PALESTINE ACTION activists who occupied a weapons factory to disrupt weapon productions for Israel in Shipley are set to go on trial on Monday.
The four activists were charged with criminal damage after they were seen scaling and taking a sledgehammer to the roof of the US-owned Teledyne Defence and Space factory on April 2.
The factory manufactures components for missiles, electronics, gunsights and munitions for the Israeli military.
Operations were ground to a halt as a result of the action.
Two out of four activists were remanded to prison afterwards.
One was held for approximately one month, while the other was held for three months.
Palestine Action says the firm “boasts of its involvement with missile products procured by Israel, including the AGM-Harpoon, AIM-120 AMRAAM and AGM-114 Hellfire missiles deployed by Israel against Gaza — the latter reportedly being used to strike al-Shifa hospital.”
It also produces parts, including filters and multifunction assemblies for drones and aircraft, along with radar systems such as the type fitted in F-35 Fighter jets used by Israel.
Members of Israeli forces prepare to enter in an armoured vehicle during a military operation in the West Bank refugee camp of Nur Shams, Tulkarem, August 29, 2024
CAMPAIGNERS are demanding that Britain stops arming Israel’s genocide against Palestinians amid Tel Aviv’s largest military assault on the West Bank in more than two decades.
Hundreds of ground troops, supported by fighter planes and drones, began targeting Jenin, Tulkarem, Nablus, and Tubas early on Wednesday.
Soldiers have besieged hospitals in Jenin and Tulkarm, while bulldozers have destroyed roads and razed critical infrastructure, including water and electricity networks.
Several refugee camps have also been targeted.
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Ministers have so far rejected calls to suspend arms, instead issuing 108 licences to Israel since it escalated its attacks in October.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy has refrained from publishing legal advice on whether the exports are being used to facilitate international war crimes.
Deputy director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Simon Foster said: “This is the largest Israeli invasion of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank since 2002.
“Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs has openly called for the forcible displacement of Palestinians.
UK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
A photo shows a World Food Program vehicle damaged by Israeli gunfire. (Photo: World Food Program)
“This is totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of WFP’s team in Gaza.”
The World Food Program said Wednesday that it was forced to suspend the movement of its employees in Gaza after the Israeli military fired on one of the United Nations agency’s teams as its clearly marked vehicle advanced toward an Israeli checkpoint in the Palestinian enclave.
The agency said in a statement that the WFP team was returning from a mission with two armored vehicles “after escorting a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian cargo routed to Gaza’s central area.”
“Despite being clearly marked and receiving multiple clearances by Israeli authorities to approach, the vehicle was directly struck by gunfire as it was moving towards an Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) checkpoint,” WFP said. “It sustained at least ten bullets: five on the driver’s side, two on the passenger side, and three on other parts of the vehicle. None of the employees onboard were physically harmed.”
While the WFP’s statement doesn’t explicitly attribute the gunfire to Israeli forces, U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told reporters Wednesday that the food agency’s vehicle was “struck 10 times by IDF gunfire, including with bullets targeting front windows.”
Cindy McCain, WFP’s executive director, said the attack was “totally unacceptable and the latest in a series of unnecessary security incidents that have endangered the lives of WFP’s team in Gaza.”
“As last night’s events show, the current deconfliction system is failing and this cannot go on any longer,” said McCain. “I call on the Israeli authorities and all parties to the conflict to act immediately to ensure the safety and security of all aid workers in Gaza.”
The Israeli military’s latest attack on aid workers in Gaza came as famine continued to spread across the strip, which Israel has strangled with a blockade that has restricted the flow of food and other necessities.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, characterized the WFP attack as part of “Israel’s starvation strategy.” Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted humanitarian workers in Gaza, making the enclave the most dangerous place in the world for aid agency employees.
Chef José Andrés, the founder of a nonprofit whose Gaza team came under deadly attack by Israeli forces earlier this year, expressed solidarity with the WFP in a social media post late Wednesday.
