JERUSALEM (IPS) - After a recent Israeli high court decision allowed Israeli companies to maintain quarrying and mining activities in the occupied West Bank, human rights activists say the decision has opened the door to Israel’s pillaging of other Palestinian resources.
In a briefing paper issued today, Amnesty International stated that the Israeli military must cancel plans to forcibly transfer more than 2,000 Bedouin residents to an area besides the Jerusalem municipal garbage dump.
Despite chronic attacks on their homes and property by settlers, while Israeli forces continue to confiscate more and more land to serve the nearby settlement, the Jaber family hold fast to both their heritage and their future.
One year after a 17-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and killed by Israeli settlers as he farmed with his father in his West Bank village, his killers remain unpunished.
Palestinians in the northern West Bank village of Kufr Qaddoum have been holding regular protests against the Israeli occupation and settlement encroachment.
In the de facto one state that exists between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River, Israeli authorities are currently planning mass expulsions of around 60,000 Palestinians, specifically in order to free up more territory for Jewish settlement.
The West Bank village of Beit Ommar is encircled by no less than five illegal settlements. Water is regularly cut off and private wells are illegal. Meanwhile, in the settlements, swimming pools and fountains are de rigeur.
Israeli military forces have demolished 27 houses in the Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank over the last two weeks, rendering more than 140 Palestinians homeless. The state of siege in the Jordan Valley has particularly impacted women.
