How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?

Special How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?
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Israel’s military operation in Gaza has drawn public condemnation, with members of the UN Security Council recently demanding an immediate ceasefire. (AP)
Special How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?
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Israeli soldiers stand next to a tank during a military operation in the north of the Gaza Strip on December 19, 2023. (AFP)
Special How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?
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Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Dec. 16, 2023. (AP)
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Updated 22 December 2023
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How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?

How is the Gaza war working out for Israel?
  • With hostages still in captivity and Hamas commanders at large, some think IDF has failed to achieve its objectives
  • Global support for Israel’s actions has steadily ebbed, with even ally US voicing concern over civilian harm

LONDON: It is now 10 weeks since the Israel Defense Forces mounted their first raids against Gaza in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.

“We are striking our enemies with unprecedented might,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis in a televised address on Friday, Oct. 13.

However, things quickly began to go wrong for the much-vaunted IDF and operation “Swords of Iron.”




Palestinians salvage belongings from the destroyed Al-Gatshan family building after an Israeli strike in Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, on Dec. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

The world, which until that moment had felt only sympathy for Israel after the slaughter of its civilians during the Hamas-led rampage, was suddenly confronted with an alternative, equally disturbing narrative.

Television screens were filled with footage of weeping, wounded Palestinian children, and scenes of destruction across Gaza.

Since then, global support for Israel’s actions in Gaza has steadily ebbed away, with even the US, its greatest ally, becoming increasingly alarmed at the cost to civilians of the disproportionate use of force.

And, even as the IDF has doubled down on the ferocity of its response, it is failing to achieve many of its stated objectives.

Very few top Hamas commanders have been captured or killed, and only some of the hostages taken by the group on Oct. 7 have been released — and these thanks only to mediation efforts by Qatar and Egypt.




Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Dec. 16, 2023. (AP)

Worse, Israel appears to have lost sight of the principle of proportionate reciprocal justice, enshrined in the Hebrew Bible as “an eye for an eye.”

The latest figures show that on Oct. 7 Hamas killed a total of 1,139 people — 695 of them Israeli civilians, including 36 children, 373 members of the security forces, and 71 foreigners.

According to the latest figures released by the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, of whom around 70 percent are women and children. 

The UN reports that many others “are missing, presumably buried under the rubble.”

Indeed, critics say the war in Gaza has exposed “Swords of Iron” to be less a precision tool and more an indiscriminately wielded blunt instrument.

That impression was reinforced on Dec. 15 when jittery IDF soldiers gunned down three Israeli hostages who approached them, calling for help in Hebrew and waving a white cloth.

On Dec. 19, Asa Kasher, an Israeli philosopher and the lead author of the IDF’s code of ethics, spoke out about the killings. “You don’t even have to kill a terrorist if he comes towards you with his hands raised,” he told journalists.




Prof. Asa Kasher (middle), together with Prof. Shikma Bressler (left) and General Uri Sagi, attend a meeting in Haifa on October 24, 2023, to talk about leadership in war time, amid Israel's war on Gaza. (Shutterstock)

“A fighter from Tsahal (the IDF) must know that he is a soldier of Israel, and that this makes him a defender of the sanctity of human life.”

But asked about the loss of civilian life in Gaza, Kasher told Arab News: “Israel is not losing the moral high ground. The world lacks a proper understanding of how a military force acts on grounds of proportionality considerations. Causing collateral damage is possible without violating any law or custom.”

And yet what appears to be the IDF’s disregard for the sanctity of life in Gaza is proving discomforting for many of Israel’s Western allies.

At the outset, the Biden administration backed Israel unreservedly. But even during a visit to Tel Aviv on Oct. 19, shortly after the Hamas attack, Biden had a word of warning for the Israeli government.




US President Joe Biden (L) meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (AFP/File)

Israel’s “rage,” he said, was understandable. “But I caution this: While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the US. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

The US government has ratcheted up its criticism ever since. In a speech on Nov. 18, Biden said that while “we stand firmly with the Israeli people,” he was “heartbroken by the images out of Gaza and the deaths of many thousands of civilians, including children. Every innocent Palestinian life lost is a tragedy.”

