THE Israeli cabinet has approved the ‘legalisation’ of five settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, and further sanctions on the Palestinian Authority for supporting cases against the regime in international courts.
‘The Security Cabinet has authorised one outpost for every country that unilaterally recognised Palestine as a state in the last month,’ Israel’s extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said late Thursday night.
Last month, Spain, Ireland and Norway formally recognised the Palestinian state, joining over 140 United Nations member states that have recognised its statehood over the past four decades.
Slovenia and Malta have also indicated they plan to formally recognise the state of Palestine.
The five settlement outposts are Evyatar, Givat Assaf, Sde Efraim, Heletz, and Adorayim.
The extremist minister said that sanctions against the Palestinian authority came after ‘weeks of discussion’ and were an ‘appropriate response’ to the Palestinian Authority’s activity against the regime at the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the United Nations.
The sanctions include the cancellation of exit visas for Palestinian Authority officials.
The Netherlands summonsed the Israeli regime’s ambassador to the country to explain allegations of Tel Aviv’s spying on the International Criminal Court.
Further restrictions were also declared regarding Palestinian construction in Area B of the West Bank, which is under the Palestinian Authority’s administration, in violation of signed agreements.
According to Smotrich’s proposed measures, the so-called Higher Planning Council for the West Bank is also expected to meet to advance the approval of thousands of additional settler units in the occupied territory.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The international community views the settlements – hundreds of which have been built across the West Bank since Israel’s occupation of the territory in 1967 – as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions because they are constructed on the occupied territories.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.
- In an unusual, strange and rare move, a Canadian university has filed a lawsuit against its own students seeking $1.5 million in damages for continuing their pro-Palestine encampment.
A court document published by the University of Waterloo said administrators are seeking damages of $1,500,000, including ‘damage for trespass, damage to property, intimidation, and ejectment.’
The lawsuit names ‘persons unknown’ and seven specific people by name, and includes their email addresses.
The university alleges the student encampment has damaged the school’s reputation, driven up administrative and operational costs for the university and depreciated the university’s property values.
The suit calls on the encampment participants to stop camping and never do so again on campus.
Also, the defendants are directed to restore the school’s property to the way it was on May 12, including the removal of all fences, tents, shelters, barriers, rubbish, and more.
Participants of the encampment have also been told to stop interfering with the University’s Senate and Board of Governors meetings, and any other school meetings.
The document includes conditions for the court to allow Waterloo Regional Police or any police service to remove the encampment and arrest the participants.
In a statement at the time, Occupy Waterloo said they ‘refused to sit idly by and watch our university support genocide with our tuition dollars!’
‘For seven months the university has lied to, dismissed and surveilled students calling for divestment and an end to UW’s financial and academic ties to the genocidal and apartheid entity of Israel.’
The University of Waterloo, like many universities across North America, has been accused of double standards when it comes to Israel’s savage military campaign in Gaza.
A social media post from the encampment says, ‘Incredibly shameful that @UWaterloo is choosing to sue their own student body protesting their university’s complicity in a genocide that’s nine months in and has claimed the lives of over 40,000.’
The post goes on to say, ‘History will absolve us. But you admin, how will you be remembered?’
The university move has also drawn widespread ridicule from many scholars and academics.
Emmett Macfarlane, a professor in the Department of Political Science, said the university had alluded to incidents of harassment and intimidation in its decision to sue, but ‘it offers no specifics, and does not even clearly state whether the university has made a legal judgment that a law has been broken (for example criminal harassment) or if it is merely responding to complainants’ perception.’
The encampment has been in place on the lawn outside Graduate House since May 13, with the participants demanding the school disclose and divest from all connections to Israel’s war against Gaza.
There are still several high-profile encampments maintaining their presence in Canada, including at the University of Toronto, and McGill University in Montreal where police used tear gas to disperse pro-Palestinian protestErs.
Both universities have indicated that they would be pushing for those to be dismantled, too.
Pro-Palestine protests by students intensified in several countries across the world, including Canada, France, Mexico, and Australia, amid a crackdown on United States students and a mounting death toll from Israel’s war on Gaza.
A Canadian student from McGill University, who has been on an indefinite hunger strike in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, has been admitted to hospital.
The students are calling for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza and demanding schools divest from companies that support the Israeli regime.
Since launching the war on Gaza on October 7th, Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
Israel has also killed the director of ambulance and emergency services in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Hani Jafrawi was killed in an airstrike on the al-Darj health clinic in Gaza City in the early hours of last Monday. He died alongside another healthcare worker.
Jafrawi, described as a ‘pillar’ of Gaza’s health system, is reported to be the 500th medical worker killed by Israeli forces since October 7th.
The Israeli military also targeted an aid convoy near Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, killing at least ten Palestinians and injuring several others.
To the west of Gaza City, at least three Palestinians were murdered after Israeli jets bombed an aid convoy in the vicinity of the Shati Supply Centre.
Meanwhile, United Nations relief agency UNRWA Commissioner General Phillippe Lazzarini has condemned the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. He says the Palestinians have been witnessing the greatest tragedy since the Nakba (catastrophe) in 1948.
Lazzarini also warned that lack of food and clean water is claiming the lives of more Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has killed more than 37,600 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in Gaza since early October.