Warning: This article contains graphic videos and images of violence.

Two more Palestinians were shot dead Wednesday following alleged knife attacks, while the Israeli army and government began implementing a rash of new measures approved by the so-called security cabinet late Tuesday night.

Among the decisions made, Israeli police and Border Police will enforce closures on Palestinian neighborhoods in occupied East Jerusalem.

Human rights groups, meanwhile, have raised the alarm about an Israeli policy of extrajudicial killing aimed at Palestinians.

The security cabinet also decided the army will deploy its military police to assist civilian police in major cities throughout present-day Israel, and 1,400 Border Police reservists have been called to reinforce Israeli occupation forces in Jerusalem.

This collective punishment is reserved exclusively for the family members of Palestinians and has never been used against Jews.

The cabinet also ruled that families will not be allowed to rebuild their destroyed homes, and alleged attackers may have their residency permits revoked.

Human Rights Watch condemned the demolition policy.

The group’s country director Sari Bashi stated that “exacerbating the punitive policy of home demolitions is an unlawful and ill-considered response.”

Extrajudicial killings

Thirty-two Palestinians have been killed since escalated violence began on 1 October.

At least 17 were killed while protesting.

Others have been killed in what Amnesty International has described as extrajudicial killings.

On Wednesday night, 20-year-old Basil Bassam Raghib Sidr was shot dead by a police officer at the Damascus Gate of the Old City in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israeli officials claimed Sidr tried to stab the officer, but no injuries were reported.

Later that evening, Ahmad Shaaban, 23, from the Ras al-Amud neighborhood in East Jerusalem allegedly attacked a woman at the central bus station in West Jerusalem.

Shaaban was killed on the spot, while the woman is reported to have sustained light to moderate wounds.

However, the Israeli account has been disputed.

Qpress, an online Palestinian outlet for news about Jerusalem, published a recording it said was an Israeli eyewitness telling media that Shaaban was unarmed and doing nothing when shot. It provided no other details about the purported eyewitness.

Speaking excitedly in Hebrew, the person states: “Central bus station in Jerusalem, just now a terrorist was eliminated in front of my eyes. In front of my eyes. Ten rounds they fired at him. What chaos! He didn’t touch anyone. He didn’t have a knife. Everyone shouted ‘terrorist’ and the security guard fired. In front of my eyes. Ten rounds! My head hurts.”

Qpress also published a video it says shows Shaaban being killed. The brief, grainy clip shows a person standing over what appears to be a motionless body and firing a gun at close range three times:

“Shoot to kill”

Nine human rights organizations in present-day Israel, including B’Tselem, the Association for Human Rights in Israel and Amnesty International, jointly condemned what appears to be an Israeli “shoot to kill” policy for any Palestinian suspected of involvement in attacks on Jewish Israelis.

“No one disputes the serious nature of the events of recent days,” the joint statement reads, “nor the need to protect the public against stabbing and other attacks. However, it seems that too often, instead of acting in a manner consistent with the nature of each incident, police officers and soldiers are quick to shoot to kill.”

While not an official stated policy, high profile politicians have endorsed the summary executions of Palestinian.

Israel’s police commander for Jerusalem Moshe Edri has stated: “Anyone who stabs Jews or hurts innocent people is due to be killed,” and Israel’s public security minister Gilad Erdan asserted that “every terrorist should know that he will not survive the attack he is about to commit.”

Edri and Erdan echo comments made earlier by Yair Lapid, the leader of the ostensibly centrist Yesh Atid party.

Military deployed

The Israeli army has deployed several more units in the occupied West Bank and surrounding the Gaza Strip, leading to a 50 percent increase in military presence since 1 October.

Boy beaten

Video footage published by Middle East Eye shows young Palestinians fleeing Israeli soldiers in Surif, a village north of Hebron in the West Bank.

Protests in Gaza continue, with Israeli forces shooting and injuring three Palestinians east of the al-Bureij refugee camp, where Palestinians have been confronted by Israeli soldiers for the sixth day in a row, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.

The Israeli army announced that it will not investigate its soldiers’ shooting at protesters that killed nine Palestinians in Gaza since last Friday.

Militarizing East Jerusalem

Israel’s Shin Bet secret police and its army have again ruled out the possibility of enforcing a general closure on the West Bank which would ban Palestinians with permits to enter occupied East Jerusalem and present-day Israel from crossing checkpoints.

Officials reportedly told the security cabinet meeting Tuesday night that no attack has been carried out by a Palestinian with a work permit in Israel and indicated that a general closure would be condemned as collective punishment.

However, the Israeli police have been authorized to seal off Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

On Wednesday occupation forces began placing checkpoints at the entrances of Palestinian areas.

Jabal al-Mukabir has been completely closed, with neither people nor vehicles allowed in or out, according to Israel’s Ynet.

No country in the world recognizes Israel’s claim to East Jerusalem and the UN Security Council has declared its assertion of sovereignty in the city “null and void.”

Acting police commissioner Bentzi Sau boasted that every night “we conduct arrest raids in every neighborhood or refugee camp in East Jerusalem.”

Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians attended the funeral of 27-year-old Mutaz Ibrahim Zawahreh, who was shot dead by Israeli forces at a protest in the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem.

