[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Palestine and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Palestine Page co-editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each roundup to Palestine@jadaliyya.com.]
The Occupation Forces
“Israel” Murders 36 Palestinians In Last May Only According to the Quds Center for Studies on Palestinian and Israeli Affairs, Israeli occupation forces killed thirty-six Palestinians in May, making that 448 since Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December of 2017.
Israeli Police Assault Worshippers After Raiding Al-Aqsa Some four hundred Israeli settlers led by Ehuda Glick, a hard-line rabbi and MK, entered the flashpoint compound, one of Islam’s holiest places, on Sunday early morning before the police officers scuffled with worshippers who chanted “Allahu akbar” (Allah is the Greatest) to express their anger at the entry of settlers.
Palestinian Hit by Israeli Bullet Following Military Drills Near Jenin A bullet fired by Israeli forces struck and injured a Palestinian Tuesday evening, following military drills in Rummana village, west of Jenin. Local sources confirmed that an Israeli military bullet hit Rushdi Zuheir al-Ahmad, fifty-seven, as Israeli forces were conducting drills in the nearby military camp of Salem.
Palestinian Injured by Shrapnel From Israeli Forces’ Fire in Hebron A Palestinian Tuesday evening sustained an injury after being struck with bullet fragments fired by Israeli forces in al-Arroub refugee camp, north of Hebron. Israeli forces raided the refugee camp and opened fire towards Palestinian youngsters protesting the raid. The man, who remained unidentified, was rushed to al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron, where medics described his injuries as light.
Two Palestinians Killed by Israeli Forces in Separate Incidents A Palestinian teenager was shot dead by Israeli forces as he tried to enter occupied East Jerusalem to offer Friday prayers in the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Local media identified him as sixteen-year-old Abdullah Loay Ghaith from the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. In a separate incident, Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian man after an alleged stabbing attack on two Israelis in the old city of East Jerusalem. The identity of this person has not been revealed–Israeli police have only stated that he is nineteen.
Domestic Policy
Palestine Declares June 5 First Day of Eid al-Fitr Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Sheikh Muhammad Hussein declared that Tuesday is complementary to Ramadan and Wednesday, 5 June, will mark the beginning of Eid al-Fitr. “The Palestinian Fatwa Council, which convened on Monday night at al-Aqsa Mosque compound, could not spot the Shawwal crescent moon. Therefore, it has been proven that Tuesday is complementary to the fasting month of Ramadan and Wednesday, 5 June, will be the first day of Eid al-Fitr festival.” This meant Palestinians celebrated Eid al-Fitr one day after Saudi Arabia declared Ramadan to end.
Palestinian Patient Referrals to Israeli Hospitals Dropped Dramatically, Says WHO Out of 2,489 Palestinian Ministry of Health referrals in April for Gaza patients and 5,577 referrals for West Bank patients to non-MoH facilities, there were only four referrals for Gaza patients and seventy-one referrals for West Bank patients. For comparison, in 2017 there was an average of 346 referrals for Gaza patients and 1,010 referrals for West Bank patients to Israeli hospitals each month.
Far-right Lawmaker Calls for Israel to Follow Biblical Law Knesset member Bezalel Smotrich (Union of the Right-wing Parties) said Monday that Israel should operate according to biblical laws. “The State of Israel, the country of the Jewish people, with God willing, will go back to operating as it did in the days of King David and King Solomon,” the far-right lawmaker said in an interview to Kan Bet radio.
Meet The Trump Administration’s Man In Palestine Ashraf al-Jabari is a little-known businessperson projecting a lot of power. He is also the only Palestinian, so far, set to attend a Jared Kushner-organized conference in Bahrain. He is not a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization nor of the Palestinian Authority. He is not a party to any long-standing Palestinian political or business institutions. All major Palestinian businesspeople, including those with a history of working with Israel, have rejected invitations to attend the Bahrain conference.
