The United Kingdom, Australia and Japan are among 21 countries that have condemned Israel’s plans to build a controversial illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank, which they say renders a future two-state solution for Palestinians impossible.
“We condemn this decision and call for its immediate reversal in the strongest terms,” the 21 countries said in a joint statement on Thursday, describing Israel’s construction plans as a “violation of international law”.
The statement follows news this week that Israel will formally move forward with a settlement on a 12-square-kilometre (4.6-square-mile) tract of land east of Jerusalem known as “East 1” or “E1”.
The development, which will include 3,400 new homes for Israeli settlers, will cut off much of the occupied West Bank from occupied East Jerusalem while also linking up thousands of illegal Israeli settlements in the area.
East Jerusalem carries particular significance to Palestinians as the top choice for the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The group of 21 nations said any plans for a two-state solution will become impossible “by dividing any Palestinian state and restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem”.
The group includes Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.
The illegal settlement also “risks undermining security and fuels further violence and instability, taking us further away from peace”, the group said, while bringing “no benefits to the Israeli people”.
The Palestinian Authority, the European Commission and United Nations chief Antonio Guterres have all voiced opposition to plans for the E1 settlement since Israel first announced the news last week.
“Coupled with ongoing settler violence and military operations, these unilateral decisions are fuelling an already tense situation on the ground and further eroding any possibility for peace,” the European Union said in a statement on August 14.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said settlements such as E1 will help erase Palestine from the map, even as Palestinian statehood gains increasing international recognition from UN member states.
“This reality finally buries the idea of a Palestinian state, because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise,” Smotrich said last week.
“My family is facing hell on Earth.” Palestinian Christians say they will not celebrate Christmas as they grieve for the people killed in Israel’s war on Gaza.
Occupied West Bank — On December 2, Eman Nafii was one of dozens of Palestinians invited to meet Prosecutor Karim Khan of the International Criminal Court in the occupied West Bank. As the wife of the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israel, Nafi wanted to speak to Khan about her husband and the Israeli occupation.
But Khan spent most of the meeting talking, before his team gave Nafi and other Palestinian victims just 10 minutes to share their stories.
“People got angry. They told him, ‘You are coming to listen to us for 10 minutes? How are we going to tell you about our stories in 10 minutes,” Nafi told Al Jazeera.
“One of the women (with us) was from Gaza. She lost 30 members of her family in the (ongoing war). She shouted, ‘How can we explain this in 10 minutes.’”
While Khan ended up listening to the victims for about an hour, Palestinians fear that he is applying a double standard by solely focusing his efforts on Hamas and ignoring the grave crimes Israel is accused of having perpetrated over two months of a deadly war.
Many were disappointed that Khan accepted an Israeli invitation to visit Israeli communities and areas that Hamas attacked on October 7, while declining an offer from Palestinians to visit the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank.
During his three-day visit, Israel also did not allow Khan to enter Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 17,000 people and displaced most of the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants from their homes since October 7.
Most of those killed have been women and children, while thousands of young men are now being rounded up, many of them stripped and taken to undisclosed locations. Legal experts have warned that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza may soon amount to genocide.
Despite the mounting evidence and ongoing atrocities, Khan has shown little interest in seriously probing Israel, according to Palestinian officials, victims and legal scholars.
“Khan became enthusiastic to start this investigation [in the occupied territories] after October 7. That’s alarming,” said Omar Awadallah, who oversees UN human rights organisations as part of the Palestinian Authority, the political body governing the West Bank.
“[The Palestinian Authority] gave him retroactive jurisdiction from 2014. [Khan] cannot say that he didn’t see crimes being committed [in the occupied territories] from 2014 until October 7,” Awadallah told Al Jazeera.
A viable alternative?
On January 2, 2015, the state of Palestine became a signatory to the Rome Statute, giving the ICC jurisdiction to investigate atrocities such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
The move was perceived as a victory for Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups, which were fed up with the Israeli judicial system for not punishing Israeli officials, settlers and soldiers who were committing crimes in the occupied territories such as land theft and extrajudicial killings.
According to Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation that opposes illegal settlements in the West Bank, Palestinians harmed by Israeli soldiers have a less than one percent chance of obtaining justice if they file a complaint in Israel.
While the ICC offers an alternative to Israeli courts, no arrest warrants have been issued against Israeli officials or soldiers for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the West Bank, according to a legal expert from Al Mezan, a Palestinian human rights organisation that advocates for justice in Gaza.
“We have submitted plenty of legal analysis and evidence to the office of the prosecutor even before Khan was elected,” the expert, who asked for anonymity due to a fear of reprisal from Israeli authorities, told Al Jazeera. “We believe that [Khan’s] office has enough evidence to issue warrants for Israeli political and military leaders by now.”
After returning from his three-day visit to Israel and the West Bank, Khan released a statement that made little mention of the mounting evidence implicating Israel in committing crimes against humanity such as that of apartheid in the West Bank and war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza.
Khan merely said that his visit was not “investigative in nature” and called on Israel to respect the legal principles of “distinction, precaution and proportionality” in its ongoing bombing campaign and ground offensive in Gaza.
Khan had a different tone when addressing Hamas’s October 7 attacks, calling them “serious international crimes that shock the conscience of humanity”.
Khan’s statement angered the Palestinian victims that he met briefly in Ramallah.
“What made us really unhappy was what he wrote after the visit,” said Nafi. “He is not supposed to draw an equivalence between the victim and their killers. We wanted him to tell the Israelis to stop what they are doing to detainees and to [stop] what they’re doing to Gaza.”
Al Jazeera submitted written questions to Khan’s office which raised Palestinian criticisms of his visit to the West Bank and his statement. His office responded by emailing Al Jazeera several of Khan’s previous statements, without answering any of the questions.
