10/15/2024

Bay Area United Against War Newsletter, October 16, 2024

  




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Fire erupts among tents of displaced civilians after Israeli attacks in courtyard of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, October 14, 2024. (Photo: STR/APA Images)

Israel’s Genocide Day 374: Israeli airstrike on Gaza hospital burns patients alive

 

Israel bombed displacement shelters across Gaza and aid distribution points in Jabalia, while Hezbollah intensified its fire on Haifa and Tel Aviv amid Israel’s continued bombardment of southern Lebanese towns.

 

By Qassam Muaddi, October 14, 2024


Casualties

 

·      42,289 + killed* and at least 98,684 wounded in the Gaza Strip. 32,280 of the slain have been identified, including 10,627 children and 5,956 women, representing 60% of the casualties, and 2,770 elderly as of August 6, 2024. Some 10,000 more are estimated to be under the rubble.*

 

·      754+ Palestinians have been killed in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This includes at least 146 children.**

 

·      2,309 Lebanese killed and more than 10,096 wounded by Israeli forces since October 8, 2023***

 

·      Israel revised its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,189.

 

·      The Israeli army recognizes the death of 720 Israeli soldiers and the injury of at least 4,100 others since October 7.****

 

* Gaza’s branch of the Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this figure in its daily report, published through its WhatsApp channel on October 10, 2024. Rights groups and public health experts estimate the death toll to be much higher.

 

** The death toll in the West Bank and Jerusalem is not updated regularly. This is the latest figure according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health as of October 9, 2024.

 

*** This figure was released by the Lebanese Health Ministry, updated on October 9, 2024. The counting is based on the Lebanese official date for the beginning of “the Israeli aggression on Lebanon,” when Israel began airstrikes on Lebanese territory after the beginning of Hezbollah’s “support front” for Gaza.

 

**** These figures are released by the Israeli military, showing the soldiers whose names “were allowed to be published.” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported on August 4, 2024, that some 10,000 Israeli soldiers and officers have been either killed or wounded since October 7. The head of the Israeli army’s wounded association told Israel’s Channel 12 that the number of wounded Israeli soldiers exceeds 20,000, including at least 8,000 who have been permanently handicapped as of June 1. Israel’s Channel 7 reported that according to the Israeli war ministry’s rehabilitation service numbers, 8,663 new wounded joined the army’s handicap rehabilitation system since October 7 and as of June 18.

Source: mondoweiss.net

 
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE!
END ALL U.S. AID TO ISRAEL!
FOR A DEMOCRATIC, SECULAR PALESTINE!

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On this Wrongful Conviction Day, Leonard Peltier, the longest-serving Indigenous political prisoner, is incarcerated in lockdown-modified operations conditions at USP Coleman I, operated by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP).

 

Yet, in this moment of silence, Leonard speaks.

 

To honor his birthday and all those who are unjustly convicted and incarcerated, the Leonard Peltier Official Ad Hoc Committee has released a video of Leonard Peltier that is going viral. Narrated by renowned scholar Ward Churchill and set to a video created by award-winning filmmaker Suzie Baer, the film most importantly centers Leonard’s personal reflection on his 80th year.

 

Jenipher Jones, Mr. Peltier's lead counsel, commented, "This powerfully moving film captures the essence of who I know Leonard to be. I am grateful to Professor Churchill and Suzie Baer for their work and longstanding advocacy of Leonard. As the recent execution of Marcellus Williams-Imam Khaliifah Williams shows us, we as a society bear a responsibility to uplift the cases of all those who are wrongfully convicted and also hold the government accountable to do that for which it professes to exist. We must challenge our impulses of blind blood-thirst for guilt and the use of our legal systems to carry out this malignant pathology. There is absolutely no lawful justification for Leonard's incarceration."

 

“Leonard Peltier is Native elder whose wrongful incarceration is shameful. His continued imprisonment exemplifies the historical cruelty of the US Government toward Native people. The US BOP's treatment of Leonard Peltier is unlawful, and he deserves his freedom.” —Suzie Baer

 

Leonard's Statement: Peltier 80th Statement.pdf:

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABHSRNdyB8SKn0I&id=DFF2DD874157D44A%21118178&cid=DFF2DD874157D44A&parId=root&parQt=sharedby&o=OneUp

 

To view the film, please visit:

https://tinyurl.com/Peltier80thPresentation

 

We hope to have additional updates on Leonard soon. In the meantime, please engage our calls to action or donate to his defense efforts.

Miigwech.

 

Donate/ActNow:

https://www.freeleonardpeltiernow.org/donate?link_id=2&can_id=1b2409958245a3dd77323d7f06d7f2df&email_referrer=email_2476307&email_subject=leonard-peltiers-80th-birthday-statement-2024


Leave a message at the Whitehouse:
www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Write to:

Leonard Peltier 89637-132

USP Coleman 1

P.O. Box 1033

Coleman, FL 33521

Note: Letters, address and return address must be in writing—no stickers—and on plain white paper.

Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWdJdODKO6M&feature=youtu.be


Sign our petition urging President Biden to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:

 

https://www.freeleonardpeltier.com/petition

 

Email: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info

Address: 116 W. Osborne Ave. Tampa, Florida 33603


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Beneath The Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024) is a collection of revolutionary essays, written by those who have been detained inside prison walls. Composed by the most structurally dispossessed people on earth, the prisoner class, these words illuminate the steps towards freedom. 

 

Beneath the Mountain documents the struggle — beginning with slavery, genocide, and colonization up to our present day — and imagines a collective, anti-carceral future. These essays were handwritten first on scraps of paper, magazine covers, envelopes, toilet paper, or pages of bibles, scratched down with contraband pencils or the stubby cartridge of a ball-point pen; kites, careworn, copied and shared across tiers and now preserved in this collection for this and future generations. If they were dropped in the prison-controlled mail they were cloaked in prayers, navigating censorship and dustbins. They were very often smuggled out. These words mark resistance, fierce clarity, and speak to the hope of building the world we all deserve to live in.  


"Beneath the Mountain reminds us that ancestors and rebels have resisted conquest and enslavement, building marronage against colonialism and genocide."

—Joy James, author of New Bones Abolition: Captive Maternal Agency

 

Who stands beneath the mountain but prisoners of war? Mumia Abu-Jamal and Jennifer Black have assembled a book of fire, each voice a flame in captivity...Whether writing from a place of fugivity, the prison camp, the city jail, the modern gulag or death row, these are our revolutionary thinkers, our critics and dreamers, our people. The people who move mountains. —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

 

Filled with insight and energy, this extraordinary book gifts us the opportunity to encounter people’s understanding of the fight for freedom from the inside out.  —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Golden Gulag and Abolition Geography

 

These are the words each writer dreamed as they sought freedom and they need to be studied by people inside and read in every control unit/hole in every prison in America. We can send this book for you to anyone who you know who is currently living, struggling, and fighting 

 

Who better to tell these stories than those who have lived them? Don’t be surprised with what you find within these pages: hope, solidarity, full faith towards the future, and most importantly, love. 

 

Excerpt from the book:

"Revolutionary love speaks to the ways we protect, respect, and empower each other while standing up to state terror. Its presence is affirmed through these texts as a necessary component to help chase away fear and to encourage the solidarity and unity essential for organizing in dangerous times and places. Its absence portends tragedy. Revolutionary love does not stop the state from wanting to kill us, nor is it effective without strategy and tactics, but it is the might that fuels us to stand shoulder to shoulder with others regardless. Perhaps it can move mountains."  —Jennifer Black & Mumia Abu-Jamal from the introduction to Beneath The Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader

 

Get the book at:

https://www.prisonradiostore.com/shop-2/beneath-the-mountain-an-anti-prison-reader-edited-by-mumia-abu-jamal-jennifer-black-city-lights-2024

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Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky 

By Monica Hill

In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.

Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: 

“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”

Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.

A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.

To sign the online petition at freeboris.info

Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024

https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. 


Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky

We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.

Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.

The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.

On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.

The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.

The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.

There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.

Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.

We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.

We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.

Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky

https://freeboris.info

The petition is also available on Change.org

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*Major Announcement*

Claudia De la Cruz wins

Peace and Freedom Party primary in California!


We have an exciting announcement. The votes are still being counted in California, but the Claudia-Karina “Vote Socialist” campaign has achieved a clear and irreversible lead in the Peace and Freedom Party primary. Based on the current count, Claudia has 46% of the vote compared to 40% for Cornel West. A significant majority of PFP’s newly elected Central Committee, which will formally choose the nominee at its August convention, have also pledged their support to the Claudia-Karina campaign.

 

We are excited to campaign in California now and expect Claudia De la Cruz to be the candidate on the ballot of the Peace and Freedom Party in November.

 

We achieved another big accomplishment this week - we’re officially on the ballot in Hawai’i! This comes after also petitioning to successfully gain ballot access in Utah. We are already petitioning in many other states. Each of these achievements is powered by the tremendous effort of our volunteers and grassroots organizers across the country. When we’re organized, people power can move mountains!

 

We need your help to keep the momentum going. Building a campaign like this takes time, energy, and money. We know that our class enemies — the billionaires, bankers, and CEO’s — put huge sums toward loyal politicians and other henchmen who defend their interests. They will use all the money and power at their disposal to stop movements like ours. As an independent, socialist party, our campaign is relying on contributions from the working class and people like you.

 

We call on each and every one of our supporters to set up a monthly or one-time donation to support this campaign to help it keep growing and reaching more people. A new socialist movement, independent of the Democrats and Republicans, is being built but it will only happen when we all pitch in.

 

The Claudia-Karina campaign calls to end all U.S. aid to Israel. End this government’s endless wars. We want jobs for all, with union representation and wages that let us live with dignity. Housing, healthcare, and education for all - without the lifelong debt. End the ruthless attacks on women, Black people, immigrants, and LGBTQ people. These are just some of the demands that are resonating across the country. Help us take the next step: 

 

Volunteer: https://votesocialist2024.com/volunteer

 

Donate: https://votesocialist2024.com/donate

 

See you in the streets,

 

Claudia & Karina

 

Don't Forget! Join our telegram channel for regular updates: https://t.me/+KtYBAKgX51JhNjMx

  

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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!