The Main Players in Israel’s Next Election, The Second This Year Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to cobble together a coalition government despite weeks of trying, and Israel will vote on 17 September in the second election within months. Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud Party are likely to fair well, but Netanyahu may face internal rivals due to a failure to form a coalition and threats of indictment. Benny Gantz and the “centrist” Blue and White Party did as well as Likud in the last election and seeks to challenge them again.
Foreign Policy
Turkey Says No Peace Deal Without a Free Palestinian State Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu said yesterday that any peace deal which does not envisage the creation of an independent Palestinian state is bound to be rejected. Cavusoglu said it is "more important than ever" to unite forces and efforts of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation member countries for the establishment of an independent, sovereign and contiguous Palestine.
'No real check on Israeli power' Leaves Palestinians Stateless The yet-to-be-revealed US Middle East peace plan, dubbed the "deal of the century" by President Donald Trump, is expected to do little to assist the Palestinians. Israel's dominance has not been offset by any meaningful legal, grassroots or media strategy strong enough to overcome this military dominance, Sam Husseini, director of the Washington, DC-based Institute of Public Accuracy, told Al Jazeera.
Kushner in Israel as US Peace Plan Faces New Political Hurdle US President Donald Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on the final leg of a regional tour to boost support for a US-led economic conference in Bahrain, where the first part of the long-anticipated Israel-Palestine peace plan is due to be unveiled.
Mecca Summit Supports Palestinians, Backs Saudis in Iran Standoff In a joint statement on Saturday, at the end of a summit of the fifty-seven-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the leaders called on countries that have moved their embassies to Jerusalem to rethink their strategy which they said constituted "a serious violation of international law and international legitimacy."
Kushner Believes Palestinians Can’t Govern Themselves, Are More Concerned With Mortgages than Statehood Kushner made the controversial statements during a sit-down interview with Axios reporter Jonathan Swan. Swan posed the question of whether Kushner believed that Palestinians were “capable of governing themselves without Israeli interference,” to which Kushner responded with, essentially, “not yet.”
Settlers and Illegal Settlements
IOF Encourages Settlement Regional Councils to Seize More Land in Area C According to the National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements, the building is divided between “Pisgat Ze’ev” settlement with 460 housing units and “Ramot” settlement with 345 settlement units.
EU Strongly Opposed to Israel’s Settlement Policy The European Union spokesperson responded to Israel’s tenders for over eight hundred new settlement units in Ramot and Pisgat Zeev in Occupied East Jerusalem by saying that “the policy of settlement construction and expansion in East Jerusalem continues to undermine the possibility of a viable two-state solution with Jerusalem as the future capital of both states, which is the only realistic way to achieve a just and lasting peace.”
Settlers Torch Palestinian Farmlands South of Nablus Israeli settlers set fire to dozens of dunums of Palestinian farmland in Jalud village, south of Nablus. Ghassan Daghlas, an official who monitors settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told WAFA that a number of Israeli settlers set fire to the villagers’ farmlands, destroying their olive orchards.
Israel Settlers Attack McDonald’s For ‘unofficial boycott’ Israeli settler leaders are campaigning to prevent McDonald’s from opening a branch in Ben-Gurion Airport, claiming that the global restaurant chain unofficially boycotts West Bank settlements. In a letter to the finance and transportation ministers, Yossi Dagan, head of the so-called Samaria Regional Council, claimed that McDonald’s Israel has continuously refused to open any branches in settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Movement
Bernie Sanders Links Hitler’s Murder of His Family to His Fight Against Occupation of Palestinians Mondoweiss has closely followed the statements of Democratic presidential hopefuls to the American Jewish Committee. Almost every candidate so far has been careful to skirt the Israel question, hinting at some mild criticism of Israel but not actually voicing it. However, Bernie Sanders weighed in yesterday with a forceful message that connects the murder of his own family by the Nazis to his fight against the crushing, humiliating military occupation by Israel of Palestine. Sanders calls himself as someone who “supports the security, freedom, and self-determination of both peoples.”