Politically compromised?
In September 2021, Khan said that he would deprioritise crimes committed by American forces in Afghanistan and focus his probe on the atrocities that the Taliban and the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, ISKP (ISIS-K) carried out.
Critics believe that Khan was acquiescing to political pressure from the United States – a state that is not a party to the Rome Statute – which sanctioned Khan’s predecessor for daring to open a case against American troops in Afghanistan.
But Khan justified his decision by claiming that the court had limited resources and that the Taliban and Islamic State committed more serious crimes. Palestinians now fear that Khan could cite a similar justification to investigate Hamas, but not Israel.
“We have yet to see that any prosecutor has taken the question of Palestine seriously, which shows that the whole system of international law has been torn into pieces,” said Diana Buttu, a Palestinian legal scholar.
Buttu added that the ICC has effectively become a court that acts in the political interest of powerful Western states, rather than in accordance with strict legal principles.
“The ICC has become a very political court that managed to issue indictments against Putin,” she told Al Jazeera. “But eight weeks into what is presumably the worst man-made disaster [in Gaza] and the prosecutor has remained silent and only comes [to visit] at the request of Israel.”
Nafi agreed and added that Khan can’t claim to be ignorant or unaware of Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians.
“How many people does he want to see killed until he speaks up,” she told Al Jazeera. “I want him to be brave enough, to say the truth and to say it in public.”
Additional reporting by Al Jazeera correspondent Zein Basravi.
East Java, Indonesia – Umar Patek was released from prison last December after serving just over half of a 20-year jail sentence for the Bali holiday island bombings in 2002, which killed 202 people. He was also convicted for a series of bomb attacks on Christian churches on Christmas Eve, 2000, that left 18 dead.
Patek’s early prison release for good behaviour in 2022 was sharply criticised by Australian officials and the relatives of the hundreds of victims of the Bali bombing.
Al Jazeera recently interviewed Patek at his home in East Java where he spoke about his role in Bali and revealed that the horrific bomb attack two decades ago was an act of revenge for the violence inflicted on Palestinian people by Israeli forces.
Umar Patek at his home in East Java, Indonesia, on October 14, 2023 [Al Jazeera]
Al Jazeera: How did you become involved with Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the armed group behind the Bali Bombings?
Umar Patek: In 1991, I was working in Malaysia and met Mukhlas [a senior JI figure who was sentenced to death and executed in 2008 for masterminding the Bali bombings] in Johor Bahru at the Lukman Hakim Islamic Boarding School.
I worked on a plantation in Malaysia, and would go to religious classes in the evening at the school. Then Mukhlas asked me to work at the school, so I moved in. After three months at the school, he offered me the chance to go to Pakistan. I wanted to study and he said I could study religion there.
I first went to Peshawar and then to Sadda, a tribal area in Pakistan which is close to the border with Afghanistan, where there was a military academy that trained people to be mujahideen [Islamic fighters]. From there I moved to a military academy in Torkham in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, I was in the same class as [Bali bomber] Ali Imron. In total, I was away for five years from 1991 to 1995.
We learned everything at the military academy to train us to be mujahideen, such as how to use weapons, map reading and bomb making. We practised blowing up bombs in areas where there were no people, like in caves or on hillsides, so that there would not be any fatalities.
We also wanted to make sure that no goats were accidentally killed because lots of people tend goats in Afghanistan.
When I finished my military training in 1995, I went to the Philippines to join the Moro Islamic Liberation Front because I supported their cause as a Muslim.
From 1995 to 2000, I lived at Camp Abubakar in the Bangsamoro region in the Philippines, but the camp was captured by the Philippine Army in July 2000 and I was told to leave because I looked like I came from the Middle East.
My family is originally from Yemen, although I am the fourth generation of my family to be born in Indonesia. My face didn’t look like the people in Moro.
In December 2000, I went back to Indonesia and stayed with Dulmatin [a JI member and one of the most wanted men in Southeast Asia who was nicknamed “the Genius” because of his expertise in electronics for bombs]. Dulmatin asked me to go to Jakarta for work. He had a job selling cars and he said I could also look for work there, which is how I became involved in the Christmas Eve church bombings.
Indonesian police officers provide security outside Jakarta’s main cathedral during morning mass on Christmas Day, December 25, 2000, following a spate of deadly Christmas Eve bomb attacks against Christian churches [File: Reuters]
AJ: You admitted to mixing the chemicals for the bombs used in the Bali bombing in 2002 and the Christmas Eve church bombings in 2000. But you also said you didn’t know what the bombs would be used for. Where did you think the bombs would be planted?
Patek: I did not mix the bombs for the church bombings, I only knew about the bombs at the time of delivery. It was Eid al-Fitr [the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan] and Dulmatin said, “Let’s go home to Pemalang for the holiday and drop off some things along the way.”
We kept stopping at churches, although I did not get out of the car. Every time we stopped at a church, I grew more suspicious that we were dropping off bombs because the packages were packed in laptop bags.
I was sentenced for the bombings even though I did not make the bombs or get out of the car because I was there and I didn’t do anything to stop it. Dulmatin then asked me to go on a trip to Bali in October 2002. We went into a house which was already full of bomb making equipment.
A general view of the scene of a bomb blast at Kuta, on the Indonesian island of Bali, in this October 17, 2002 photo, taken five days after explosions in a popular night spot killed 202 people [File: Reuters]
I met with [JI members] Imam Samudra, Mukhlas, Idris and Dr Azahari. Imam Samudra said that they wanted revenge for the occupation of Palestine and the attack on Jenin [by Israeli forces in 2002 which killed more than 50 Palestinians as well as 23 Israeli soldiers], so they wanted to bomb Westerners in nightclubs in Bali. He ushered me into one of the rooms in the house where all the ingredients to make the bombs had been prepared.
