[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.]
The Occupation Forces
Israeli Forces Kidnap Dozens of Palestinians in West Bank, Jerusalem According to a report by the Palestine Information Center, from local sources, Israeli forces abducted at least twenty-nine Palestinians early Monday, including a woman and three minors, Palestinian Authority employees work in the city after breaking into their homes across various neighborhoods of the occupied territories. They also looted some homes.
Israeli Troops Detain Journalist Near Jerusalem Israeli Occupation Forces detained a Palestinian journalist today at Beit Iksa checkpoint, to the northwest of Jerusalem, witnesses said. Soldiers at the said checkpoint reportedly assaulted and detained Ahmad Kamal Hababa, a journalist with Palestine TV, before taking him to an unknown destination.
Domestic Policy
Four New Cases of COVID-19, One of Them in Gaza In a statement, Minister of Health Dr. May Al-Kaila confirmed that three cases were recorded in the town of Barta’a, southwest of Jenin, northern West Bank. The fourth case was for a sixty-three-year-old citizen from the Gaza Strip.
Israel Suspends Parliament Sessions After MP Gets Virus All non-essential Knesset staff were instructed to stay home, and all of Thursday's committee meetings were postponed "pending an investigation of the ramifications" of Member of Parliament Sami Abu Shehadeh having contracted COVID-19.
Israelis Protest Against Netanyahu's Plan to Annex West Bank Several thousand Israelis demonstrated on Saturday in Tel Aviv against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to annex the Jordan Valley and illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. The protest was organized by left-wing groups and NGOs and did not appear to have the support of the wider population–according to a recent poll, around half of Israelis support annexation.
Palestinians Hold Vigil For George Floyd And Eyad al-Halaq Palestinians in the occupied West Bank City of Bethlehem gathered on Tuesday night outside the Church of Nativity, the birthplace of Jesus, to hold a vigil in honor of George Floyd and Eyad al-Halaq. In the wake of Halaq’s killing, protests expressing solidarity with Black Lives Matter and the Palestinian struggle for liberation have popped up across Israel and the occupied territories, with many people drawing parallels between Israel’s excessive use of force against Palestinians, and police brutality in the United States.
Shaath: PA, Hamas in Contact to Resume Reconciliation Speaking to Donia al-Watan, Shaath said he is personally making contact with Hamas as well as holding discussions with the various parties working on the reconciliation file to develop a clear timetable to resume talks. Shaath said the ban on travel due to the coronavirus pandemic has negatively affected the resumption of talks, but there are suggestions to use virtual conference platforms to overcome these obstacles.
Right-wing NGO Wants Singer Banned For Criticizing Israeli Soldiers A petition has been set up calling for British artist Dua Lipa to be dropped from local radio playlists in Israel following her sharing of a post on Instagram slamming the “ill-treatment of Palestinian children by the Israeli military.” The petition is the brainchild of Zionist NGO Im Tirtzu.
PA Proposes Demilitarized State as Counterproposal to Trump Plan The Palestinian Authority says it has sent international mediators a counterproposal to United States President Donald Trump's Middle East plan, proposing the establishment of a demilitarized and sovereign Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. The Palestinian proposal seeks to create a "sovereign Palestinian state, independent and demilitarized," with East Jerusalem as its capital.
PA to Stop Palestinian Resistance Efforts Despite Halting Security Coordination with Israel The Palestinian Authority will continue fighting the Palestinian resistance movements and protecting Israelis despite halting security coordination with Tel Aviv, a senior official has said. Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority official who is in charge of relations with Israel, added that the Palestinian Authority would arrest any Palestinian who intends to carry out an attack on the occupation from the occupied West Bank, the New York Times reported.
Foreign Policy
Chilean Foreign Minister Slams Israel’s Annexation Plans as Dangerous Chilean Foreign Minister, Teodoro Ribera, slammed the Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank land as a dangerous step with unpredictable consequences. The government of Chile is following with great interest and concern the Israeli impending annexation plans, emphasizing his country’s unwavering stance toward the Palestinian issue in adhering without restrictions to international law and United Nations resolutions.
South Africa Pledges Strong, Unequivocal Stand Against Israel’s Annexation Move South African International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor stated that she would recommend that South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who chairs the African Union, to urge heads of member countries to take strong and unequivocal stands against Israel’s impending move to annex the Jordan Valley and apply sovereignty on the illegal colonial settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Medical Aid Shipment Sent by Turkey Reaches Gaza Health officials in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza announced on Thursday the arrival of medical supplies sent by Turkey to help fight the novel coronavirus outbreak, Anadolu Agency reports. In a statement, Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra confirmed that two polymerase chain reaction machines had been delivered for detecting the virus.
Palestinians Ignore US Attempt to Hold Palestine-Israel Conference The US embassy has invited Israelis, Palestinians and technology companies to attend a joint conference aimed at undermining the Palestinian Authority’s halt of relations with Israel and United States, al-Quds al-Arabi reported on 7 June. Palestinian companies and individuals who have been invited to attend have yet to accept the offers, the publication added.