Law
Israel Cop Charged With Breaking Leg of Palestinian Activist An Israeli police officer was charged on 3 June with fracturing the leg in May 2018 of prominent Palestinian activist Jafar Farah during a demonstration in Haifa, reported Haaretz. According to paper, in addition to being charged with “causing serious bodily harm” in breaking Farah’s leg, the police officer Lior Hatam, “is accused of assaulting seven other men who had been brought to the Haifa police station that day.”
Palestinian Photojournalist At Risk of Israeli Deportation For the past five months, Mustafa al-Kharouf has been languishing inside Israel's Givon prison, away from his wife Tamam and their one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Asia, but now he faces deportation to Jordan. Despite repeated attempts in the past decade, he has been denied permanent residency status, which he is entitled to, thus rendering him stateless.
The Pressing Question at a Palestinian Health Gathering: How to Illegally Collect Sperm From Prisoners Palestinians in the occupied territories face a challenging and chaotic health care system with care provided by the Ministry of Health, UNRWA, the private sector, and numerous NGOs. In Aida Camp at the Lajee Center, with funding from 1for3.org, Health for Palestine is trying to address some of these issues with an innovative program that trains community health workers, or CHWs, who identify and support high-risk patients.
Palestinian Academic Sues Quora, Saying She Was Banned From the Website for Criticizing Zionism Dr. Rima Najjar, a retired professor and active participant on many social media platforms, had her attorney, Rima Kapitan, serve the management of Quora with a letter seeking a settlement with the internet platform, which had banned her permanently earlier that month. Quora.com is a website where users can post general questions on a range of topics and other users offer answers to those questions
New Evidence Backs Arab MK's Claims that Police Shot Him New evidence suggests Israeli police shot Palestinian Member of Knesset Ayman Odeh in the head with a sponge-tipped bullet during a home demolition in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in 2017, according to a final investigation report published earlier this week by the London-based Forensic Architecture research center.
3 Palestinian Prisoners Continue Hunger Strikes Against Detention Thirty-five-year-old Hassan Mohammed al-Aweiwi from occupied Hebron has been on hunger strike for sixty-four days. Over this two-month period, he has lost twenty-two kilograms in weight and is no longer able to stand as a result of exhaustion. He has been taken to the Kaplan Medical Centre for treatment.
Israel Supreme Court Postpones Deportation of HRW Director In the latest chapter in Omar Shakir’s ordeal–which has seen him subjected to protracted legal proceedings after Israel’s Interior Ministry ordered his deportation–the Supreme Court yesterday ruled that Shakir will be allowed to stay while he continues to fight against the expulsion order.
Environment, Economy, and Other
The EU contributes €15 million to the PA payment of May salaries and pensions The European Union has made today a contribution of fifteen million euro to the payment of May salaries and pensions of nearly 56,000 Palestinian civil servants and pensioners in the West Bank. “A functioning Palestinian Authority that delivers health, education, and security to millions of Palestinians is in the interest of all sides, “said the Deputy European Union Representative Tomas Niklasson.
Israeli Report Warns of ‘environmental implications’ of Gaza Crisis The study was prepared by scholars from Ben-Gurion University and Tel Aviv University for the environmental organization EcoPeace Middle East, and was presented Monday at the annual Conference of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians and Schools of Public Health. The report warned that “the collapsing water, sewage, and electricity infrastructure in the Gaza Strip pose a material danger to Israel’s groundwater, seawater, beaches, and desalination plants.”
Gigi Hadid’s Brother Releases Music Video Filmed in Palestine Nineteen-year-old Anwar Hadid uploaded Progression 101 to Instagram as part of his debut album Bleach. The video takes viewers through the streets of West Bank towns and highlights some of the injustices which Palestinians live through. The song’s lyrics include: “Just to be erased from it all, by a bullet or iron bars … disgusting.” Anwar is the son of Palestinian Mohammad Hadid who was born in Nazareth.