We have seen the Israeli occupation expand its reach through its growing settlement enterprise, increasing home demolitions, and extrajudicial killings of unarmed protesters, all with the full backing of the United States and relatively no accountability from the international community.

2018 marked 25 years since the Oslo Accords were signed, but a fair and just peace agreement for the Palestinians remains far out of reach — the dream of an independent Palestinian state even further.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), which was supposed to be a temporary government according to the accords, has developed into a despotic regime, focused more on quashing dissent and policing free speech than achieving liberation and statehood.

2018 also marked 70 years since the Nakba, the tragedy that has shaped the Palestinian issue for generations.

But as evidenced by the ongoing fight for the rights of refugees in Gaza’s Great March of Return, the fight against expulsion in places Silwan and Khan al-Ahmar, and the fight for equal rights as citizens in Israel, the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, of the Palestinian people did not end in 1948.
 

The impact of Trump

President Donald Trump talks with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jared Kushner in Jerusalem, May 22, 2017. (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO)
 

It goes without saying that perhaps that most defining moment of the year actually took place in late 2017, when President Donald Trump announced that the US would be recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The decision sparked widespread protests that lead to the arrest of hundreds of Palestinians and the injury of many more. Even after the initial protests died down, Trump’s Jerusalem decision has continued to be a feature of nearly every demonstration, big and small, across Palestine.

Over the course of the year, the Trump administration has relentlessly unleashed a series of political decisions aimed at harming the Palestinian people and forcing their leadership to the negotiating table.

From defunding UNRWA and USAID in the West Bank and Gaza, to moving the Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump’s decisions will have a lasting political impact on the region. The human impacts have already begun to be felt.

More than 60 Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli forces on the Gaza border on May 14th when they were protesting Trump’s decision to move the embassy.

Last week, a three-year old Palestinian refugee boy died waiting for treatment in a Lebanon hospital. Many have attributed his death to the UNRWA financial crisis, saying that the family could not afford to pay and that the hospital delayed the treatment because they were waiting for the insurance payment from UNRWA.

As time goes on, more than 5 million Palestinian refugees will feel the effects of UNRWA’s financial crisis in the form of job cuts, reduced healthcare coverage, and the shut down of primary schools across the region.

The existence of UNRWA is truly essential to the lives of Palestine’s most vulnerable communities. Living in the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem, I have witnessed my neighbors skip doctor visits and unable to purchase necessary medications due to the fact that the current health care they receive UNRWA doesn’t cover all of their needs.

If the already lacking coverage is taken away from them, it is not out of the question that many more will suffer the fate of that young boy in Lebanon.

The UN has reported that despite a rise in humanitarian needs across the occupied Palestinian territory, funding levels for humanitarian interventions declined significantly: only US$221 million had been received, compared to the $540 million requested in the 2018 Humanitarian Response Plan.
 

Gaza & The Great March of Return

Much of this year’s coverage of news in Palestine has focused on the besieged Gaza Strip, which entered its 11th year under siege in 2018.

With every passing day, the situation in Gaza grows more and more dire. People see only a few hours of electricity a day, unemployment rates are at an all time high, and hospitals are closing their doors due to lack of medications.

In 2018, the UN reported that around 1.3 million people in Gaza, or 68 per cent of the population, were food insecure.

We have reported on a series of stories from the Gaza Strip this year, each one more distressing than the last.

We have seen children with cancer forced to travel alone to the West Bank for treatment without their parents, UNRWA employees set themselves on fire after losing their jobs, and the ever rising death toll from the Great March of Return.

On Saturday, one Palestinian was killed and six more were injured along the Israeli border fence.

UN documentation reported on December 28th that the death toll from Gaza’s Great March of Return stood at 180, and that over 23,000 people had been injured in the protests. Among the dead are journalists, medics, women, and children.

This year marked the highest death toll in a single year since the Israeli offensive on Gaza in 2014, and according to UNOCHA,  the highest number of injuries recorded since the group began documenting casualties in the occupied Palestinian territory in 2005.

The Great March of Return has galvanized Palestinians from across the Gaza Strip to demand an end to the crippling Israeli siege.
 

The Great March of Return in Gaza, August 10, 2018 (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Despite nine months of death and injuries, and no tangible wins for the protesters, the continued participation of Gazans in the march is evidence of the growing desperation in the coastal enclave.

With nowhere to go, no future for Gaza’s young people, and no medicine for the sick, the only remaining choice for many is to try as hard as they can to tear down the walls and fences surrounding them, knowing full well that death awaits them at the borders.
 

Growing discontent with PA

In the PA-controlled West Bank, there is a growing sense of discontentment with the government and its leaders, who continue to prioritize their consolidation of power and resources over the rights of the people.

The state of hopelessness and frustration among Palestinian citizens is on a steady rise, with polls showing that Palestinians ranked corruption as the second largest problem they face after the economic crisis – higher than the Israeli occupation, which ranked third.

Palestinian economic and social decline has led to higher rates of poverty and unemployment, with college graduates witnessing the highest rates of joblessness.

The Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), once the most important official instruments of control and accountability for the government, has been dysfunctional for the past 11 years.

The PA’s executive authority and security apparatuses have continued to impose restrictions on media and journalists through the Cyber Crimes Law, blocking websites that publish dissenting voices, and detaining journalists and activists critical of Mahmoud Abbas and his regime.

Over the summer, PA forces violently suppressed youth-led protests that criticized the government’s policies in Gaza and its security coordination with Israel, which has been denounced as a “revolving door” policy funneling Palestinian activists from PA jails to Israeli prisons.