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• Naftali Bennett
• Yisrael Katz
• Ras al-Amud
• Association for Civil Rights in Israel
• Gilad Erdan
• Moshe Edri
• Dheisheh refugee camp
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Comments

Stand Up America demand the

Permalink Helen thomas replied on Thu, 10/15/2015 - 01:23

Stand Up America demand the leader of Israel gone. demand justice for Palestine,and Gaza. down with Israel genocide.

No. There is no such a thing

Permalink Peter andré replied on Fri, 10/16/2015 - 19:46

No. There is no such a thing as a genocide there. Use a dictionary sometimes.

What a sad joke

Permalink Kieran replied on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 03:31

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as: "In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Many Zionists past and present have either denied that there is such a thing as a Palestinian people or openly avowed the intent to cleanse them from Eretz Israel. Israelis openly refer to periodic attacks on Gaza as "mowing the lawn". Feeding restrictions (which featured prominently in Raphael Lemkin's original definition of genocide) are openly discussed as policy.

Lemkin based the concept of genocide on occupation policies which he saw as a form of warfare against "peoples and nations" rather than against "sovereigns and armies". His depiction of genocide in Axis occupied Europe is almost exactly produced in miniature by the Israeli occupation. If the Zionist genocide is much slower than the Nazi genocides, it actually makes it even more clear that there is genocidal intent.

No modern society has so openly expressed genocidal intent in both mass sentiment and political rhetoric and then carried out clearly genocidal acts. That is why your genocide denial is sickening but also risible in a pathetic way.

Genocide...

Permalink Francis replied on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 16:37

What the Israeli's are doing, executing innocents, is clearly genoicide. It seesms that you are the one in need of a dictionary.

Troll, reality is knocking

Permalink Jane Zacher replied on Wed, 10/28/2015 - 01:37

Peter, lower a "andre'", stop, just stop, please stop. If you are Jewish like me, then we, although I stand with Palestinians, have gone way off of G-d's grid. It's hurtful to me as Jew and Human, to see people like you, hide behind a keyboard and try to psychologically mess with some one. They (the Palestinians) have suffered enough. Listen to her soul. Does it tell you this is ok? Is it ok for my President, to one time, stand with the rights of Palestinians, then turn coat, as soon as he became President?

After the Jewish Holocaust, we said "never again" Well guess what, We as Jew/Humans are allowing it. I protest, write openly, send $ to Palestinian causes when I can, and still feel like it's not enough. Ironically, the only time these days, my heart is not heavy, is when I'm crying over these stories, and a Muslim woman is near by and asks me, why I'm crying. She holds my hand, and offers me peace. She doesn't say anything negative about Jews or Israel, but you guys always claim "antisemitism". Maybe she's sent from somewhere to help me. Either way, it helps me get through the pain and anguish of watching this, unable to stop it, despite the numerous emails, letters and protests in front of my representative's offices.

Peace and thank you Ali and your amazing contributors for the strength and guts it takes to bring the world the truth.
Jane Zacher
Turtle Island,
Student

International Legal Definition

Permalink PJ Hutchinson replied on Sat, 10/17/2015 - 00:57

Not sure what dictionary you are using, but if you refer to international legal definition, the use of the description word genocide in respect to Israeli states actions against Palestinians is correct.

Israel was born in the

Permalink Sadness replied on Thu, 10/15/2015 - 08:09

Israel was born in the terrorism that was the sacrifice of the 20th century.
The natural law is: 'You are what you eat' - The means are the end - i.e. It is as it was born, a terrorist state.
This is the jewish state. An unfortunate living lesson for us all....But no one in the bought centres of the powerful, the 'International Community' wants to see beyond the slogans they know....
Something new? An original insight for change? ....Unlikely when yet another sacrifice will keep the money rolling in for another stolen settlement....sadness.

Price tag

Permalink Anthony Shaker replied on Thu, 10/15/2015 - 13:03

Israel will pay dearly for its official policy of murder, and for its racial incitement both in Palestine and at world forums. It has no future in its present form, and I think it will pay with its miserable existence as a Jewish-only state.

In the last five years it has added Syria to its long list of crimes in Palestine and Lebanon. Israel shares the blood of Syrians with the head-chopping, blood-swilling terrorist Wahhabi entity created by the British, Saudia Arabia. Its only true friends after almost 70 years of existence are those Gulf Arab monarchies, which make North Korea look like a sanctuary for the enlightened.

Ironic how things have turned for the mass murderers and liars of this collapsing American-brand world order. It is Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Israel that are now dangerously unstable. Iran has matured into an oasis of stability--the only vibrant, educated and free people in the entire region. Apart from Lebanon the rest is collapsing.

Let us hope that the Syrian people will be able to build something better after the Wahhabi terrorists are completely crushed than the Baathist old-guards' security state. But this will be conditional on Israel being brought to its knees and dismantled. The Baathists have been half-asleep while the Zionists had been quietly plotting for two decades for the destruction of Syria.

The Western states should admit their mistake in creating this vile race colony on the ruins of another people and based on a biblical forgery. If I were an Israeli, I would be packing my bags right about now. Things will not improve. All the fires that Israel has lit with its Saudi Wahhabi-takfiri demons are permanent--from Syria to Iraq to Yemen. But the fire has now caught inside Israel as well as Turkey and Saudi Arabia.