Protest against Jewish settlements in Tulkarm West Bank
A Palestinian man argues with Israeli soldiers as they detain a demonstrator during a protest against Jewish settlements.

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Protest against Jewish settlements in Tulkarm West Bank
A Palestinian man argues with Israeli soldiers as they detain a demonstrator during a protest against Jewish settlements.
Palestinians protest Trump's peace plan
The peace proposal announced by President Trump would give Israel most of what it has sought during decades of conflict, including the disputed holy city of Jerusalem and nearly all the occupied land on which it has built settlements. Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People, commonly known as the Trump peace plan, is a proposal by the Trump administration to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Donald Trump formally unveiled the plan in a White House press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 28, 2020; Palestinian representatives were not invited. The plan was authored by a team led by Trump's son-in-law, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States Jared Kushner. Both the West Bank settlers' Yesha Council and the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan: the former because it envisaged a Palestinian state, the latter arguing it is too biased in favor of Israel. The plan is divided into two parts, an economic portion and a political portion. On June 22, 2019, the Trump administration released the economic portion of the plan, titled "Peace to Prosperity". The political portion was released in late January 2020. Critics of the plan, including all the leading Democratic presidential candidates , have denounced it as a "smokescreen" for annexation. Proposed benefits to the Palestinians from the plan are contingent on a list of conditions that have been denounced by opponents of the plan as "impossible" or "fantastic". An editorial of the Los Angeles Times stated that the plan had arrived 'dead in the water'. The New York Times's regional correspondents state that the plan's rejection of a return of Jerusalem to the Palestinians and complete removal of settlements was a "non-starter" for the Palestinian Authority.
Humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip Fast facts
Fast Facts The population of Gaza is 1.6 million, with over 50% under 18. 38% of Gazans live in poverty. 26% of the Gazan workforce, including 38% of youths, is unemployed. The average wage declined by over 20% in the past six years. 54% of Gazans are food insecure and over 75% are aid recipients. 35% of Gaza’s farmland and 85% of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures. 50-80 million litres of partially treated sewage are dumped in the sea each day. Over 90% of the water from the Gaza aquifer is undrinkable. 85% of schools in Gaza run on double shifts. About one-third of the items in the essential drug list are out of stock. Since the beginning, 64 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 621 injured by Israeli forces; over 60% of casualties occurred in the access-restricted areas. Another 60 civilians were killed and 137 were injured in tunnel-related accidents.
Israel begins demolition of Palestinian homes
Gaza City, Gaza The Abu Amre family prepare their meal next to the debris of their house, destroyed in an Israeli attack.
Palestinian protest against Jewish settlements in West Bank
Palestinian demonstrators pray as Israeli troops stand guard during a protest against Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
Palestinians break their fast by eating the Iftar meals
Palestinians break their fast by eating the Iftar meals during the holy month of Ramadan, near the rubble of a building recently destroyed by Israeli air strikes, in Gaza City.
Daily Life in Gaza: Loss Despair and Hopelessness
The New York Times published a major front page story on the daily life in Gaza. The story chronicles the adversity, disunity, and sheer loss that dominates daily life in Gaza, and the Times’ website includes some very powerful images and video footage. Civilians in Gaza suffer from a complete lack of opportunities, high unemployment, and scarce resources, including water and electricity, the article concludes. The article also claims that the root of the current suffering is the loss of opportunity and the inability of Palestinians in Gaza to produce for themselves. Since these options do not exist for Gazans, men stay home throughout the day, some taking sedatives to numb their loss, and women struggle to ease their husband’s pain and fill their children’s bellies. Despite international criticism over the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the international concern over the May 31 flotilla incident, the blockade has continued uninterrupted for three years, and the daily struggles and overwhelming despair of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza have been largely overlooked and misrepresented internationally. We have repeatedly urged the U.S. government and international community to pressure Israel to lift the blockade. In fact, the recent “easing” of the blockade is not sufficient in adequately addressing the daily plight of Gazans. Israel’s blockade of Gaza has left more than 1.4 million Palestinian men, women and children trapped in the Gaza Strip, four in five of which are dependent on humanitarian aid. As a form of collective punishment, Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza is a flagrant violation of international law. The blockade does not target armed groups – who in the past have repeatedly launched indiscriminate attacks against civilians in southern Israel – but rather punishes Gaza’s entire population by restricting the entry of food, medical supplies, educational equipment and building materials. Unsurprisingly, its impact falls most heavily on those most vulnerable among Gaza’s people: children, the elderly and the sick. To end the suffering and restore opportunity and hope to the people of Gaza, a full lifting of the blockade is imperative. Courtesy : Amnesty International
Gaza youth Yousef Abu Hajras dies of injuries sustained during protests
Dead body of Fares Yousef Abu Hajras, who succumbed to injuries sustained last Saturday while taking part in demonstrations near Gaza-Israel border, is seen at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza on April 02, 2019.