FREE HIM NOW!

Write to Mumia at:

Smart Communications/PADOC

Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335

SCI Mahanoy

P.O. Box 33028

St. Petersburg, FL 33733


Join the Fight for Mumia's Life


Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.

Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024

Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.

Send to:

 Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio

P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103

Prison Radio is a project of the Redwood Justice Fund (RJF), which is a California 501c3 (Tax ID no. 680334309) not-for-profit foundation dedicated to the defense of the environment and of civil and human rights secured by law.  Prison Radio/Redwood Justice Fund PO Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94141


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Updates From Kevin Cooper 

A Never-ending Constitutional Violation

A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee

 

      On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.

      On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.

      On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.

      On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.

      These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.

      The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.

      It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.

But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?

      This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.

      Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?

      Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?


An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:


Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213

 

www.freekevincooper.org

 

Call California Governor Newsom:

1-(916) 445-2841

Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish, 

press 6 to speak with a representative and

wait for someone to answer 

(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)


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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression

https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/

 

Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests. 

 

The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page. 

 

Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.

 

Emergency Hotlines

If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities. 

 

State and Local Hotlines

If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for: 

 

Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312

San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org

Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963

National Hotline

If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:

 

National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811


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Articles

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1) Roadblocked

By Ben Hubbard, Sergey Ponomarev, Leanne Abraham and Marco Hernandez Oct. 13, 2024

In the occupied West Bank, Israelis zip along well-groomed roads designed for their convenience. Palestinians are shunted onto convoluted routes dotted with checkpoints.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/13/world/middleeast/west-bank-roads.html
Palestinian side separated by wall                                     Israeli side

The Palestinian Detour

THE TWO PASSENGERS departed from neighboring communities and even used some of the same roads. At a roundabout near Jerusalem, the paths of the Israeli and the Palestinian diverged dramatically.

 

Rachel Filus, an Israeli living in a West Bank settlement, rode an Israeli bus that could enter Jerusalem. So it took a right at the roundabout and blazed through the Israeli military’s Hizma checkpoint after a cursory glance from the soldiers there.

 

Abdullah al-Natsheh, a Palestinian going from Ramallah, rode a Palestinian bus that was forbidden to enter Jerusalem. So it went left at the same roundabout, avoiding the checkpoint but setting off on a meandering and bumpy route around the city.

 

To differentiate who can drive where, cars have different-colored license plates. Those registered in Israel have yellow plates and can move much more freely. West Bank Palestinian cars have green plates, and except for rare vehicles with special permits, they are barred from certain roads and can’t enter Israel or almost any part of Jerusalem.

 

“I can’t go to Jerusalem, but my understanding is that it would be much faster,” said Mr. al-Natsheh, who is 24. He estimates that it would cut an hour off his trip. Instead, he settles in for a long, uncomfortable ride.

 

“Life ends,” he said. “But the road never ends.”

 

When Mr. al-Natsheh, a molecular geneticist at a private lab, boarded his bus in an exhaust-filled garage to visit his family in Hebron, he knew Israeli restrictions would hamper his trip. His bus would fight traffic near army checkpoints and use lengthy workarounds on roads that were often crowded and in bad shape.

 

The Palestinian route from Ramallah to Hebron is only about 50 miles. On good days, it takes an hour and a half. When we drove it, in late May, it took three hours — meaning an average speed of just 17 miles per hour.

 

The roads have become more perilous for Palestinians since Hamas attacked Israel last October, starting the war in the Gaza Strip, with Israeli settlers sometimes attacking Palestinian drivers. Some Palestinian routes have also gotten longer. On the day we rode with Mr. al-Natsheh, the military had blocked the route his bus had usually used to leave Ramallah, forcing it onto a slower, congested road that passes by Qalandia, a checkpoint that screens Palestinians heading to Jerusalem.

 

Mr. al-Natsheh has gotten used to killing time on the bus.

 

“You can sleep a bit, read, look at social media,” he said. “You can do everything — and you are still on the bus.”

 

Ms. Filus, who works in food service in a Jerusalem hospital, boarded her bus in Beit El, an orderly, tree-lined settlement, and zipped along the well-groomed highway that Mr. al-Natsheh’s bus had been barred from reaching.

 

Born in Panama, Ms. Filus, 21, immigrated to Israel five years ago. Her family initially lived in East Jerusalem, but she said that living near so many Palestinians made her feel unsafe. Seeking a more religious community and more space, her family moved to Beit El, a West Bank settlement.

 

“Here we know that all the people are Jewish people,” she said.

 

At first, she had been scared to share the roads with Palestinians. They drove recklessly, she said, and she had heard that Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli cars. She got used to it and now takes the bus to work regularly.

 

Other Israeli passengers said that if the bus broke down in the West Bank, they would be scared to get off, fearing that Palestinians could attack them.

 

Yaacov Koren, a 49-year-old courier, compared the Palestinians along the route to “a caged lion.”

 

“If you stick your finger in, they will bite it off,” he said.

 

A roadmap shaped by history

 

Today, about 500,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, among 2.7 million Palestinians. They sometimes live so close together that they can see each other’s homes, but direct interactions are limited, often hostile and sometimes violent.

 

They regularly drive near each other, however, on the West Bank’s roads.