And, even as the world’s attention has been focused on events in Gaza, on Dec. 5 the US condemned the activities of Israeli settlers in the West Bank where, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 300 attacks on Palestinians, including at least eight murders, have been recorded since Oct. 7.

“We have underscored to the Israeli government the need to do more to hold accountable extremist settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank,” said Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, as Washington imposed unprecedented travel bans on extremist settlers.

Five days later, on Dec. 12, Biden made his strongest public criticism yet.




Pro-Palestine Jewish activists gather in New York City's Grand Central Station to participate in a Global Strike for Gaza on December 18, 2023. (Getty Images/AFP)

After Oct. 7, he said, Israel had the support of the US and most of the world, but “they’re starting to lose that support by (the) indiscriminate bombing that takes place.”

The president also directly attacked the Israeli cabinet. Netanyahu “has to change this government,” he said. “This government in Israel is making it very difficult.”

It is not even certain that Israel is winning the war. A survey carried out in Gaza and the West Bank between Nov. 22 and Dec. 2 found that support for Hamas is actually rising.

The poll, by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, also found that 90 percent want to see the resignation of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in effect undermining Netanyahu’s divide-and-conquer policy aimed at preventing a two-state solution.




Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas (C) holds hands with Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo (R) and Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez during their meeting in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on November 23, 2023. (POOL / AFP)

Regardless of whether it is winning the war, in the eyes of the world, Israel is most definitely losing the moral high ground.

On Dec. 6, international concern about the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza led Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, to invoke Article 99 of the UN Charter for the first time in his six-year tenure, to appeal to the Security Council to “help avert a humanitarian catastrophe and appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared.”

The 15-member council was due to vote on Dec. 18 on a resolution, drafted by the UAE, calling for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” and expressing “deep concern at the dire and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation” in Gaza, and its “grave impact” on civilians.

The vote has been repeatedly delayed amid negotiations to accommodate Washington’s concerns — itself a breakthrough as previously the US would have vetoed such a resolution out of hand.




US Deputy Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood (2nd R) raises his hand during a United Nations Security Council after the vote about a ceasefire in Gaza at UN headquarters in New York on December 8, 2023. (AFP/File)

And as the debate at the UN continues, the extent of the world’s opprobrium is becoming ever more evident.

On Tuesday, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, pleading on behalf of “the victims of the indiscriminate Israeli actions,” pointed out that Israel had dropped some 29,000 bombs on Gaza, similar to the total number dropped on Iraq in the whole of 2003 by the US and UK.

For Mohamed Issa Abushahab, the UAE’s permanent representative to the UN, the fact that 2023 had already been the deadliest year in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “should be a wakeup call that the current status quo cannot be allowed to continue, and this starts with the current situation in Gaza.”

Other countries, including China, France, Brazil and the UK, have lined up to express similar sentiments.

However, senior members of Israel’s political and military establishment continue to robustly reject criticism of the IDF’s tactics in Gaza.

“The IDF is performing very well in Gaza,” Colonel (res.) Gabi Siboni of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security told Arab News. 




Israeli soldiers are seen during a ground operation in the northern Gaza Strip on Dec. 15, 2023. (AP)

Contrary to international criticism, he said “the IDF is conducting operations very strictly according to the norms of international law — I know that first hand.

“The IDF is having to fight in a situation where the civilian population is held hostage by Hamas, but is doing its best even in that extreme situation to minimize the collateral damage in Gaza.”

Siboni, a colonel in the IDF reserve who took part in all of Israel’s wars since the mid-1970s and now serves as a consultant to the IDF, also dismissed claims about the number of Palestinian casualties as propaganda.

“These numbers have nothing to do with reality,” he said. “These are Hamas numbers. The ministry of health in Gaza is a Hamas entity, so I don’t know why people even bother quoting them.”

