Category Archives: Palestinian Territories

Israel’s army drafts Gaza ground operation plan as mob violence escalates

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Plans being prepared for senior Israeli military figures and politicians to consider

Israel’s military is drafting a plan for a possible ground operation in Gaza, as it presses ahead with a fierce air offensive on the enclave and as Hamas, the militant group that runs Gaza, fires volleys of rockets deep into Israel.

Meanwhile, racist mob attacks have continued to spread through Israel in the worst Arab-Jewish chaos for years. Overnight on Wednesday, far-right Jewish mobs took to the streets across the country searching for Arabs, while Palestinian citizens of Israel clashed with police, including reports of attempted shootings.

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Israel-Gaza violence: flattened buildings, rockets and communal unrest – video

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Israeli jets and Palestinian militants have traded airstrikes and rocket fire as the UN’s Middle East envoy warned of an escalation towards a full-scale war. High-rise buildings containing flats and offices in Gaza City have been targeted and the Israeli military has said it had killed four senior Hamas commanders. As airstrikes and rocket fire continued, towns with mixed Jewish and Arab populations have been struck by some of the worst communal violence that Israel has seen in years

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Journalist reports live from Gaza as neighbouring building hit by Israel airstrike – video

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An Israeli airstrike struck a high-rise building in central Gaza City as journalist Youmna Al Sayed reported live for Al Jazeera from a neighbouring building. Al Sayed continued to provide commentary despite being forced to move away from the camera by the explosions. The targeted building housed businesses in addition to offices for Hamas' Al-Aqsa satellite channel and is located in one of the busiest streets of Gaza's Roman neighbourhood. The airstrike is part of continued violence between Israel and Palestinian militants that is the most serious conflict between the parties since 2014

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Israel-Gaza violence intensifies – in pictures

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Palestinian Hamas militants and the Israeli army have traded fresh rocket fire and airstrikes in the worst violence since the 2014 conflict. Intense fighting continued overnight as the UN’s Middle East envoy warned the two sides were heading towards a full-scale war

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Israel vows not to stop Gaza attacks until there is ‘complete quiet’

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Defence minister rules out ceasefire as Israeli military says it has killed four senior Hamas commanders

Israel will not stop its military operation in Gaza until “complete quiet” has been achieved, the country’s defence minister has said, as airstrikes and rocket fire continued throughout Wednesday.

The Israeli military said it had killed four senior Hamas commanders and a dozen more Hamas operatives in a series of strikes. It said it had undertaken a “complex and first-of-its-kind operation” jointly with the Shin Bet security service.

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Gaza weapons boast may come back to haunt Hamas

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Analysis: attacks will challenge Israeli establishment to deal with a threat made suddenly very real

In the rounds of fighting and violence between Hamas and Israel in Gaza in the last dozen years, one thing has always appeared baked into the proposition. For all their industriousness and attempts at innovation in developing weapons and ways of attacking, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been at best largely ineffectual when it comes to targeting Israel from inside the Gaza Strip.

From the early rocket systems to labour-intensive attack tunnels and incendiary balloons, the efforts were crude. Even when the rockets became more sophisticated by the time of the 2014 conflict, flying further and with bigger warheads, most of them were shot out of the sky.

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Israel-Palestine flare-up has caught Biden administration unprepared

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Analysis: The White House is playing for time and needs to decide quickly how to deal with Trump’s legacy of unwavering support for Netanyahu

Joe Biden came into office thinking he could put the Israel-Palestine issue on the back burner to focus on other, bigger, issues. That is not working out well.

The upsurge in violence has caught the new administration on the back foot, under-staffed and without a clearly defined approach.

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Israel-Gaza violence: death toll rises as UN envoy warns over escalation

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Further airstrikes and rocket fire reported early on Wednesday in Gaza, Tel Aviv and Beersheba

Israeli jets and Palestinian militants traded fresh airstrikes and rocket fire early on Wednesday as the UN’s Middle East envoy called for a cessation of hostilities, warning: “We’re escalating towards a full-scale war.”

The death toll since unrest broke out early on Tuesday rose to 40 – 35 in Gaza and five in Israel – as Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza and Palestinian militant groups fired multiple rocket barrages at Tel Aviv, Beersheba, and other central Israeli cities.

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Israeli airstrike collapses tower block and Hamas rocket hits bus as violence escalates – video

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Israel has vowed to further intensify its attacks on Gaza, after a day of ferocious confrontations that left more than 30 people dead. On Tuesday evening, a 13-storey tower collapsed after being hit by an Israeli airstrike. In response, Hamas’s military wing said it had fired 130 rockets towards Tel Aviv.

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Twenty-four Palestinians and two Israelis dead in Gaza violence

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Israel launches strikes on Gaza as Hamas militants fire rockets after weeks of rising tensions in Jerusalem

Israeli jets and militants in Gaza have traded airstrikes for rocket attacks, in a ferocious confrontation that has continued almost non-stop since sundown on Monday, killing 24 Palestinians, including nine children, according to the enclave’s health ministry, and leaving two Israeli women dead and scores wounded.

After weeks of intense violence in Jerusalem, Hamas, the Islamist group that rules inside Gaza, fired a barrage of rockets towards the holy city on Monday evening, believed to be the first time it had targeted Jerusalem in more than seven years.