 

Israel says it manages the roads to reduce friction and prevent militant attacks on Israelis. Rights groups say the movement restrictions on Palestinians create deep inequality.

 

“Palestinian free movement on main roads in the West Bank is viewed as something that Israel can give and take as it wishes based on its own interests,” said Sarit Michaeli, of the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. “It is providing a swift and fast system of transport for Israeli settlers into Israel and between settlements. This has always been the guiding principle.”

 

The Palestinian Detour

 

EARLY ON OUR DETOUR with Mr. al-Natsheh around Jerusalem, the bus reached one of the starkest examples of roads built to keep Israelis and Palestinians apart: the East Jerusalem Ring Road. Palestinian cars use one side; only Israeli-registered cars are allowed on the other. A high wall keeps them apart.

 

The Palestinian Authority and other critics have called it and others “apartheid” roads. Israel says it is a security measure to prevent Palestinian attacks on Israeli drivers.

 

The Ring Road led to part of Route 1, a major highway that also separates Israeli and Palestinian traffic, with a towering wall topped with concertina wire.

 

Later, after a stretch of shared road, the bus turned onto a crowded street with huge red signs declaring it a Palestinian area, which a military directive bars Israelis from entering.

 

The bus crawled through traffic on a Palestinian commercial avenue. Shops along its sides displayed tools and ladders, furniture and freshly slaughtered sheep.

 

The bus turned off the avenue and zoomed down a hill, and a baby in the back seat vomited.

 

From his seat, Mr. al-Natsheh could clearly see the Jerusalem skyline, close but unreachable.

 

Only once had he been to the city that Palestinians hope will be the capital of a future state. He was 10 years old, and his family had received single-day permits to leave the West Bank. They planned to pray at Al Aqsa Mosque, a treasured Muslim holy site.

 

Despite their permits, his father was not allowed to cross the checkpoint, so Mr. al-Natsheh went with his mother and brother, he said.

 

“I don’t remember much,” he said. “It was mostly the road, checkpoints and searches.” They were in the city for only about three hours. He has never been back.

 

“Now we look at it from far away,” he said.

The bus soon hit even worse traffic at a roundabout, with cars feeding from three directions into a single road leading to a checkpoint the Palestinians call the Container. It straddles the primary Palestinian road connecting the northern and southern halves of the West Bank.

 

When Israel closes it, it effectively cuts the territory in half, paralyzing movement.

 

“You wait,” Mr. al-Natsheh said. “There is no choice but this road.”

 

The bus popped up on to the curb to overtake other cars and finally reached the checkpoint, passing a soldier with an assault rifle inspecting the cars.

 

Then it traversed one of the slowest sections of the trip: Palestinians call it the Valley of Fire. It is a steep incline, full of switchbacks, to a bridge over a dry creek bed that smells of sewage, followed by a zigzagging ascent out of the valley.

 

The succession of sharp turns made the baby vomit again.

 

Once out of the valley, the bus reached the second new detour since Oct. 7.

 

Before the war began, the bus could take a smooth road that mostly avoided passing through towns. But since October, the Israeli military has kept many entrances to that road closed to Palestinian cars, forcing the bus to take a zigzagging path on backroads.

 

Unable to enter the main road, Mr. al-Natsheh’s bus twisted back onto more village roads, some of them wide enough for only one car to pass at a time. Children sat at the chokepoints, selling coffee and directing drivers in order to avoid head-on collisions.

 

Finally, the bus emerged from the villages onto a wider road. Israeli soldiers in guard posts along it held their rifles pointed at the passing drivers.

 

Crossing Through Jerusalem

 

AFTER CROSSING THROUGH the checkpoint, Ms. Filus’s bus sped easily toward Jerusalem.

 

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 and has annexed it, a move not recognized by most of the world. It has since erased most indications on the ground of the dividing line between Israel and the territory it occupies, known as the green line.

 

Ms. Filus’s bus drove for four miles after the checkpoint before reaching the green line. Nothing marked the spot.

 

She appeared to give little thought to how the road network inconveniences Palestinians, saying simply that they have ways to drive between their cities. In the West Bank, she hardly ever interacts with them.

 

“Just sometimes when we are on the road,” she said. “But to talk to someone in the West Bank, no.”

 

She arrived at her stop, climbed off the bus and headed for work.

 

Few Israelis do the trip from Beit El to Hebron on public transportation, so we did it in two legs.

 

Near where Ms. Filus got off, another Israeli, Grigory Kels Tsvi, boarded a different bus for his home settlement of Kiryat Arba, which was next to Mr. al-Natsheh’s destination, Hebron.

 

Mr. Tsvi’s bus departed and sped south on a major highway. Just as there was no marker where Ms. Filus left occupied territory, nothing marked where Mr. Tsvi entered it.

 

As the bus passed the Palestinian cities of Beit Jala and Bethlehem, towering concrete walls lined the road, meant to keep out Palestinians and prevent attacks on passing cars.

 

Later, the bus passed a military checkpoint on the other side of the road to prevent Palestinian cars from going the opposite direction, toward Jerusalem.