Protest against Jewish settlements in Tulkarm, West Bank
A Palestinian man argues with Israeli soldiers as they detain a demonstrator during a protest against Jewish settlements.
Palestinians protest Trump's peace plan
The peace proposal announced by President Trump would give Israel most of what it has sought during decades of conflict, including the disputed holy city of Jerusalem and nearly all the occupied land on which it has built settlements. Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People, commonly known as the Trump peace plan, is a proposal by the Trump administration to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Donald Trump formally unveiled the plan in a White House press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on January 28, 2020; Palestinian representatives were not invited. The plan was authored by a team led by Trump's son-in-law, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States Jared Kushner. Both the West Bank settlers' Yesha Council and the Palestinian leadership rejected the plan: the former because it envisaged a Palestinian state, the latter arguing it is too biased in favor of Israel. The plan is divided into two parts, an economic portion and a political portion. On June 22, 2019, the Trump administration released the economic portion of the plan, titled "Peace to Prosperity". The political portion was released in late January 2020.
Critics of the plan, including all the leading Democratic presidential candidates , have denounced it as a "smokescreen" for annexation. Proposed benefits to the Palestinians from the plan are contingent on a list of conditions that have been denounced by opponents of the plan as "impossible" or "fantastic". An editorial of the Los Angeles Times stated that the plan had arrived 'dead in the water'. The New York Times's regional correspondents state that the plan's rejection of a return of Jerusalem to the Palestinians and complete removal of settlements was a "non-starter" for the Palestinian Authority.
Gaza children face death and disorientation
Ali Bannat, who was injured during the Great March of Return protests, drives a car he made from spare parts to provide transportation at Bureij refugee camp. In their homes, in the street, in UN-run schools, Palestinian youth are not safe from Israeli bullets Chris McGreal in Khan Yunis Guardian Weekly Raghda Alassar's classmates did not hear the Israeli bullet that tore into the nine-year-old's brain as she wrote an English test. But as a pool of blood spread across her desk and spilled on the floor, a wall of screams rose from the classroom of the UN elementary school for girls in Khan Yunis. At that point Raghda was still crying for help. By the time she was hauled into the trauma room of a neighbouring hospital she was silent. For five days the army blocked Raghda's transfer to an Israeli hospital, whose facilities might have offered a glimmer of hope. An infection set in. Last week doctors told her father, Adnad, that she was brain-dead. "The bullet entered under her eye and went out the back of her head," Mr Alassar said. "I find it so difficult to believe what happened to my daughter. She was at school, just carrying her notebook, not a gun. What is my daughter - nine years old - guilty of that she has to be shot? It's state terror against the whole population." In recent weeks the Israelis have again been preoccupied with terrorism, from the murder of 16 people in the Beersheba bus bombings to the slaughter of Russian schoolchildren in Beslan, which received blanket coverage. During the six months of relative peace for Israelis, until the Beersheba bombings, the army killed more than 400 Palestinians. Most were fighters, but they also included about 40 children under the age of 15. Palestinians say this also is a form of terror. "We're always listening for the helicopters, listening for the tanks, listening for the bombs," said Khitam abu Shawarib, the only social worker in Rafah refugee camp, on the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. "I am very sorry when I hear of a Jewish woman or children killed. I think it is wrong, and many people here think it is wrong. But what the Jews suffer is nothing to the terror we live with from them. It takes such a toll on our health, on society, most of all on the children." Israelis live in fear of random attacks, principally the suicide bombing of buses and cafes, and shootings in the occupied territories. But they are generally safe in their homes. In southern Gaza and parts of the West Bank there is often no sanctuary from the seemingly relentless, indiscriminate Israeli shooting. Israel classifies Gaza Strip towns such as Rafah and Khan Yunis, and Nablus and Jenin in the West Bank, as war zones. That, the army says, justifies the firing of weapons into residential areas or the bulldozing of scores of homes each month, ostensibly in search of rarely discovered tunnels for smuggling in weapons. Barely a night passes