In the wake of a spate of attacks earlier this month allegedly orchestrated by Hamas, demonstrations erupted in support of the PA’s rival faction, and in condemnation of Israel’s punitive ongoing home demolitions, road closures, and massive arrest campaigns.

Video footage of the protests showed PA security forces using batons to beat demonstrators, many of them women.

Despite widespread public outcry and ongoing protests, the PA is moving forward with a controversial social security law which will see citizens that work in the private sector paying seven percent of their monthly salaries taxes to the Palestinian Social Security Corporation (PSCC), with no clauses exempting workers who receive minimum wage.

While the law claims workers will be able to apply for a retirement pension at age 60, it stipulates that widows, orphans, and the families of Palestinians killed by Israel will not be eligible to receive benefits.

Palestinians have voiced their opposition to the law, citing concerns that if subjected to monthly deductions, workers receiving already low wages will not be able to provide for their families or pay off hefty bank loans, which many Palestinians use to purchase homes, cars, etc.
The primary opposition to the law lies in the fact that many Palestinians do not trust the government to uphold its end of the deal, and that under the Israeli occupation and an increasingly unstable PA, there’s no guarantee they would ever see the benefits of their contributions.
 

Business as usual for the Israeli occupation

According to UN documentation, a total of 295 Palestinians were killed and over 29,000 were injured in 2018 by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

Over 459 Palestinian structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem were demolished by Israeli forces, marking a slight increase from 2017. The demolitions resulted in the displacement of 472 Palestinians, including 216 children and 127 women.

In the wake of this month’s spate of attacks on Israeli settlers and soldiers, Israel has stepped up its efforts to demolish the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out attacks on Israelis, a policy that has been widely criticized for years as collective punishment.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on so-called “deterrence” efforts, instructing security officials to fast track punitive home demolitions, despite previous recommendations from an Israeli military committee that the practice did not deter attacks.

Last week, the Israeli Knesset passed the first reading of a bill to forcibly transfer families of Palestinians involved in attacks against Israelis, despite heavy opposition from intelligence and army officials.

If passed into law, it would see that within a week of an attack or attempted attack, the Israeli army would be permitted to expel the relatives of the Palestinian assailants from their hometowns to other areas of the West Bank.

Forcible transfer is considered a war crime under international law.

Since the election of Trump, the West Bank has witnessed a steep increase in the expansion of Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law.

In the 22 months before Trump was elected, 4,476 settlement housing units were approved, according to settlement watchdog  Peace Now. But since his election, that figure has more than tripled to 13,987 housing units.

Earlier this week, Israel advanced plans for nearly 2,200 living units in 47 settlements.

Palestinians in the West Bank have also witnessed a frightening increase in settler attacks on them and their property, with settlers more emboldened than ever before.

In 2018, UNOCHA recorded 265 incidents where Israeli settlers killed or injured Palestinians or damaged their property, marking a 69 per cent increase from 2017.

One Palestinian woman, 48-year-old Aisha al-Rabi, a mother of eight, was killed in October when settlers attacked her family’s car with rocks as they were driving home in the Nablus district of the northern West Bank.
Some 7,900 trees and 540 vehicles were damaged or completely destroyed in settler attacks, the UN reported.
 

The Palestinians that shook 2018

Amid all the devastation of 2018, several Palestinian faces have emerged from the darkness to offer a sense of hope, inspiration, and resilience for their people.

The following men, women, and children have been iconicized through social media for their roles in combating the Israeli occupation and bringing the plight of the Palestinian people to the international stage.

Ahed Tamimi

16-year-old Ahed Tamimi in Israeli military court (Photo: Tali Shapiro/Twitter)
 

Ahed Tamimi was propelled on to the international stage when she was arrested by Israeli forces in December 2017 after she slapped an Israeli soldier during a raid on her hometown of Nabi Saleh.

As she severed out an 8-month sentence in Israeli prison, she shed a new light on the issue of Palestinian child prisoners and the struggles of Palestinian youth under occupation.

By the time she was released, she had reached star status in Palestine and beyond, and has remained outspoken in her criticism of the Israeli occupation, travelling the world raising awareness about the Palestinian cause.

Yasser Murtaja & Razan al-Najjar

Razan al-Najjar, photo shared by the al-Najjar family.
 

Yasser Murtaja, portrait from his Facebook page.
 

During the Great March of Return, Israeli forces shot and killed Palestinian journalist Yasser Murtaja and medic Razan al-Najjar, drawing outrage from the Palestinian and international community.

Their deaths highlighted Israel’s widely criticized open-fire policy along the Gaza border, and the ongoing killing of unarmed civilians.

The funerals of both Murtaja and al-Najjar drew thousands of mourners, and their status as heroes of the Great March of Return has been memorialized on Palestinian social media.

The Bedouins of Khan al-Ahmar

Ibrahim Khamees, a member of the Khan al-Ahmar village council, watches as armed Israeli forces guard a bulldozer that razed lands on Wednesday to create a pathway for Israeli forces to use in the imminent demolition of the village (Photo: Akram al-Wara)
 

As the battle to save their village came to a head this year, the bedouins of Khan al-Ahmar remained steadfast in their nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation’s efforts to expel them from their lands.

Through grassroots efforts, the people of Khan al-Ahmar galvanized international support for their struggle, resulting in the indefinite postponement of the village’s demolition.

Rashida Tlaib

On their way to Congress: Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib (left) of Michigan, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. Omar is the first Somali-American legislator elected to office in the United States. (Photo: Twitter/Rashida Tlaib)
 

Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan’s 13th Congressional District made headlines across the US and the world as one of the first Muslim-American women to be elected to Congress, and the first ever Palestinian-American woman to do so.