No NGO employees or civilians or press corps can be never ever be targeted by anyone while delivering humanitarian aid! My support to @WFP @WFPChief @UN for their efforts and proud that we’ve work side by side in many countries! https://t.co/jl2hzplsyB
WFP did not say how long its pause on employee movement would stay in place, but any disruption to the agency’s humanitarian operations could be disastrous for starving Palestinians.
In its statement Wednesday, the U.N. food agency said that Israel’s “frequent and ongoing evacuation orders continue to uproot both families and food relief operations intended to support them.”
“Last week, WFP lost access to its third and last operational warehouse in Gaza’s middle area, while five of WFP’s operated community kitchens had to be evacuated,” the agency said. “This week, on Sunday 25 August, the evacuation orders impacted the main WFP operating hub in Deir al-Balah, forcing our team to relocate for the third time since the war started.”
IOF attacks in Al-Fara’a Camp in Tubas. Photo: Wafa News Agency
Israel continues to close all possible doors to a ceasefire in Gaza and de-escalation in the West Asia region, intensifying military operations and provocations in the West Bank and Gaza
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) launched the largest military operation across the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, August 27, aiming at crushing the Palestinian armed resistance groups. According to Israeli media outlets, the operation is the largest assault carried out by the Israeli military since 2002 at the peak of the Second Intifada. The operation involves hundreds of Israeli ground soldiers, warplanes, drones, and bulldozers.
On Tuesday night, the IOF ordered the residents of Nour Shams refugee camp, in the city of Tulkarm north of the West Bank to evacuate the camp. Israeli forces also established a military checkpoint to search the residents before leaving. The IOF has resorted to similar evacuation orders in the Gaza strip during the 11-month Israeli genocidal aggression on the Palestinian people there.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz wrote on X on Wednesday, August 28, “We must deal with the threat just as we deal with the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian residents and whatever steps are required. This is a war for everything and we must win it.”
Katz added regarding the expanded operation, which the IOF carried out in the cities of Jenin and Tulkarm overnight, that the Israeli military has been working “to thwart Islamic-Iranian terror infrastructure that was set up there.”
The large-scale Israeli military operation that started on Tuesday night is intended to continue for several days, according to media reports. The operation also included the West Bank cities of Nablus, Tubas and Ramallah. At least 10 people have been killed in the last 24 hours. The death toll in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, has surpassed 660 people since October 7 attacks.
While storming different parts of the West Bank, the IOF has been committing flagrant violations of human rights against civilians and medical staff. According to the Palestinian News and Information Agency Wafa, the Israeli military seized the house of Palestinian resident Hamada Odeh Al-Barghouthi in the town of Beit Rima, northwest of Ramallah since Tuesday night. They turned the house into a field investigation center and a military barracks, where a number of Palestinian young men from the town, neighboring towns and villages have been detained.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) also reported that the IOF stormed a medical facility in the Al-Far’a refugee camp south of the city of Tubas, and detained and assaulted its staff, while shooting live ammunition inside the facility.
As Israeli incursions have been taking place in the West Bank, the massacres in Gaza and elsewhere in the region have not stopped. On Wednesday, August 28, IOF struck the Al-Manfalouti school, where displaced people were sheltering in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza strip, killing at least 8 Palestinians and injuring several others. At least 4 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike that targeted a car in Syria near the border with Lebanon. The Israeli Army claimed that Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement’s top commander Faris Qasim was killed in the attack, without any confirmation by Islamic Jihad that Faris could have been assassinated.
A Palestinian woman holds the shrouded body of a child killed by Israeli bombardment of the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 26, 2024. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
The human rights group said Israeli forces “failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives by using unguided munitions in an area full of civilians sheltering in tents.”
