The Month in Pictures: January 2014

Palestinians carry the body of 18-year-old Muhammad Mubarak during his funeral at the Jalazone refugee camp near the West Bank city of Ramallah, 29 January. The Israeli military said Mubarak opened fire on soldiers but his family disputed the claim, saying the youth was killed without provocation.

Issam Rimawi APA images

On the first day of 2014, 85-year-old Said Jasir died after Israeli forces shot tear gas into his home during a protest in the Palestinian village of Kufr Qaddum near the occupied West Bank town of Qalqiliya. Later on in the month, a two-month-old baby from the same village was injured after a tear gas canister fired by the Israeli army broke a window and penetrated the child’s house.

Also in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers shot dead 19-year-old Muhammad Mubarak from Jalazone refugee camp. The army claimed that the youth opened fire at a military post near Ofra settlement but eyewitnesses told Agence France-Presse that Mubarak was unarmed and was working as a laborer on the road where the incident occurred as part of a project funded by the US government agency USAID.

On 7 January, Israeli settlers raided Qusra village near the northern West Bank city of Nablus, assaulting a Palestinian family and vandalizing property. A group of Palestinian residents apprehended the settlers, injuring ten of them, before Palestinian authorities and human rights activists intervened and handed the settlers over to the Israeli military, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

Several settler attacks were reportedly carried out in retaliation for the incident, according to OCHA, which also documented 129 Palestinian injuries by Israeli forces in the West Bank from the begnning of the year through 27 January.

Meanwhile in Gaza, during the month of January, Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian civilians, including a 16-year-old child, without warning in separate incidents near the Gaza-Israel boundary.

Israeli forces also extrajudicially executed a member of a Palestinian armed group in a strike on his vehicle in Beit Hanoun in the northern occupied Gaza Strip; a 22-year-old relative of the man was also killed in the 22 January attack.

Another member of an armed group was hit by tank fire and killed near the boundary fence east of Gaza City on 8 January. Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip, which Israel said were in response to rocket fire from Gaza, caused injuries to a three-year-old Palestinian girl on 9 January in Khan Younis and an Israeli airstrike targeting an alleged member of an armed group on 19 January resulted in the injury of the targeted man and an 11-year-old boy, according to OCHA.

Gaza remained under severe closure during January; Rafah Crossing, the sole outlet for the vast majority of Gaza’s nearly 1.7 million residents, remained closed most of the month, according to OCHA, leaving hundreds of patients unable to access specialized medical care outside Gaza.

On 12 January, a Palestinian laborer died of electrocution while working in a supply tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border; 14 persons, including two children, were killed in tunnel incidents in 2013. The vast majority of the tunnels, which are used to bring essential goods into Gaza while the commercial crossings remain closed by Israel, have been destroyed or shut down by Egypt in recent months.

The situation for Palestinian refugees in Syria remained critical at the dawn of 2014; dozens of cases of death from starvation have been reported at the besieged Yarmouk refugee camp south of Damascus. The UN agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, reported that it has been prevented from delivering aid to the camp for months and convoys attempting to deliver aid have had to turn back because of gunfire.

UNRWA also reported 72 unconfirmed deaths of Palestine refugees during the period of 17 December through 20 January as a result of the ongoing violence in Syria.

The family of Said Jasir mourn during the 85-year-old’s funeral in the occupied West Bank village of Kufr Qaddum, 2 January. According to Palestinian medical sources, Jasir died after the Israeli army shot tear gas into his house during a protest in the village on 1 January. Jasir was evacuated to a hospital in the nearby city of Nablus, were he died a few hours later.

Oren Ziv ActiveStills

A man chokes from tear gas shot by Israeli soldiers during the weekly demonstration in Kufr Qaddum village, 24 January. The village started to organize regular demonstrations in July 2011 to protest the Israeli army’s blocking of the main road connecting the village to Nablus.

Yotam Ronen ActiveStills

Israeli soldiers arrest a Palestinian youth during the weekly protest against the occupation in the West Bank village of Kufr Qaddum, 3 January.

Oren Ziv ActiveStills

Palestinians carry the body of 32-year-old Islamic Jihad fighter Muhammad Salama al-Ijla during his funeral in Gaza City, 8 January. Islamic Jihad claimed al-Ijla was killed by Israeli tank fire during a mission east of Gaza City.

Ezz Al-Zanoon APA images
Activists in the West Bank town of Bethlehem hold a vigil in Manger Square on 25 January in solidarity with Palestinians under siege in Yarmouk refugee camp near the Syrian capital of Damascus, where dozens of residents have died of starvation. Ryan Rodrick Beiler ActiveStills
ِA Palestinian man inspects the entrance to a mosque which was vandalized with Hebrew-language graffiti reading “Arabs out” and “revenge for blood spilled in Qusra” in the northern West Bank village of Deir Istiya, 15 January. Jewish extremists are suspected to have torched the entrance to the mosque in an apparent revenge attack after Palestinians detained and beat up Israeli settlers in Qusra village the previous week. Nedal Eshtayah APA images

Blood stains are seen on the wall of a house at the site of an Israeli air strike in Beit Hanoun, northern occupied Gaza Strip, 22 January. Two Palestinians were killed in the strike.

