Following Israel’s 11-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip this past month, the besieged coastal enclave is once again staring down a long road to reconstruction. It does so even as the territory remains under Israeli blockade, the people living there are facing urgent humanitarian needs, and there continues to be no existing or emerging political/diplomatic path to change the underlying status quo – a status quo that contains in it the seeds for the next round of violence and destruction. FMEP and our panel of experts discussed what Gaza truly needs, and how the political agendas of international donors and Israeli restrictions have, in the past, sabotaged efforts not only to restore, but also to meaningfully improve, life in the Gaza Strip.

“Israeli police beat and arrested Palestinians on Tuesday, after closing Damascus Gate to make way for Israelis gathering for the start of a provocative nationalist march through occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City…Having closed off certain roads and Damascus Gate, Israeli police arrested Palestinians in Jerusalem ahead of the march. Videos posted on Twitter showed Israeli officers beating a Palestinian on the steps by Damascus Gate. The Red Crescent said 27 people were wounded during confrontations with Israeli authorities around the Old City, including three from rubber-coated steel bullets, one from being beaten and one who had been hit by part of a sound grenade. Two people were hospitalised. Authorities beat vendors working in shops near Damascus Gate, and pushed them away from the Old City. The area around the gate was sealed off by early afternoon on Tuesday, except for members of the press, with several barricades set up to clear the way for the settlers’ march. More than a thousand Israelis waving national flags gathered at the basin of Damascus Gate at the start of the march, singing anthems of the Jewish state’s settler movement. Videos posted on social media showed Israelis waving flags and chanting ‘Death to Arabs’.”

• Also see:
• Israeli Far-Right Groups March in Palestinian Areas of Jerusalem (New York Times – Video report)
• Flag march held in Jerusalem amid riots in city, threats from Hamas (Israel Hayom)
• Israeli nationalists march in East Jerusalem under heavy police presence (Arab News)
• ‘Death to Arabs’: Nationalist Jerusalem flag march held under ramped-up security (Times of Israel)
• Mansour Abbas: Flag march is ‘unbridled provocation’ that should have been nixed (Times of Israel)
• Messages from Flag March participants: ‘Jerusalem is ours’ (Jerusalem Post)
• ‘March of the Flags’ in Jerusalem: 17 Palestinians arrested (i24 News)
• Israeli forces attack rallies protesting settlers’ flag march (WAFA)
• Israeli forces attack rally in al-Bireh protesting Israel’s flag march (WAFA)

“Israeli aircraft carried out a series of airstrikes at militant sites in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday, the first such raids since a shaky cease-fire ended the war with Hamas last month. The airstrikes targeted facilities used by Hamas militants for meetings to plan attacks, the Israeli military said, blaming the group for any act of violence emanating from Gaza. There were no immediate reports of casualties. On Tuesday, hundreds of Israeli ultranationalists, some chanting ‘Death to Arabs,’ paraded in east Jerusalem in a show of force that threatened to spark renewed violence. Palestinians in Gaza responded by launching incendiary balloons that caused at least 10 fires in southern Israel. The march posed a test for Israel’s fragile new government as well as the tenuous truce that ended last month’s 11-day war between Israel and Hamas.”

Also see:

• Mediators Push to Restore Cease-Fire in Gaza After Overnight Strikes (New York Times)
• Israel launches airstrikes on Gaza, first since ceasefire (WAFA)
• Israel launches air strikes on Gaza putting fragile ceasefire in jeopardy (Middle East Eye)
• IDF strikes Hamas targets in Gaza as arson terrorism rears its head (Israel Hayom)
• IDF hits Gaza terror targets after arson attacks, in first raids since ceasefire (Times of Israel)
• Gaza incendiary balloons spark fires in southern Israel (i24 News)

“Israeli occupation forces shot dead a Palestinian woman today alleging she had tried to carry out a car-ramming attack northeast of Jerusalem. A military statement said the woman attempted to ram her car into a number of Israeli soldiers before exiting the vehicle with a knife near the town of Hizme, northeast of Jerusalem. Soldiers did not allow healthcare workers to provide the lady with medical assistance. Army Radio later confirmed that she was killed by occupation forces. The army said a soldier was lightly injured.”

Also see:

• Health Ministry: Palestinian woman killed by Israeli military gunfire near Jerusalem (WAFA)
• Palestinian woman shot dead by Israeli troops near Jerusalem (Al Jazeera)
• Palestinian Woman Shot Dead by Israelis in West Bank (Asharq Al-Awsat)

“An Israeli settler assaulted Palestinian activist Muna al-Kurd, who has become the face of a campaign against the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem’s Sheik Jarrah neighborhood for the benefit of settlers. Local sources said an Israeli settler dumped paint on Muna’s face before she was detained and interrogated by Israeli police.”