In an investigation focusing on a pair of Israeli massacres of forcibly displaced Palestinians in Gaza, Amnesty International on Monday urged the International Criminal Court—whose chief prosecutor has already applied for warrants to arrest Israeli and Hamas leaders—to open a war crimes probe of the attacks, which it said were likely “indiscriminate” and “disproportionate.”
“On May 26, 2024, two Israeli airstrikes on the Kuwaiti Peace Camp, a makeshift camp for internally displaced people in Tal al-Sultan in west Rafah, killed at least 36 people—including six children—and injured more than 100,” noted Amnesty, which early in the assault on Gaza found “damning evidence” of Israeli war crimes including indiscriminate killing of civilians.
The Tal al-Sultan attack, which hit an Israeli-designated “safe zone,” ignited an inferno that burned people alive inside the tents in which they were sheltering. One survivor told Amnesty that “there were so many dead people all around us,” many of them “in pieces and in pools of blood.”
“The military could and should have taken all feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimize, harm to civilians.”
The Amnesty report states that the airstrikes, “which targeted two Hamas commanders staying amid displaced civilians, consisted of two U.S.-made GBU-39 guided bombs” and that “the use of these munitions, which project deadly fragments over a wide area, in a camp housing civilians in overcrowded temporary shelters likely constituted a disproportionate and indiscriminate attack, and should be investigated as a war crime.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Tal al-Sultan massacre a “tragic mistake.”
“On May 28, in the second incident investigated, the Israeli military fired at least three tank shells at a location in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah, which was designated by the Israeli military as a ‘humanitarian zone,'” Amnesty continued. “The strikes killed 23 civilians—including 12 children, seven women, and four men—and injured many more.”
“Amnesty International’s research found that the apparent targets of the attack were one Hamas and one Islamic Jihad fighter,” the publication notes. “This strike, which failed to distinguish between civilians and military objectives by using unguided munitions in an area full of civilians sheltering in tents, likely was indiscriminate and should be investigated as a war crime.”
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director for research, advocacy, policy, and campaigns, said in a statement that “while these strikes may have targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders and fighters, once again displaced Palestinian civilians seeking shelter and safety have paid with their lives.”
“The Israeli military would have been fully aware that the use of bombs that project deadly shrapnel across hundreds of meters and unguided tank shells would kill and injure a large number of civilians sheltering in overcrowded settings lacking protection,” she added. “The military could and should have taken all feasible precautions to avoid, or at least minimize, harm to civilians.”
Israel—whose 325-day bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza has left more than 144,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and millions more suffering forced displacement, starvation, and disease—is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands.
In January, the ICJ orderedIsrael to “take all measures within its power” to uphold its obligations under Article II of the Genocide Convention. Israel’s far-right government and military have been accused by human rights groups of ignoring the order.
As Israeli forces launched a major ground invasion of Rafah four months later, the ICJ issued another order for Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive” in the city, where around 1.5 million forcibly displaced and local Palestinian residents were sheltering. Instead of heeding the order, Israel ramped up its assault on Rafah.
At the International Criminal Court, Prosecutor Karim Khan is urging the tribunal to promptly act upon his May application for warrants to arrest Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, political chief Ismail Haniyeh, was subsequently assassinated by Israel.
Guevara-Rosas on Monday reminded Israel of its legal responsibility to protect noncombatants.
“The avoidable deaths and injuries of civilians is a stark and tragic reminder that, under international humanitarian law, the presence of fighters in the targeted area does not absolve the Israeli military of its obligations to protect civilians,” she said.
“All parties to the conflict must take all feasible precautions to protect civilians,” Guevara-Rosas added. “This also includes the obligation of Hamas and other armed groups to avoid, to the extent feasible, locating military objectives and fighters in or near densely populated areas.”
The new Amnesty report was published on the same day that Human Rights Watch called upon the ICC to investigate alleged and documented incidents of Israeli forces torturing imprisoned Palestinian medical workers, including at the notorious Sde Teiman prison, where guards are accused of war crimes including murder, rape, and torture.