But he makes a bleak prediction.

“Nobody should imagine that there will be a position where we put a flag on top of a hill and say: ‘Okay, we won, and now Gaza will be peaceful and safe.’ It will not happen.

“The reality is that we are going to be fighting in Gaza for years to come, until we eliminate the Hamas presence to make sure that what happened on Oct. 7 will not happen again.”

It is a prediction that ties in with Netanyahu’s own warning on Oct. 13 — that “this is only the beginning.”

But Israel’s disproportionate response to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7 may yet prove to be the beginning of the end for the government of the Israeli leader who once enjoyed a reputation as “Mr Security.”

 


Hezbollah says launched drones at ‘sensitive military targets’ in Tel Aviv

Hezbollah says launched drones at ‘sensitive military targets’ in Tel Aviv
Updated 11 sec ago
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Hezbollah says launched drones at ‘sensitive military targets’ in Tel Aviv

Hezbollah says launched drones at ‘sensitive military targets’ in Tel Aviv

BEIRUT, Lebanon: Lebanon’s Hezbollah said it launched drones at “sensitive military targets” in Tel Aviv on Tuesday evening, after deadly Israeli strikes in Beirut and as news of a ceasefire deal was announced.
“In response to the targeting of the capital Beirut and the massacres committed by the Israeli enemy against civilians,” Hezbollah launched “drones at a group of sensitive military targets in the city of Tel Aviv and its suburbs,” the Iran-backed group said in a statement.
 

 


What does the US-brokered truce ending Israel-Hezbollah fighting include?

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024. (AP)
Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024. (AP)
Updated 14 min 32 sec ago
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What does the US-brokered truce ending Israel-Hezbollah fighting include?

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh, in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024. (AP)
  • The Lebanese army would deploy troops to south of the Litani to have around 5,000 soldiers there, including at 33 posts along the border with Israel, a Lebanese security source told Reuters

BEIRUT: Israel and Lebanese armed group Hezbollah are set to implement a ceasefire early on Wednesday as part of a US-proposed deal for a 60-day truce to end more than a year of hostilities.
The text of the deal has not been published and Reuters has not seen a draft.
US President Joe Biden announced the deal, saying it was designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities. Israel’s security cabinet has approved it and it will be put to the whole cabinet for review. Lebanon Prime Minister Najib Mikati welcomed the deal, which Hezbollah approved last week.
The agreement, negotiated by US mediator Amos Hochstein, is five pages long and includes 13 sections, according to a senior Lebanese political source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Here is a summary of its key provisions.

HALT TO HOSTILITIES
The halt to hostilities is set to begin at 4 a.m local time (0200 GMT) on Wednesday, Biden announced, with both sides expected to cease fire by Wednesday morning.
The senior Lebanese source said Israel was expected to “stop carrying out any military operations against Lebanese territory, including against civilian and military targets, and Lebanese state institutions, through land, sea and air.”
All armed groups in Lebanon — meaning Hezbollah and its allies — would halt operations against Israel, the source said.

ISRAELI TROOPS WITHDRAW
Two Israeli officials said the Israeli military would withdraw from southern Lebanon within 60 days. Biden said the troops would gradually pull out and civilians on both sides would be able to return home.
Lebanon had earlier pushed for Israeli troops to withdraw as quickly as possible within the truce period, Lebanese officials told Reuters. They now expect Israeli troops to withdraw within the first month, the senior Lebanese political source said.
A Lebanese official told Reuters the deal included language that preserved both Lebanon’s and Israel’s rights to self-defense.