I told them, if we wanted to get revenge for the atrocities committed against Muslims in Palestine, we should go to Palestine and not kill Westerners in Indonesia. I asked them, “What is the relationship between these people who will be victims and your motive of revenge for Muslims in Palestine?”
I told them that if they wanted to kill Westerners in large numbers using a one-tonne bomb, it would not just kill the people in front of it. It would explode everywhere. I told them that it would kill lots of other people who were not their target.
A Palestinian woman gestures on top of her house in the destroyed Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, following what became known as the Battle of Jenin in April 2002 [File: Reuters]
I said that a bomb would also likely cause Muslim casualties. I asked them, “Who will take responsibility in the next world [paradise] if there are Muslim victims because of this bomb?”
Imam Samudra said that, on the day of judgement, everyone would be judged individually for their actions based on their intentions.
I felt that there was no way I could refuse. Imam Samudra had locked the front door of the house so that no one could leave.
So I did it, and made the last 50kg [110lbs] of the bomb.
AJ: More than 200 people died in Bali as a result of the bomb you helped to make. How do you feel about killing so many people?
Patek: I felt guilty when I mixed the materials for the bomb and I felt I was sinning. I felt I was breaking Indonesian law but, more than that, I felt it was a sin against God.
A Balinese mother and son mourn in front of the Bali Bombing Memorial during commemorative services in Kuta, Bali, Indonesia in 2004 [File: Bea Beawiharta/CP/Reuters]
AJ: Do you consider yourself to be a mass murderer?
Patek: Yes. I feel that I am a murderer and a sinner.
I have apologised to the victims of the Bali bombing several times and met with the families of the victims of the bombing, too. I told them I was sorry. Everyone who has met with me in person has forgiven me. When I meet victims, I say, “I am Umar Patek and I was involved in the Bali bombing,” then I explain why I was there, and apologise.
Some people don’t want to meet me and don’t want to forgive me, like people from Australia. That is their right, but my responsibility as a Muslim, and someone who has done wrong, is to apologise. I don’t know if I will be forgiven, only God knows that.
I did not say sorry to get out of prison early, but everything is always wrong in other people’s eyes. If I say sorry, people say I am pretending and it is a strategic choice. If I didn’t apologise, people would say I was arrogant.
AJ: Did you agree with the 20-year prison sentence that you were given?
Patek: I accepted it at the time. There is nothing fair in this life on Earth, justice will only come in the hereafter.
Umar Patek sits in the courtroom during his trial in Jakarta in February 2012 [File: Enny Nuraheni/Reuters]
AJ: Your release from prison was highly controversial, particularly in Australia, as you only served 11 years of your 20-year sentence. Should you have been freed?
Patek: I fulfilled all the criteria according to Indonesian law to qualify for release in 2022. I had also been very opposed to the idea of the Bali bombing from the beginning. The witnesses at my trial all said the same, which is why I was sentenced to 20 years in prison [only]. The central people in the Bali bombing were sentenced to death or died in other ways like Dulmatin, who was shot by the police.
From left to right: Convicted Bali bombers Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Mukhlas, also known as Ali Ghufron, as seen in Nusakambangan prison in October 2008. The three were executed on November 9, 2008, for their role in the bombings [File: Reuters]
I last saw him in June 2009, when I came home from the Philippines to Jakarta. He asked me to go to a JI military academy in Aceh, but I said I didn’t want to. I had had enough. I told him I was just transiting in Indonesia to get my passport and visa to go to Afghanistan. I wanted to live there for the rest of my life and I asked him to come with me, but he refused.
He [Dulmatin] was shot in Pemulang in Tangerang [a city on the outskirts of Jakarta]. I wondered if he had repented for his sins before he died. I never heard him say he felt remorse or sadness about the victims of the Bali bombing and about people who were not the target of the bombing. He never said anything about that and never asked for forgiveness.
So I was sad for him.
The four sons of accused Bali bombing mastermind Dulmatin, alias Joko Pitono, mourn during his funeral in Petarukan village in Indonesia’s central Java province in 2010 [File: Reuters]
AJ: Is the killing of civilians ever justified?
Patek: When I was in the Philippines with the [Moro front], I lived with [the chairman] Salamat Hashim and he would often preach to us. He strongly forbade mujahideen from attacking civilians, not just Muslims but also Christians. He said that that was not allowed, and that only members of the army, or civilians who were fighting with the army, and who were also carrying weapons, were allowed to be attacked.
He once said to me, “Why do you want to wage jihad in Indonesia, who do you want to fight there? The president is Muslim, the government is Muslim, the People’s Representative Council is mainly Muslim, lots of police are Muslim, the army is full of Muslims. It is haram [forbidden] to attack them because attacking Muslims is not allowed.”
He felt that it was not right to attack people in Indonesia, and I said that at the time of the Bali bombing, but no one wanted to listen to me.
AJ: What are your thoughts on the Israel-Gaza war?
Patek: In the opening section of the 1945 Indonesian Constitution, it says that “all colonialism must be abolished in this world”.
Occupation anywhere, not just in Palestine, is not allowed.
It is Hamas’s right to take back their land. The news that they are killing babies and children is a hoax perpetrated by the Western media. Indonesia used to be occupied by the Dutch colonialists. Would you call Indonesian heroes, who fought for their independence, terrorists? The Dutch would call them terrorists, but they were just taking back their land.
A man holds a poster during a rally in support of the Palestinians in Gaza, at the National Monument in Jakarta, Indonesia, on November 5, 2023 [Dita Alangkara/AP Photo]
AJ: Are you deradicalised now?
Patek: What is radicalised? If a Christian wants to follow their religion according to the teachings of the Bible, would we call them radicalised?
I feel that the media has a false image of me as someone who is frightening and cruel. They always paint me as someone who is dangerous.