In Palestine, Tlaib’s win was a form of poetic justice: the descendant of Palestinians from a small occupied West Bank village would now be serving in one of the highest levels of US government.

Since her election, Tlaib has been outspoken in her defense of the BDS movement, and has even announced that she will be leading a delegation of her colleagues to Palestine, as an alternative to AIPAC’s annual Israel trip for new members of congress.
 

Looking forward

As we enter the New Year, there is little reason for optimism in Palestine.

The Israeli occupation continues to tighten its grip with the help of the US, and the prospect of any reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and free democratic elections in Palestine are virtually nonexistent.

Palestinians in the West Bank continue to see their family members cycled through the Israeli prison system, with 5,554 Palestinians in prison as of November.

The current security situation in the West Bank has created a climate in which Palestinians are scared to drive their cars between cities, fearful that a settler attack or wrong move at a checkpoint could spell their death.

In East Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees are bracing for the worst as Israel moves forward with its plans to shut down UNRWA’s operations in the city.

In Gaza, the Great March of Return pushes on into its 10th month, and an end to the Israeli and Egyptian siege is nowhere in sight.

The Trump administration continues to tout its “deal of the century,” which many Palestinians anticipate will attempt to erase any Palestinian claims to Jerusalem, and force them to once again compromise their rights for the sake of Israel and the settlers.

The political future of Palestine is as uncertain as ever, and 2019 will likely see a further deterioration of the humanitarian situation here.

This year, we have interviewed hundreds of Palestinians from the borderlines in Gaza to refugee camps of Bethlehem. Countless people have have opened up their homes to Mondoweiss, to tell us, and show us, the reality of their existence under occupation.

Time and time again, we have asked people what their message is to the world, and to the Israeli government.  And time and time again, there is one common theme to every person’s answer:  sumud, or steadfastness. 

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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The announcement sparked widespread protests across the occupied Palestinian territory and Gaza, some of which are still continuing today.

The political implications of Trump’s decision were clear: the US was virtually erasing any Palestinian claims to the city, specifically occupied East Jerusalem, which Palestinians maintain must be the capital of their future state.

As Trump put it, he “took Jerusalem off the table,” essentially “giving” the city to Israel, its unlawful occupier, and forcing the Palestinians to concede to negotiations on other ancillary issues.

At the time, through protests and halting diplomatic ties with the US, the Palestinians refused to accept Trump’s self ordained right to take or leave certain final status issues off the negotiations table.

The worst possible damage, it seemed, had already been done.

But over the course of the next year, Trump and his administration would announce and enact a series of measures against the Palestinians in an effort to wear them down until they were forced to come to Trump and Netanyahu’s negotiating table and take whatever they could get.

Trump’s year in Palestine: a timeline

Following Trump’s announcement, the US government began preparations to move the US Embassy for Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a plan Trump had been touting since the campaign trail.

Until Trump, countries had kept their Israeli embassies in the internationally recognized capital of Israel, Tel Aviv, in order to avoid being impacting negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians on the future of Jerusalem.

In January, the US slashed its funding to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for providing essential services to Palestinian refugees, in half, paying $60 million to the agency instead of a promised $365 million.

On May 14, Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, a senior advisor to the President, traveled to Jerusalem for the embassy opening.
 

The president’s daughter Ivanka Trump takes a selfie at the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem with husband and senior White House advisor Jared Kushner, Sara Netanyahu and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 15 2018. (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO)
 

The inauguration of the new embassy coincided with the 70th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes when the state of Israel was established in 1948.

On August 24, the US State Department announced that it would be cutting $200 million in funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) for projects in the West Bank and Gaza, and would re-route the money to “high-priority projects elsewhere.

Palestinian officials came out in full force against the decision, accusing the US of employing “coercion” tactics and “political blackmail.”

Just one week later, the US announced it would be ending all financial support for UNRWA, putting the agency at increased risk of shutting down, and their more than 5 million registered Palestinian refugees at risk of losing critical education, work programs, and food assistance services.

On September 8th, Trump ordered that $25 million earmarked for the care of Palestinians in East Jerusalem hospitals be directed elsewhere as part of a “review of aid.”

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry criticized the aid cut as part of a U.S. attempt “to liquidate the Palestinian cause,” saying it would threaten the lives of thousands of Palestinian patients and hospital employees.

Two days later, the Trump administration ordered the Palestinian representative office to close, ending the near 25-year diplomatic presence of the PLO Mission in Washington DC.

State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters that the decision was made after Palestinian leaders refused to “advance the start of direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel.”

Last month, reports emerged that in efforts to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas into peace talks, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides millions of dollars in project-based aid each year to the Palestinian territories,  would be completely shutting down operations in 2019.

Since it began operating in 1994, USAID has invested about $5.5 billion in the West Bank and Gaza through the construction of roads, water infrastructures, schools, clinics and community centers.
 

Human Impact

Over the course of the year, as each US decision was followed up with more outcry and condemnation from Palestinian officials, the true impact of Trump’s foreign policy changes was most intensely felt by some of the most vulnerable communities across occupied Palestine and the diaspora.

In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, hundreds of Palestinians were arrested during protests in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society reported just three weeks after the decision that 490 Palestinians, including 148 minors and 11 women, had been arrested by Israeli forces.

Between December 14th-20th, 2017, four civilians were killed by Israel, including a double leg amputee, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during related protests, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

The group added that 256 Palestinian civilians, including 29 children, five journalists and four paramedics, were also wounded.

On May 14th, while US officials celebrated the embassy opening in Jerusalem, Israeli forces were gunning down Palestinians along the Gaza border.
 

