These are the not-so-prescient words of Jeffrey Goldberg, named this week the new chief editor of the 159-year-old Atlantic Magazine, one of the most famous journalistic institutions in U.S. history.

The openly-Zionist Goldberg moved to Israel nearly 25 years ago and served in the Israeli Defense Forces. Since then, he has been the opening speaker for numerous Zionist functions, including the American Jewish Committee conference and Zionism 3.0.

Most garishly, he worked as a prison guard at Ktzi’ot, Israel’s largest detention camp for Palestinian political prisoners, where he boasted of helping beat Palestinian political prisoners. Ktzi’ot is one of Israel’s largest detention camps and has long been criticized for its inhumane conditions, which include frequent beatings, lack of drinking water and forced labor.

Over the weekend, the White House released “Peace to Prosperity,” the economic component of its so-called Deal of the Century.

It calls for $50 billion in “investments” spread over 179 projects. Half the money would be spent on Palestinian infrastructure over 10 years, with the rest spread between Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.

It will supposedly include a $5 billion transportation corridor between the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and another $2 billion in the Palestinian tourism sector.

Calls for the annexation of the Occupied West Bank are gaining momentum in both Tel Aviv and Washington. But Israel and its American allies should be careful what they wish for. Annexing the Occupied Palestinian Territories will only reinforce the current rethink of the Palestinian strategy, as opposed to solving Israel’s self-induced problems.

Encouraged by the Donald Trump administration’s decision to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Israeli government officials feel that the time for annexing the entirety of the West Bank is now.

In fact, “there is no better time than now” was the exact phrase used by former Israeli Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, as she promoted annexation at a recent New York conference.

According to documents released by the White House, the economic aspect of Donald Trump’s peace plan between Palestine and Israel includes granting $9 billion to Egypt, half of which is in the form of soft loans.

The documents revealed that $50 billion will be dedicated to the economic part of the deal of the century, which will be invested in the revival of the Palestinian territories, as well as Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt.

The US President’s advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner will announce the details of the first phase of the peace plan during the workshop on “Peace for Prosperity” in Manama, Bahrain, on 25 and 26 June.

Hanna Issa, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Secretary-General for the Islamic-Christian Council for Jerusalem and the Holy Places, has announced that the number of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) has reached 503, with 474 located in the West Bank and 29 in East Jerusalem.

In a press release today, Issa also stated that the illegal settlers living in these settlements number over one million, adding that the settler population is increasing at a far higher rate than the population growth rate of Israel itself.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Finance Minister Shukri Bishara yesterday revealed that international donations to the authority have declined by 60 per cent in the past six years.

This came during an urgent meeting held in Egyptian capital Cairo for Arab finance ministers to discuss ways to assist the PA, which is thought to be on the brink of financial collapse. Bishara called for Arab states to raise a financial safety network worth $155 million a month, Al-Watan Voice reported.

Bishara also stated that international donations to the PA have decreased substantially, from over $1 billion in 2013 to less than $450 million in 2018 – a 60 per cent decrease.

The British government licensed arms deals worth over £14m ($17.8m) to Israel last year even as Israeli soldiers were accused of intentionally firing on Palestinian protesters at the Gaza border in what the UN says may be potential war crimes.

Weapons approved for sale included ammunition, components for assault rifles, and other types of arms which could be used for repression, according to newly released details from the Department of International Trade (DIT), compiled by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT).

Analysts have rebuked the economic part of the United States's Middle East peace plan for failing to address the main problem that has heavily curbed the Palestinian economy - the 52-year-old Israeli military occupation over the Palestinian territories.

The economic plan was released by the White House on Saturday and is set to be presented during a US-led workshop in Bahrain on June 25-26.

When the document was released, many noticed that the 40-page plan was void of any political context with the words "occupation", "freedom", "equality", "blockade" missing.

"The absence of those words is actually quite glaring and it's very indicative of what they see is the issue," Diana Buttu, a Haifa-based analyst and former legal adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators, told Al Jazeera.

The White House published the economic section of its peace plan for the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dubbed the "deal of the century". The teased plan suggests investing $50 billion over 10 years to boost the Palestinian Authority's economy, but gives no hints about political solutions to the conflict.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has slammed the US for palnning to use secretely-developed ideas to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ignoring the existing international agreements.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Sunday toured the West Bank with John Bolton, said he will listen to US peace proposals – but added that “any future agreement” with Palestine must guarantee an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley.

Footage posted on Sunday showed Israel’s prime minister and the US national security adviser overlooking the Israeli-occupied area from an aircraft and on the ground, with Netanyahu seen giving Bolton an excursion.

Foxtrot, the movie that Israel doesn’t want you to see.

The Jerusalem Center of Socio and Economic Rights, Monday, warned of the escalation of Israeli demolitions in occupied Jerusalem, noting it bears the nature of a collective form of punishment. The director of the center Zeyad al-Hamouree warned, in a statement, that the Israeli municipality and civil administration are carrying out demolitions in Qalandia, Sur Baher, Silwan and al-Bustan neighborhoods. He explained that Israel plans to demolish wide parts of Palestinian facilities to build Israeli facilities, noting the Israeli plans to establish the so-called National Park in Arrababh neighborhood. He stressed, according to Al Ray, that the next phase in Jerusalem is so difficult, especially regarding residential buildings. He said that dozens of demolition orders are carried out without warning.

A $50 billion plan for Palestine’s economy that hinges on peace with Israel has been revealed by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. He calls it the “opportunity of the century” but a chorus of Palestinian groups disagrees.

Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Kushner dangled the multibillion proposal separately from the central –political– part of US President Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace deal plan. He said he did so on purpose to let people “digest” the “less controversial” side of the plan before the political details finally land.

The former chief of Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, Shabtai Shavit, has said that Israel does not want peace and that, if it had, it would have made peace with the Palestinian Authority (PA) long ago.

Shavit gave his remarks to Israeli daily Maariv, reiterating that if Israel wanted peace it would have discussed it in economic and infrastructure terms that serve the interests of both parties, Arab 48 reported yesterday.