“Lying at the entrance to Jerusalem, with lands that in the past stretched all the way to the Old City, the hillside ruins of Lifta are a collection of exceptionally preserved Palestinian stone houses that have continued to stand, albeit neglected, for the past 73 years. Now, the last partially intact Palestinian village of its kind in modern Israel is in danger of being demolished and replaced with a luxury real estate development.”

“Israeli warplanes bombed the largest warehouse of agricultural material in the Gaza Strip, burning tons of dangerous pesticides and setting off an unfolding environmental disaster.”

“Israeli military vehicles today infiltrated Gaza borders and went into the eastern part of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, where they razed Palestinian-owned farmland, according to sources. Sources said seven Israeli military tanks infiltrated Gaza borders, went nearly 150 meters into the eastern part of Rafah city, and proceeded to raze agricultural land. Israeli occupation forces regularly infiltrate the Gaza borders, level and destroy lands, which are mainly agricultural in an effort to prevent landowners from accessing, benefiting, and farming their lands near the fence.”

“‘We would see the dead bodies on the ground. They (Israeli soldiers) would move around the streets in their cars and shoot randomly. People walking would just drop dead.’ Eighty-six year old Ebtihaj Dola was forced to flee Jaffa with her family in 1948. She recounts the distressing events that led to her family eventually settling in al-Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.”

“Israeli forces Wednesday overnight detained 22 Palestinians, including one who is recuperating from an injury, from various parts of the West Bank, according to local and security sources.”

“Some 30 families in Khirbet al-Aida in Hebron have received notices that their houses will be demolished and their lands expropriated to expand Israeli settlements.”

“Israeli forces and settlers are targeting Palestinian protesters – and the medics trying to rescue them.”

“Hundreds of Israeli settlers today stormed the archaeological site of Sebastia, north of Nablus city, according to a municipal source. Sebastia mayor, Mohammad Azzem, told WAFA that hundreds of settlers forced their way into the site under the protection of the Israeli military, which declared the site off-limit for Palestinians. He added that a large unit of Israeli soldiers cordoned off the town before deploying in its streets and occupying the rooftops of several houses near the site to make room for the settler intrusion.”

“Former deputy commander Amnon Yahavi was in charge of Ketziot Prison in March 2019, when 55 Palestinian inmates were gathered and beaten. Since then, he has been promoted.”

“Police closed nine out of 10 investigations into hate crimes cases in mosques and churches between 2018 and 2020 on the grounds of being unable to identify the perpetrators. The tenth case is awaiting a decision by the State Prosecutor’s Office. The information was provided to Haaretz as part of a freedom of information petition filed by advocate Tal Lieblich of the Lieblich-Moser legal firm against the police, which initially refused to provide any information about the results of the investigations. In response to the petition, the police provided this data, but refused to provide details about the last remaining open case or link it to the closures of the other investigations.”

“Karim Khan has replaced Fatou Bensouda as the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor in a ceremony in The Hague on Wednesday after a nine-year term. In Bensouda’s place, the British-Muslim international lawyer Khan will be left to determine Israel’s fate in the criminal probe which Bensouda opened in March. Bensouda’s decision to open a full war crimes investigation against Israelis relating to the 2014 Gaza War, the settlement enterprise and the 2018 Gaza border conflict came after a six-year legal battle dating back to January 2015. The outgoing chief prosecutor also threatened Israel and Hamas with new alleged war crimes during the May 10-21 Guardian of the Walls conflict with Gaza. Still, Bensouda had strongly hinted at the possibility of her office eventually closing the probe against the IDF on the grounds that the Israeli military performs its own investigations of alleged war crimes, however imperfect. There is much greater concern from Israeli lawyers about whether her office would go after the settlement enterprise. Commentary is mixed about what to expect from Khan.” Also see – With Israel-Hamas probe on agenda, Karim Khan sworn in as ICC chief prosecutor (Times of Israel)

“The Israeli military will substantially limit its controversial practice of conducting nighttime reconnaissance operations in Palestinian homes, the Israel Defense Forces said on Tuesday night… ‘House-mapping’ has long been a common but controversial tactic used by Israel to ensure security in the West Bank. The military had long defended such operations as an important intelligence-gathering tool, while human rights groups have condemned the practice as arbitrary and invasive. In a mapping operation, Israeli soldiers enter a Palestinian home with little forewarning, often in the middle of the night, to collect information on the building and its residents. Soldiers typically wake up inhabitants, ordering them out of bed to take photographs and record identification numbers.”