Ashraf Amra APA images

Palestinians receive the remains of two Palestinian fighters, Fathi Amerih and Atta Samahneh, in the West Bank city of Tulkarm, 21 January. Amerih was killed by the Israeli army in 2002 while Samahneh was killed in 2004. Israel still holds hundreds of Palestinian bodies in an isolated cemetery in the Jordan Valley, occupied West Bank.

Ahmad Al-Bazz ActiveStills

Family members of Palestinians who were killed or wounded by Israeli forces protest against the Palestinian Authority’s continued cuts to benefits to victims, Gaza City, 28 January.

Ashraf Amra APA images

Palestinian national security guards carry the flag-covered body of the Palestinian ambassador to the Czech Republic, Jamal al-Jamal, during his funeral in the West Bank city of Ramallah, 8 January. Al-Jamal died on 1 January in a mysterious explosion after opening a safe in his residence at the Palestinian mission in Prague.

Issam Rimawi APA images

Palestinians inspect a house damaged during an Israeli air strike that injured two Palestinians in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, 31 January.

Eyad Al Baba APA images

A member of the Ajluni family witnesses the demolition of his East Jerusalem home by Israeli forces, 27 January. The Israeli authorities claimed the house was built on lands that do not belong to the family.

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Palestinians hoping to cross into Egypt wait at the Rafah crossing at the southern Gaza Strip, 21 January. Since the ouster of Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi on July 2013, the authorities have kept the crossing, the only outlet for the vast majority of Gaza’s nearly 1.7 million residents, largely closed.

Eyad Al Baba APA images

Palestinian protesters look through the broken glass doors of a Ramallah hotel where a group of Israelis and Palestinians held a meeting, 9 January. Protesters said they reject attempts to normalize Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Issam Rimawi APA images

Israeli forces interrupt an olive tree planting activity on land located between the Israeli settlements Efrat and Elazar which belongs to the occupied West Bank Palestinian village of al-Khader, 13 January.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler ActiveStills

Palestinians clash with Israeli forces following a protest against the demolition of a furniture factory in the village of Deir Samet near the West Bank city of Hebron which Israel said was built without a permit, 10 January.

Mamoun Wazwaz APA images

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron protest against US Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in the region in an attempt to revive Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, 25 January.

Mamoun Wazwaz APA images

Supporters of the Islamic Jihad party in Gaza City chant slogans against US-brokered peace talks with Israel, 10 January.

Ashraf Amra APA images

Members of the Fatah party arrive at the Erez crossing between Israel and the northern Gaza Strip on 21 January, weeks after Ismail Haniyeh, the de facto Palestinian prime minister in the Gaza Strip, announced that the Hamas-led government will allow the return of Fatah members who fled Gaza in 2007 as a goodwill gesture toward Palestinian unity and reconciliation.

Ashraf Amra APA images
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas meets with Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman on 8 January in an effort to unify the positions of the Jordanian and Palestinian Authority governments regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations ahead of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to the region. Thaer Ganaim APA images

Palestinians burn posters depicting the late former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as they celebrate his passing in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 11 January. Sharon, who played a role in multiple episodes of mass violence against Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, died at the age of 85, eight years after he suffered a massive stroke that left him comatose.

Eyad Al Baba APA images

Thousands of African asylum seekers participate in a Tel Aviv protest calling for the release of all African refugees imprisoned in Israel and for the recognition of all refugees’ rights, 5 January. The protest kicked off a three-day general strike undertaken by African asylum seekers in Israel, and was the biggest protest of African refugees in Israel to date.

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A Palestinian shepherd tends his flock near the Palestinian community of al-Farisiya in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley, 22 January. The Israeli military regularly forces inhabitants of such communities to evacuate their homes during military exercises.

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Palestinian motorists wait in a fuel queue at a petrol station in Gaza City, 6 January. Gaza suffered an acute fuel shortage due to Israel’s closure of the Kerem Shalom commercial crossing for several days.

Mohammed Asad APA images

Israeli forces monitor Palestinian activists in Ein Hijleh protest village in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley, 31 January. Hundreds of Palestinians participated in the action as part of Mileh al-Ard (Salt of the Land) campaign against the Israeli plan to annex the Jordan Valley which is being discussed as part of the US-brokered Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler ActiveStills

A Palestinian boy points to the names of the residents who left their homes in 1947 in the village of Tarshiha, north of Akka in present-day Israel, on 21 January. Tarshiha was in the territory allotted to the Arab state under the 1947 UN Partition Plan but came under siege and was captured by Zionist forces on 29 October 1947; most of the village’s inhabitants fled north to Lebanon.

Saeed Qaq APA images

Palestinian worshipers attend Friday prayers at the al-Aqsa compound in the Old City of Jerusalem, 24 January.

Saeed Qaq APA images

A Palestinian vendor displays fresh fish at a market in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 20 January.

Eyad Al Baba APA images

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