People often ask me why I don’t want to be a terrorist any more and why I am so cooperative. I also say that it is from my family. They are the ones who melted my heart and set me back to the right path.
I am the oldest of three brothers. All my family members are moderate Muslims, none of them have ever followed the same ideology I used to follow, and they have often confronted me about it over the years.
If my family had said they did not want to have anything more to do with me because of my old ideology, perhaps I would still be radical in my thinking, but fortunately they embraced me and that allowed me to change.
AJ: How do you feel about non-Muslims?
Patek: When I was a child growing up, all my neighbours were Chinese Christians. I always used to play with them. Since I was young, I have always been around non-Muslims.
I don’t hate Christians. My wife’s extended family are Christians and, when we got married, we had no problems and took photos together on our wedding day.
When I married my wife, I invited all of her family to the wedding at Camp Abubakar. In the beginning, they didn’t want to come because they were worried we would cut their heads off. I told them that the mujahideen did not harm civilians, and that we only attacked the police and the army. I said that I guaranteed their safety.
In the Moro tradition, when someone got married, mujahideen would shoot their weapons in the air to celebrate. But because my wife’s Christian family was there, I told my fellow mujahideen, “Don’t do the traditional celebration because we have Christians coming and it will scare them.
The Palestinian health ministry reports that five people were killed by Israeli forces in Nur Al Shams refugee camp.
At least nine Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry, as violence soars amid Israel’s continuing assault on the besieged Gaza Strip.
At least 75 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or settlers in the West Bank since the Gaza war erupted on October 7, according to ministry figures.
The Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces killed seven Palestinian during raids on the Nur Al Shams refugee camp in the town of Tulkarem on Thursday.
Health officials said one of the victims was a 16-year-old boy.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it was “continuing to operate in the [Nur Al Shams] camp to thwart terror activity”.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics treated 25 people in Nur Shams, the majority for gunshot wounds.
“Ambulances are being detained by occupying forces with injured people inside,” the organisation said in a statement.
Two other Palestinians were killed in separate incidents in the Dheisheh refugee camp and the town of Budrus, the ministry said.
Israel began its assault on Gaza after the Palestinian group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, launched a brutal attack on southern Israel, killing at least 1,400 people and taking more than 200 others captive.
Israel has since imposed a “complete siege” on Gaza, cutting off access to water, food, electricity and fuel for the strip’s 2.3 million inhabitants and relentlessly bombarding the territory. At least 3,785 people have been killed in the assault, according to Palestinian health authorities.
Protests across the West Bank — which grew more intense following reports of an explosion at a hospital in Gaza that Palestinian authorities say killed hundreds of people on Tuesday — have also targeted the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has long faced criticism for its policy of security coordination with Israel.
PA security forces used tear gas and stun grenades to dispel protestors who chanted for the ouster of President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday.
Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank have arrested more than 600 people since the fighting began. Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem have also warned about increasing harassment by Israeli settlers and security forces.
A mural in memory of Al Jazeera’s slain journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, has been inaugurated in the Palestinian city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
The municipality of Bethlehem unveiled the mural on Wednesday, saying that it was a tribute to Abu Akleh and her reporting on the Palestinian cause.
The ceremony took place on al-Mahd Street in Bethlehem in the presence of Abu Akleh’s relatives and colleagues, as well as local officials.
Speakers at the event stressed the need for justice for Abu Akleh, who was killed by an Israeli soldier on May 11, 2022, while she was reporting from Jenin. No one has been held accountable for her killing.
Walid al-Omari, the head of Al Jazeera’s bureau in Ramallah, said the mural conveyed a moral message.
“We’re thankful to the Bethlehem municipality for this work, and we’ll continue to follow up on Shireen’s case so that we can achieve justice,” al-Omari said.
Waild al-Omari, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Ramallah, speaks at the memorial event [Ghassan Banoora/Al Jazeera]
Abu Akleh’s brother, Tony, echoed that message.
“This mural is in memory of Shireen, especially in the city of Bethlehem, from where her origins come,” said Tony. He went on to explain the close relationship between Shireen Abu Akleh and the “city of Christ”, as he described it.
“This mural is not only for Shireen, but rather in memory of every martyr who was killed at the hands of the Israeli occupation,” Tony said.
For his part, Hanna Hanania, Bethlehem’s mayor, said that Abu Akleh represented the city, as well as Jerusalem, where she was born and eventually laid to rest, and the Palestinian people as a whole because she is “a martyr of the truth” who conveyed the Palestinian cause to the world.
“It’s our duty to immortalise her name in ‘the city of peace’, Bethlehem,” Hanania said.
Bethlehem mayor Hanna Hanania said that Shireen Abu Akleh was a ‘martyr of the truth’ [Ghassan Banoora/Al Jazeera]
Nida Ibrahim, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the occupied West Bank, expressed her sadness when she first saw the mural. “For me, it was a bittersweet moment,” she said.
“It’s a reminder of the loss we endured after she was killed, both as her colleagues and as Palestinian journalists,” Ibrahim said. “A reminder that justice has not been served and that the killer is probably on the beach right now or enjoying coffee or living their life.”
“It’s really touching to see Shireen’s pictures and memorials in different places in Palestine and abroad,” Ibrahim added. “It shows the deep impact she has on people, as someone who was passionate and deeply interested in the human part of the story.”
Members of the Al Jazeera team in Palestine attend the unveiling of the mural [Ghassan Banoora/Al Jazeera]
“It’s been almost 500 days – but she’s still with us and her memory lives on and on.”
The killing of the late Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American dual nation, garnered international attention, and at first, Israel attempted to falsely accuse Palestinian fighters of fatally shooting the veteran reporter, who had been at Al Jazeera since 1997, and was renowned across the Arab world.