However, Shavit said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not see the PA as a negotiating partner and therefore refuses to develop relations with the authority. “Do you know any other head of an Israeli government who did not talk with the Palestinians?” he asked.

Shavit also claimed that Netanyahu stopped speaking to the PA under pressure from the Israeli right-wing, who he claimed “would lynch him in the city centre” if he opened discussions today.

Hamas yesterday stressed that the Palestinians have enough power and resilience to undermine Israel.

Marking the 63rd Friday of the Great March of Return, Hamas spokesman Abdel-Latif Al-Qanou said “our people have enough power, resilience and willingness to undermine all [Israeli] projects.”

He added: “The Palestinians are sticking to their land and are able to fight all plans aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause.”

As is common practice during the summer after the election of a new House of Representatives, a group of freshman Congress members will take an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel in August. The list of Democrats currently stands at twenty-three, with two more indicating that they are trying to fit the trip into their schedules.

The trips will be sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), the nonprofit arm of the powerful lobbying organization, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The goal of the trips is to promote American support for Israel despite Israel’s violations of human rights, international law, U.S. law, and discrimination against Christians and others. Lawmakers are currently considering legislation that will give Israel a minimum of $38 billion over the next 10 years. This amounts to $7,230 per minute, or about $23,000 per Jewish Israeli family of four.

MARY JO KILROY was elected to Congress at the height of the financial crisis, in November 2008, to represent Columbus, Ohio, and the surrounding area. She landed a seat on the Financial Services Committee, where she had a chance to address the foreclosure crisis ripping through her state, as well as to push for tougher regulation of Wall Street.

As she learned to navigate Washington during her first term, one of the more unexpected pressures she faced was about a foreign trip. It wasn’t just any congressional sojourn, but rather a trip to Israel organized by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and sponsored by the nonprofit arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. “I would say that I was ‘strongly encouraged’ to take the Steny Hoyer AIPAC trip. ‘Everyone’ is going except you,” recalled Kilroy, who resisted the pressure, telling AIPAC that she didn’t want to go on a one-sided tour of the region.

Palestinian protesters carry a wounded boy during clashes with Israeli troops on the Gaza-Israel border, east of al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip, on June 21, 2019. At least 81 Palestinians were injured on Friday afternoon during clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli soldiers in eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel, medics said.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has pledged $20 million to establish a foundation that will fight anti-Semitism and BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement). Kraft made the announcement while in Israel accepting The Genesis Prize, a $1 million award that Time Magazine has called “the Jewish Nobel.”

The award was presented by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the prize is administered in partnership with Israel’s government. Like President Trump, Netanyahu has been friends with Kraft for years. “Robert Kraft fights back,” said Netanyahu, “and he’s committed to fight BDS and the slanders against Israel and to stand up for the state of Israel.”

Newly-appointed Israeli transportation minister Bezalel Smotrich has declared that one of his main objectives is to ‘Judaise the Galilee’, in light of the region’s number of Palestinian citizens.

In an interview with Israel Hayom, the notorious right-wing nationalist also vowed to boost settlement infrastructure in the occupied West Bank.

Smotrich, part of the Union of Right-Wing Parties, was given the transportation ministry by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as part of a transitional government between elections.

The health sector in the occupied Gaza Strip is still struggling to cope with injuries sustained by protesters in Great March of Return demonstrations, according to a new update from UN OCHA.

A recently published World Health Organisation (WHO) report noted that gunshot accounted for 210 of the fatalities between 30 March 2018 and 31 March 2019, and for 6,872 injuries, or 25 per cent of the total casualty caseload over the time frame analysed.

“Although any health system in the world would be overwhelmed if it had to manage a high influx of trauma casualties every week; the most pressing concern was the staggering number of gunshot wounds”, the WHO noted.

Decades of failed talks with Israel and internal divisions have left residents more desperate than ever, and the 'deal of the century' seems unlikely to change the status quo

14-year-old Palestinian boy was forced to undergo a leg amputation after an Israeli soldier shot him as he retrieved a football near the Separation Wall in the West Bank

Recent revelations confirming the involvement of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in efforts to actively disrupt the growing movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel did not come as a surprise to pro-Palestine activists.

Gilad Erdan, the Israeli strategic affairs minister and a senior figure in Israel's fight against BDS, met Mossad head Yossi Cohen to discuss "the struggle against the boycott", according to the politician's 2018 official diary.

Israeli daily Haaretz, which first reported on the matter, did not give further details about the meeting, but said that according to Erdan's schedules, which were made public by a Freedom of Information request filed by the Israeli Hatzlaha group, the minister had also met the head of the National Security Council, as well as a number of Jewish organisations.

Hundreds of Israeli settlers stormed the occupied West Bank village of Kifl Haris, preventing Palestinian Muslims from conducting evening prayers at their local Mosque and vandalising property for hours.

The mayor of Kifl Haris, located in northeast of the occupied Salfit, Essam Abu Yaqoub, told The New Arab’s Arabic-language service that Israeli settlers, backed up by heavily armed forces stormed the village just before night prayers were due, preventing Muslims attending their local mosque.

Abu Yaqub said that the settlers stormed the village to pray at tomb of Joshua and Caleb, located inside the village. He added that settlers ransacked the village, and damaged properties and vehicles of the Palestinian residents.

Hamas' chief Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday accused Israel of dragging its feet in carrying out its obligations under an indirect cease-fire for the Gaza Strip, saying the fragile deal was in danger of collapsing.

Speaking to international journalists, Haniyeh said the 2 million residents of Gaza "have not felt" any improvement in their living condition, despite what he said were Israeli pledges to ease a crippling blockade on the territory. The unofficial truce was brokered by Egypt, Qatar and the U.N. after a round of heavy fighting in May.

Whereas the OCLA and the BCCLA (and the CCLA) are distinct and separate organizations, the OCLA nonetheless also opposes the international campaign to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is targeting all levels of government in Canada, as well as universities, police, and other authorities.