Mourners carry the body of a Palestinian man who was shot dead by Israeli security forces during clashes where Palestinians demand the right to return to their homeland, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the “Nakba”, and against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem at the Israel-Gaza border, at al-Shifa hospital on May 14, 2018. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajour/ APA Images)
 

Gazans had launched weekly, and eventually daily, Great March of Return protests six weeks earlier, but the demonstrations peaked on the 14th as Palestinians protested the embassy move and commemorated 70 years since the Nakba.

Tens of thousands of protesters took to the Israeli border fence on that day. By May 15th, some 62 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli soldiers, in the deadliest day in Gaza since the 2014 war.

In July, scenes of chaos erupted in Gaza City after UNRWA announced that it would be laying off hundreds of its employees following January’s massive US budget cuts. One Palestinian man, an employee at UNRWA, attempted to set himself on fire.

Following Trump’s decision to completely stop US funding to UNRWA at the end of August, Chris Gunness, the agency’s spokesman, warned of a “doomsday scenario” when UNRWA’s funds do dry out,.

“Let there be no mistake; this decision is likely to have a devastating impact on the lives of 526,000 children who receive a daily education from UNRWA; 3.5 million sick people who come to our clinics for medical care; 1.7 million food insecure people who receive assistance from us, and tens of thousands of vulnerable women, children and disabled refugees who come to us,” he told Al Jazeera.

In October, Israel’s Jerusalem Mayor, Nir Barkat, announced that he would be shutting down all UNRWA operations in the city by 2019, a move he said was inspired by Trump’s UNRWA cuts.

Barkat said he plans to end the agency’s services in schools, clinics and sports centers, among others, and transfer the operations to Israeli authorities. UNRWA schools in East Jerusalem serve around 1,800 Palestinian children.

Between September and November, Saudi Arabia barred 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, along with Palestinian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon, and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, from getting visas to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj pilgrimage.

Reports at the time speculated the move was made in accordance with Trump’s efforts to “take the refugee issue off the table,” by pressuring Jordan and Lebanon into naturalizing Palestinian refugees in the countries, therefore stripping millions of their refugee status
 

What happens next?

One year on, and Palestinian leaders are maintaining their boycott of the US administration.
 

(Image: Carlos Latuff)
 

Abbas and his officials have widely denounced the US tactics over the past year, saying they won’t enter into any negotiations under the current circumstances.

In October, Palestinian leaders filed a complaint with the top court of the UN, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), over the U.S. decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Despite this, Trump is moving forward with his so-called “deal of the century,” which he has been claiming, for months, will solve the decades long conflict. In September, he said it would be released within two to four months.

But with refugees and Jerusalem allegedly “off the table,” and Israeli settlement expansion on a steady post-Trump rise, Palestinians and their supporters are skeptical that a plan put forward by the Trump administration could offer any semblance of justice for Palestinians.

Courtesy; https://mondoweiss.net/
 

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The village of Ras Karkar (background) overlooks the Risan mountain (foreground), which was taken over by a family of Israeli settlers in September (Photo: Yumna Patel)

But when the residents of the Ramallah-area village of Kafr Ni’ma woke up, expecting to spend the day decorating their homes and preparing sweets for the visitors they would receive the following morning, they were shocked to find a group of visitors on the outskirts of the town.

“The settlers came in the middle of the night, no one knew. By morning they had paved a road up to the mountain, set up their tents, and had soldiers protecting them,” Zafer Attayah, a resident of Kfar Ni’ma told Mondoweiss.

Attayah pointed to the top of Risan mountain, located just 500 meters northeast of the village. “You can see now they have set up a caravan, and there are some soldiers around them,” he said.

The family of settlers, which Attayah estimates numbers around 10, first showed up on Risan mountain on September 7th. “Every day since then, the soldiers have been present in the area. Day and night they are there,” Attayah said.
 

Armed Israeli forces are now a permanent fixture on the Risan mountain (Yumna Patel)
 

The Risan mountain is nestled between three villages northwest of Ramallah, just a few kilometers from the Green Line — Kafr Ni’ma, Ras Karkar, and Kharbetha Bani Hareth.

“People from all three villages own land on the mountain,” Attayah said, noting that his family is among the landowners.

“After the settlers came, the Israeli occupation authorities told us that they were confiscating the land for the settlers,” he said. “They want to take 1,000 dunums [about 250 acres] of our land.”

Ever since the settlers showed up two months ago, the Palestinians from Risan’s three surrounding villages have been staging weekly Friday protests on the mountain in attempts to stop the confiscation.

“We have to maintain our presence in the area,” Attayah said. “They think they can just come and take the land, but we will not make it easy for them.”
 

A history of resistance

The villagers of Kafr Ni’ma are no strangers to resisting the Israeli occupation. The village sits just four kilometers from the Green Line, the skyline of Israel’s large coastal cities clearly visible beyond the hills of the West Bank.
 

(Map: The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem)
 

Just a few hundred meters west of the village is Israel’s separation wall. Its 26 foot tall concrete panels weave through the lands of Kfar Ni’ma’s famous neighbor, Bil’in village.

Hundreds of Kafr Ni’ma’s residents participated in Bili’in’s years long nonviolent resistance campaign against the wall. “Many men and youth from our village were imprisoned for their activism in the Bil’in protests,” Attayah told Mondoweiss.

When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1995, 30% of the villages lands were designated as “Area C,” and put under the full civilian and security control of Israel.

Following the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, Israel established hundreds of military checkpoints and watchtowers across the West Bank. One of those watchtowers was built on a road connecting Kafr Nima with its neighboring village, Ras Karkar.

