Bi-Weekly Brief for Dec.13, 2021
A one page digest of Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinian land and livelihoods, and Palestinian resistance.
Dehumanization of Gazans intensifies as Israel encloses the open air prison with ‘a terrifying barrier’
On Nov. 29, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights issued a damning report, The Gaza Bantustan – Israeli Apartheid in the Gaza Strip. Eight days later Defense Minister Benny Gantz inaugurated Israel’s latest menacing achievement: a 40-mile-long wall looming 18 to 20 feet high that encircles the Gaza Strip with 140,000 tons of iron and steel bristling with sensors, radar and cameras. It extends out to sea and deep underground and cost $1.1 billion to construct. Beneath it are command and control centers. Gantz celebrated the ‘iron wall’ as “a technological and creative project of supreme importance.” In Gideon Levy’s words, “This is what the fence of a ghetto looks like, of a prison, of a concentration camp. Only in Israel do they celebrate the building of a concentration camp. Only the skies of the ghetto are somehow still open, and that is in a limited fashion too. Coming soon, the next devilish invention of the defense establishment, a huge ceiling over the skies of Gaza.”
Bennett seeks to appease Blinken but there is no sign that Israel’s expansionist agenda is changed
On Dec. 2, after Israel appeared to have gone back on its Nov. 25th promise to shelve plans to build 9,000 settlement units in the Atarot airport site which would cut off Ramallah from East Jerusalem, US Secretary of State Blinken initiated an ‘intense’ phone call with Prime Minister Bennett. On Dec. 6, Israel agreed to put the units on hold for a year pending the results of an environmental study. There has meanwhile been no end to plans for settlement units in Sheikh Jarrah and in and around East Jerusalem, land confiscation, and the demolition of homes, commercial facilities and water wells, with demolition orders hitting a 5-year record. Settler violence, attacks on Palestinian cars, the destruction of hundreds of olive trees, attacks on Gaza’s farmers and fishermen and mass arrests are a near daily occurrence. On Dec. 10, Jamil Abu Ayyash from Beita became the 9th Palestinian killed since May during the weekly march against the Evyatar outpost near Nablus. Injuries in the protests now top 700. On Dec. 8, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called the situation in the Palestinian territories “disastrous, with severe infringements on the rights of over 4 million people.”
Prolonged hunger strikes can win release of administrative detainees but take heavy physical toll
On Dec. 5, Israel released from prison one of 6 current long-term hunger strikers: 32-year-old Kayed Fasfous, who had gone for 131 days without food to protest his indefinite administrative detention without charges or trial. Another hunger striker is Hisham Abu Hawash, aged 40, who launched his hunger strike on August 17 after receiving a second administrative detention order. There are around 500 administrative detainees in Israel’s jails, who are never told why they are there and how long they will be imprisoned. Many who have engaged in hunger strikes suffer severe life-long physical problems.
Water Fact
Over the years, soldiers and settlers from 21 Israeli agricultural settlements in the Northern Jordan Valley have been steadily confiscating water sources and subjecting Palestinians to violent attacks. On Nov. 28, soldiers destroyed an irrigation water line in the Northern Jordan Valley east of Tubas and on Dec. 1, a large contingent of vehicles and 4 mounted crane trucks moved into the area and confiscated private vehicles, tractors, trucks and 4 water tanks, with the aim of displacing farmers. On Dec. 10, on the pretext of undertaking ‘restoration works,’ Israeli settlers accompanied by construction equipment took over a water spring and structures belonging to a Khirbet Al-Farisiya resident. The spring is a vital water source for dozens of Palestinian farmers and shepherds in the area. In October, Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin vowed to double the number of settler homes in the Jordan Valley and Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council, traveled to Washington to drum up opposition in Congress to any attempt by the Biden administration to impose a settlement freeze.
Compiled by The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
Banner design by Paul Normandia of Red Sun Press