Bi-Weekly Brief for January 3, 2022
A one page digest of Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinian land and livelihoods, and Palestinian resistance.
2021 called a ‘year of struggle and victories for the Palestinian cause’
During a year which saw more than 450 settler attacks on Palestinians, the killing of over 300 unarmed civilians, a steep increase in home demolitions and land confiscation, the criminalizing of leading Palestinian civil society organizations and a military onslaught involving 1,500 airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, this Mondoweiss summary has still found plenty to be hopeful about. Be sure to have a look!
Killing of settler leads to explosion of violence as 2021 winds down
On Dec. 14, Prime Minister Bennett called settler violence ‘insignificant’ and criticized Public Security Minister Omer Bar-Lev for talking about the issue with a US official, saying settlers “serve as a protective wall for all of us and we must protect them in word and deed.” That set the stage for a convulsion of violence throughout the rest of 2021. On Dec. 16, Yehuda Dimentman, a 25-year-old settler from a yeshiva erected at the evacuated outpost of Homesh near Nablus, was ambushed in his car and shot to death. Homesh, which stands on privately-owned lands taken from the village of Burqa, had been evacuated in 2005 as part of the disengagement plan that included Israel’s withdrawal from settlements in the Gaza Strip. Settlers had long defied a High Court ruling banning them from the area and used the yeshiva as a base for frequent attacks on farmers trying to access their fields. On Dec. 19, hundreds of settlers responded to Dimentman’s killing by fighting with soldiers who tried to prevent them from erecting new buildings on the Homesh site. On Dec. 23, the army used rubber bullets against some of the 10,000 pro-settlement marchers protesting plans to raze the yeshiva’s buildings - some were torn down by Border Police but others left standing. Many of the marchers then entered Burqa, and attacked residents, and dozens of Palestinians were subsequently injured in clashes with the army. Homesh was the site of more violence on Christmas Day, when the army shot 9 Palestinians with live bullets, seriously wounding one. The year ended with scores of Palestinians wounded in anti-settlement protests around the West Bank.
Air strikes, artillery pummel Gaza Strip; more violence is anticipated if hunger striker dies
Early on Jan. 2, the Israeli military hit the Gaza Strip with at least 10 missile strikes and artillery shells (see video), reportedly after 2 rockets fired from Gaza towards Tel Aviv on Jan. 1 fell into the sea. It is unclear whether those rockets were a response to near daily attacks from Israel (on Dec. 28 and 31, Israeli soldiers fired live rounds at farmers and shepherds and fishermen continue to be routinely attacked) or a message about the ‘extremely critical condition’ of Hisham Abu Hawwash, who has been on a hunger strike for 140 days to protest his second term of administrative detention. A father of 5, Abu Hawwash is reportedly a member of Islamic Jihad. Israel issued 1595 administrative detention orders in 2021 under which Palestinians are imprisoned indefinitely without charges or trials.
Water Fact
On Dec. 21, the Bedouin community of Al Araqeeb was destroyed by Israel for the 196th time since 2000. After each raid by Israel’s demolition squads, Al Araqeeb residents, who hold Israeli citizenship and pay taxes, have returned to re-erect tents on their ancestral lands. Located in the Naqab (Negev) desert, Al Araqeeb is one of about 50 ‘unrecognized villages’ in the Naqab and Galilee which have been denied water, electricity and other basic services by Israel. Despite the fact that their presence pre-dates the founding of the state, residents of these communities are regarded by Israel as ‘trespassers’ who stand in the way of development. In the effort to drive Al Araqeeb’s residents permanently off their land, the New York-based Jewish National Front (JNF) planted the area with water-greedy eucalyptus trees just over a decade ago. An irrigated forest now looms in the desert where Al Araqeeb’s shepherds used to graze their flocks.
Compiled by The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine
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