Israel confiscated 120 dunums of land from the village and its neighbors for the construction of Israeli bypass road No. 463. The villagers protested against that as well.

The confiscation of Risan mountain has ignited a dormant flame in the people of Kafr Ni’ma and its surrounding villages, who are determined to stage peaceful resistance.

“Every Friday, at least 150 to 200 youth and men from all three villages take to the mountain and we perform Friday prayers before we stage the demonstration,” Attayah, who has been participating in the demonstrations since day one, told Mondoweiss.

“These are peaceful, non-violent demonstrations,” Attayah insisted, “there are young boys and old men participating. We are trying to get as much attention from the media and from the popular resistance in Palestine so we can put pressure on the Israelis to stop,” he said.
 

Friday: Prayers & Protest

Palestinian protesters pray underneath an olive grove on Risan mountain (Yumna Patel)
 

On the road to Risan mountain, just minutes before the Friday prayer was scheduled to begin, sounds of rubber bullets firing and sound bombs exploding filled the air.

“Look, they already started to attack the people,” Attayah said as he exited the car, pulling his sweater over his face to shield himself from the overwhelming smell of tear gas.

Dozens of armed Israeli soldiers dotted the mountaintop around the settlers’ caravan, while dozens more descended into the valley firing tear gas at protesters who were attempting to reach the top of the mountain.

Eventually, as protesters receded and soldiers established new positions in the valley below Risan mountain, the Israelis held their fire just long enough for demonstrators to perform prayers under an olive grove.

Within minutes after the conclusion of the prayer, soldiers started firing tear gas again, sending protesters and journalists running in the other direction. Several Palestinians, including at least one child, were treated by medics on the scene.

One of the protesters was the Mayor of Kafr Ni’ma, Khader al-Dik, who spoke to Mondoweiss just moments after he was tear gassed.

“Today, the people tried to reach the area close to the land that they confiscated in order to perform Friday prayers there,” al-Dik said. “But the Israeli forces prevented people from reaching the mountain for the prayer, and attacked the people with tear gas and rubber bullets as you see.”

According to al-Dik, when the protests began, residents were able to perform prayers at the top of the mountain. But he says every week since, the soldiers have been pushing the protesters further and further down, away from the settlers.

“Even with the peaceful protests, the Israeli occupation refuses to keep the peace,” al-Dik said. “They always escalate the situation and respond with violence.”
 

Intimidation tactics

Journalists take cover from tear gas fired by Israeli forces on Risan mountain (Yumna Patel)
 

As part of their efforts to suppress resistance from the Palestinians against the land confiscation on Risan mountain, Israeli forces have been engaging in other intimidation tactics, according to the villagers.

Mariam Attayah, 55, told Mondoweiss that in the weeks since the demonstrations began, Israeli forces have escalated their nightly raids on the village.

“They come into the village every two or three days, to intimidate and arrest people who are involved in the protests,” she said, adding that at least seven young men have been arrested from Kafr Ni’ma since September.

“One of them was 12 years old, and they made his family pay a 3,000 shekel bail,” she said, adding that the boy spent 15 days in detention.

“The Israelis have always raided and arrested people from Kafr Ni’ma, as they do all across Palestine,” Attayah, who goes by ‘Umm Hassan’, said. “But things have gotten worse over the past two months.”

“Sometimes they raid the village just to go ransack people’s homes and break things and scare people,” she said.

When asked if she believed the raids were meant to scare villagers into not protesting against the confiscation of Risan mountain, Umm Hasan responded with an emphatic “Of course.”
 

Mariam ‘Umm Hasan’ Attayah says she is deeply saddened by the confiscation of Risan mountain, where her family owns tens of dunums of land (Yumna Patel)
 

“This is obvious,” she said. “We have been working to defend the mountain, so the soldiers come here and attack all the people as part of what they say is their protection of the settlers.”

“They think they can just come here and claim this land as their own, but we are telling them ‘no’,” she continued.

‘No one can stop us’

Despite the fact that the mountain is in Area C, Umm Hasan said that up until September, villagers would go tend to their land on the mountain, and take their families to enjoy the weather in the spring and summer.

But since the settlers arrived, Israeli forces have prevented any of the villagers from reaching their lands on the mountain, including Umm Hasan’s family.

“This land has been in our families for generations,” said Umm Hasan, whose family owns tens of dunums of land on Risan mountain. “It should be our right to go to this land whenever we want. Who are they to tell us no?”

“We feel sadness, we feel it deep inside. We are trying everything we can to protect our land, but this is very difficult on us,” she said.

“The settlers do not keep anything for us Palestinians to use. They took every mountain, every street. There is not a single hill in Palestine that the settlers have not put their hands on,” she continued.

In the face of it all, Umm Hasan said she is determined to continued supporting the popular resistance in the villages, and to return the land to her family and all the other Palestinians in the area.

“No one can stop us from going to our land,” she said. “We will go there day and night, we will sleep there if we have to. But no matter what they say or do, we will never give it up.”

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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Abdullah Sharqawi, 70, supports 15 members of his family by farming off the land that has now been confiscated by Israel (Photo: Yumna Patel)

In late July, the village of Aboud, whose existence dates back two millennia, was handed an order by Israeli authorities confiscating some 324 dunums (80 acres) of land shared by Aboud and its neighboring village al-Lubban al-Gharbiya.

Israeli authorities confiscated the land under the pretext that it would be used to build an Israeli-only road between the two illegal settlements of Beit Arye and Ofarim — both of which are built on the lands of Aboud.