HEZBOLLAH PULLS NORTH, LEBANESE ARMY DEPLOYS
Hezbollah fighters will leave their positions in southern Lebanon to move north of the Litani River, which runs about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of the border with Israel.
Their withdrawal will not be public, the senior Lebanese political source said. He said the group’s military facilities “will be dismantled” but it was not immediately clear whether the group would take them apart itself, or whether the fighters would take their weapons with them as they withdrew.
The Lebanese army would deploy troops to south of the Litani to have around 5,000 soldiers there, including at 33 posts along the border with Israel, a Lebanese security source told Reuters.
“The deployment is the first challenge — then how to deal with the locals that want to return home,” given the risks of unexploded ordnance, the source said.
More than 1.2 million people have been displaced by Israeli strikes on Lebanon, many of them from south Lebanon. Hezbollah sees the return of the displaced to their homes as a priority, Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah told Reuters.
Tens of thousands displaced from northern Israel are also expected to return home.

MONITORING MECHANISM
One of the sticking points in the final days leading to the ceasefire’s conclusion was how it would be monitored, Lebanon’s deputy speaker of parliament Elias Bou Saab told Reuters.
A pre-existing tripartite mechanism between the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon (UNIFIL), the Lebanese army and the Israeli army would be expanded to include the US and France, with the US chairing the group, Bou Saab said.
Israel would be expected to flag possible breaches to the monitoring mechanism, and France and the US together would determine whether a violation had taken place, an Israeli official and a Western diplomat told Reuters.
A joint statement by Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron said France and the US would work together to ensure the deal is applied fully.

UNILATERAL ISRAELI STRIKES
Israeli officials have insisted that the Israeli army would continue to strike Hezbollah if it identified threats to its security, including transfers of weapons and military equipment to the group.
An Israeli official told Reuters that US envoy Amos Hochstein, who negotiated the agreement, had given assurances directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel could carry out such strikes on Lebanon.
Netanyahu said in a televised address after the security cabinet met that Israel would strike Hezbollah if it violated the deal.
The official said Israel would use drones to monitor movements on the ground in Lebanon.
Lebanese officials say that provision is not in the deal that it agreed, and that it would oppose any violations of its sovereignty.

 


3 dead in Israel strikes on Syria border crossings with Lebanon: monitor, authorities

3 dead in Israel strikes on Syria border crossings with Lebanon: monitor, authorities
Updated 21 min 54 sec ago
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3 dead in Israel strikes on Syria border crossings with Lebanon: monitor, authorities

3 dead in Israel strikes on Syria border crossings with Lebanon: monitor, authorities

BEIRUT, Lebanon: A Syria war monitor said Israeli strikes on the Lebanon-Syria border late Tuesday killed two soldiers as Lebanon also reported one dead, the latest frontier raids amid news of a Hezbollah and Israel truce.
“Israeli warplanes targeted the Al-Arida crossing in Tartus province for the first time, and the Dabussiyeh and Jussiyeh crossings in Homs province,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reporting “two regime forces killed” at Dabussiyeh.
Lebanon’s health ministry said an “Israeli enemy strike” on the Al-Arida crossing killed “one person,” adding that the toll was provisional.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, also reported other strikes on unofficial crossings and bridges between the two countries.
State news agency SANA reported “Israeli aggression that targeted the Al-Arida and Dabussiyeh border crossings with Lebanon,” without reporting casualties.
On Monday, Israel also struck a crossing on the Syria-Lebanon border, the latest in a wave of attacks targeting such routes since September.
Syrian state television reported Israeli strikes on several bridges in the Qusayr region near the border.
Israel’s military said strikes that day targeted “smuggling routes to transfer weapons” to Hezbollah, and followed other operations against “Syrian regime smuggling routes” in recent weeks.
Israel intensified its strikes against Syria from September 26, days after launching an intense bombing campaign mainly targeting Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon, after almost a year of clashes with the group across the Lebanon border.
Since Syria’s war broke out in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting the army and groups including Hezbollah.
 

 


Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war

Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war
Updated 27 November 2024
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Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war

Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war
  • ACRI accuses Netanyahu govt. of “excessive, unrestrained and illegal use of force” in occupied territory in a new report
  • Says govt. is “implementing profound changes to all aspects of control, most of which are flying under the radar”

LONDON: On Oct. 12 last year, a group of armed settlers and Israeli soldiers drove into the West Bank village of Wadi Al-Seeq, 10 kilometers east of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

There, they seized and handcuffed three Palestinian men, subjecting them to hours of abuse and violence, later compared by one of the victims to the treatment meted out by rogue US soldiers to prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.

