Day: 15 January 2022

With nearly two governments for each half of 2021, Israeli occupation authorities doubled down on policies to repress Palestinians and privilege Israeli settlers during the last year, said Human Rights Watch in a new report.

“The government’s policy of maintaining the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), coupled with the particularly severe repression against Palestinians living in the OPT, amounts to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution,” the report reads.

Human Rights Watch said it documented serious violations of the laws of war and apparent war crimes during the May 2021 Israeli aggression on Gaza, including Israeli strikes that killed scores of civilians and destroyed four high-rise Gaza towers full of homes and businesses, with no evident military targets in the vicinity.

“These attacks took place amid Israel’s sweeping restrictions on the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza. With rare exceptions, Israel’s closure policy, which is not based on an individualized assessment of security risk…, rob the more than two million Palestinians of Gaza of their right to freedom of movement, severely limit their access to electricity, health care, and water, and have devastated the economy,” the report adds.

The report continues, “In June, a broad range of political parties formed a new Israeli coalition government, with Naftali Bennett as prime minister. This government continued to facilitate the transfer of Israeli citizens into settlements in the occupied West Bank, a war crime. In October, it advanced plans and issued tenders for more than 4,000 new settlement units.”

The report further says that “during the first eight months of 2021, Israeli authorities demolished 666 Palestinian homes and other structures in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, displacing 958 people, a 38 percent increase compared to the same period in 2020, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).”

Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency

The international Christian relief and development organization, World Vision, said that after carrying out its own investigation into Israeli allegations that its imprisoned Gaza office director, Mohammad El Halabi, is involved in so-called terrorist activities, it found out that these allegations are unfounded and that Halabi is innocent of all charges.

It said in a statement that when Halabi was publicly charged in August 2016 by Israel, “we suspended our work in Gaza because the alleged actions completely go against our values and mission.”

Following these allegations, World Vision decided to itself examine any evidence of such charges and commissioned an independent external forensic investigation, in cooperation with its donor governments.

“We have been closely following Mohammad’s lengthy trial. Many of our staff have participated as witnesses, and our staff, often alongside representatives from other organizations, have been present as observers in every public trial session. After five years of trial proceedings, which have now concluded as we await a verdict, we have not seen anything that makes us question our conclusion that Mohammad is innocent of all the charges. Moreover, Mohammad so steadfastly asserts his innocence that he has consistently refused any plea agreement, even when the sentences offered reportedly would have had him free by now,” said the international organization.

“This process has had a dramatic and negative effect on children and their families in Gaza, including Mohammad’s own family. We expect and pray that it will be resolved soon and fairly with an acquittal.”

Halabi, the manager of operations for World Vision in Gaza, was arrested on 15 June 2016, during one of his travels between Gaza and Jerusalem, and was later charged with providing financial support to Hamas. He has been on trial since then.

Israel has been targeting Palestinian civil society organizations and their staff, including Halabi, in order to discredit and defund them to stop their development and human rights work with the Palestinians. It recently designated six prominent Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations operating from Ramallah as “terrorist organizations”, threatening to arrest anyone working for them.

Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency

The low pressure and polar front that affected Palestine yesterday is expected to continue today causing the temperature to plummet to 5°C below the seasonal average and paving the way to cloudy and very cold conditions, particularly in the mountains, according to the Palestinian Meteorological Department (PMD).

Scattered rain is expected from the north to the center, along with thunderstorms and occasional hail. Gusty westerly to northwesterly winds are expected and sea waves are high.

Temperature in the capital, Jerusalem, and Bethlehem is expected to reach a high of 8°C and a low of 5°C and in Ramallah and Hebron a high of 7°C and a low of 4°C. In Jericho, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan Valley temperature is expected to reach a high of 16°C and a low of 10°C, while it is expected to reach a high of 13°C and a low of 10°C in Gaza and the coastal areas.

The cold conditions are expected to continue tomorrow, Sunday, with scattered rain with occasional thunderstorms and hail as the temperature remains 5°C below the seasonal average and very high winds expected to reach 70 kilometers per hour.

Monday’s temperature is set to further drop to 6°C below the seasonal average. A chance of frost is expected in most areas in the early morning hours and in the evening and night hours.

Temperature is expected to rise on Tuesday but remains 4°C below the seasonal average, said the PMD, which warned people against flash floods in low areas and valleys, gusty wind, slippery roads, low horizontal visibility during the low pressure and frost formation on Monday morning.

Source: Palestinian News & Information Agency