‘What’s happening in the West Bank just as in Gaza are war crimes’
Labour MP John McDonnell has questioned the UK government’s record on sanctioning Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, as violence in the region escalates.
Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, McDonnell called on the UK government to publish a detailed report into the sanctions imposed by the government on Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
It comes after the UN human rights office has demanded that Israeli security forces immediately stop participating in and enabling attacks by Jewish settlers in the region, stating the, “escalating violence over the past few days is also a matter of grave concern”.
This followed the killing of a 14 year-old Israeli from a settler family, which sparked the biggest settler rampage since the war in Gaza began, with seven Palestinians reported murdered and many others wounded.
Speaking on Wednesday in Parliament McDonnell said: “At a meeting with Israeli colleagues this morning we heard that the Israeli government is arresting legal and peaceful observers in the West Bank.
“Could the government now make it very clear to the Israeli government that observers should be allowed to operate within the West Bank, to ensure that peace is maintained, but also could we have a report in detail on the sanctions that the government is applying to Israeli settlements and Israeli settlers.”
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk speaks during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt on November 8, 2023. (Photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images)
“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.”
The United Nations human rights chief on Friday condemned the record expansion of illegal Israeli apartheid settlements in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem and the “dramatic increase” in violence against Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces and settlers, developments that are occurring while the world’s attention is focused on the Gaza genocide.
“Reports this week that Israel plans to build a further 3,476 settler homes in Maale Adumim, Efrat, and Kedar fly in the face of international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said in a statement responding to the far-right Israeli government’s latest settlement expansion scheme.
Türk submitted a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council affirming that Israel is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention by “effectively transferring the civilian population of Israel to the occupied territory while displacing the Palestinian population from their land.”
“Such transfers amount to a war crime that may engage the individual criminal responsibility of those involved,” the report states.
The drastic acceleration in Israeli settlements is worsening long-standing patterns of oppression, violence & discrimination against Palestinians, says @UNHumanRights report published today
Both the occupation and settlements are illegal under international law. Israel conquered the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights in Syria in 1967 and has occupied the territories ever since. Although Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and dismantled Jewish settlements there in 2005, Israel maintains a crippling physical and economic stranglehold that has become a total siege since October 7, when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a genocidal war in response to Hamas-led attacks.
The U.N. report notes that approximately 24,300 new homes in existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank were advanced between November 2022 to the end of October 2023, “the highest on record since monitoring began in 2017.”
According to the publication:
The policies of the current government of Israel appear aligned, to an unprecedented extent, with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long-term control over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to steadily integrate this occupied territory into the state of Israel…
During the reporting period, there was a dramatic increase in the intensity, severity, and regularity of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, which is accelerating the displacement of Palestinians from their land, in circumstances that may amount to forcible transfer. This violence further spiked following the attacks on October 7, 2023.
“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” said Türk.
According to the report, Israeli occupation forces and settlers have killed at least 413 Palestinians—including 107 children—while wounding more than 4,600 others in the West Bank since October 7. Palestinians killed 15 Israelis including four soldiers in the occupied territories during the same period.
In one of the most recent incidents, Israeli troops fatally shot 10-year-old Amr Mohammad Ghaleb Najar in the head while he sat in the front seat of his father’s car with his younger brother as they drove through the village of Burin on Monday. Soldiers then opened fire on Palestinians trying to rescue the child, wounding two other people.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also heads the Civil Administration—the governing body in the occupied territories—said this week that 18,515 new housing units have been approved in the settlements over the past year.
“The enemies try to harm and weaken us, but we will continue to build and be built up in this land,” the far-right minister said on social media.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, which has sanctioned a handful of extremist settlers, last month reversed a Trump-era policy shift under which the United States no longer officially viewed Israeli settlements as illegal. The U.S. State Department first declared the settlements unlawful in 1978.
“Our administration maintains a firm opposition to settlement expansion,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month. “And in our judgment, this only weakens—it doesn’t strengthen—Israel’s security.”
New housing projects are seen in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Givat Ze’ev, June 18, 2023
ISRAELI government proposals to build 3,500 new homes for settlers in the occupied West Bank took a step forward today, when far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the project had received planning permission.
“We continue to build the country!” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the scheme received approval from the Higher Planning Council, which authorises West Bank construction. “The enemies try to hurt and weaken us, but we will continue to build.”
The decision concerns 300 new homes in the Kedar settlement and 2,350 in Maale Adumim. It also advances a previously approved plan to build nearly 700 homes in Efrat to its final approval stage.
Mr Smotrich unveiled the plan in February, prompting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to say that was “disappointed.”
The number of new settlement housing units approved in the West Bank since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government took office has now risen to 15,775, according to Israeli activist group Peace Now, which is the highest number for a 15-month period since the watchdog began keeping count.
Carla Denyer is the co-leader of the Green Party in England and Wales (Image: BristolLive)
Bristol Green Party candidate Carla Denyer is demanding the UK scale up action against the Israeli government over the Gaza conflict. The Greens are calling for an end to all arms sales to Israel, prosecutions of war criminals and sanctions on Israel’s leaders.
The Green Party co-leader, who will stand in Bristol Central, has called for the UK to suspend arms export licences to Israel and to take measures such as excluding Israel from music and sporting events.
Ms Denyer said: “It is clear that the Israeli government is refusing to heed warnings about the catastrophic implications of an all-out attack on Rafah. The UK government must now demand that Israel stop the killing, calling for an immediate ceasefire. Hamas must also agree to this ceasefire of course, and release all hostages.