 

Mr. Tsvi, 77, immigrated to Israel from Kazakhstan in 1992 and moved to Kiryat Arba because housing was cheaper, allowing him to put more money toward his four children’s education, he said.

 

Like most Israelis, he dismissed the idea of dividing Jerusalem in a peace deal with the Palestinians.

 

“What kind of capital would it be if you would cross the street and be in another country?” he said.

 

He likes living in the West Bank.

 

“My home is my fortress,” he said. “If I live here, then I have to defend this patch of land.”

 

The Routes Converge

 

MR. TSVI’S BUS reached an intersection where Palestinian cars could turn onto the main road. This is where his route overlapped with that of Mr. al-Natsheh. Mr. Tsvi pointed to the mix of yellow and green license plates around the bus, saying they showed that Palestinians could move easily too.

 

“There is no discrimination,” he said.

 

But as the bus drove, it passed Palestinian towns whose access to the highway had been blocked by large gates that the Israeli army had locked.

 

Mr. Tsvi shrugged and said that Israelis had to share the roads with Palestinians.

 

“What can we do?” he said. “We live here, and they also live here.”

 

By the time Mr. al-Natsheh’s bus reached that same stretch of road, all the bumping, swerving and heat had made him doze off, his head bobbing as he approached Hebron. When he woke up, he pointed out the Palestinian towns whose access to the highway had been blocked, meaning nearly all of them.

 

Finally, the bus turned into Hebron and he climbed off the bus, stretched and walked home.

 

Map data sources

 

Data on the extent of Palestinian communities and Israeli settlements, including areas with Israeli jurisdiction, are from Peace Now, an advocacy group that monitors settler activity in the West Bank.

 

The road network in the West Bank, including the roads restricted to Palestinians, is from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The U.N. also provided the extents of areas A, B, and C as determined by the Oslo Accords.

 

The checkpoints and other roadblocks mapped in this piece were tracked and compiled by B'Tselem, an Israeli rights organization, as of May this year. Checkpoints and other parts of the road network change frequently.

 

Other data in the maps is from OpenStreetMap and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). Elevation data is from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM).

 

Rami Nazzal contributed reporting from Ramallah and Adam Sella from Jerusalem. Produced by Joyce Ho and Rumsey Taylor.


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2) U.S. to Deploy Missile Defense System and About 100 Troops to Israel

The Pentagon announced it would send the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery and its crew as Israel considered retaliatory attacks against Iran.

By Helene Cooper, Reporting from Washington, Oct. 13, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/us/politics/us-missile-defense-iran-israel.html

A large defense system points up toward the sky.

A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in Guam in 2023. Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times


The United States is sending an advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with about 100 American troops to operate it, the Pentagon announced on Sunday. It is the first deployment of U.S. forces to Israel since the Hamas-led attacks there on Oct. 7, 2023.

 

President Biden directed Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, and its crew, Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement on Sunday.

 

The move will put American troops operating the ground-based interceptor, which is designed to defend against ballistic missiles, closer to the widening war in the Middle East. It comes after Iran launched about 200 missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 and as Israel plans its retaliatory attack.

 

The THAAD battery, a mobile defense system, will give the Israel Defense Forces another layer of protection to defend cities, troops and installations from short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles like those deployed by Iran in its last attack.

 

When asked about it on Sunday, Mr. Biden said only that he had ordered the Pentagon to deploy the system “to defend Israel.” General Ryder said in his statement that the battery would “augment Israel’s integrated air defense system.”

 

“This action underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran,” the statement said. “It is part of the broader adjustments the U.S. military has made in recent months to support the defense of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias.”

 

A senior U.S. military official said on Sunday that it would take at least a week to get the new system, and the necessary troops, to Israel.

 

While the THAAD system represents the first U.S. troop deployment to Israel since the war in Gaza began, the U.S. military did build a temporary pier off the coast of Gaza in May meant to rush humanitarian aid to the enclave. The pier was dismantled in July after weeks of damage from rough seas.

 

And late last month, the Pentagon said that it would send a “few thousand” American troops to the Middle East as Israel intensified its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon, with one official putting the figure between 2,000 and 3,000. The United States also sent a THAAD battery along with other air defense systems to the region weeks after the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.

 

The decision announced on Sunday comes as senior Pentagon officials have been debating whether the increased U.S. military presence in the region is containing the war, as they had hoped, or inflaming it.

 

Several Pentagon officials have expressed concern in recent weeks that Israel has been waging an increasingly aggressive campaign against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, knowing that an armada of American warships and dozens of attack planes stand ready to help blunt any Iranian response.

 

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has raised the issue in meetings at the Pentagon and at the White House, officials said. General Brown has also questioned the effect of the expanded American presence in the region on overall combat “readiness,” the ability of the U.S. military to respond quickly to conflicts, including with China and Russia.

 

General Brown, Mr. Austin and other officials have tried to balance containing the conflict and emboldening Israel, one senior U.S. military official said.

 

On Saturday Mr. Austin spoke with Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, and “expressed his deep concern about reports that Israeli forces fired on U.N. peacekeeping positions in Lebanon as well as by the reported death of two Lebanese soldiers,” the Pentagon said in a statement about the call.