Deadly shooting comes after a Palestinian man shot by Israeli forces this week succumbed to his wounds on Saturday.
Two Israelis have been shot dead south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank by a suspected Palestinian gunman.
Israel’s ambulance service said two men – ages 60 and 29 – were shot near the Palestinian village of Huwara. Paramedics said the two people were targeted inside a carwash.
“Both were unconscious and had sustained gunshot wounds to their bodies,” a spokesperson for the ambulance service said.
The Israeli army spokesperson for Arabic media, Avichay Adraee, confirmed two Israelis had been killed.
#عاجل 🛑 شبهة لارتكاب عملية اطلاق نار تخريبية استهدفت عدد من المواطنين الاسرائيليين في منطقة #حوارة وأسفرت عن مقتل مواطنيْن إسرائيلييْن. قوات جيش الدفاع باشرت بملاحقة المشتبه فيهم ونشرت الحواجز في المنطقة pic.twitter.com/xroJz5rO1U
Translation: Urgent – suspected terrorist shooting attack targeted a number of Israeli citizens in Huwara, leading to the killing of two. The IDF is tracking suspects and has erected checkpoints in the area.
The situation in the West Bank has been particularly volatile over the past 15 months with stepped up deadly Israeli raids and rampages by Jewish settlers on Palestinian villages.
Huwara has been the scene of attacks by Israeli settlers and retribution in the form of Palestinian shooting attacks over the past few months.
In the area, “there has been an intensified military presence for a year now. Huwara has been a flashpoint of a lot of tension. We’ve seen a month ago Israeli settlers rampaging through Huwara during the night, burning Palestinian homes,” said Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Bethlehem.
Saturday’s shooting comes the same day a Palestinian man shot by Israeli forces earlier this week during a raid in the occupied West Bank succumbed to wounds.
Mohammed Abu Asaab was “seriously injured in the head” on Wednesday in Balata refugee camp on the outskirts of the northern West Bank city of Nablus and died Saturday, the official news agency Wafa reported.
Abu Asaab was hit during clashes that erupted when Israeli “undercover forces” surrounded a house in the camp, it said.
His death brought to 218 the number of Palestinians killed in violence this year linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Prospects of reviving US-brokered peace talks that collapsed almost a decade ago and that aimed to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, remain dim.
Qalqilya, occupied West Bank – Although he was just 14 years old, Faris Abu Samra was “a man in every sense of the word”, his father, Sharhabeel, said.
“He was older than his age. He was my companion, my heart and the mastermind at work,” Sharhabeel told Al Jazeera on Friday, a day after Israeli forces shot his son in the head during an incursion in the occupied West Bank city of Qalqilya.
Israel said its forces entered the city’s refugee camp to arrest a “suspected militant”, and residents said youngsters in the area threw rocks at the soldiers, who responded with gunfire.
The shooting marked the latest death amid a surge of Israeli attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Sharhabeel, a retired military trainer for the Palestinian police forces, said Faris helped him sell fruit when he was struggling financially.
One of the mourners at Faris Abu Samra’s funeral [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
The third child in a family of six, Faris insisted that he stop going to school to help his father.
“He told me, ‘I’m going to help you, and we’re going to solve all of our financial problems.’ He was a man of his word because, indeed, I realised that he was up to the responsibility,” Sharhabeel said.
The Abu Samra family lives in a small house, but with Faris’s help, they managed to purchase a plot of land nearby.
“He used to point to a particular corner of the land and say, ‘Here I’m going to build my own house one day,’” Sharhabeel recalled.
Qalqilya, where Faris was shot, is in the northwest part of the West Bank and is surrounded by Israel’s separation wall, a structure the United Nations considers illegal.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers since the beginning of this year now stands at 202. At least 37 of them were children, it said.
Officials have warned that 2023 is on track to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the United Nations began keeping track of fatalities in 2005.
‘Loved by everyone’
Fatima could not stop saying her younger brother’s name during the funeral procession, held on the same day Faris was killed.
“Faris, Faris, Faris,” the 16-year-old said as she screamed and cried.
Fatima recounted how she found out about Faris’s death. She said she initially had hope when her neighbours told her her brother was injured.
“I was at home. I grabbed my phone and went online to check if a video had been posted of the incident. At first, I saw a video with a boy on the floor covered in blood. It kept lagging because we have a weak connection,” Fatima told Al Jazeera.
“I thought to myself, ‘I hope it’s not Faris.’ I waited patiently for the video to load. … Then I saw the paramedics resuscitating Faris,” she said. “I saw it all. It was him.”
The body of Faris Abu Samra is carried during his funeral procession [Ayman Nobani/Al Jazeera]
Fatima crumpled to the floor. A short time later, her mother, 37-year-old Samia Nazzal, joined her.
“Faris was out to bring us some food in the evening because we were supposed to fast,” Samia told Al Jazeera.
“He told me, ‘I want to have suhoor with you, mum,’” Samia said, referring to the predawn meal to start a fast.
Translation: A video from Qalqilya shows families assembling in a main street where live ammunition shots are being fired by occupation forces, resulting in the death of a child.
“He said he would be back soon. But my darling Faris never came back,” she said.
“Everyone loved him. … Congratulations to him on his martyrdom.”
According to Faris’s uncle Ashraf Mutlaq, Faris had “an appetite for life” and died after he had taken his electric bike to the Qalqilya Zoo. It was near the zoo where the Israeli soldiers entered the city.
“He didn’t want to die,” Mutlaq said. “They killed him in cold blood.”
Israeli forces have regularly shot children during incursions into Palestinian towns and cities.
Last month, two-and-a-half-year-old Mohammed al-Tamimi died in a Tel Aviv hospital after being shot by Israeli forces in the village of Nabi Saleh, northwest of Ramallah in the West Bank.
