Israel Wages Massive Military Attack on Palestinians in West Bank
In the last three days, Israel has launched large-scale military assaults across the illegally occupied West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem, its most violent since 2002. The main target is Palestinian refugee camps, particularly in the northern cities of Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas.
Israel’s occupation forces have killed at least 20 Palestinians since the massive military assault began in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Repeating on a smaller scale some of the most ruthless tactics employed in its genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, Israel has blockaded all hospitals in Jenin and Tulkarm.
In occupied Jerusalem, Israel’s occupation forces have invaded the Shu’fat refugee camp, the nearby village of Anata, as well as several villages near Ramallah, continuing their wave of mass arrests of Palestinians.
Since the start of Israel’s #GazaGenocide, and under its cover, Israeli forces and armed illegal settlers have murdered at least 663 Palestinians in the West Bank, systematically destroying public infrastructure, particularly water and power supply as well as roads, storming homes, arresting, killing, and injuring thousands of Palestinians. Ethnic cleansing of Indigenous Palestinian communities, a constant in Israel’s settler-colonial policies, is clearly the key goal of these deadly assaults.
On 19 July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel guilty of apartheid and its military occupation illegal. The World Court ordered Israel to completely end its military occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Instead, Israel, while continuing to escalate its livestreamed genocide in Gaza, has simultaneously increased its relentless violent attacks in the West Bank.
In May, the UN warned that “Israeli forces [are] bringing war to the West Bank.” On Wednesday, Israel Katz, Foreign Minister in Israel’s genocidal government, called for a Gaza-esque war in the West Bank and for Israel to issue evacuation orders for Palestinians, aka genocidal ethnic cleansing.
The ICJ ruling affirmed beyond doubt the legal obligation for all States to end complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation and gross violations of human rights, and to act to ensure respect for international law. This demands imposing immediate targeted sanctions on Israel.
The BDS movement calls for maximizing grassroots and civil society pressure on all states, the United Nations, and regional bodies to:
- Immediately impose a comprehensive military embargo on Israel, including the export, import and transfer of weapons, military equipment, and dual use items, as well as end all other forms of military cooperation (training, joint research, investments, etc.).
- Impose lawful targeted sanctions against Israel including diplomatic, economic, financial, academic, cultural, and sports.
- Immediately end all other forms of complicity in Israel’s illegal military occupation, its system of apartheid, and its ever more brutal Gaza genocide.
- Re-activate the UN Special Committee against Apartheid to help eradicate Israel’s regime of apartheid and hold those responsible accountable.
- Suspend Israel from the UN and strip it of its privileges and membership rights, just as was done with apartheid South Africa.
- Suspend Israel from the Olympics, FIFA, and all such international and regional fora and events.
Channel your rage, frustration, and grief into effective, strategic BDS action and build pressure and people power to stop the genocide and to eventually help Palestinians dismantle Israel’s 76-year-old regime of settler-colonial apartheid, the root cause of this oppression and unspeakable violence. •