 

On Sunday morning, the Israeli military said that its jets had hit around 200 Hezbollah targets in Lebanon over the past day.

 

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.


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3) How Israel’s Army Uses Palestinians as Human Shields in Gaza

Israeli soldiers and Palestinian former detainees say troops have regularly forced captured Gazans to carry out life-threatening tasks, including inside Hamas tunnels.

By Natan Odenheimer, Bilal Shbair and Patrick Kingsley, Oct. 14, 2024

Natan Odenheimer, Bilal Shbair and Patrick Kingsley interviewed 16 Israeli soldiers and officials who knew about the practice, as well as three Palestinians, on the record, who were forced to take part in it.


"Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, a scholar at West Point who has studied the use of human shields in armed conflicts, said he was unaware of another military routinely using civilians, prisoners of war or captured terrorists for life-threatening reconnaissance missions in recent decades. Military historians say the practice was used by U.S. forces in Vietnam. 'In most cases,' Professor Schmitt said, 'this constitutes a war crime.'”


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-military-human-shields.html

Troops and two people in civilian clothes seen in semidarkness inside a wrecked building.

A picture provided by Breaking the Silence, a watchdog group, showing Israeli soldiers and two Palestinian detainees who were sent into homes suspected to be booby-trapped in Gaza City. Credit...Breaking The Silence


After Israeli soldiers found Mohammed Shubeir hiding with his family in early March, they detained him for roughly 10 days before releasing him without charge, he said.

 

During that time, Mr. Shubeir said, the soldiers used him as a human shield.

 

Mr. Shubeir, then 17, said he was forced to walk handcuffed through the empty ruins of his hometown, Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, searching for explosives set by Hamas. To avoid being blown up themselves, the soldiers made him go ahead, Mr. Shubeir said.

 

In one wrecked building, he stopped in his tracks: Running along the wall, he said, was a series of wires attached to explosives.

 

“The soldiers sent me like a dog to a booby-trapped apartment,” said Mr. Shubeir, a high school student. “I thought these would be the last moments of my life.”

 

An investigation by The New York Times found that Israeli soldiers and intelligence agents, throughout the war in Gaza, have regularly forced captured Palestinians like Mr. Shubeir to conduct life-threatening reconnaissance missions to avoid putting Israeli soldiers at risk on the battlefield.

 

While the extent and scale of such operations are unknown, the practice, illegal under both Israeli and international law, has been used by at least 11 squads in five cities in Gaza, often with the involvement of officers from Israeli intelligence agencies.

 

Palestinian detainees have been coerced to explore places in Gaza where the Israeli military believes that Hamas militants have prepared an ambush or a booby trap. The practice has gradually become more widespread since the start of the war last October.

 

Detainees have been forced to scout and film inside tunnel networks where soldiers believed fighters were still hiding. They have entered buildings rigged with mines to find hidden explosives. They have been told to pick up or move objects like generators and water tanks that Israeli soldiers feared concealed tunnel entrances or booby traps.

 

The Times interviewed seven Israeli soldiers who observed or participated in the practice and presented it as routine, commonplace and organized, conducted with considerable logistical support and the knowledge of superiors on the battlefield. Many of them said the detainees were handled and often transported between the squads by officers from Israel’s intelligence agencies, a process that required coordination between battalions and the awareness of senior field commanders. And though they served in different parts of Gaza at different points in the war, the soldiers largely used the same terms to refer to human shields.

 

The Times also spoke to eight soldiers and officials briefed on the practice who all spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss a military secret. Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, a former chief of military intelligence who is routinely briefed by top military and defense officials on the conduct of the war, confirmed the use of one version of the practice, saying that some detainees had been coerced into entering tunnels while others had volunteered to accompany troops and act as their guides, in the hope of gaining favor with the military. And three Palestinians gave on-the-record accounts about being used as human shields.

 

The Times found no evidence of any detainees being harmed or killed while being used as human shields. In one case, an Israeli officer was shot and killed after a detainee sent to search a building either did not detect or failed to report a militant hiding there.

 

The Israeli military said in a statement that its “directives and guidelines strictly prohibit the use of detained Gaza civilians for military operations.” It added that the accounts of the Palestinian detainees and soldiers interviewed by The Times would be “examined by the relevant authorities.”

 

International law forbids the use of civilians or combatants as a shield against attack. It is also illegal to send captured combatants to places where they would be exposed to fire, or to force civilians to do anything related to the conduct of military operations.

 

While the laws are vaguer about the rights of people detained during conflicts with a nonstate actor like Hamas, it is illegal to force Palestinian detainees to explore dangerous places “regardless of whether those detainees are civilians or members of the fighting wing of Hamas,” said Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, a professor at the University of Bristol in England and an expert on laws governing detention in conflicts with nonstate actors.

 

The Israeli military employed a similar practice, known as the “neighbor procedure,” in Gaza and the West Bank in the early 2000s. Soldiers would force Palestinian civilians to approach the homes of militants to persuade them to surrender.

 

That procedure was banned in 2005 by Israel’s Supreme Court, in an expansive ruling that also outlawed the use of human shields in other contexts. The court’s president, Aharon Barak, ruled that a resident of an occupied territory “should not be brought, even with his consent, into an area where a military operation is taking place.”