In this context, the OCLA opposes the “hate speech” provisions of the Criminal Code. The said provisions are distinct from the “threat of violence”, “harassment” and “coercion” provisions, are contrary to international law, remove the State’s onus to prove actual harm to any actual specific victim, and are incompatible with democratic values. Further, the said provisions are susceptible to erosion and practical abuse from political campaigns such as the IHRA campaign.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has recognized Palestine as a state by allowing it to join the body as an observing member, a move that drew fire from the Israeli regime.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano and Palestinian Ambassador to Vienna Salah Abdul Shafi signed an agreement on Tuesday that lets IAEA inspectors carry out safety checks on radioactive materials and fissile nuclear materials, such as uranium, that are stored in Palestine.

Palestine has no nuclear reactors, but there are medical equipment components of nuclear materials in physics departments in some hospitals and universities, according to reports by Israeli media.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the move by the IAEA amounted to a "violation of international conventions."

The Israeli occupation has left its physical and political mark within the historic walls, with most Palestinians barred from visiting Al-Aqsa

In an interview with the New York Times, Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris said she believes Israel meets international human rights standards “overall.” The declaration comes less than a week after Israel wounded ninety-two Palestinian civilians during a weekly protest at the Gaza border, including twenty-eight children and four medics.

Harris made the comments about Israel during a New York Times feature, in which the paper asked a number of the candidates twenty-one questions. One of those questions was, “Do you think Israel meets international standards of human rights?”

Harris: I think that Israel as a country is dedicated to being a democracy, and is one of our closest friends in that region and that we should understand the shared values and priorities that we have as a democracy, and conduct foreign policy in a way that is consistent with understanding the alignment between the American people and the people of Israel.

On 31 May, 2010, Israel carried out a deadly attack on human rights activists trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. After boarding the Mavi Marmara during a dawn raid whilst it was sailing in international waters, Israeli soldiers killed nine aid workers and injured several others; one of those injured succumbed to his wounds a few years later. The assault was met with international outrage, but nine years on the victims of the attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla are still seeking justice. I was on board the Mavi Marmara on that day and witnessed the ordeal of my fellow passengers. Since then, as a lawyer, I have been working closely with the victims in their quest for justice.

Two infamous anti-Palestinian activists in London pleaded guilty to charges of harassment and threatening behavior on Wednesday.

Jonathan Hoffman, a former leader in the Zionist Federation, and Damon Lenszner changed their earlier not-guilty pleas in exchange for government prosecutors dropping related assault charges.

The incident took place in October last year when the pair attacked Palestine solidarity protesters calling for the boycott of a Puma store in Carnaby Street, central London.

Hendon Magistrates’ Court, in Northwest London, imposed a fine and costs totaling $350 on Hoffman, and about $300 costs and charges on Lenszner, whose lawyer said he was unemployed.

When US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman commented on Israel’s “right” to annex land in the occupied West Bank — as a dutiful Zionist he called it “Judea and Samaria” — he provided the Palestinians with an important reason for resistance to the Israeli occupation. So too does Israel’s systematic annexation policy, which is basically ethnic cleansing because the state is trying to rid itself of the Palestinians in the areas taken.

There are now 20 synagogues in occupied East Jerusalem; there will probably be more. What’s more, the Israeli Supreme Court has approved a deal for the settler organisation Ateret Cohanim to buy three buildings from the Greek Orthodox Church located in the Christian quarter of occupied Jerusalem.

The Israeli international TV channel i24 News last week aired a call for the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

“There will never, ever be a two-state solution,” British far-right demagogue Katie Hopkins stated. “Israel will become the super force here. You will have to have a one-state solution.”

But she wasn’t talking about a single state with equal rights for all.

“There will not be peace in Israel until you remove the people who don’t belong there,” Hopkins asserted.

Palestinians are calling for a boycott of the German festival that disinvited American rapper Talib Kweli because of his support for BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

Earlier this month, the Open Source Festival in the western city of Düsseldorf dropped Kweli for refusing to denounce BDS.

PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, is now calling on other artists to cancel their performances to show solidarity with Kweli.

Is there any other country on Earth with which America would dare collude on such a scale? Forget the “special relationship” with the crackpots in Britain, or the New World coming to the rescue of the Old World in the Second World War.

There’s only one special relationship that matters right now – and we all know what that is. Having given its blessing to all Jerusalem as Israeli property and having now handed Golan to Israel as a possession – for “to annex” means “to take possession”, does it not? – Donald Trump has undermined the entire foundation of “land for peace” enshrined in Security Council Resolution 242. And Israel is happy. A gift for Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election, we are told.

Israeli forces Tuesday demolished a structure and uprooted a number of olive trees in the village of Qusra, near northern West Bank city of Nablus, according to local sources.

According to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, Israeli forces demolished a structure used for agricultural purposes.

The agricultural structure was demolished last November and its owners rebuilt it again.

According to the UN, Israel has approved only 1.5 percent of the construction building permits requested by Palestinians.

Israel Police withheld potentially-crucial evidence and changed their timescale of events in a case against a West Bank Palestinian who is accused of raping an Israeli child.

Earlier this year, a seven-year-old Israeli girl from an ultra-Orthodox West Bank settlement was brutally raped. The girl’s name and the exact location of the settlement are currently under an Israeli court gag order, but the attack is presumed to have taken place in Modi’in Ilit, a Haredi settlement near Israel’s illegal Separation Wall.

On Monday, 46-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud Katusa – who hails from the village of Deir Qadis, next to Modi’in Ilit – was charged with her kidnap and rape. Katusa reportedly worked at the girl’s school as a maintenance worker, with the indictment against him charging that he won the girl’s trust by engaging her in conversation and giving her sweets over a prolonged period of time.

Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan yesterday praised the role played by a controversial definition of anti-Semitism in the fight against the Palestinian-led boycott campaign.

Speaking at a conference he described as “the most important gathering of the pro-Israel and anti-BDS community”, Erdan hailed the efforts being made to undermine the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign, telling delegates: “We built the network to fight the network.”

“We do have a lot to be proud of tonight,” the minister declared. “We did what we said we were going to do: We moved from defence to offense and put BDS on the defensive.”