Like Faris, the toddler was shot in the head with live ammunition.
Palestinian children are also routinely abused emotionally and physically when held in Israeli detention, a recent report by Save the Children found. The charity said some former child detainees reported violence of a sexual nature while many others were beaten, handcuffed and blindfolded in small cages.
It said Palestinian children are the only ones in the world to experience systematic prosecution in military courts.
Most are often held in administrative detention, Israel’s widely criticised practice of holding Palestinians on secret evidence without charge or trial.
Israeli forces raided Bethlehem and arrested the suspected gunman and two others after a shooting attack near a checkpoint.
A Palestinian gunman opened fire on a car in the occupied West Bank, wounding three Israelis, including two girls, Israeli authorities said. The suspect fled the scene of the shooting, but he was later captured.
In a statement, the army said the car came under fire from a vehicle close to the Tekoa checkpoint, near the city of Bethlehem on Sunday.
According to Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service, a 35-year-old man wounded in the shooting was in serious but stable condition. His daughters, aged 9 and 14, were lightly wounded by flying debris. The family lives in the occupied West Bank settlement of Nokdim, according to Israeli media reports.
Israeli forces raided Bethlehem and apprehended the suspected gunman and two other suspects. They also seized the suspected gunman’s car, which contained an M16 assault rifle in it.
At least 15 Palestinians were injured in the raid, local media reported. Haitham Al-Hadri, director of Beit Jala Governmental Hospital, told local news agency Maan that the wounded who arrived at the hospital all had minor injuries.
Several Palestinian political factions said the shooting represents “the natural response to the [Israeli] occupation’s crimes and an affirmation of the continuation of the confrontation”.
In a press release, the Popular Resistance Committees said the attack was a natural Palestinian response to the “crimes of the Zionist enemy against our people, our land, and our sanctities”.
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right government have promised there will be no let-up in settlement construction.
Tensions have soared across the occupied West Bank in recent months amid near-nightly Israeli raids into Palestinian towns, sparking the worst fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank in nearly two decades.
Nearly 195 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the start of this year, according to the Palestinian health ministry. At least 27 Israelis have been killed in separate attacks during the same period.
Israeli forces have killed at least nine Palestinians and wounded 20 during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian officials said an elderly woman was among the dead in the latest raid since Israel intensified such operations last year.
An Israeli army statement said its forces conducted a counterterrorism raid to apprehend “a terror squad” belonging to the Islamic Jihad armed group.
Islamic Jihad confirmed battling Israeli forces as they carried out the unusually deep raid into Jenin’s refugee camp. The death toll – the highest in Jenin in years – drew a warning from the group that its truce with Israel, called after a brief exchange of fire across Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip last year, could be in danger.
During the raid, local youths threw rocks at army vehicles from the entrances to the camp’s cramped alleyways. As the Israeli troops withdrew and the smoke and tear gas cleared, civilians streamed into the camp to check on casualties. A two-storey building that had been the focus of the fighting was heavily damaged.
There were no Israeli casualties.
Medics said the situation in the refugee camp was critical and Israeli forces were stopping ambulances from reaching people who were wounded.
The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces during raids in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem in January has risen to at least 29 people, including five minors. At least 15 of those killed were from Jenin. More than 170 Palestinians were killed in such raids in 2022, many of them civilians.
Benjamin Netanyahu returns as Israeli prime minister for a sixth time, despite being embroiled in a corruption trial.
Netanyahu’s government – the most right-wing in the country’s history – was sworn in on Thursday. It includes ultranationalist and ultraorthodox Jewish parties.
Some ministers in the new government have pledged to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, while others have openly opposed Palestinian statehood.
Here is a list of the top members of Netanyahu’s cabinet:
Parliament Speaker Amir Ohana
Former minister Amir Ohana is Israel’s first openly gay speaker of parliament.
A member of parliament since 2015, the Likud party member is the third most senior figure after the president and prime minister, according to the country’s constitution.
In 2019, he became the first gay man to hold a ministerial post when he was selected as Netanyahu’s justice minister.
Defence Minister Yoav Galant
A member of Netanyahu’s far-right Likud party, Galant, 64, began his military service as a navy frogman and had been slated to become head of the army in 2011.
But he stepped aside over allegations that he carried out building work on his home without a permit.
Since entering politics in 2015, he has served as minister for education, housing and immigration – and has been a prominent backer of Israel’s settlements, regarded as illegal under international law.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
An illegal settler in the occupied West Bank who heads the hardline Religious Zionism Party, Smotrich will lead the treasury under a rotation deal with Aryeh Deri from the religious Shas Party.
After his recent remarks that Israel would prosper if it embraced Biblical values raised concerns, Smotrich clarified that he champions free markets.
Smotrich, 42, opposes Palestinian statehood. In the past, he has agitated against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, condemned LGBTQ activists and called the justice system too liberal. He now says he will serve all Israelis. He previously served as transport minister.
His new cabinet duties include a role within the defence ministry overseeing illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, which he wants to see expanded and, eventually, annexed by Israel.
Foreign Minister Eli Cohen
As intelligence minister in a previous Netanyahu government, Cohen, 50, has supported United States-sponsored normalisation deals between Israel and several Arab countries. He is a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir
An illegal settler in the occupied West Bank who heads the far-right Jewish Power Party, Ben-Gvir secured an expanded cabinet ministry in charge of police. He has promised to focus on law and order for all citizens, but he favours freer open-fire regulations for Israeli security forces.
Jewish Power Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir is a prominent far-right face [File: Corinna Kern/Reuters]
Ben-Gvir, 46, opposes Palestinian statehood and advocates the dismantling of the interim Palestinian Authority government.
He once belonged to Kahane Chai, a Jewish armed group that is blacklisted in Israel and the United States. He has since disavowed some Kahane views.
