[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 Cuts Down Gaza Fuel Supply Over Alleged Rocket Attacks From Enclave The Israeli military claimed on Sunday night that three rockets had been fired from Gaza toward the occupied territories and two had allegedly been intercepted. Israeli Occupation Forces has reduced by half the amount of fuel supplies to the besieged Gaza Strip over these alleged rocket attacks.
Video: Israeli Warplanes Strike Gaza Overnight Israeli Occupation warplanes overnight on Thursday fired strikes towards sites in the Gaza Strip, destroying properties. Local sources said there were two attacks: one on the eastern coast of Gaza city, and the other near Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip. The attacks allegedly came as a response to two missiles fired from Gaza into the enclave settlements, which caused no damage.
Israeli Warplanes Target Palestinian Site Deep Inside Lebanon The Lebanese National News Agency reported that Israeli warplanes carried out an airstrike on a site belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command in the town of Qusaya in the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon. An official from the PFLP-GC site said that the Israeli airstrikes caused only material damage.
Israel Defense Ministry Hired Controversial Spy Firm Black Cube According to a report by Haaretz, Israel’s Defense Ministry held “a short-term contract with Black Cube from 2012-2014” and worked on an army intelligence base. It is not clear whether the controversial company assisted the Israeli state in its spy operations or whether the company was hired to support the Israeli army’s intelligence division.
Domestic Policy
Government to Pay Its Employees 60% of August Salary Plus What was Left of February Salary Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said today that his government is going to pay its 160,000 employees sixty per cent of their August salary plus the fifty per cent that remained unpaid from last February salary when the Palestinian Authority’s financial crisis started after Israel’s cut of millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority’s tax funds.
Gaza on State of Alert After Blasts Kill 3 Hamas Policemen The police officers died in "two explosions targeting police checkpoints" late on Tuesday, the interior ministry in the Hamas-controlled coastal territory said in a statement. Such attacks on Hamas, which has the most powerful armed apparatus in the enclave, are rare.
How Will the Joint List Fare in Israel's Snap Election? Following the split of the Joint List into the competing Hadash-Taal and United Arab List-Balad blocs in the last election, the Joint List has reformed for the upcoming September election after a dismal result in the initial election. "It was clear that our people punished us for splitting apart," Haneen Zoabi, stepped away from national politics this year after a decade in the Knesset with the Balad party, told Al Jazeera.
Israel Agrees to Withhold Less Palestinian Tax Money The Palestinian Authority says it has reached an agreement with Israel to restore some of the tax funds that Israel withheld in recent months. Under Thursday's agreement, the Palestinian Authority says Israel will stop collecting about sixty million dollars in monthly fuel taxes on behalf of the Palestinian Authority and instead permit the latter to collect the funds directly.
PA Rescinds Ban on LGBTQ Group After Protests The Palestinian Authority has rescinded a ban on a gay and transgender advocacy group that caused outrage among human rights organizations and fear among some of its members and after a huge backlash. But rights groups say the Palestinian Authority must go further then withdrawing a police statement that left members of the LGBTQ rights group al-Qaws fearful for their safety.
Foreign Policy
The EU Provides €20 Million For the Payment of Social Allowances to Vulnerable Families in Palestine The European Union supports the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Social Development Cash Transfer Program responsible for the provision of basic social protection to the most vulnerable families in the West Bank and Gaza. The social allowances are paid on a quarterly basis to some one hundred five thousand vulnerable families.
Cabinet Condemns US State Department Deletion of Palestine From Its website The Palestinian Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, condemned during its weekly meeting held in Ramallah the US state department deletion of the Palestinian territories from the list of countries on its website.
Harvard University Student From Palestine Denied US Entry Ismail Ajjawi, a seventeen-year-old refugee living in Lebanon who was awarded the Hope Fund undergraduate scholarship by US non-profit Amideast, was barred from entering the U.S. after he said he was interrogated for hours by immigration officials about his religion and his friends’ social media posts. "After the five hours ended, she called me into a room, and she started screaming at me. She said that she found people posting political points of view that oppose the US on my friend's list," he told the Harvard Crimson newspaper.
Lebanon President: Israel Drone Attack a Declaration of War Lebanon's president has said an Israeli drone attack on Beirut at the weekend was a "declaration of war" that justified a military response. Also, on Monday, Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri said his government wants to avoid an escalation with Israel, but the international community must reject Israel's "blatant violation" of Lebanese sovereignty.