In front of a reported 300 pro-Israel activists and “legal experts” from over 30 countries, Erdan stressed the importance of attacking BDS as “anti-Semitic”.

Newly uncovered documents have revealed that Israeli authorities began looking for ways to encourage Palestinian emigration immediately after occupying the West Bank in 1967.

According to +972 Magazine, the discovery was made by Omri Shafer Raviv, a PhD student in the Department of Jewish History at Hebrew University. The study uses official government documents from the 1967 war and its aftermath that have only recently been declassified.

The documents uncovered by Shafer Raviv show that “mere weeks” after the Six-Day War, “Israel enlisted teams of academics in the country to find ways to encourage Palestinians to emigrate from the newly occupied territories”.

In November 2016, fresh off his electoral win, US President-elect Donald Trump boasted of his intention to end the Israel-Palestine conflict by striking what he called the “ultimate deal”.

Calling it “the war that never ends”, Trump told the Wall Street Journal: “As a deal maker, I’d like to do… the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”

A billionaire property tycoon and reality TV star known for his wheeling and dealing in the New York City real estate market, this was not the first time that Trump had framed the cause of peacemaking and diplomacy in terms of a business transaction.

Asked in March 2016 during his election campaign what the best deal of his life had been, he said it had been the creation of 6,000 housing units on the West Side of Manhattan.

His interviewer then asked him what would be the best deal he could make as president.

Israel’s Supreme Court yesterday gave the green light for the state to demolish 13 apartment blocks built in “Area A” of the occupied West Bank, but which now lie inside the route of the illegal Separation Wall.

According to Haaretz, Palestinians say that the ruling “sets a precedent that will enable the demolition of thousands of buildings in the West Bank”.

The court, sitting as the High Court of Justice, backed the state’s argument that the buildings do not have the required permits, and thus can be demolished. The buildings contain roughly 100 apartments, 20 of which are already inhabited and the rest are under construction.

The buildings are in Wadi Hummus which is located on the edge of Sur Baher, in southeast Jerusalem. As described by Haaretz, “unlike the rest of the village, this neighbourhood lies beyond the city’s municipal boundaries, in the West Bank”. Most is designated “Area A”, under the administrative control of the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Israeli circles have demanded that a large-scale military naval operation be carried out in Gaza to respond to the growing military capabilities of Hamas, provided that it would surprise Hamas and exploit the soft belly of Gaza, specifically the western side of Gaza’s coast on the Mediterranean Sea.

I will discuss Israel’s warnings about Hamas’s growing naval capabilities, its readiness to confront them, the movement’s combative capabilities in the face of an Israeli maritime invasion, and Israel’s purposes for the marine operations.

Israeli reports are increasingly concerned about Hamas’ naval commando units, which have successfully developed strategic capabilities on the seafront. This is especially in the light of the lingering Israeli memories of Hamas’s infiltration of Zikim Beach, north of Gaza during the 2014 war.

As Qatar delivered $20 million in cash to aid impoverished families in Gaza on Sunday, a shortage of essential medicines threatens the lives of patients in the occupied territory.

Gaza’s health ministry has less than a month’s supply of more than half of the medicines in its stocks, spokesperson Ashraf al-Qedra stated on Sunday.

The depleted stocks include therapeutic milk for infants, as well as medicines for patients with cancer, kidney failure, diabetes and hypertension.

Some 8,000 cancer patients are affected, according to the health ministry, as well as nearly 1,200 patients who receive dialysis – among them 39 children.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights called on the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank “to shoulder its responsibilities and urgently intervene to ensure the supply of medicines and medical disposables” to Gaza health facilities.

When Israeli prime ministers are in trouble, facing difficult elections or a corruption scandal, the temptation has typically been for them to unleash a military operation to bolster their standing. In recent years, Gaza has served as a favourite punching bag.

Benjamin Netanyahu is confronting both difficulties at once: a second round of elections in September that he may struggle to win; and an attorney general who is widely expected to indict him on corruption charges shortly afterwards.

Mr Netanyahu is in an unusually tight spot, even by the standards of an often chaotic and fractious Israeli political system. After a decade in power, his electoral magic may be deserting him. There are already rumblings of discontent among his allies on the far right.

Given his desperate straits, some observers fear that he may need to pull a new kind of rabbit out of the hat.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled an illegal settlement in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights named after US President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu yesterday inaugurated the settlement – called “Ramat Trump”, Hebrew for “Trump Heights” – hailing the US President as a “great friend” of Israel. The development will extend the existing settlement of Bruchim, located in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights captured by Israel during the war of 1967.

Israel has been granted protection from its critics by the state of Florida in recent amendments to the Florida Educational Equality Act (FEEA), which includes provisions that suppresses free speech. Under new definitions of anti-Semitism adopted by the American state, limits have been placed on discussions of the plight of the Palestinian people and underscoring the brutality of Israel’s occupation.

The bill is likely to open the door for criminal charges to be levelled against human rights activists and critics that advocate a single democratic state in which Israeli Jews, Palestinians and all others are granted full, equal rights. Supporters of the Palestine cause face the prospect of being silenced on the grounds that calls for equality under a single democratic state is deemed to be an attempt to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination and that such a call for non-discrimination questions Israel’s right to exist.

US Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt has stood behind comments made by US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, in which the latter stated Israel has “the right” to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

Speaking yesterday at a conference held by Israel’s English language daily the Jerusalem Post in New York, Greenblatt said: “I will let David’s comments stand for themselves. I think he said them elegantly and I support his comments.”

Greenblatt was referring to an interview with Friedman in the New York Times last weekend, in which the ambassador claimed that, “under certain circumstances, I think Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank”. Friedman was understood to be referring to Israel’s illegal settlement blocs, several of which extend deep into the occupied West Bank and which Israel seeks to formally annex under any future peace settlement.