The villagers however, insist that this time, it is not an ordinary tale of land confiscation — something they have been subject to for decades.

“There is already a road that exists between the settlements, so they are lying to us when they say they are taking the land for this purpose,” 70-year-old Abdullah Sharqawi, a resident of Aboud, told Mondoweiss.

“It is clear what they are trying to do,” he said. “They want to use the land to build new houses and create a settlement bloc in the area.”

Sharqawi’s predictions were more than just a speculation held by one elderly man.

His fears were echoed by other villagers and local officials who spoke to Mondoweiss, each of whom recounted stories of decades of land confiscation and settlement expansion that has led the village to its current state: a dwindling piece of history fighting to stay on the map.
 

The Beit Arye settlement (background) and the road between Aboud and al-Lubban al-Gharbiye (foreground) that has been closed off by Israeli authoriities since the Second Intifada (Photo: Yumna Patel)

‘As long as the settlers are happy’

Located just 10km east of the Green Line, the Tel Aviv skyline visible through the mountains even on a hazy day, Aboud is a quiet village filled with Muslims and Christians, whose families have lived on the land for centuries.
Thousands of dunams of land have been confiscated by Israel from the village over the years for different purposes, including the building of illegal settlements and outposts on Aboud’s lands, the construction of Israeli bypass roads in order to connect neighboring settlements, and the Israeli separation wall.

Over 760 dunams of village land, around 5.2% of the total village area, has been used for the construction of Beit Aryeh to the north and Ofarim to the southwest, which are home to more than 4,000 settlers.

According to the Applied Research Institute — Jerusalem (ARIJ), Aboud was divided between Area B (16.8% of total area) and Area C (83.2% of total area), the latter of which falls under complete Israeli civilian and security control, making it “illegal” for Palestinians to build on the land.
 

Yousif Mas’ad, former mayor of Aboud village (Photo: Yumna Patel)
 

“All of the village residents live in the borders of Area B,” Yousif Mas’ad, the former Mayor of Aboud, told Mondoweiss. “The rest of the land, that is Area C, is agricultural and used by farmers in Aboud.”

Mas’ad told Mondoweiss that Israeli forces began working on the land that was confiscated almost immediately after the village was given the notice last month.

“They have been working on this road everyday, non stop, except on Saturdays,” he said.

“But it is hard to believe that they want to use this for yet another road,” he said, highlighting the fact that the Israeli government has already confiscated dozens of acres of the village’s land for existing bypass roads, which according to ARIJ, number to three roads.
“The settlements of Beit Arye and Ofarim are only two kilometers away from each other, and there is already a road that exists between them. Why do they need another one?” Mas’ad asked earnestly.
 

Map of Aboud and its surroundings (Map: The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem)
 

Mas’ad pointed out that while the settlers have several roads to choose from, the road connecting Aboud with its neighboring village al-Lubban al-Gharbiya has been permanently closed off since the Second Intifada.

“What should be a less than five minute journey for us, actually takes 30 minutes,” he said. Laughing, Mas’ad remarked “but as long as the settlers are happy and comfortable, right?”

“Our fears that they will use the land to create a large settlement bloc on this land, much of which is privately owned, doesn’t come from nothing,” Mas’ad said, as he pointed to existing massive settler conglomerates in the West Bank like the Gush Etzion bloc in the Hebron district, and the Ariel bloc in Salfit. “This has been done before.”

As he sat among some of his former colleagues in the village’s municipality office, Mas’ad began to list all the farmers and their families who would be affected by the land grab.

“More than 45% of the villagers work in the agricultural sector,” Mas’ad said. “If they lose this land, it will not only affect their personal livelihoods and that of their families, but also the entire economy of the village.”
 

One of the roads paved by Israeli forces on the lands of Aboud. The road is used exclusively for Israeli military patrols. Beit Arye settlement in the background (Photo: Yumna Patel)
 

A bleak future for farmers

Seventy-year-old Abdullah Sharqawi, the patriarch of one of Aboud’s Christian families, is one of the local farmers who potentially stands to lose the most as a result of the land confiscation.

Sitting in his Ottoman-era stone home, where pictures of his children on their wedding days hang on the paint-chipped walls, Sharqawi wipes his brow as his wife prepares fresh lemonade, picked from their garden.

“My family has owned hundreds of dunums of land in Aboud for centuries. Our roots date so far back, I cannot even count,” he told Mondoweiss.

“In 1948, when we saw how much land was being taken and how much was being destroyed by Israel, my grandfather and father decided that we should plant our land, because surely, we thought, they cannot destroy land that is planted and grows fruits of the earth,” Sharqawi said.

The hopes of preventing the theft of their land began to fade away with the construction of Beit Arye and Ofarim in the 1980’s.

“First they would take the land, and say ‘oh you can still come to farm it’, but slowly, as time went on, they began to push us out completely until we were not able to reach some parts of land at all,” he said.

“At one point, about 10 years ago, they uprooted 26 olive trees to make way for a settler road,” Sharqawi told Mondoweiss, as he expressed fears that the land he currently has access to, which falls under the confiscated area, will suffer a similar fate.

“On that land, which they said they are using to build the road, we have 400 olive trees, 200 almond trees, grape vines, fig trees, everything,” Sharqawi said. “These trees support the livelihood of 15 people in our family, and provide food to the people of the village and people all over Palestine.”

For Sharqawi, even if the land is used to build another road, it is only a matter of time before new settlement houses start popping up alongside it.

“For now maybe they will let me access the land. But inevitably, with time, they will tell me no, it is not allowed,” he said.
 