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Israel launches airstrikes on Gaza Strip after Hamas rocket attacks

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Gaza health ministry says 20 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes after Palestinian groups fired rockets into Israel

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians escalated dramatically on Monday as militant groups in Gaza fired rockets into Israel and Israel responded with strikes on the Palestinian coastal territory following a police raid on the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem that left hundreds injured.

The rocket attacks were launched just minutes after the passing of a Hamas-issued ultimatum for Israel to withdraw security forces from both the Jerusalem compound that is home to the al-Aqsa mosque and the Old City’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

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Clashes over Israeli settlements prompt fears for Monday’s Jerusalem Day march

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Reports seven were injured in Palestinian clashes with Israeli police on Sunday, despite now-delayed court ruling on East Jerusalem settlements

Israeli police faced off with Palestinian protesters in another full night of clashes in East Jerusalem, ahead of a planned parade by hardline Israeli nationalists through the Old City in an annual flag-waving march meant to cement Israeli claims to the contested area.

The Palestine Red Crescent reported seven injuries, including four hospitalisations, as officers in riot gear clashed with Palestinian demonstrators clashed in East Jerusalem. Confrontations continued until after dawn, when police stormed into the Old City’s al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, and fired stun grenades at worshippers, who lobbed stones.

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Israeli settlement ruling delayed as Jerusalem tensions run high

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More than 120 injured in continuing Palestinian protests over planned evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah area

Israel’s supreme court has delayed a deeply contentious decision on whether Palestinians can be evicted by force to make way for Jewish settlers, after hundreds of Palestinians were wounded in confrontations with the police in some of Jerusalem’s worst unrest in years.

A former Israeli defence official described the atmosphere as like a powder keg ready to explode at any time, after more clashes erupted outside the Old City overnight on Saturday.

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Scores injured in second night of Jerusalem clashes

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Palestinian Red Crescent says 80 people were hurt during clashes with Israeli police outside Jerusalem’s Old City

Clashes have erupted for a second night between Palestinians and Israeli police outside the Old City of Jerusalem as tens of thousands of Muslim worshippers prayed at the nearby al-Aqsa Mosque.

At least 80 people were injured, including a one-year-old, and 14 were taken to hospital, the Palestine Red Crescent said. Israeli police said at least one officer was hurt.

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More than 205 Palestinians wounded in Jerusalem al-Aqsa clashes

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Confrontations at holy site leave 17 Israeli police officers wounded, with international calls for calm

More than 205 Palestinians and 17 Israeli police officers were wounded during a night of intense clashes at a sacred Jerusalem site that holds the Dome of the Rock, medics and police said, a serious escalation in a weeks-long rise in violence.

Tensions in Jerusalem have soared recently, with Palestinians complaining of oppressive restrictions during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. An upcoming Israeli court ruling on whether authorities can evict dozens of Palestinians – and give their homes to Jewish settlers – has further inflamed the situation.

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Refugees and the Armenian genocide: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, rights watchdog says

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Human Rights Watch calls on international criminal court to investigate ‘systematic discrimination’ against Palestinians

Human Rights Watch has accused Israeli officials of committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution, claiming the government enforces an overarching policy to “maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians”.

In a report released on Tuesday, the New York-based advocacy group became the first major international rights body to level such allegations. It said that after decades of warnings that an entrenched hold over Palestinian life could lead to apartheid, it had found that the “threshold” had been crossed.

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Gaza militants fire rockets after clashes flare in Jerusalem

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Rockets seen as response to unrest in mostly Palestinian east Jerusalem, including far-right Jewish groups chanting ‘death to Arabs’

Militants in Gaza have fired at least 35 rockets into Israel in one of the most intense flare-ups in months, seemingly triggered by days of tensions in Jerusalem in which far-right Jewish groups and the Israeli police have clashed with Palestinians.

Hours of sustained rocket launches early on Saturday – and Israel’s retaliatory strikes on the strip using fighter jets and attack helicopters – broke a months-long lull along the frontier with the coastal enclave.

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‘Kill the bill’ and trans visibility: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China

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‘Film-making? Bring it on!’: ex-stockbroker Farah Nabulsi on her Oscar nomination

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The British Palestinian is up for an Oscar with her debut, filmed at a notorious Israeli flashpoint called Checkpoint 300. The London-based director talks about her shocking visits to the Middle East

Farah Nabulsi was at home in west London when she found out her film The Present had been nominated for the Oscar for best live action short. She’d persuaded her teenage sons to stay home and watch the announcement. When she heard her name, she jumped up on the table. Her eldest looked at her as if she’d gone mad. He’d got it into his head that this was the actual ceremony and she had lost. “He was like, ‘Why are you so happy? They didn’t pick you.’ He killed the moment.”

The film is Nabulsi’s directing debut, a powerful 20-minute piece of humanist cinema about a Palestinian man, Yusef (Saleh Bakri), who wants to surprise his wife with a fridge as an anniversary gift. He takes the couple’s young daughter, Yasmine (Mariam Kanj), shopping. But their big day out is ruined by two encounters with Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint. Yasmine is a witness to her dad’s humiliation – she tugs on his sleeve, reminding him to bite his tongue, to swallow the soldiers’ insults. It is a study of injustice that – like the best shorts – doesn’t try to cram too much in.

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