Palestine in Pictures: November 2021

3 December 2021

Israeli occupation forces killed four Palestinians – two of them children – during November.

Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 330 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since the beginning of the year.

Soldiers shot Muhammad Amjad Dadas, 15, in the stomach during confrontations near Nablus in the northern occupied West Bank on 5 November, killing him.

Palestinians have held frequent protests near Elon Moreh settlement that was established on land belonging to Deir al-Hatab village, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine.

Witnesses said that a soldier opened fire and fatally injured the boy after he was hit by a stone thrown by protesters.

Muhammad Dadas was an avid photographer and aspired to work as a photojournalist, his father told media.

Tor Wennesland, the UN Middle East peace envoy, told the Security Council that the child’s killing was being investigated by the Israeli military.

B’Tselem, a leading human rights group in Israel, has dismissed Israel’s self-investigation mechanism as a “fig leaf for the occupation.”

“Wilful killings”

After the killing of Dadas, Ayed Abu Eqtaish, a program director with Defense for Children International-Palestine, said that “systemic impunity has fostered an environment where Israeli forces know no bounds.”

The rights group added that “Israeli forces use lethal force against Palestinian children in circumstances that may amount to extrajudicial or wilful killings.”

Israeli forces shot and killed Saddam Hussein Bani Odeh, 26, in Tubas, a city in the northern West Bank, during an arrest raid on 16 November.

Footage of the raid appears to show Palestinians firing on the invading Israeli forces. No Israelis were injured.

The Palestinian resistance group Islamic Jihad claimed Bani Odeh as a member.

The following day, an Israeli civilian shot and killed Omar Ibrahim Ayoub Abu Assab, 16, after the teen allegedly stabbed two paramilitary Border Police officers in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The armed civilian, identified by media as the head of a seminary founded by Ateret Kohanim, a pro-settlement organization, fired at least six shots at the boy, eyewitnesses told Defense for Children International-Palestine.

The Israeli Border Police officers sustained light to moderate wounds.

Defense for Children International-Palestine said that Omar Abu Assab was the 16th Palestinian child shot and killed by Israeli forces or civilians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, so far this year.

Bodies withheld

Israeli forces have detained Omar’s body as part of its policy of withholding the corpses of Palestinians slain in the course of alleged attacks.

In 2019, the Israeli high court put its stamp of approval on the policy, which aims to use Palestinian bodies as bargaining chips to secure the remains of Israeli soldiers held by Palestinians.

The Israeli practice is “a violation of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, which include absolute prohibitions on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” according to Defense for Children International-Palestine.

Also in Jerusalem’s Old City, Israeli forces shot and killed Fadi Abu Shkheidem, 42, after he opened fire at Israelis near the Chain Gate to the al-Aqsa mosque compound on 21 November.

Eliyahu David Kay, 26, was killed. Three others, including two police officers, were injured.

Hamas claimed that Abu Shkheidem, a school teacher, was affiliated with the party.

After the shooting, occupation forces raided Abu Shkheidem’s home in Shuafat refugee camp, which is cordoned off by Israel’s wall. Israeli forces arrested several of Abu Shkheidem’s relatives, including his wife and daughter.

Kay, the man slain by Abu Shkheidem, was a recent immigrant from South Africa who worked as a tour guide at the Western Wall and was on his way to work when he was shot, according to Israeli media.

His death brings to 15 the number of Israelis or people in Israel killed in the context of the occupation so far this year.

The Israeli army razed the 700-year-old Moroccan Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to create the Western Wall plaza immediately after capturing Jerusalem during the 1967 War.

Medical neglect

Also during November, Sami al-Amour, 39, died while in Israeli detention. Al-Amour received inadequate medical care for a congenital heart problem and other health issues during his 13 years of imprisonment.

Israel has withheld al-Amour’s body, preventing his family from holding a burial.

Israel is now refusing to hand over the bodies of eight Palestinian prisoners to their families. The eight include al-Amour’s body and those of two other prisoners from Gaza.

Before he died, al-Amour was among 230 people from Gaza held behind Israel’s bars. In total, 4,650 Palestinians are now being detained by Israel.

On 29 November, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said that a funding shortfall meant that it was unable to pay its 28,000 employees, most of whom are Palestinians, on time.

UNRWA provides essential services to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

“If UNRWA health services are compromised in the middle of a global pandemic, COVID-19 vaccination rollout will come to an end,” Lazzarini warned.

“Maternal and child care will stop, half a million girls and boys not knowing if they can continue learning, and over two million of the poorest Palestinian refugees will not get cash and food assistance,” he added.

“The humanitarian needs of Palestinian refugees keep increasing while funding to the agency has stagnated since 2013.”

Separately, Wennesland, the UN secretary general’s Middle East envoy, warned of “an untenable fiscal crisis within the Palestinian Authority” during his briefing to the Security Council on 30 November.

Wennesland also reported that a Palestinian man was critically injured and his 10-year-old son wounded when their car overturned after being attacked by Israeli settlers on 24 November.

He added that “some 3,000 olive trees have been damaged or have had their harvest stolen” since the Palestinian harvest began in early October.

Israeli settlers have attacked “Palestinian farmers, volunteers and humanitarian volunteers,” sometimes in the presence of Israeli soldiers, Wennesland added.

Also during November, Israel extended its designation of six Palestinian nongovernmental organizations as “terrorist organizations” to the West Bank through a military order.

The military order puts the organizations’ “staff members and their property at imminent risk of raid, arrest and reprisals,” according to Al-Haq, one of the targeted groups.

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