Faint hope of justice

According to Mas’ad and other officials in the Aboud municipality, the village has collected all the necessary paperwork and has hire a lawyer to being proceedings to fight the confiscation.

“We cannot stand to lose more and more land like this,” remarked one municipality employee, who asked to remain unidentified.

“The least we can do is try to fight it, even if we know deep down, the possibility to win is very low.”

Mas’ad and the others in the office nodded in agreement. “But, at the end of the day, this is a huge injustice,” Mas’ad said.

“We know it is a difficult case to win, but maybe we have a chance because we have the documents proving that the land is privately-owned, meaning that settlement construction on it is even illegal under Israeli law.”

As the municipality workers went back and forth, exchanging theories and weighing possibilities, Sharqawi brushed off the plan to file a case in Israeli court against the settlers.

“If the Israelis are the ones who are taking away the land, how can we possibly trust that they could deliver us justice?”

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net
 

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A Palestinian holds a poster saying “the nation state bill is official apartheid” in two languages. Photo from Simone Zimmerman.

Passed last month, the law officially declared Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and, among other things, made Hebrew the singular national language. The move was appladued by Israel’s right-wing government, which praised it as finally affirming the “Jewish character” of Israel.

Critics, local and international, however, have criticized the law, saying it turned Israel’s nearly 2 million non-Jewish citizens — both Palestinians and other minorities — into second-class citizens, by prioritizing Israel as a Jewish state over a democratic one.

About 30,000 protesters gathered in the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv and marched through the streets of the city towards the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where the main rally, entitled “Abolish Nation-state Law – Yes to Equality,” took place.

Protesters called for the cancellation of the law and held signs calling on people to fight against apartheid.

Many activists and journalists tweeting about the protests commented that it was possibly the largest display of protests and solidarity between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel’s history.

Photos of the massive crowds showed people flying Israeli, Palestinian, and Druze flags, despite several reports saying that the protest organizers — The Arab Higher Monitoring Committee — specifically requested that flags not be flown, seemingly to appease liberal Zionists who threatened to boycott the protest if Palestinian flags were featured.

Nevertheless, many of the demonstrators waved Palestinian flags, while some chanted popular national slogans, including “With spirit, with blood we shall redeem you, Palestine!”

On his personal Twitter account, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted a video of said protesters, saying “There is no better evidence of the necessity of the nationality law.”

Jafar Farah, Director of the Mossawa Advocacy Center for Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel, who was at the protest, told Mondoweiss that the show of Palestinian symbols at the protest was “extremely powerful.”
 

Jafir Farah at march in Tel Aviv against nation state law. Photo by Yumna Patel
 

“To take our Palestinian flag and symbols to Tel Aviv and tell the Jewish population what we think of this legislation, and to tell them that we will not accept second class citizenship, it was a powerful feeling,” Farah said.

“It was the first time that the Palestinian community moved in buses from our towns and villages to the middle of a Jewish center, Tel Aviv, to challenge the public discourse in Israel,” he told Mondoweiss.

When asked about Netanyahu’s and the Israeli response to the Palestinian flags and chants at the march, Farah said he was happy that it got the attention of the PM.

“The fact that Bibi was talking about it is a success in itself,” he said, highlighting the importance of creating a discourse in Israeli society, and getting Israelis to talk about and acknowledge Palestinian symbols, heritage, and history.

“We came with the Palestinian flag to say we are Palestinians, this country is our country, and if you like it or not, the future of this country will take into consideration that Palestine is not only about the occupied territories.”

Farah stressed to Mondoweiss that the symbols of the state is one of the core issues outlined in the Nation State law, which say that the state’s symbols are the Israeli flag, and that the name of the state will be called Israel, and nothing else.

“The marginalization of the Palestinian community, which has been happening since 1948, is also taking place through this designation of the symbols of the state,” Farah said, when asked why it was so important for Palestinians to raise their flags and wear kuffiyehs at the march.
“What we can offer to the Jewish population is peace based on reconciliation and truth, not peace based on separation,” Farah told Mondoweiss.

“The peace that has been offered to us has excluded and separated us. This is not peace. We are here, we are Palestinians, and we are not planning to go away.”

Yumna Patel is a multimedia freelance journalist based in Bethlehem, Palestine. You can find her on twitter @yumna_patel.

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza identified the pregnant woman as 23-year-old Inas Khamash, and her 18-month-old daughter as Bayan Khamash.

The two were killed when an Israeli airstrike hit their home in the Jaafari area of central Gaza. Khamash’s husband, Muhammad, was severely injured during the strike.

While some local media outlets were reporting that Muhammad succumbed to his wounds early Thursday afternoon, the Gaza Ministry of Health has maintained that he is still in critical condition and being treated in the ICU.
 

Mourners carry the bodies of Palestinian Enas Khammash 23, and her 18-month-daughter Bayan, during their funeral in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip on August 9, 2018. (Photo: Ashram Amra/ APA Images)
 

The third slain Palestinian, reportedly a Hamas fighter, was killed in an airstrike in northern Gaza. He was identified as 30-year-old Ali al-Ghandour.

The health ministry added that around 12 Palestinians were injured, two critically, and were transferred to the hospital for treatment.

Israeli air forces pounded the Gaza Strip overnight, targeting over 100 sites in the besieged coastal enclave. The Israeli army said in a statement that forces struck 150 “terror targets.”
 

A picture taken on August 8, 2018 shows a fireball exploding during Israeli air strikes in Gaza City. (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/ APA Images)
 

In a statement on Twitter, the army said the strikes were “conducted in response to the rockets launched from Gaza at Israel throughout the night,” adding that 180 rockets — at least 30 of which were intercepted by Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense system — were fired from the Gaza Strip.

