Dear Khani,
This past weekend, the Israeli government began withholding crucial aid to Palestinians in Gaza as the first phase of the ceasefire deal came to a close. As a genocidal campaign continues even amidst the relative calm of a ceasefire, Palestinians are bracing for an uncertain future. Here’s what we’re paying attention to in Israel-Palestine.
Even prior to Israel’s withholding of aid, the more than 586,000 Palestinians returning to the north of Gaza found a horrifying and bleak reality with few homes remaining and grossly insufficient humanitarian aid available. That will be further complicated if the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)—the main humanitarian organization for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, and across the Middle East—can’t continue its work. UNRWA has been facing a barrage of attacks from the Israeli government, which has threatened to ban their activities outright. The effect, one UNRWA official argues, would be catastrophic, leaving a vacuum in education and healthcare that no other agency could fill. Returning prisoners, meanwhile, are recounting the inhumane conditions in Israeli jails. One Palestinian doctor, who was held and released without charge, faced months of physical and psychological abuse, and his story is not unique.
Despite clear human rights violations by the Israeli government, some of which we investigated last month with our report on the gassing of Gaza’s underground, the Trump administration has granted further cover to the Israeli government by proposing the U.S.-led ethnic cleansing of Gaza. The new approach, which shuns diplomatic engagement and tramples Palestinian rights, doubles down on the Trump administration’s bypassing of Palestinians in favor of Israeli interests. Even if the plan turns out to be bluster, argues Local Call’s Meron Rapoport, it has tapped into a deep undercurrent in Jewish-Israeli society, removing incentives for negotiations and sowing the seeds for an all-out regional war. Palestinians have categorically rejected the plan, calling out not just its absurdity but recognizing it as part of a century-long campaign to erase Palestinians.
That campaign is on full display in the West Bank. It’s not just Masafer Yatta facing daily threats from settlers and the Israeli military. The last several weeks have marked the largest military operation in the West Bank since the second intifada, with Israeli forces displacing over 40,000 Palestinians from four refugee camps: Jenin, Tulkarem, Nur Shams, and Al-Far’a. Meanwhile, Israeli authorities came for the booksellers, raiding an internationally-reputed Palestinian bookstore in occupied East Jerusalem, arresting the owners, and confiscating dozens of books they claim are “suspected of incitement.”
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