In 2007, he was convicted of incitement against Palestinians and support for terrorism. He is now a lawyer.
Interior and Health Minister Aryeh Deri
Deri, 63, an ultraorthodox rabbi, is the veteran leader of Shas, which draws support from religious Jews of Middle Eastern descent. His appointment to the new Netanyahu government has been challenged in Israel’s Supreme Court given his conviction for tax fraud – without prison time – last year.
In 1999, Deri was sentenced to three years in jail for taking bribes. He returned to politics in 2012. Under his coalition deal, he will become finance minister in two years.
Shas, along with another ultraorthodox party, United Torah Judaism, has long raised concerns among secular liberals by demanding welfare benefits and military draft exemptions for its constituents.
Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf
A leader of United Torah Judaism, which draws support from religious Jews of European descent, 72-year-old Golfknopf is a newcomer to national politics. He made headlines when he denied knowledge of a crisis over a shortage of housing that has priced out many Israelis.
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer
A former ambassador to Washington, Dermer was key to forging Israeli ties with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020 under a series of normalisation deals brokered by the US.
The brothers were fixing a tire after their vehicle broke down when an Israeli settler ‘deliberately’ ran a car into them, local media reported.
Two Palestinian brothers have been killed after an Israeli settler ran them over with his car near a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank, according to the Wafa news agency.
The two brothers, Mohammed and Muhannad Mutair, were “deliberately” run over at the Zaatara checkpoint, south of Nablus, the official Palestinian news agency said on Saturday.
In a press statement, the director of the Jerusalem Governorate office in Qalandiya, Zakaria Fayala, said Mohammed’s body was transferred to a hospital in Nablus, while Muhannad was transferred to Hadassah Hospital before his death was announced.
According to Fayala, the two brothers were travelling with three other siblings, running errands for their sister’s wedding next Friday, when their car broke down. They pulled over to fix one of the tires, before the settler’s speeding car “deliberately” ran into the group, resulting in the immediate death of Mohammed.
The settler then fled the scene, Fayala said.
The Two #Palestinian brothers Mohammad and Mohanad Mtair, from occupied #Jerusalem, were killed after being run over by an Israeli settler’s vehicle in #Nablus, northern occupied West Ban.
Muhannad’s feet had been amputated by the car and he passed away not long after reaching Hadassa Hospital in critical condition, according to the Maan news agency.
Qalandiya, where the brothers lived, has announced a general strike for Sunday.
A spokesman for Fatah, the largest faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization, described the incident as “a new heinous crime committed by fascism”.
“The Israeli occupation is determined to commit crimes, and our people are determined to respond and defend themselves,” Munther al-Hayek said in a statement.
Last month, two other brothers, Jawad and Dhafr Rimawi, were killed by Israeli forces after a raid in their neighbouring village.
Ramallah, occupied West Bank – The Israeli army has killed three Palestinian men during a raid in Jenin, the latest people to die in a months-long Israeli campaign of near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinian ministry of health identified the three killed on Thursday morning as Siqdi Zakarneh, 29, Atta Shalabi, 46, and Tareq al-Damaj, 29.
The ministry announced their death at approximately 5:30am (02:30 GMT).
Zakarneh and al-Damaj were from the Jenin refugee camp, while Shalabi was from the town of Qabatya on the southern outskirts of Jenin.
At least two other Palestinian men were injured by Israeli fire during the raid, including one in serious condition, local journalists told Al Jazeera.
A general strike across Jenin governorate has been announced to mourn the three men, with schools, businesses and stores shut.
The Israeli army, including special forces, raided Jenin and its refugee camp at dawn on Thursday and arrested several wanted Palestinian resistance fighters, during which clashes broke out between Israeli forces and armed Palestinian men.
According to local journalist Mujahed al-Saadi, one of the men killed – Sidqi Zakarneh – was a fighter, while Shalabi and al-Damaj were civilians.
Al-Saadi, as well as local media, said Zakarneh was affiliated with the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade – the armed wing of the Fatah political party but it remains unclear whether Zakarneh was engaged in fighting when he was shot.
“Eyewitnesses said Zakarneh was shot in his car. The people who took him out of the car said they did not find any weapons on him,” Al Jazeera producer Ali al-Samoudi, who is based in Jenin, said.
The second man who was killed, Atta Shalabi, was driving by with his brother on their way to work when they found Zakarneh killed in his car.
“Atta attempted to help Zakarneh but as soon as he approached, the Israeli army shot him,” said al-Samoudi, based on information received from Shalabi’s brother, Mohammad.
Shalabi was a labourer working in Israel, according to his brother. He had a work permit and was on his way to the Jalameh checkpoint in Jenin when he was killed.
The context surrounding the killing of the third man, al-Damaj, remains unclear.
After the incident, the Israeli military said that its forces had been conducting “counterterrorism” activity near Jenin when its soldiers were “targeted with direct fire and responded with live fire” during one arrest raid.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority (PA) presidency, said in a statement that the “Israeli occupation government is trying to ignite the region by continuing its crimes against the Palestinian people”, adding that the frequent killings of Palestinians are creating “an explosive situation”.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Society said in a statement that two men were arrested during the raid – Bajes Kayed and Khaled Misbah Abu al-Hayja – both former prisoners in Israeli jails.
Local media reported that Israeli forces also shot at Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances during the raid. Videos shared online showed the aftermath of their targeting, with several bullet holes showing on the windshield and inside the ambulance.
Four Palestinians killed in less than 24 hours
The killing of the three men comes less than 24 hours after the Israeli army killed a Palestinian man from the town of Silwad on the outskirts of Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank.
