‘major step’ in burying Palestinian state
The Israeli cabinet announced unprecedented decisions which allow Israeli settlers to own land in the occupied West Bank and diminish the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) already limited control.
Under the Oslo Accords – signed in 1993 with the Palestine Liberation Organization – Israel has control over 60 percent of the occupied West Bank, known as Area C, where the Israeli government lets settlers flourish. The remaining 40 percent range between full and partial Palestinian control and include city centres.
The new measures strip the PA’s authority over these areas. The laws also mean control of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron would be transferred from Palestinian to Israeli authorities. The same with Rachel’s Tomb, a religious site in Bethlehem.
Bezalel Smotrich has campaigned against Palestinians throughout his career. He has already accelerated the process of building new illegal Israeli settlement units in the past few years.
Israel has been choking any prospect of a Palestinian state. This is a major step towards burying it altogether.
All of the West bank was supposed to be under PA control by May 1999...
Hebron shows how Israeli settlers plant themselves in occupied West Bank
Yesterday’s decision was a rubber stamp on a practice that Israel has been carrying out for decades.
The fear is that Israeli settlers are going to be taking up spaces inside city centres, not the way they were before, and in more remote areas across the occupied West Bank.
Hebron, where I am right now, is the exact example of how, since the 1960s, Israeli settlers planted themselves inside the city and kept expanding at the expense of Palestinians.
There is a special arrangement for Hebron, under which the presence of Israeli settlers is entrenched in an area known as H-2. Israeli settlers in H-2 live inside the city, with hundreds of Israeli soldiers there to protect them.
In certain areas in Hebron, Palestinians are not even allowed to use the roads.
