Palestine in Pictures: June 2021

Palestinian musicians perform on the rubble of Gaza City’s Hanadi Tower, destroyed in Israeli airstrikes the previous month, on 2 June.
Ashraf Amra APA images

Israel’s brutal subjugation of Palestinians living under its colonial and apartheid rule marched on during June, despite the unilateral ceasefire that ended an 11-day escalation the previous month.

Several Palestinians were shot and killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank during June, including two women and two children.

Three were killed when Israeli forces raided the northern West Bank city of Jenin in the early hours of 10 June.

Among them were two Palestinian Authority officers shot in an exchange of fire with Israeli forces disguised as Palestinian civilians.

The slain Palestinians, Adham Yaser Aleiwi, 23, and Tayseer Issa, 33, were both military intelligence officers.

Israel claimed that its forces were pursuing two Palestinians belonging to the Islamic Jihad resistance faction who were hiding in the building next to the PA’s military intelligence compound.

Israeli forces killed Jamil al-Amouri, reportedly one of their targets that night, and injured and arrested the other wanted man.

The governor of Jenin said that the Israeli military’s raid was not coordinated with the PA. Initial media reports suggested that the Palestinian officers fired on the Israeli forces, who they did not recognize as such, while the latter were withdrawing after having killed one of the Islamic Jihad operatives and injured the other.

Teens killed in Beita

The following day, Israeli forces shot and killed Muhammad Hamayel, 16, with live ammunition during a protest in the village of Beita near the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

A week later, soldiers killed Hamayel’s friend Ahmad Bani-Shamsa, 15, during confrontations with Beita villagers protesting Israeli land theft.

Neither boy posed a threat to Israeli forces at the time they were shot, according to Defense for Children International Palestine.

Four Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in Beita since the beginning of May, when settlers established a new outpost on land belonging to three Nablus-area villages.

Hundreds more have been injured in Beita, many of them children, while protesting the new settlement, according to the UN monitoring group OCHA.

All of Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Syria’s Golan Heights are illegal under international law and their construction is a war crime.

A private security guard shot and killed Ibtisam Kaabneh, 28, at Qalandiya checkpoint near the West Bank city of Ramallah on 12 June. Israeli police claimed the woman ran towards occupation forces while carrying a knife and ignored the guard’s calls to stop.

Another Palestinian woman, Mai Afaneh, also 28, was shot and killed by Israeli forces after allegedly attempting to attack soldiers with her car and brandishing a knife near the Jerusalem-area town of Hizma on 16 June.

No Israeli casualties were reported, as in so many other incidents in which an alleged Palestinian assailant is killed.

Meanwhile, Fadi Sadiq Musa Washah, 24, died on 2 June after being shot during confrontations with soldiers during a demonstration at Beit El checkpoint near Ramallah in May.

Palestinians in Gaza succumb to injuries

Palestinians in Gaza also succumbed to wounds sustained during Israel’s 11-day attack.

Diana al-Yazji died in a Jerusalem hospital on 3 June. The woman was injured in the same bombing that killed her two adult daughters and dozens of others in the single worst attack during the May offensive.

That same day, Yahya Bassem al-Ijla, 24, died from injuries sustained in Israeli bombing of Gaza City’s Shujaiya neighborhood during the May attacks. Al-Ijla’s cousin was also critically injured in the strike.

Palestinian outlets also reported the death of Muayyad Hamdan as a result of injuries sustained during the previous month’s offensive.

At least 260 Palestinians were killed during the 11-day offensive in May and more than 2,200 were injured, according to the UN’s human rights office.

Three Palestinians in Gaza were killed by unexploded ordnance during June.

Usama Jneina and Ahmad Zaki Abu Haseera, both members of Hamas’ armed wing, died on 2 June while attempting to defuse unexploded Israeli ordnance at a resistance site in Deir al-Balah.

On 10 June, Obeida Salah al-Dahdouh, 8, was seriously injured by unexploded ordnance of unknown origin that he found on farmland adjacent to his home in Gaza City on 9 June and died from his wounds the following day.

The boy’s brother was also seriously injured in the explosion, according to Defense for Children International Palestine.

Gaza siege tightened

Around 8,400 Palestinians displaced from their homes during the May offensive remain with host families and in two UN schools, OCHA reported on 25 June.

Electricity was only available for 12 hours per day across Gaza “due to the disruption to some lines and insufficient fuel” for the sole power plant in the territory, OCHA said.

On 28 June, Israel allowed the import of fuel to the Gaza power plant for the first time since 10 May.

Israel eased other restrictions on Palestinians in Gaza after tightening its siege, now approaching its 15th year, during the May offensive.

Palestinians requiring life-saving treatment unavailable in Gaza were allowed to leave with an Israeil-issued permit, as well as those needing longer-term treatment, OCHA said.

Israel also extended the permitted fishing area to up to nine nautical miles off of Gaza’s coast, short of the 20 nautical miles stipulated by the Oslo accords.

Occupation authorities allowed a limited amount of agricultural goods and textiles to be exported from Gaza for the first time since 10 May, and Israel resumed the transfer of postal mail in and out of the territory, OCHA said.

Israel has attempted to condition reconstruction in Gaza on the return of two Israeli civilians being held by Hamas in the territory, as well as the bodies of two soldiers.

Hamas said that talks with a senior UN delegation had failed, with Yahya Sinwar, the head of the resistance group in Gaza, accusing Israel of using the dire humanitarian situation to blackmail Palestinian factions.

Israel bombed Gaza multiple times during June after Palestinians in the territory launched balloons carrying flammable materials that set fire to Israeli farmland. No casualties were reported in Gaza or Israel from the bombing and balloons.

Meanwhile, Israel formed a new government, ending Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year run as prime minister.

Naftali Bennett, a proponent of formal apartheid in which Israel annexes most of the occupied West Bank without giving the vast majority of Palestinians any rights, is the new head of state.

The new cabinet is an assemblage of other war criminals and genocidal fanatics, including interior minister Ayelet Shaked and defense minister Benny Gantz.

Jerusalem

In Jerusalem, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, where Palestinians face imminent forced removal from their homes. Israeli occupation forces fired tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and skunk water in the neighborhood and attacked a journalist who was covering a protest there.

Israeli authorities demolished a home in the Ras al-Amud neighborhood of Jerusalem on 29 June, displacing two boys and their parents.

That same day, Israeli forces destroyed a butcher’s shop in the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem. Occupation forces attacked Palestinians protesting the demolition with tear gas and batons.

Some 90 homes are at risk of demolition in the Bustan area of Silwan, where an Israeli settler group seeks to build a national park linked to the City of David archaeological theme park.

Around 75 Palestinian structures in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were demolished, seized or their owners were forced to raze them during the month, displacing some 100 people.

Meanwhile, Palestinian Authority and Fatah faction forces attacked protesters, human rights workers and journalists following the death of Nizar Banat, a prominent activist and critic who died while in PA custody and shortly after his arrest on 24 June, his body showing marks of violence.

The apparent killing of Banat and the PA crackdown was condemned by Palestinian political parties and human rights groups.

Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, called on the PA to investigate the violent suppression of protests by Palestinian security forces, including plain-clothes officers, and other armed persons.

“We have also witnessed and received credible reports of specific targeting of women present in the demonstrations – women protesting, reporting for media or merely bystanders,” Bachelet said.

“We call for an immediate end to any gender-based targeting, harassment, threats or violence and call on the [PA] government to ensure the safety and security of all without discrimination,” she added.