The man was identified as 32-year-old Mujahed al-Najjar. Residents told Al Jazeera al-Najjar was killed in a firefight with the Israeli army in the nearby village of Deir Dibwan following a manhunt.
Israeli authorities said they believe that al-Najjar was behind several shootings in recent days at the Ofra military base, which was built on Silwad lands and stands at its entrance.
On Thursday morning, the Israeli army raided Silwad and arrested al-Najjar’s father and brother.
Tensions in the occupied West Bank and Israel have been on the boil since last year.
Israeli army raids and killings of Palestinians across the occupied West Bank have increased and happen on a near-daily basis, in parallel with a rise in Palestinian armed attacks, as well as an increase in settler attacks against Palestinians.
The raids have been particularly focused on the northern occupied West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus, where Palestinian armed resistance is growing.
More than 200 Palestinians, including more than 50 children, have been killed by Israel in the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip in 2022 – the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2006.
Mohammad Souf, 18, stabbed several Israelis at the Ariel settlement’s industrial entrance in the occupied West Bank.
A Palestinian killed at least two Israelis and wounded four others in an attack in a settlement in the occupied West Bank before he was shot and killed by Israeli security personnel, Israeli paramedics and Palestinian officials said.
The Magen David Adom paramedic service said that two people were killed in the settlement of Ariel. The four wounded were hospitalised in a serious condition.
It was the latest attack in a wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence this year that has seen near-daily Israeli raids on the occupied West Bank, in which Palestinians are arrested or killed, as well as attacks by Palestinians against Israelis.
The Israeli military said the Palestinian, named by the Palestinian health ministry as 18-year-old Mohammad Souf, first attacked the Israelis at the entrance to the settlement’s industrial zone, then proceeded to a nearby petrol station and stabbed more people there. The army said the man then stole a car, intentionally collided with a car on a nearby highway and struck another person, before fleeing the scene on foot.
It said the attacker was shot by a soldier, and that troops were searching the area for additional suspects.
Amateur video aired on Israeli television appeared to show the suspected attacker running down a highway and collapsing to the ground after he was shot. The Palestinian health ministry later said that Souf was from the nearby village of Hares.
Israeli forces raided Souf’s family home and, according to Palestinian media outlets, physically attacked family members.
No Palestinian faction has claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was hailed by spokespeople for Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In a statement, Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanou said that the operation demonstrated “the ability of our people to continue their revolution and defend Al-Aqsa Mosque from daily incursions”.
The left-wing PFLP said the attack was in response “to the policy of field executions pursued by the [Israeli] occupation and its security services against our people, the last of which will not be the Palestinian girl Fulla Masalmeh who was killed in Beitunia yesterday”.
Deadliest year
Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid sent condolences to the families of the Israelis killed in the attack and said Israel was “fighting terror nonstop and full force”.
“Our security forces are working around the clock to protect Israeli citizens and harm terror infrastructure everywhere, all the time,” he said.
This year’s surge in Israeli-Palestinian violence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem has killed at least 25 people on the Israeli side and more than 130 Palestinians, making 2022 the deadliest year since 2006.
Israel says its almost nightly arrest raids in the West Bank are needed to dismantle armed networks at a time when Palestinian security forces are unable or unwilling to do so.
The Palestinian Authority says the raids undermine their security forces and are aimed at cementing Israel’s open-ended 55-year illegal occupation of territories they want for their hoped-for state.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been rounded up in such raids, with many placed in so-called administrative detention, which allows Israel to hold them indefinitely without trial or charge.
Protesters held banners in solidarity with victims of Israeli violence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Khan Yunis, Gaza — Thousands of people in the besieged Gaza Strip have protested in solidarity with fellow Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem amid a wave of violence by Israeli forces.
The rallies on Friday, called by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, began from mosques in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza and Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, where the demonstrators carried banners that read: “Palestine brings us together, Jerusalem is ours, We will defend Jerusalem with our hands and souls.”
The protesters held banners of solidarity with the people of Jerusalem and pictures of young men killed by the Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
“The West Bank and Jerusalem are entering in a new phase that shows Israeli occupation that armed struggle is the choice of our people,” he said.
He said daily incursions by Israeli settlers into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, in the old city of Jerusalem, and other recent Israeli provocations at the site were only driving Palestinian resistance.
“Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque are the core of the conflict and for their sake our people rose up throughout their history,” he said.
“The West Bank is rising up again, confirming that the path towards liberation and sweeping the occupier is through the barrel of a gun.”
Israeli forces have been carrying out near-daily raids in the occupied West Bank in recent months, largely focused on the towns of Jenin and Nablus, where a new wave of Palestinian armed resistance is emerging.
Meanwhile, since the beginning of the year, at least 160 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, including 51 Palestinians during Israel’s three-day assault on Gaza in August, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Tensions have also been high in occupied East Jerusalem since Saturday evening after Israeli police locked down the Shuafat camp on the pretext of searching for a Palestinian suspected of killing a female soldier.
On Wednesday, businesses went on strike and educational institutions closed in occupied East Jerusalem in solidarity with the besieged people in the Shuafat camp and with the Anata, Ras Khamis, Ras Shehadeh and Dahiyat al-Salam neighbourhoods, where the Israeli police have imposed strict restrictions on residents’ movements.
A woman participant in the protest holds a banner that reads ‘Al-Aqsa is for us, not for the darkness’ [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera]
In Khan Yunis, Abu Sufyan Muhammad, 60, told Al Jazeera he was protesting to show his support for the people of the occupied territories in light of the recent wave of violence.
“We will not be silent about the Israeli actions against us. We are one people and one suffering, and our protest today is an affirmation of our unity in the face of the occupation,” he said.
Muhammad called on all Arab and Islamic countries to intervene to stop repeated Israeli aggression.
“The situation has become unbearable. Enough of the silence and humiliation. The occupation does what it wants without accountability.”