“Decisions made by the UK government – above all its failure, month after month, to call for an immediate ceasefire – have made them complicit in the killing of almost 28,000 people to date, 12,000 of whom are children.
“Israel relies on certain weapon parts manufactured in the UK, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter whose essential components are made here. A Dutch court has ordered the state to cease the export of F-35 spare parts to Israel. We call on the UK government to follow suit.
“Greens would implement the requirements of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign across the UK economy. This would include excluding Israel from international sporting and music events.
“It is clear that only outside pressure will make Israel stop its mass killing. We can increase the pressure on Israeli leaders by introducing targeted sanctions against key individuals. This would include travel bans and asset freezes on Israel’s leadership and cabinet members, in particular those calling for new settlements in Gaza and the annexation of the West Bank.
“Finally, we would encourage UK authorities including the Metropolitan Police and director of public prosecutions to pursue perpetrators of war crimes committed where UK citizens are the victims or where UK citizens are potential perpetrators.
“These unlawful killings are in blatant violation of international human rights law,” said the rights group.
While Israeli officials continue to claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Israel Defense Forces are targeting Hamas in their bombardment of occupied Palestine, a new report from Amnesty International on Monday details the extent to which the military has frequently used lethal force against civilians across the West Bank in addition to the more than 27,000 people it has killed in Gaza.
Calling for an investigation into possible war crimes, the group said it had analyzed four cases in which the IDF has used “unlawful lethal force” against people in the occupied West Bank and blocked medical professionals from reaching injured residents, with Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab verifying 19 videos and four photos of the incidents.
The events documented in the report account for the deaths of 20 Palestinians, including seven children. Since October 7, when the IDF began attacking the West Bank and Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, at least 360 people have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank, including 94 children, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
🚨 Israeli forces have over the past 4 months unleashed a brutal wave of violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, carrying out unlawful killings, including by using lethal force without necessity or disproportionately during protests and arrest raids, and denying…
Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty’s director of global research, advocacy, and policy, said the surge in unlawful deadly attacks in the West Bank have been perpetrated “under the cover of the relentless bombardment and atrocity crimes in Gaza.”
“These unlawful killings are in blatant violation of international human rights law and are committed with impunity in the context of maintaining Israel’s institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination over Palestinians,” said Guevara-Rosas. “These cases provide shocking evidence of the deadly consequences of Israel’s unlawful use of force against Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli authorities, including the Israeli judicial system, have proven shamefully unwilling to ensure justice for Palestinian victims.”
The report was released days after a team of Israeli forces disguised themselves as medical staff and civilians and raided Ibn Sina Hospital in the West Bank city of Jenin, killing three Palestinians who they claimed—without evidence—were planning an attack on Israel.
OCHA has recorded a sharp increase in “search and arrest operations” by the IDF in the occupied West Bank since October 7, with 54% of the 4,382 Palestinians injured in Israel’s assault sustaining their injuries during raids.
In the early days of the Israeli onslaught, 13 people, including six children, were killed during a raid on Nour Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem that began on October 19 and went on for 30 hours. IDF soldiers “stormed more than 40 residential homes, destroying personal belongings and drilling holes in the walls for sniper outposts” during the operation, which Israel said was in response to an improvised explosive device that was thrown at border police by Palestinians.
Israeli authorities cut off water and electricity to the camp and used bulldozers to destroy infrastructure, while stopping at least two ambulances from reaching people who were injured.
One person killed in the raid was 15-year-old Taha Mahami, who was “unarmed and posed no threat to the soldiers at the time he was shot, based on witness testimony and videos reviewed by Amnesty International.”
“They did not give him a chance. In an instant, my brother was eliminated,” said Fatima Mahamid, the victim’s sister. “Three bullets were fired without any mercy. The first bullet hit him in the leg. The second—in his stomach. Third, in his eye. There were no confrontations… there was no conflict.”
When the children’s father, Ibrahim Mahamid, tried to carry his injured son out of the line of fire, he was shot in the back by the IDF, sustaining damage to his internal organs.
“Neither Taha nor Ibrahim Mahamid posed a threat to security forces or anyone else when they were shot,” said Amnesty. “This unnecessary use of lethal force should be investigated as possible war crimes of wilful killing and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.”
In another “egregious” incident in October in Tulkarem, two eyewitnesses interviewed by Amnesty described Israeli forces opening fire from a watch tower on a crowd of at least 80 people who were holding a peaceful protest in solidarity with Gaza.
IDF soldiers opened fire on journalists wearing clearly visible “Press” markings as well as on a Palestinian man who was riding past the protest on a bike.
By carrying out such attacks, said Amnesty, Israel is violating international standards including the U.N. Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials.
“These standards prohibit the use of force by law enforcement officials unless strictly necessary and to the extent required for the performance of their duty and require that firearms may only be used as a last resort—when strictly necessary for military personnel or police to protect themselves or others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury,” said the group. “Willful killings of protected persons and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to protected persons are grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and war crimes.”
Guevara-Rosas said the incidents documented in the report, and the Israeli onslaught in the West Bank and Gaza as a whole, “is a litmus test for the legitimacy and reputation” of the International Criminal Court, which prosecutes war crimes, and that “it cannot afford to fail it.”
“In this climate of near total impunity, an international justice system worth its salt must step in,” said Guevara-Rosas. “The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court must investigate these killings and injuries as possible war crimes of willful killing and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury.”