The abuses in Wadi Al-Seeq were led by members of the IDF’s Sfar Hamidbar (Desert Frontier) unit, notorious for recruiting into its ranks violent “hilltop youth” from the illegal farming settlements that are proliferating in the West Bank with the blessing of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, which includes, and is dependent on the support of, far-right parties.

“For hours,” as an Israeli newspaper reported on Oct. 21, 2023, the Palestinians “were severely beaten, stripped to their underwear, and photographed handcuffed.

“Their captors urinated on two of them and extinguished burning cigarettes on them. There was even an attempt to penetrate one of them with an object.”

Palestinians bound and stripped after being apprehended by IDF soldiers and settlers in the central West Bank village of Wadi Al-Seeq on October 12, 2023. (The Times of Israel)

Israeli human rights activists who arrived at the scene were also arrested, cuffed, beaten, threatened with death and, like the Palestinians, robbed.

At the time, many in Israel were shocked to read the reports of the joint operation between the IDF and settlers, exposed by the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

But as a new report from an Israeli human rights group makes clear, such events have become commonplace as, under cover of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli government and its agencies have been pursuing the ultimate goal of “realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.”

In the report, “One year of war: the collapse of human and civil rights in Israel and the West Bank,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) accuses the government of “excessive, unrestrained, and illegal use of force.”

Furthermore, it says, Netanyahu’s government is “demolishing the judicial system and the civil service with the aim of accumulating unlimited power; increasing the use of force in the West Bank and granting tacit permission for unrestrained settler violence; using force to limit freedom of expression and protest; and systematically violating the rights of detainees and prisoners.”

Israeli settlers march towards the outpost of Eviatar, near the Palestinian village of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)

The list of charges levelled against the government is long, including institutionalized discrimination against Arab society, “unprecedented” infringement of the rights of suspects and prisoners, the “mass armament and creation of untrained forces” of settlers, the “destruction of democratic foundations,” attacks on freedom of expression and “normalization of citizen surveillance and disregard for privacy.”

Legislative steps are being taken with the aim of excluding certain parties from running for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Last month a controversial bill was passed to change the rules for banning individuals or parties from membership of the Knesset if they have “supported terror,” a definition which now includes visiting the family of someone accused of an act of terrorism.

Likud, Netanyahu’s party, has even accused Arab members of the Knesset of supporting terror simply on the ground of their support for Palestinian statehood.

“Depriving a population of the right to protest politically and the right to political representation” is “a very slippery slope,” said Noa Sattath, the CEO of ACRI.

“When there’s no political representation of a minority, then there's a radicalization of that minority.”

IN NUMBERS

  • 733 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.
  • 40 Israelis killed during the same period.
  • 3,340 Palestinians in administrative detention as of last June.
  • 11,800 Palestinians arrested since current conflict erupted.

What the ACRI report exposes on a grand scale, says Sattath, is “the excessive use of power. Of course, we see it in Gaza, and in Lebanon now, but we also see it in the West Bank.

“We also see it being used against Israeli protesters. We’re also seeing it in the treatment of prisoners. In all walks of life, basically, the Israeli government has moved to using excessive power against the different players, rather than making more complicated decisions.”

The headline scandal of the past year is what ACRI describes as “the quiet coup” in the West Bank.

“With public attention focused elsewhere,” says the report, “the government is implementing profound changes to all aspects of control in the West Bank, most of which are flying under the radar.

“In the last two years, the government has made giant strides in advancing policies aimed at accelerating the annexation process of the West Bank, while establishing Jewish supremacy and marginalizing the Palestinian population, all in pursuit of realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.”

A member of the Israeli security forces walks past a bulldozer demolishing a house belonging to Palestinians in the southern area of the occupied West Bank on November 6, 2024. (AFP)

The annexation of the West Bank has long been on the agenda, said Sattath, “but the war has given cover and enabled this to happen.