World Abandons Palestinians on Eve of annexation Faced with such obvious intent that Israel will go through with annexation, several countries, politicians and international actors have registered their protests. Britain will “not support” annexation, and many other countries have all mooted punitive economic measures in response. And yet. None of that is deterring Israel, as more and more detailed plans for annexation are beginning to emerge.
Settlers and Illegal Settlements
Terrorist ‘Hilltop Youth’, Students of Religious Institutions Establish Joint ‘Pro-Annexation Room’
Some influential leaders of the Settlement Council have built closer ties with terrorist groups from the “Hilltop Youth” that has decided to cooperate with students of the Yeshiva “Jewish religious institutes” in order to build an operations room to prepare for the implementation of the annexation plan and the failure of the “deal of the century.”
Israeli Settler Sentencing For Arson 'won't bring my family back' An Israeli settler convicted of murdering eighteen-month-old Ali Dawabsheh and his parents in a firebomb attack in 2015 is due to be sentenced on Tuesday. The only survivor of the attack was Ahmed Dawabsheh, a young boy who was four years old at the time and is still receiving treatment for his burns. His extended family says that they hope the sentencing will deter future settler attacks.
Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Movement
Israel Lobby Sees Black Lives Matter as Major Strategic Threat As protests sweep the world in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Israel lobby groups are struggling to appear on board with the Black Lives Matter movement while upholding their support for Israel’s racism. Morton Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, demanded that the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, “immediately put Black Lives Matter on their list of hate groups.”
US City Bans Brutal Israeli Military Training of Police Forces Durham, North Carolina has banned the training of its police force by Israel’s military, in the aftermath of the brutal police killing of Black American George Floyd, reported The New Arab.
Law
ICC: Palestine’s Decision to Disengage From Israel Has no Bearing on Court’s Jurisdiction Palestine’s decision to absolve itself of the agreements with Israel does not have a bearing on the exercise of the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction in the situation of Palestine, the ICC said in their response to Palestinian officials providing further clarification to the court on the severing of ties with Israel.
PA Discusses Palestinian Prisoners’ Issue With Red Cross Palestinian Authority’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh on 3 June discussed the issue of Palestinian prisoners being held by the Occupation with the International Committee of the Red Cross representative in Jerusalem. Shtayyeh reiterated the importance of reinforcing mutual cooperation and coordination for the sake of offering humanitarian and health services to Palestinian prisoners.
US Court Rules Iran, Syria Liable for Palestinian Attacks in Israel Judge Randolph D Moss in US District Court for the District of Columbia held Iran and Syria accountable for compensation to US citizens wounded or killed in a series of attacks because they provided “material support” to movements such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The court however is yet to determine the amount of damages, with the order posted online on Sunday.
Israel Supreme Court: You can't Legalize Settlements on Stolen Palestinian Land Israel’s Supreme Court struck down a law on Tuesday that had retroactively legalized about four thousand settler homes built on privately owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, reported Reuters. Rights groups say the measure, which was frozen soon after passage while the court heard petitions against it, had legalized more than fifty settler outposts built without government approval.
Israel Convicts Policewoman Who 'shot Palestinian for fun' Israel’s Magistrate’s Court convicted an Israeli officer yesterday after she pleaded guilty to shooting a Palestinian man in the back, reported the Times of Israel. The incident, which took place more than a year ago, involved the policewoman shooting twenty-three-year-old Karam al-Qawasmi in the back with a sponge-tipped bullet at al-Zaeim checkpoint, situated near the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim in the occupied West Bank.
Environment, Economy, and Other
“MADA”: 73 Violations Against Media Freedoms in Palestine, 46 of Which Committed By Facebook Company May has witnessed a significant increase in the number of violations against media freedoms in Palestine, as a result of the broad campaign of closures carried out by Facebook Company. The campaign targeted the pages of Palestinian journalists and media websites, which was accompanied by an increase in the number of Israeli violations that have decreased significantly in the preceding month, due to the closure and measures taken to combat the outbreak of coronavirus.
WATCH: A Conversation on Palestinian Solidarity With Black Communities On 4 June, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee held an important webinar with guest speakers Ajamu Amiri Dillahunt (Ph.D. student and Black Youth Project one hundred member), Noura Erakat (human rights attorney and Rutgers assistant professor), and lawyer Ahmad Abuznaid (Palestinian-American, organizer, and co-founder of The Dream Defenders). The informative talk touches on the history of police violence, the connections to US foreign policy, and the need to understand such struggles within a wider global context.
PA Unable to Pay Staff Salaries Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh announced yesterday that civil servants would not be paid at the end of this month due to Israel’s refusal to transfer the tax money, Quds Press reported. He continued: “We recognized that we suffer from a fragile financial situation after the outbreak of the coronavirus. We do not have financial reserves or national currency. Our corona crisis deepened due to living under the Israeli occupation.”
Gaza Fishing Industry Declines 50% Due to Israel Attacks on Fishermen The fishing industry in Gaza has declined fifty percent due to Israel’s continuous bullying of fishermen, al-Quds al-Arabi reported the head of the Palestinian Workers’ Union in Gaza saying. Sami al-Amasi noted that there are four thousand fishermen in Gaza, who take care of twenty-four thousand families, adding that this fishing season has been one of the worst for years.