On 13 June, the Toronto Raptors won the National Basketball Association (NBA) Championship. A few days earlier, news had broken in the Israeli media that one of the team’s billionaire co-owners, Larry Tannenbaum, announced in April that if the team won, he would take them on a trip to Israel. Tannenbaum is one of the founders of the leading pro-Israel lobby group in Canada, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) It is interesting to note how the Zionist lobby seamlessly merges Israel and Jewish. The reaction by progressive fans to this proposed trip was initially shock, and then a commitment to push back on such a blatant attempt to sports-wash Israel’s war crimes. The Canadian BDS Coalition started a petition on 14 June, calling on team members not to be part of such an infamy; it has already gathered over 3,000 signatures.

Selling settlement products as “Made in Israel” may mislead consumers and stop them from making what they consider to be ethical buying choices, a senior European Union legal official says.

“Just as many European consumers objected to the purchase of South African goods in the pre-1994 apartheid era, present-day consumers may object on similar grounds to the purchase of goods from a particular country” because it pursues “policies which that consumer happens to find objectionable or even repugnant,” Gerard Hogan, advocate general of the Court of Justice of the European Union writes in an advisory opinion published last week.

The opinion specifies that consumers may object to buying goods from Israeli settlements “precisely because of the fact that the occupation and the settlements clearly amount to a violation of international law.”

The Palestinian Center For Human Rights (PCHR): On Friday, 14 June 2019, in excessive use of force against peaceful protesters on the 61st Friday of the Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege, Israeli forces wounded 92 Palestinian civilians, 28 of them were children and four were paramedics, including a female paramedic, in the eastern Gaza Strip. One of the wounded was a child, who was hit with a live bullet to the chest and sustained serious wound.

According to observations by PCHR’s fieldworkers, the Israeli forces who stationed in prone positions and in military jeeps along the fence with Israel continued to use excessive force against the protesters by firing bullets and tear gas canisters at them. As a result, dozens of the protesters were hit with bullets and teargas canisters without posing any imminent threat or danger to the life of soldiers.

After US Ambassador David Friedman gave a thumbs-up to possible Israeli annexation of portions of the West Bank last week, Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg seized on the threat for political capital, saying he would make Israel pay a price in aid for such a move. “If Prime Minister Netanyahu makes good on his threat to annex West Bank settlements, he should know that a President Buttigieg would take steps to ensure that American taxpayers won’t help foot the bill,” said the South Bend mayor.

In seeming to threaten sanctions against Israel, Buttigieg is leading the Democratic field– much as Beto O’Rourke jumped to the front on Netanyahu’s racism some weeks ago. Buttigieg is even ahead of Bernie Sanders. Though Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have co-sponsored a resolution condemning the idea of annexation because it is a threat to the two-state solution.

Israel’s high court has given the green light for major properties in Jerusalem’s Old City to be sold to an extremist settler organization.

The Greek Orthodox Church had appealed against the 99-year lease of three major Jerusalem assets in prime locations near Jaffa Gate, but the high court rejected the appeal on Monday.

Ateret Cohanim, a right-wing organization involved in Israeli settlement on Palestinian land in Jerusalem, claims to have bought church land in 2004 from Ireneus I, the Greek Orthodox patriarch at the time.

The Greek Orthodox Church has subsequently taken over the site but Ateret Cohanim is now trying to seize the land that it bought over a decade ago.

Ireneus I claims his ousting was not legal and still identifies as the patriarch.

Theophilos III, the current patriarch, has rejected the sale that his predecessor approved.

Top generals in the IDF are expected to push for a much stronger response to rocket fire and arson balloons from the Gaza Strip after fresh attacks in recent days, Channel 12 reported Friday.

Citing a senior military source, Channel 12’s veteran military analyst Roni Daniel said Israel was “on the verge of a serious military campaign,” and said the IDF was considering ending its policy of warning occupants of buildings ahead of airstrikes, even if it causes casualties.

On Friday, 14 June 2019, in excessive use of force against peaceful protesters on the 61st Friday of the Great March of Return and Breaking the Siege, Israeli forces wounded 92 Palestinian civilians; 28 of them were children and four were paramedics, including a female paramedic, in the eastern Gaza Strip. One of the wounded was a child, who was hit with a live bullet to the chest and sustained a serious wound. According to observations by PCHR’s fieldworkers, the Israeli forces who were stationed in prone positions and in military jeeps along the fence with Israel continued to use excessive force against the protesters by firing bullets and tear gas canisters at them.

Israeli airstrikes were reported in the Gaza Strip east of Gaza City around midnight Friday, believed to be in response to a rocket fired at the Israeli city of Sderot the previous day.

The airstrike reportedly targeted al-Zaytoun, an area that was also hit by the Israeli Air Force the previous night, again following a rocket attack in southern Israel earlier that day, Sputnik reported.

Israeli authorities are pressing ahead with plans to demolish an entire Palestinian neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem, human rights NGO B’Tselem reported, which will leave 550 homeless.

Wadi Yasul, located between the neighbourhoods of Abu Tur and Silwan, is home to 72 Palestinian families.

According to B’Tselem, the Jerusalem Municipality has “issued demolition orders for all the neighbourhood homes so all the families there are facing the threat of expulsion.”

Illegal Israeli settlers have setup an illegal outpost on Palestinian land near the Gold Souk in the occupied Old City of Hebron, the West Bank, the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee has said.

Committee head, Imad Hamdan, said that the settlers intend to build two housing units on the land after they took over the petrol station in Al-Shuhada Street and fenced it.

Hamdan expressed his grave concern over such encroachments upon the properties of Palestinian citizens in Hebron’s Old City, especially in the areas declared 17 years ago by the occupation as closed military zones.

A senior legal advisor to the European Union’s top court said yesterday that products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory should be clearly labelled as such, reported AFP.

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is “considering a request from France’s top tribunal for clarification of rules on labelling goods” from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

According to AFP, the ECJ “is not obliged to follow Advocate General Gerard Hogan’s advice, but the former Irish judge’s legal opinions are seen as highly influential in the bench’s deliberations.”

In his legal advice, Hogan said that “labels must make it clear if products originate in the occupied territories, and in particular if they come from Israeli settlements in those areas.”

Al-Judaily was the fifth paramedic to be killed by Israeli forces during the Great March of Return protests; more than 500 others have been wounded

Israel used “bunker buster” bombs made by a US arms company in two attacks on Gaza in which civilians were killed last month.