“Basically, they’re creating a new reality on the ground, behind the scenes, without a lot of public scrutiny, without a lot of international discourse on this new reality that they’re manufacturing.”

The Israeli government has, in certain instances, issued statements that aim to distance itself from the violent actions of settlers in the West Bank. Netanyahu has occasionally called for calm and condemned settler attacks on Palestinians, especially after high-profile incidents.

However, ACRI fears that under the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, whose election has been welcomed so enthusiastically by far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, things are only going to get worse.

A member of the Israeli security forces scuffles with a protestor as Palestinian and Israeli peace activists demonstrate at the entrance of Huwara in the occupied West Bank, on March 3, 2023. (AFP)

“I think that the next years are going to be very difficult,” said Sattath.

“The US government is one of the only checks and balances on the behavior of the Israeli government behavior and, even if we would have liked them to be more forceful in the way that they do it, we're very worried that the disappearance of that will have grave implications for the lives of Palestinians, both in Gaza, where the US is currently so involved in the humanitarian aid efforts there, and in the West Bank.”

Disturbingly, she says, Israel is manoeuvring behind the scenes to end the status of the West Bank as an occupied territory under military occupation, which is how it has been defined by international law since the occupation of the West Bank by Israel in 1967.

A picture shows burnt cars, which were set ablaze by Israeli settlers, in the area of in Al-Lubban Al-Sharqiya in the occupied West Bank on June 21, 2023. (AFP)

“It seems a little strange that an organization like ACRI would be advocating for military occupation,” she said. 

“But under international conventions military occupation gives the protected citizens of that area many different rights and gives the occupiers obligations. 

“Residents in occupied territories cannot be moved. You cannot build on their territory and the occupying force has all sorts of obligations toward them, in terms of humanitarian aid. 

“Now, what the settler movement, through its ministers in the government, is trying to do is erase the military occupation, replacing it with government agencies and officials to facilitate the settlement enterprise.” 

A Palestinian man walks at the village of Khallet Al-Daba, in the occupied West Bank on October 26, 2023, after it was attacked by Israeli settlers. (AFP)

The process began in February 2023 when, despite disquiet among some members of Netanyahu’s government, authority over many civilian issues in the West Bank was stripped from Defense Ministry agency COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) and transferred to Bezalel Smotrich, the religious Zionism leader and finance minister. 

According to a Times of Israel report, the agreement “appears to give the ultranationalist leader sweeping powers over the territory, and allows him to advance his goal of thwarting Palestinian aspirations for a state in the West Bank by enabling the Israeli population there to substantially expand.”

Anti-settlement organizations denounced the agreement, with one, Breaking the Silence, saying it amounted to “legal, de jure annexation,” of the West Bank.

The importance of ACRI’s report, says Sattath, lies in the sheer breadth of abuses by the Israeli government it exposes.

Israeli security forces fire tear gas at Palestinians demonstrating in the village of Beita, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on April 10, 2023. (AFP)

ACRI, founded in 1972 and the oldest civil and human rights organization in Israel, has been publishing reports on the state of human rights in Israel and the West Bank for decades. But, she says, “we have never published a report showing such a severe and comprehensive deterioration as we have seen over the past year.”

ACRI says it hopes its report “will deepen the public’s understanding of the damage being done to human rights and democratic institutions, and that it will stir the public to action and resistance.”

It added: “Monitoring human rights violation processes is also critical for there to be any hope of correction under a different government and reality.”

 


Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army

Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army
Updated 26 November 2024
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Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army

Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army
  • Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central and northern Israel following projectiles that crossed from Lebanon

JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said sirens sounded across central and northern Israel Tuesday, with three projectiles fired from Lebanon after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his cabinet would vote for a ceasefire.
“Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central and northern Israel following projectiles that crossed from Lebanon,” the military said in a statement. “Three projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory were successfully intercepted by the IAF (Israeli air force).”