US Officials Confirm Israel Air Raid in Iraq US officials have confirmed that Israel was responsible for the bombing of an alleged Iranian weapons depot in Iraq last month, The Associated Press news agency reports. The deputy head of the Iraqi Shia militias, known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces, stated that future attacks would receive retaliation.
Settlers and Illegal Settlements
One Killed, Two Wounded in Israeli Settlement Bomb Attack A blast from a homemade bomb has killed one person and wounded two others near the illegal settlement of Dolev in the occupied West Bank, Israeli media reported. A military helicopter evacuated the wounded, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The occupation forces stated it suspected Palestinians were behind the attack but did not provide evidence or further explication.
Netanyahu Approves 300 New Settlement Units Near Ramallah Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu has approved the construction of three hundred new settlement units in the illegal West Bank settlement of Dolev, located on al-Janiya village west of Ramallah, northern West Bank. The decision was allegedly made in response to Friday’s explosion near the village of Ein Arik, west of Ramallah, that killed one Israeli settler and injured two others.
Israeli Settler Runs Over 6-year-old Girl Southwest of Bethlehem Eyewitnesses said a settler ran over Jana Abu Loha, six, as she was passing near the entrance connecting between the villages of Jabaa and Surif, which necessitated her transfer to a hospital for medical treatment. Her condition at the time of writing is unknown.
Republican Delegation Tours Settlement Businesses in West Bank A Republican delegation sponsored by the US Israel Education Association toured settlement businesses in the occupied West Bank last week, according to a report by pro-settler media outlet JNS. The delegation visited Hebron and the Ariel settlement industrial park, among other locations, in a trip designed to undermine the case for a boycott on the basis that West Bank settlements produce economic benefits for occupied Palestinians, an argument refuted by mainstream economists.
Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Movement
California Ethnic Studies Curriculum Delayed After Attack on Its Comparison of Israel to South Africa A bill that would have required all California high school students to take an ethnic studies course will be delayed for at least a year after pro-Israel groups complained that the curriculum failed to address anti-Semitism and singled “Israel out for condemnation.”
Pro-BDS, Pittsburgh-based National Labor Union United Electrical Endorses Bernie Sanders For President Sanders announced on Monday that he was humbled after the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America voted to endorse him in the 2020 election. UE General President Peter Knowlton cited the socialist Vermont senator's decision to march with striking Pennsylvania workers as a factor in the endorsement.
Law
Israel Parties Banned From Filming At Polling Stations, In Blow to Likud The chair of Israel’s Central Election Committee has banned parties from sending representatives equipped with cameras to polling stations in next month’s election, reported the Times of Israel. Yesterday’s decision was described by the news site as “a stinging defeat” for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, who had been planning on sending more than a thousand activists with recording devices to intimidate voters in Palestinian communities.
Shin Bet Allows Hamas Prisoners From Gaza to Make Phone Calls to Their Families In an unusual move, the Israeli General Security Service (Shin Bet) has allowed Hamas prisoners from the Gaza Strip to make phone calls to their families. Using public phones installed in the prisons, sixty-nine prisoners associated with Hamas will be allowed to make phone calls to relatives.
Israel Supreme Court Halts Appointment of Netanyahu Loyalist to Justice Ministry Israel’s Supreme Court has frozen the appointment of Ophir Cohen, a loyalist to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as the director general of the Justice Ministry. Despite only holding the position of justice minister temporarily, last month Amir Ohana sparked outrage by abruptly firing the ministry’s veteran director general, Emi Palmor, replacing him with Cohen.
Environment, Economy, and Other
Exports and Imports Decrease by 13% And 7% Respectively in June: PCBS Exports decreased in June by thirteen per cent compared to May and imports decreased seven per cent compared during the same period, today said the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
Palestinian Instructors Conclude Eight-day Environmental And Water Sciences Training Eight professors and instructors from five Palestinian universities have recently wrapped up an eight-day course on the education of environmental and water sciences, organized by Birzeit University.
VIDEO: Palestinian Artist Kamal Boullata Buried in Jerusalem Palestinian artist Kamal Boullata has been buried in occupied East Jerusalem from which he had been exiled since the start of the Israeli occupation in 1967. Boullata's family fought to get Israeli approval to bring the body of their son home from Berlin.
Ilhan Omar, Human Rights Orgs Voice Support For Palestinian LBTQ Group Under Attack From Palestinian Authority US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar, along with several Palestinian human rights groups, jumped to the defense of queer Palestinians in the wake of the Palestinian Authority’s ban on an LGBTQ group in the occupied West Bank.