Israeli media outlets reported that 11 Israelis were injured in the town of Sderot. One woman was reported to be in serious condition, while nine others were taken to the hospital. Thirteen other Israelis were reportedly treated for “shock.”

An Israeli army spokesperson told Mondoweiss that they could not confirm the number of Israelis reportedly injured.

The Israeli army said they held Hamas “fully responsible” for the escalation in violence, and that it was “determined to secure the safety of Israelis, is on high alert, & prepared for a variety of scenarios.”

“Hamas is responsible & bears the consequences for the ongoing events,” the army said on Twitter.

The army’s rhetoric has been echoed by Israeli politicians and government bodies over the course of Thursday, with the Foreign Ministry saying that Israel was “defending itself from from Hamas’ aggression.”

The US envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt released the following statement on Twitter: “Hamas regime again is launching rockets at Israeli communities.  Another night of terror & families huddling in fear as Israel defends itself. This is the Hamas regime’s choice. Hamas is subjecting people to the terrifying conditions of war again.”

Neither Greenblatt, the foreign ministry, nor the army made any mention of the killing of Inas Khimash and her daughter Bayan.
 

Palestinians inspect a house that was damaged in an Israeli airstrike on Dair al Balah in the center of Gaza Strip on August 9, 2018. (Photo: Ashram Amra/ APA Images)
 

Hamas official Fawzi Barhoum said in a statement that it was Israel who was responsible for the violence, and that “in the event of continued aggression, shelling and killing of the Palestinian people in Gaza, the resistance will not be silent. It’s duty to respond and break the occupation.”

On Twitter, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri echoed similar sentiments, and called on the international community to “shoulder its responsibilities towards Israel’s aggression and siege.”

Thursday’s events are the latest in a series of severe flare ups over the past few months in Gaza, leading many local and international officials to speculate that another large-scale Israeli offensive on the Palestinian territory could be imminent.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted an unnamed senior Israeli commander as saying that the military is “nearing launching an operation in the Gaza Strip” if the current situation persists.

The official told Haaretz that Hamas “will pay the price for its violations in the last four months,” seemingly referring to the ongoing Great March of Return protests that began on March 30th, over which time Israeli forces have killed at least 160 Palestinians and injured 17,000 more.

“Hamas must go back to the understandings after the [2014 Gaza war], and if it doesn’t, it will understand the hard way,” Haaretz quoted the officer as saying.

With fears of a new Israeli onslaught on the horizon, reports have emerged of the UN scrambling to negotiate a ceasefire.

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nikolay Mladenov, said in a statement issued on early Thursday that he was “deeply alarmed by the recent escalation of violence.”

“For months I have been warning that the humanitarian, security and political crisis in Gaza risk a devastating conflict that nobody wants. The UN has engaged with Egypt and all concerned parties in an unprecedented effort to avoid such a development,” he said.
Mladenov added that “if the current escalation however is not contained immediately, the situation can rapidly deteriorate with devastating consequences for all people.”

The Gaza Strip is home to more than 2 million Palestinians, over 70% of which are refugees who were forcibly expelled from their homes in present-day Israel when the state was established in 1948.

A more than decade-long Israeli air, land, and sea blockade has crippled Gaza’s economy, which boasts one of the highest unemployment rates in the world at 44 percent, leaving an estimated 80 percent of the territory’s population dependent on humanitarian assistance.

Gaza has often been compared to an “open air prison,” and in 2015, the UN warned that the it could become “unlivable” by 2020 if nothing was done to improve the situation.

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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In a report published on Monday, DCIP said that between January and July, the number of slain Palestinian children was three times higher than during the same time period in 2017.

According to the group, Israeli forces have killed more Palestinian children since January this year than in any previous year of the past decade, outside of large-scale Israeli military offensives.

On August 5th, the day before the report was published, 17-year-old Ahmad Jihad Ahmad al-Aydi from Gaza succumbed to wounds he had sustained on the first day of Great March of Return protests on March 30th.

Al-Aydi was one of four minors who died of gunshot wounds between July 27 and August 5 after Israeli forces shot them during protests on the the Gaza border.

The other three were identified as Muath Ziad Ibrahim al-Soury, 15, Moemen Fathi Yousef al-Hams, 16, and Majdi Ramzi Kamal al-Satri, 11.

The majority of the children killed in 2018 were killed in Gaza, according to DCIP, with at least 22 of those children killed in the context of the Great March of Return protests.

The ongoing popular demonstrations have been violently suppressed by Israeli forces, who have killed 160 Palestinians and injured over 17,000 more, according to numbers from the Gaza Ministry of Health.

The majority of the slain children, according to DCI, were shot with live ammunition, while two were struck by artillery shells.

Of those killed by live ammunition, 13 children were shot in the head, neck, or chest, the group said said.
 

Arkan Mezher. (Photo: Twitter)
 

One of those children shot in the chest was 14-year-old Arkan Mizher, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces shot during an arrest raid in Dheisheh refugee camp in the middle of the night on July 23.

“Israeli forces have operated with near complete impunity for so long that unlawful killings and other flagrant violations of international law have become the norm,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, Accountability Program director at DCIP said in the report.

The group added that “DCIP evidence has determined on multiple occasions that children killed along the Gaza Strip perimeter did not pose a direct, mortal threat at the time of their death,” while noting that under international law, the use lethal force is strictly reserved for instances when a”direct and mortal threat to life or of serious injury exists.”

The number of Palestinian children who died at the hands of the Israeli occupation this year has doubled in comparison to 2017, during which 15 children were killed, according to DCIP records.

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net

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