At a time when the Corona virus crisis has crowded out other news, the Alliance is producing news briefs every two weeks to keep our members informed about the situation in occupied Palestine.
Brief for May 16, 2020
As of May 15, Israel had 16,539 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 262 deaths. There were 528 cases and 4 deaths in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and 20 confirmed cases in the Gaza Strip.
May 15 is commemorated in Palestine as Nakba Day to mark the expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes inside what is now Israel. In this, the 72nd year of the Nakba, most rallies were cancelled because of the pandemic. The annexation of a large part of the West Bank proposed by Netanyahu will accelerate the dispossession of Palestinians and turn Israel into a de jure Apartheid state.
On May 1 the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Fatou Bensouda upheld “Palestine’s viability as a state” and declared that the ICC has jurisdiction to carry out a war crimes investigation. If her ruling is endorsed by a pre-trial panel of judges, an investigation into Israel’s settlement activity and Apartheid reality could take place, despite the opposition of Israel and the US.
The Covid-19 shut down has not stopped Israel’s nighttime raids. On May 12, an Israeli soldier died after being hit with a rock during a raid on Ya’abed near Jenin. On May 13, a soldier shot and killed 14-year-old Zaid Qaysia, who was watching the army invasion of the Al-Fawwar refugee camp from the roof of his house. According to Al Jazeera, soldiers raided the camp searching for another teenager who had allegedly insulted the Israeli army on Facebook. Jewish settlers have continued to destroy Palestinian olive trees and crops, and on Nakba Day attacked Palestinian cars near Nablus.
In the Gaza Strip, it was Occupation business as usual as Israel bombarded several sites on May 6 and on May 8 opened fire on fishing boats, injuring an elderly fisherman.
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