in Rafah or Khan Yunis without the machine-gun fire that has shredded hundreds of homes, forcing families to sleep in an inner room behind bricked up windows or a second wall. Others live in the rubble of their bulldozed houses, in the firing line from the rarely seen soldiers high in the gun towers. Earlier this month 15-year-old Mazen al-Ara was trying to lead his siblings away from tanks and heavy shooting around their house on the edge of the "Philadelphi Road", the highly militarised border at Rafah. Usually they sheltered in an inner room when the shooting began, but that night it was so intense that Mazen said they would all be killed if they stayed. As he led the terrified group into the street, Mazen was caught by a burst of fire. The boy died; doctors took 18 bullets from his body. A few days earlier, 10-year-old Munir al-Daqas left his home in Jabalya refugee camp to visit his grandparents' house five minutes' walk away. "It must have been a sniper," his mother, Kifah, said. "People told me as I was shopping in the market. I couldn't believe it. Munir was just there with me and now they were saying he was dead." In four years of intifada, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights says, the army has killed 136 children in Rafah and Khan Yunis, a quarter of all the Palestinian children who have died during the uprising, because of its "indiscriminate shooting, excessive force, a shoot-to-kill policy and the deliberate targeting of children". The dead in Khan Yunis and Rafah in recent weeks also include two 12-year-old boys, a 15-year-old girl and a 75-year-old man in a wheelchair, Ibrahim Halfalla, who was crushed under the rubble of his own home by an army bulldozer as his wife begged the soldiers not to advance. The army has not offered an explanation for the killing of Raghda Alassar, but it frequently says that child victims are caught in crossfire during Palestinian attacks on the army or Jewish settlers. There were no such battles when Raghda Alassar and Munir Daqas were hit. Or when a bullet pierced the blind of Sara Zorob's living room and struck the 10-year-old in the chest, killing her instantly. There are other young victims, as well. "The children who are physically injured are not the only ones harmed," said Usama Freona, a psychologist at the UN clinic in Rafah. "The levels of violence children are exposed to is horrific. We work in a lot of schools to treat the children. In the one next to Kfar Darom [a Jewish settlement in Gaza], all the children are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Most of them were crying and shaking when they were speaking about their experiences. There is a lot of bedwetting." Mohammed abu Yusuf is the counsellor at Raghda Alassar's school. "After Raghda was shot," he said, "the children were crying and screaming. Five girls in her class still won't come back to school." Raghda Alassar is not the first child shot at the cluster of UN schools in Khan Yunis. Last year an Israeli bullet blinded Huda Darwish, 12, as she sat at her desk. Mrs Daqas said her children could not comprehend Munir's death. "Munir's younger brother doesn't understand he is dead. He thought he would come back after the funeral and kept asking why Munir has come when we've had 'the party' for him. His four-year-old sister asks every day if we can search the market because Munir must be lost," she said. Mr Freona said the constant violence begets violence. "Look at the games children play. Most of the boys play Arabs and Jews. Many want to play the role of the Jews. They see that the Israeli soldiers are the ones with the guns and they are strong and they see that is the most important thing," he said. With that has come a collapse in respect for authority. The image of Mohammed al-Dura, the 12-year-old Gaza boy shot as his father vainly tried to protect him from Israeli gunfire in the first days of the latest intifada, is seared on the Palestinian consciousness. It has come to symbolise what they see as the callous indifference of Israeli forces to the lives of their children. But Mrs Abu Shawarib said it had a further impact on many children, who saw that a father was unable to protect his son. "The respect for authority is shattered because children see their fathers beaten in front of them," she said. "The father looks helpless to protect the child and the child thinks he is alone." Another result of the perpetual killing was that many children came to expect an early death and the prospect of becoming a "martyr". "The martyr is in paradise, he has glory here and in the afterlife where it is so much better than life in Rafah," she said. "The children see many people killed, so they come to expect to be killed. This is horrible, that children should accept the possibility of death." Plight of Palestinian women, page 20
Humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip Fast facts
Fast Facts
The population of Gaza is 1.6 million, with over 50% under 18.