The deadly strikes occurred in intense violence between 4 and 6 May during which 25 Palestinians, half of them civilians, and four civilians in Israel were killed.

Remnants of the GBU-39 series guided “small diameter” bomb manufactured by Boeing were found by Human Rights Watch at the site of the Zoroub building in Rafah, southern Gaza. Three civilians were killed in an Israeli attack on the six-story commercial building on 5 May.

The White House’s prolonged financial bullying of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Palestinians’ government-in-waiting, has reached the point where there are now credible warnings that it is close to collapse. The crisis has offered critics further proof of the administration’s seemingly chaotic, often self-sabotaging approach to foreign policy matters.

Meanwhile, US officials charged with resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have demonstrated ever more blatant bias, such as the recent claims by David Friedman, the ambassador to Israel, that Israel is “on the side of God” and should have the “right to retain” much of the West Bank.

Again, critics view the Trump administration’s approach as a dangerous departure from the traditional US role of “honest broker”.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza yesterday warned of a deterioration in conditions in its hospitals due to the “unprecedented” lack of medicines, Shehab.ps reported.

In a statement, the ministry said that “patients in Gaza hospitals are experiencing unprecedented bad conditions due to the severe lack of medicines resulted of the Israeli siege.”

Fifty-two per cent of basic medicines and medical supplies have now run out in the Strip, the statement said, adding that this “undermines” the ministry’s ability to offer its services.

Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled against the Greek Orthodox Church in a long-running legal battle over the sale of three properties in predominantly Palestinian parts of Jerusalem’s Old City to a Jewish settler group.

The ruling handed down on Monday was part of a protracted dispute over the 2004 sale of Old City properties, including two Palestinian-run hotels, to Ateret Cohanim, an Israeli organization that aims to increase the Jewish presence in Palestinian areas of the contested holy city.

The IDF has struck “terrorist targets” in the Gaza Strip for the second night in a row. The strikes were launched in retaliation for rocket fire from the enclave which reportedly hit a Jewish educational facility in Sderot.
The strikes on early Friday morning reportedly targeted at least two locations around Gaza City, in the vicinity of the airstrikes Israel has conducted a day earlier. Following the initial air strikes, the IDF artillery fired two shells east of Rafah in the southern Strip, a Wafa correspondent reports, noting that it is difficult to assess the casualties or damage yet.

Some 240 Israeli and Jewish academics and intellectuals have sent a letter to the Germany government urging it not to enact in to law a bill that would define the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as “anti-Semitic”.

If it is passed in to law, the currently non-binding motion, which was passed by the Bundestag – parliament – in May, would be the first official law in Europe to classify BDS activity as anti-Semitic.

Despite winning huge support among vast sections of the major parties, including the Social Democrats, the Free Democratic Party, and Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, the law has also drawn a significant amount of criticism and condemnation.

When Swan asked him if he understands why Palestinians do not trust him, and might not want to talk to him, he simply replied that he doesn’t need their trust: “Look, I am not here to be trusted.” Swan reminded him that he is a businessman, and he should try to see things from the Palestinian point of view, as successful businessmen usually do. The journalist then mentioned reasons why Palestinian would not trust the American team: “You’ve got three orthodox Jews on the negotiating team. Two of you have at different points funded settlements; Jewish settlements in the West Bank. You’ve got the actions taken so far, moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. You’ve cut all aid to Palestinians, including hospitals in East Jerusalem. And you shut down the Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington. I mean, can you not see why they might not want to talk to you and they might not trust you?”

When Palestinians in villages around Ramallah should have been celebrating the end of Ramadan and the coming harvest, instead they were dousing flames

The Israeli army blamed Palestinians for setting fire to fields in the West Bank, but footage emerged showing Israeli settlers, including an off-duty soldier, ignited the flames

Activists fighting against efforts to Judaise the Old City of Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque compound have found themselves in the crosshairs of Israeli forces

In a highly provocative statement — one that was most likely well planned — United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said in an interview this week to the New York Times that “Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.”

Responses to this statement were quick to pop up, with the Israeli “Left” condemning and the Right expressing their agreement. Public Security and Strategic Affairs Minister Gil’ad Erdan said:

The Trump administration’s view, which was expressed by Ambassador Friedman, is the only one that might bring about change and make the Palestinians understand that boycotting Israel and the United States and supporting terror and incitement won’t achieve anything.”

In a TV interview on June 2, on the news docuseries "Axios" on the HBO channel, Jared Kushner opened up regarding many issues, in which his "Deal of the Century" was a prime focus.

The major revelation made by Kushner, President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, was least surprising. Kushner believes that Palestinians are not capable of governing themselves.

Not surprising, because Kushner thinks he is capable of arranging the future of the Palestinian people without the inclusion of the Palestinian leadership. He has been pushing his so-called "Deal of the Century" relentlessly, while including in his various meets and conferences countries such as Poland, Brazil and Croatia, but not Palestine.

Indeed, this is what transpired at the Warsaw conference on "peace and security" in the Middle East. The same charade, also led by Kushner, is expected to be rebooted in Bahrain on June 25.

Israeli troops exchanged fire with Palestinian security forces in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday in a rare shootout which the army said was down to a case of mistaken identity.

The Palestinian governor of Nablus, Ibrahim Ramadan, said that two members of the Palestinian security forces were lightly wounded in the incident in the early hours of the morning adjacent to their headquarters.

He told reporters the Israelis said they came under fire first and then responded by shooting at the headquarters building, but questioned why they were there in the first place.

"Where is the headquarters? It is in central Nablus," he said outside the facility, where a number of windows were shattered.

Last week members of Quebec Movement for Peace disrupted a speech by Irwin Cotler on “Canada as a Human Rights leader” (at the last-minute ‘deputy’ foreign minister, Rob Oliphant, canceled his participation).

With “Free Palestine” signs in hand, filmmaker Malcolm Guy and I took the stage to denounce Cotler’s anti-Palestinian positions and support for intervention in Venezuela and Iran.