 

The power imbalance between soldier and civilian, his decision said, meant that no one could be considered to have volunteered for such a task. Soldiers should also not ask civilians to do things they assumed were safe, the ruling added, given that “this assumption is sometimes unfounded.”

 

The war in Gaza began last October when Hamas and its allies committed widespread atrocities in Israel before retreating into underground tunnels to escape a devastating Israeli counterattack that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

 

Accused of acting without enough concern for civilian casualties, Israel has defended itself by saying that Hamas embeds its fighters and weapons in civilian areas, effectively using entire communities as human shields.

 

Israeli soldiers have used human shields in a different way.

 

Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, a scholar at West Point who has studied the use of human shields in armed conflicts, said he was unaware of another military routinely using civilians, prisoners of war or captured terrorists for life-threatening reconnaissance missions in recent decades. Military historians say the practice was used by U.S. forces in Vietnam.

 

“In most cases,” Professor Schmitt said, “this constitutes a war crime.”

 

The soldiers who spoke to The Times said they began using the practice during the current war because of a desire to limit the risks to infantry.

 

Some of the soldiers who saw or participated in the practice found it deeply troubling, prompting them to take the risk of discussing a military secret with a journalist. Two were connected to The Times by Breaking the Silence, an independent watchdog that gathers testimony from Israeli soldiers.

 

Two soldiers said that members of their squads, which each comprised roughly 20 people, expressed opposition to commanders. Soldiers said some low-ranking officers tried to justify the practice by claiming, without proof, that the detainees were terrorists rather than civilians held without charge.

 

They said they were told that the lives of terrorists were worth less than those of Israelis — even though officers often concluded their detainees did not belong to terrorist groups and later released them without charge, according to an Israeli soldier and the three Palestinians who spoke to The Times.

 

One Israeli squad forced a crowd of displaced Palestinians to walk ahead for cover as it advanced toward a militant hide-out in central Gaza City, according to Jehad Siam, 31, a Palestinian graphic designer who was part of the group.

 

“The soldiers asked us to move forward so that the other side wouldn’t shoot back,” Mr. Siam said. Once the crowd reached the hide-out, the soldiers emerged from behind the civilians and surged inside the building, Mr. Siam said.

 

After seemingly killing the militants, Mr. Siam said, the soldiers let the civilians go unharmed.

 

Searching a Yard at Gunpoint

 

Hamas has turned large parts of Gaza into a labyrinth of booby traps and hidden tunnel networks, rigging civilian homes and institutions with explosive traps or using them as temporary military bases and arms caches.

 

After invading Gaza in late October, Israeli soldiers said they found they were often at most risk when entering homes or tunnel entrances possibly lined with traps. To combat that threat, they used drones and sniffer dogs to scout a location before entering.

 

When no dogs or drones were available or when officers believed a human would be more effective, they sometimes sent in Palestinians.

 

Basheer al-Dalou, a pharmacist from Gaza City, said he was forced to act as a human shield on the morning of Nov. 13, after being captured at his home. Mr. al-Dalou, now 43, had fled the neighborhood with his wife and four sons weeks earlier, but had briefly returned to fetch some basic supplies, even though the neighborhood was a battlefield.

 

The soldiers ordered Mr. al-Dalou to strip to his underwear, then handcuffed and blindfolded him, he said in an interview in Gaza after his release without charge.

 

After being interrogated about Hamas activities in the area, Mr. al-Dalou said, he was ordered by the soldiers to enter the backyard of a nearby five-story home. The yard was littered with debris, including birdcages, water tanks, gardening tools, broken chairs, shattered glass and a large generator, he said.

 

“Behind me, three soldiers pushed me forward violently,” Mr. al-Dalou recalled. “They were afraid of potential tunnels under the ground or explosives hidden under any object there.” Walking barefoot, he cut his feet on the shards of glass, he said.

 

After being provided with the location, date and description of Mr. al-Dalou’s experience, the military declined to comment. His description echoed accounts of similar episodes from 10 Israeli soldiers who also described witnessing or being briefed on how Palestinian detainees had been used to scour buildings and yards.

 

Roughly seven or eight soldiers hid behind the rubble of the yard’s shattered wall, taking cover in case Mr. al-Dalou stumbled across a bomb, he said. One of them directed him using a loudspeaker.

 

With his hands tied behind his back, he said, Mr. al-Dalou was ordered to walk around the yard, kicking bricks, scraps of metal and empty boxes. At some point, the soldiers tied his hands in front of him so that he could more easily shunt suspicious objects in his path.

 

Then something stirred suddenly from behind a generator in the yard. The soldiers started firing toward the source of the noise, narrowly missing Mr. al-Dalou, he said. It turned out to be a cat.

 

Next, the soldiers ordered him to try to shift the generator, suspecting that it concealed a tunnel entrance, he said. After Mr. al-Dalou hesitated, fearing that Hamas fighters might emerge from within, a soldier hit his back with his rifle butt, Mr. al-Dalou said.

 

Later that day, he said, he was ordered to walk in front of an Israeli tank as it advanced toward a mosque where soldiers worried they would encounter militants. Some of his neighbors were taken to look for tunnel entrances at a nearby hospital, Al-Rantisi, and he has not seen them since, he said.