“The Palestinian Authority has formed a negotiating team to deal with the new Israeli government at the request of the administration of US President Joe Biden, Israel’s Channel 12 reported yesterday. The channel quoted a “high-ranking” Palestinian Authority official as saying that the PA will demand, during its talks with the new Israeli government, to return to the situation that existed in the West Bank before the Second Intifada, including stopping the Israeli army’s incursions into Area A.”

“One of the first tasks of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid is to find a way to work with the administration of US President Joe Biden.”

Also see:

• Biden formally taps Tom Nides as ambassador to Israel (Jewish Insider)
• Biden likely to appoint Hady Amr as Consul-General to Palestinians: report (i24 News)
• US and Israeli defence ministers discuss mutual cooperation (Middle East Monitor)

“The term ‘terrorist’ often gets used as a general-purpose epithet intended to consign a disliked state or group to perpetual isolation and punishment. Used in this way, the label of ‘terrorist’ becomes a substitute for careful analysis of policy toward the state or group in question. Usually, the object of the labeling has indeed used terrorism — but so have many others who don’t get labeled the same way and may even be treated as friends and allies. If the operative notion is ‘once a terrorist, always a terrorist,’ then there are many shady histories that warrant examination. Consider, for example, as Benjamin Netanyahu — who has flung the ‘terrorist’ label at least as freely as anyone else — is finally being pushed out of the prime minister’s job in Israel, the histories of some of his predecessors. Menachem Begin, who held that job in the late 1970s and early 1980s — longer than anyone except Netanyahu, David Ben-Gurion, and Yitzhak Rabin — had an earlier career as a hard-core terrorist. As leader of the Irgun group during World War II, Begin conducted a campaign of attacks, focused principally on British government and police targets, intended to drive the British out of Palestine — while Britain was busy waging a war against the Nazis.”

“It has been three decades since a U.S. president considered freezing aid to Israel. Progressives are now making sure that idea stays on the table.”

“The last two years have seen a significant decrease in evangelical support for Israel, a new study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke reveals. According to the report, which will be presented at Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of the United States on June 17, in partnership with the Fulbright Program, support among young evangelicals went from 69% to 33.6% in just two years.”

“Israel’s fragile new government has shown little interest in addressing the decades-old conflict with the Palestinians, but it may not have a choice. Jewish ultranationalists are already staging provocations aimed at splitting the coalition and bringing about a return to right-wing rule. In doing so, they risk escalating tensions with the Palestinians weeks after an 11-day Gaza war was halted by an informal cease-fire. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s best hope for maintaining his ruling coalition — which consists of eight parties from across the political spectrum — will be to manage the conflict, the same approach favored by his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, for most of his 12-year rule.”

“Jewish reactionaries long active in the West Bank have brought their politics into Israel proper. Last month’s unprecedented violence was the result.”

“Violent speech directed against Arabs and Palestinians on social media increased 15-fold during the recent hostilities in Gaza, a report has found. Between May 6 and May 21 when clashes with Israel were most severe, hate speech against Palestinians rose dramatically in comparison with the same period in 2020, according to the Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, or 7amleh. The center recorded 1.09 million posts on social media platforms, with 16.8 percent containing racism, slurs or incitement against Arabs. Among tweets shared widely, one reads: ‘A good Arab is a dead Arab,’ while another reads: ‘Death to all Arabs.’,Most violent speech (58 percent) took place on Twitter, compared with only 8 percent on Facebook and 1 percent on Instagram. The same period also witnessed widespread censorship of Palestinian posts on social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.” Also see: Index of Racism and Incitement: An increase in racism and incitement against Palestinians & Arabs during the last Israeli Aggression (7amleh)

“Vanessa Perilman, the head designer of global fast-fashion chain Zara’s women’s department, has come under fire after a Palestinian model shared messages she sent him containing inflammatory comments.  Last week, Qaher Harhash, who is from occupied East Jerusalem, shared direct messages Perilman had sent to him on Instagram responding to posts he had made about Palestinians suffering injustice.  ‘So your point is that you are trying to show that Israel is a horrible evil country that does terrible things to Palestinians?’ she wrote. ‘The people in my industry know the truth about Israel and Palestine and I will NEVER stop defending Israel… Maybe if your people were educated then they wouldn’t blow up the hospitals and schools that Israel helped to pay for in Gaza.’”