In this article, Amira Hass — the Haaretz correspondent for the occupied territories — documents the intensifying violence by the Israel Armed Forces (IDF) against Palestinians in the West Bank. Combined with horrific attacks by right-wing settlers, the IDF assaults have resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,000 Palestinians, while injuring more than 7,000, over the last two years. Palestinians in the West Bank have also been effectively banned from cultivating their land.
This article documents the Israeli government’s recently unveiled plan to force 600,000 displaced Palestinians into a “humanitarian city” to be established on a strip of land where the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, once stood. It aptly describes such a plan for what it really is: creating a concentration camp designed to crowd displaced Palestinians in a tiny area with the intention of eventually forcing them out of their destroyed homeland. “It’s forced displacement on pain of death or starvation, as a prelude to expulsion.”
After months of U.S. opposition to a ceasefire in the war on Gaza, the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted a U.S.-sponsored ceasefire plan in a near-unanimous vote on June 10. Yet no end to the war is in sight. Israel’s relentless assault grinds on. The number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has passed 37,000 with over 85,000 wounded. On June 12, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, warned, “A significant proportion of Gaza’s population is now facing catastrophic hunger and famine-like conditions.”