38% of Gazans live in poverty.
26% of the Gazan workforce, including 38% of youths, is unemployed.
The average wage declined by over 20% in the past six years.
54% of Gazans are food insecure and over 75% are aid recipients.
35% of Gaza’s farmland and 85% of its fishing waters are totally or partially inaccessible due to Israeli military measures.
50-80 million litres of partially treated sewage are dumped in the sea each day.
Over 90% of the water from the Gaza aquifer is undrinkable.
85% of schools in Gaza run on double shifts.
About one-third of the items in the essential drug list are out of stock.
Since the beginning, 64 Palestinian civilians have been killed and 621 injured by Israeli forces; over 60% of casualties occurred in the access-restricted areas. Another 60 civilians were killed and 137 were injured in tunnel-related accidents.
Israel begins demolition of Palestinian homes
Gaza City, Gaza
The Abu Amre family prepare their meal next to the debris of their house, destroyed in an Israeli attack.
Palestinian protest against Jewish settlements in West Bank
Palestinian demonstrators pray as Israeli troops stand guard during a protest against Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank
Palestine is not for sale : Palestinians reject Trump’s $50bn peace plan
Palestinians protest against Washington's long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan spearheaded by President Trump's adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Donald Trump’s long-awaited economic peace plan he hopes will resolve the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict was immediately rejected by the Palestinian leadership and figures in the Arab world, who said the 96-page document was “meaningless” and impractical. Jared Kushner, President Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, revealed the details of the $50bn (£39bn) “Peace to Prosperity” plan over the weekend, and is expected to formally present it to the world at a two-day conference in Bahrain starting on Tuesday.
He told Reuters that if executed it could create a million jobs in the West Bank and Gaza, reduce Palestinian poverty by half and double the Palestinians’ GDP.
It is centred around a new investment fund which earmarks over $27bn for spending in the Palestinian Territories, with the remaining $23bn split between Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. Among some of the 179 infrastructure and business projects outlined is a $5bn travel corridor for Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza, and a $1bn injection of cash into the Palestinian tourism sector. Both have been criticised for being impractical given the tough security measures in place preventing freedom of movement due to flare-ups between Israeli forces and factions within Gaza and the West Bank. The document, which does not use the term Palestinian “state” but instead opts for “society”, has also been slammed by critics for encouraging Palestinians to “barter away” their national aspirations for economic investment. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, immediately rejected the plan, saying the “economic situation should not be discussed before the political one”.
“As long as there is no political solution, we do not deal with any economic solution”, he was quoted by WAFA news agency as saying. Jibril Rajoub, a senior Fatah official, echoed Mr Abbas’s words, telling Israeli public broadcaster Kan: “The economic track is not a solution” and that the funds were “meaningless as long as the occupation continues”. Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) Executive Committee, reiterated the criticisms. “First lift the siege of Gaza, stop the Israeli theft of our land, resources and funds, give us our freedom of movement and control over our borders, airspace, territorial waters etc. Then watch us build a vibrant prosperous economy as a free and sovereign people,” she wrote. Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, bluntly replied: “Palestine isn’t for sale.”The troubled plan, which was two years in the making, will be launched during a two-day US economic workshop hosted in Bahrain. Palestinian Authority is boycotting the conference. Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, has ready urged Bahrain’s King Hamad to cancel the meetings.
The White House also did not invite the Israeli government. Despite the setbacks Washington still pushed ahead, saying it believes the plan could rebuild the Palestinian Territories and help end the political crisis with Israel. One of the largest projects would construct a highway and possibly railway line that crossed Israel and linked the occupied West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip, which are around 25 miles away from each other. A section on tourism, meanwhile, talks of repairing, restoring and upgrading historical and religious sites as well as beachfront areas, despite the fact that the only seaside in the Palestinian Territories is in Gaza which is currently closed off to most of the world. It also outlines a $590m upgrade of Gaza’s main power plant which the White House said would provide reliable energy for the first time in years, as well as $500m to build a world-class university in either Gaza or the West Bank. A further $900m would be distributed in grants to improve cargo terminals and border crossings to open Gaza and the West Bank to its Arab neighbours.