After we were ushered off the stage lawyer Dimitri Lascaris rose to interrogate the supposed human rights activist for refusing to criticize injustices inflicted upon Palestinians. Part of the way through Lascaris’ grilling a handful of us at the back of the room began chanting “Cotler, Cotler, you will see Palestine will be free”, as one can hear in this video viewed over 10,000 times.

In an article on Telesur as far back as December 2017 reporters cited Glenn Greenwald’s observation that an increase in Israeli military repression of Palestinian citizens was joined by what Greenwald called a “censorship rampage” designed to delete as many Palestinian accounts as possible.

In a more recent article titled “Censored and Surveilled,” the authors asked if social media is a “safe space” for Palestinians, given the likelihood that you might get arrested and charged with “incitement” for writing something that the Israeli government does not like.

What makes the case of Dr. Rima Najjar’s banning from Quora different? It’s different because she is fighting back not just for her right to free speech, but for the voices of all Palestinians silenced by what Telesur calls “social media imperialism.”

Israel’s 10-meter high separation barrier and the country’s decades of indoctrination have blocked its view and allowed Israelis to simply stop seeing real live Palestinians?—?decidedly alive, even if not well, and determined to live normal lives.

“Extreme injustice”
To give some perspective to the ordeal endured by Ashqar, in 2007, Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted of lying to a federal grand jury about the disclosure of the identity of a CIA agent.

Libby was sentenced to two and a half years, but didn’t spend a day in prison because President George W. Bush commuted his sentence.

Last year, President Donald Trump pardoned Libby altogether.

Ashqar, who wasn’t accused of perjury but of simply refusing to testify, spent more than a decade in prison.

Michael Deutsch, Muhammad Salah’s lawyer during the trial of Ashqar and Salah, wrote for The Electronic Intifada in 2008 about the “extreme injustice perpetrated on Abdelhaleem Ashqar by the US government and the federal court in Chicago culminating in a draconian sentence of 135 months for nonviolent acts of civil disobedience.”

Hundreds of Jewish settlers on Sunday forced their way into East Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, according to Jerusalem’s Religious Endowments Authority.

“Israeli police shut the compound’s Al-Mugharbah Gate after allowing 334 settlers through it into the site,” the Jordan-run authority tasked with overseeing the city’s Muslim and Christian holy sites, said in a statement.

Last week, a settler tour inside the flashpoint site during the final day of the fasting month of Ramadan triggered clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian worshippers.

The US ambassador to Israel did not rule out an Israeli move to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, land that the Palestinians seek for a state, in an interview with the New York Times published on Saturday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the run-up to an April election that he plans to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a move bound to trigger widespread international condemnation and complicate peace efforts.

A Reuters report of the interview said that US Ambassador David Friedman had declined to say how Washington would respond to annexation, but remarked:

We really don’t have a view until we understand how much, on what terms, why does it make sense, why is it good for Israel, why is it good for the region, why does it not create more problems than it solves.

These are all things that we’d want to understand, and I don’t want to prejudge…

A video has been released showing a group of masked Israeli settlers attacking a Palestinian home in the West Bank village of Kufr Yasuf, prompting Israel Police and Israeli army to launch an investigation.

The video – which was released by Israeli human rights NGO Yesh Din – shows a group of 15 illegal Israeli settlers approaching a Palestinian home in Kufr Yasuf, off Route 60 in the occupied West Bank. All are wearing balaclavas and hooded jackets, disguising their faces from the CCTV camera which captured the event yesterday.

According to an investigation by Yesh Din: “the settlers entered the village from the direction of Tapuah outpost [Za’tara]. They threw rocks and cement blocks at the family’s home while they were inside, breaking its windows, as well as the family car’s windshield, which they tried to set on fire.”

The British government on Thursday accused both Israel and the Palestinians of ongoing human rights abuses, in its annual report on the state of democracy and human rights across the globe.

Meanwhile, Israel's military intel chief said Hamas 'has no interest in going to war at this time'

The Gaza Strip's militant factions on Wednesday warned that Israel's "foot-dragging" in following through with certain ceasefire arrangement could lead to an escalation beginning with border protests later this week.

"We insist on holding our Eid in the locations of Jihad, the bond to the land and the marches of return, to communicate to the people of the world that the people of Palestine, and the people of Gaza, will not break and their determination will not break," Senior Hamas official in Gaza Khalil Al-Hayya said Wednesday, on the first day of the three-day Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.

A top member of the committee organizing the weekly "Great March of Return" protests on Gaza's border with Israel told Haaretz daily that Palestinians are demanding more aid be transferred from Qatar, further loosening of import restrictions, and continuation of humanitarian initiatives.

In classical racist literature and discourse, black/brown natives are portrayed as lazy groups who cannot run their own affairs; they belong to backward entities that clash with other modern entities. The best intentions of these nations amount in the end to nothing, and whatever they have is brought about by the powers of illusion and Western intervention. The racist ideology of colonialism justifies the occupation of other lands, and then defends the so-called human face of Western colonialism, in general, and Israeli settler colonialism, in particular.

The Trump administration’s often delayed and much hyped “deal of the century” to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace may never see the light of day thanks to the chaos into which Israeli politics has been plunged following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inability to form a governing coalition and the subsequent decision by the Knesset to dissolve itself and hold new elections in the fall.

No serious analyst gave the plan a snowball’s chance even in the absence of concrete details about its content. As presidential adviser Jared Kushner made clear in remarks last month to the pro-Israel think tank Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the plan revolves around contenting Palestinians with economic betterment while denying them their political rights under perpetual Israeli domination.

Speaking at the commencement of the College of Arts & Sciences, graduation speaker Steven Thrasher’s bravely commended NYU students and departments who have stood up to the string of Israeli massacres and Israeli racism against Palestinians generally: “I am so proud, so proud of NYU’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace … and of the NYU student government and of my colleagues in the department of social and cultural analysis for supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against the apartheid state government in Israel.”

The Israeli occupational forces takes away balloons and toys from Palestinians marking the end of Ramadan and the arrival of Eid

Israeli occupation authorities today reduced the Gaza Strip’s fishing area from 15 nautical miles to ten.