Although representatives from the wealthy Gulf nations together with financial lenders International Monetary Fund and World Bank are expected to attend the workshop in Manama, questions have been raised about how the $50bn will be found. Experts have also queried how additional funds will benefit the Palestinian economy given the Israeli and Egyptian imposed blockade on Gaza, and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, which restricts the flow of people, goods and services. From Jordan to Kuwait, prominent commentators and ordinary citizens denounced the proposals as “colossal waste of time,” “non-starter,” and “dead on arrival.” “Homelands cannot be sold, even for all the money in the world,” Egyptian analyst Gamal Fahmy said. “This plan is the brainchild of real estate brokers, not politicians. Even Arab states that are described as moderate are not able to openly express support for it.” Jawad al-Anani, a former senior Jordanian politician, said it was “unbalanced’ and would not be trusted given the widespread suspicion after Mr Trump’s decisions to move the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognise Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. “This is a major setback for the whole region,” he said of the plan.
Even some Israeli commentators questioned whether any of the projects could be implemented. Anshel Pfeffer, an Israeli journalist and analyst at the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, said: “Kushner’s plan is a pile of empty business-speak based on the assumption the Palestinians will barter away their national aspirations for 5G.” The US deal has however been nominally supported by the Israel authorities, whose officials said it was a “tragedy” that the Palestinians had rejected the plan too early. “They are still convinced that the whole matter of an economic peace is a conspiracy, aimed only at piling them with funds for projects and other goodies only so that they will forget their nationalist inspirations,” Tzachi Hanegbi, a cabinet member close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel’s Kan radio. “This of course, is simply paranoia, but it’s another tragedy for the Palestinians,” he said. Gulf commentators whose states will attend the Bahrain workshop have said that the PA was wrong to reject the plan out of hand. Prominent Emirati businessman Khalaf Ahmad al-Habtoor said they were being “short-sighted at best, self-defeating at worst”.
Bel Trew Jerusalem
Agencies contributed to this report
Daily Life in Gaza: Loss, Despair, and Hopelessness
The New York Times published a major front page story on the daily life in Gaza. The story chronicles the adversity, disunity, and sheer loss that dominates daily life in Gaza, and the Times’ website includes some very powerful images and video footage. Civilians in Gaza suffer from a complete lack of opportunities, high unemployment, and scarce resources, including water and electricity, the article concludes.
The article also claims that the root of the current suffering is the loss of opportunity and the inability of Palestinians in Gaza to produce for themselves. Since these options do not exist for Gazans, men stay home throughout the day, some taking sedatives to numb their loss, and women struggle to ease their husband’s pain and fill their children’s bellies. Despite international criticism over the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the international concern over the May 31 flotilla incident, the blockade has continued uninterrupted for three years, and the daily struggles and overwhelming despair of the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza have been largely overlooked and misrepresented internationally.
We have repeatedly urged the U.S. government and international community to pressure Israel to lift the blockade. In fact, the recent “easing” of the blockade is not sufficient in adequately addressing the daily plight of Gazans. Israel’s blockade of Gaza has left more than 1.4 million Palestinian men, women and children trapped in the Gaza Strip, four in five of which are dependent on humanitarian aid. As a form of collective punishment, Israel’s continuing blockade of Gaza is a flagrant violation of international law. The blockade does not target armed groups – who in the past have repeatedly launched indiscriminate attacks against civilians in southern Israel – but rather punishes Gaza’s entire population by restricting the entry of food, medical supplies, educational equipment and building materials. Unsurprisingly, its impact falls most heavily on those most vulnerable among Gaza’s people: children, the elderly and the sick. To end the suffering and restore opportunity and hope to the people of Gaza, a full lifting of the blockade is imperative.
Courtesy : Amnesty International
Palestinians break their fast by eating the Iftar meals
Palestinians break their fast by eating the Iftar meals during the holy month of Ramadan, near the rubble of a building recently destroyed by Israeli air strikes, in Gaza City.