Zakaria Bakr, coordinator of the Union of Fishermen’s Committees in Gaza, confirmed that the occupation informed the Palestinian association of its decision.

Occupation authorities expanded the fishing zone to 15 nautical miles, from ten, on Monday.

Israeli authorities have long imposed unilateral restrictions on Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Strip, which are routinely enforced with violent attacks by naval vessels.

The Gaza Strip has been under an intense blockade since 2006-07, and under Israeli military occupation since 1967.

Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi has condemned Israeli plans to build new settlement units in occupied Jerusalem. In a series of tweets published on Tuesday, Safadi denounced the move as “a violation of international law” and called on the world to “act against Israeli illegal measures”.

On 17 May, a 5-year-old child died from cancer in a hospital in Gaza.

She died with her family around her. But she didn’t know that.

In fact, she had spent most of the past month alone in hospitals in Jerusalem, separated from her parents and other relatives by the Israeli permit system that controls the movement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Only when treatment failed and she was no longer conscious was she sent back to her family in Gaza.

Aisha Lulu of the Bureij Refugee Camp in Gaza had been diagnosed with brain cancer in April. She had been having headaches and vomiting attacks since March and doctors found a brain tumor on 7 April.

With no specialist doctors in Gaza and in view of her age, Aisha was granted a permit by the Israeli military authorities to allow her to attend al-Makassed, a Palestinian hospital in East Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.

The Israeli government is working to “prevent the Senate from passing a bipartisan resolution endorsing a two-state solution”, according to a report in Axios.

Drafted by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, the resolution is expected to be tabled soon. “As a bipartisan measure backed by a close Trump ally like Graham,” Axios noted, it “would be expected to win a substantial majority.”

Citing unnamed Israeli officials and congressional staffers, the report claimed that Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, and other Israeli embassy officials “have been lobbying Graham and Van Hollen to remove the words ‘two-state solution’ from the text”.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday laid a wreath at the tomb of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the occasion of Eid Al-Fitr.

The Wafa news agency reported Abbas saying: “We ask God that Eid would return to us when we liberate our country, establish our independent Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital, and overcome all conspiracies against our cause, including the deal of the century and others. All of the conspiracies will go to hell, and our people will remain steadfast on their land in the face of all these.”

Last month the US announced that it would be rolling out the first stage of it’s Middle East peace plan dubbed the ‘deal of the century’ in an economic forum in Bahrain. The “Peace to Prosperity” conference aims to encourage “investment in the Palestinian territories” ahead of the revelation of further details of the peace plan.

The data provided by WHO make for harrowing reading. But the report sanitizes the fact that this body-breaking and traumatizing violence is by Israeli policy and design.

Any effective treatment must correctly diagnose the cause and not just the symptoms.

In the year following the launch of the Great March of Return, more than 28,000 Palestinians in Gaza were injured and 277 killed, including 52 children, most of them slain during unarmed, mass protests along Gaza’s eastern and northern perimeter.

Despite the civilian nature of the protests, as was affirmed by a panel of UN investigators, WHO says the deaths and injuries happened “as a result of clashes with Israeli security forces.”

That is a gross mischaracterization of Israel’s use of force against peaceful and unarmed protesters, officially sanctioned by shoot-to-kill or maim orders against civilians who pose no plausible threat, even when they are children.

Former Canadian justice minister Irwin Cotler was on stage as one of several “inspiring thought leaders” talking about “pressing human rights issues” at Montreal’s Concordia University on Monday.

But one issue the chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights was in no hurry to talk about is Israel’s massive and systematic violations of Palestinian rights.

Cotler was the focus of a disruption that sought to raise the question of Palestine in a place where members of Canada’s liberal elite preferred silence.

As the video above shows, lawyer and activist Dimitri Lascaris jumps up on the stage and challenges Cotler directly, pointing out how Israeli snipers have deliberately killed journalists, medics and unarmed protesters during Great March of Return protests in Gaza over the last year.

Ramzy Baroud, author of ‘The Last Earth’ and editor of the Palestine Chronicle, wrote a commentary posing the question “if access to clean water is a human right, why is Palestine the exception?”

Baroud cites the 2010 UN General Assembly resolution, 64/292 recognizing “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.”

Baroud proclaims that “it all makes perfect sense. There can be no life without water. However, like every other human right, it seems, the Palestinians are denied this one too.”

He recognizes the water crisis affecting the whole world, but says the “situation is more complicated in Palestine, where the water crisis is directly related to the political context of Israel’s occupation: apartheid, illegal Jewish settlements, siege and war.”

A report prepared by Israeli experts has warned that “the collapsing water, sewage and electricity infrastructure in the Gaza Strip pose material danger to Israel’s groundwater, seawater, beaches and desalination plants”, reported Haaretz.

The study was prepared by scholars from Ben-Gurion University and Tel Aviv University for the environmental organisation EcoPeace Middle East, and was presented Monday at the annual Conference of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians and Schools of Public Health.

One upshot of the reduced electricity supply to the blockaded territory “is that sewage plants aren’t operational and thus 70 percent of Gaza’s untreated sewage goes straight into the sea”.

A new online interactive map has been published to mark 52 years of Israeli military occupation, designed to illustrate “Israel’s encroachment upon Palestinian space over the decades”.

‘Conquer and Divide’ was launched Wednesday by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, in the week that marks the beginning of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.

In the latest round of Israeli aggression on Gaza in early May, the Palestinian resistance factions, specifically Hamas, relied more on its media and propaganda system. They took video footage of their armed operations and produced short films, using inflammatory language directed at the Palestinians to make them more supportive of the group and directed at the Israelis in Hebrew for intimidation and deterrence.

Trump’s gifts to the Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu of the Syrian Golan occupied by Israel and of the whole of Israeli-occupied Jerusalem gave an enormous boost of adrenaline to all non-state actors and resistance movements in the Middle East. These groups, who enjoy financial and military support from Iran, are united not only against US hegemony but have also effectively linked themselves and their struggle to form a united front against the US and Israel. This new unity is evident from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon to Palestine.