 

Later that day, he said, he was ordered to walk in front of an Israeli tank as it advanced toward a mosque where soldiers worried they would encounter militants. Some of his neighbors were taken to look for tunnel entrances at a nearby hospital, Al-Rantisi, and he has not seen them since, he said.

 

That evening, he said, he was taken to a detention center in Israel. Given his experiences that day, he said, the transfer felt like a small blessing, even though he expected to face abuse inside Israeli jails.

 

“I was over the moon at that moment,” Mr. al-Dalou remembered thinking. “‘I will leave this danger zone for a safer place inside the Israeli prisons.’”

 

Beneath a U.N. Compound

 

In early February, the Israeli military captured the Gaza City headquarters of UNRWA, the main United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

 

Discovering that Hamas’s tunnel network extended beneath the compound, military engineers drilled into the ground to create new access points.

 

At one point, the engineers lowered a camera into the tunnels using a rope, so that they could more clearly see what was inside, according to a soldier involved in the operation. Watching a live feed from the camera, the engineers saw a man inside the tunnel, probably a Hamas operative.

 

Concluding that Hamas fighters were still using the tunnel, the officers at the site decided that they would send a Palestinian with a bodycam to explore it further, instead of Israeli engineers, the soldier said.

 

Two other soldiers confirmed that this soldier’s account generally matched how engineers typically deployed Palestinians in tunnels. This soldier’s description of the site also matched that of a reporter for The Times who visited it shortly afterward with a military escort but did not see any Palestinians.

 

After being provided with the location, date and description of the soldier’s experience, the military declined to comment.

 

At first, the officers considered deploying one of the several dozen Palestinian civilians who had been captured in the area and were being held until the operation ended, the soldier said.

 

Eventually, the officers decided to send what they called a “wasp,” or a Palestinian detained in Israel, for reasons that were not clear to the soldier. That set off a more complicated process that took several days and considerable coordination with other units to complete, the soldier said.

 

Throughout the war, soldiers across different units generally referred to the detainees by the same terms. A “wasp” generally meant people brought to Gaza from Israel by intelligence officers for brief and specific missions; however, some soldiers said it referred to paid collaborators who voluntarily entered Gaza, while others said it referred to detainees. A “mosquito” described detainees who were captured in Gaza and swiftly deployed without being taken to Israel, sometimes for several days and even weeks. “Mosquitoes” were used far more often than “wasps.”

 

They were all considered expendable, the soldier said. “If the tunnel explodes, at least he will die and not one of us,” he recalled an officer saying.

 

Inside the tunnel underneath the U.N. compound, the unit discovered a huge bank of computer servers that the Israeli military later concluded was a major Hamas communications hub.

 

Days later, the military brought a group of journalists, including from The Times, to see the servers in the tunnels.

 

The military escorts did not disclose that a Palestinian detainee had been used to explore the area. The Times discovered his involvement nearly four months afterward.

 

Instructed by a Drone

 

Mr. Shubeir was captured after the army overran his neighborhood on the edge of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

 

The army had ordered the residents to evacuate, but the Shubeir family decided to wait out the looming Israeli advance in its fourth-floor apartment. To leave, the Shubeirs would have had to pass through Israeli checkpoints, where they faced the possibility of arrest and detention.

 

The Shubeirs soon found themselves in the middle of a battle, Mr. Shubeir said. Shells struck their building, killing his father, a blacksmith, Mr. Shubeir said. His sister, 15, was later shot and killed after Israeli soldiers entered the building, he said. Mr. Shubeir said he was captured and separated from his surviving relatives.

 

Until his release without charge some 10 days later, Mr. Shubeir said, he was often sent by the soldiers to wander the streets of Khan Younis accompanied by only a small overhead drone known as a quadcopter. The drone monitored his movements and issued instructions to him from its loudspeaker.

 

Near a neighborhood school, he was ordered to search through rubble for tunnel entrances, said Mr. Shubeir, who was previously interviewed by Al Jazeera. He said he was sent inside apartment blocks, the small drone hovering a yard or two from his head. He was told to look for the bodies of militants, which the Israelis typically feared were booby-trapped.

 

In one apartment, he saw the booby trap that had him fearing for his life.

 

“It was the hardest thing I have experienced,” he said. “I understood it was a trap.”

 

In the end, the device did not explode, for reasons he said he did not understand.

 

In another apartment, he found a body with a gun lying next to it, he said. Mr. Shubeir was told to throw the gun from a window for the Israeli soldiers to collect, he said.

 

A few days before his release, the soldiers untied his hands and made him wear an Israeli military uniform, he said. Then they set him loose, telling him to wander the streets, so that Hamas fighters might fire at him and reveal their positions, he said. The Israelis followed at a distance, out of sight.

 

His hands free for the first time in days, he considered trying to flee, he said.

 

Then he decided against it.

 

“The quadcopter was following me and watching what I was doing,” he said. “They will shoot me.”

 

Ronen Bergman, Aaron Boxerman and Adam Sella contributed reporting.


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4) Deadly Israeli Strike Hits Central Gaza Hospital Complex

Israel said it targeted Hamas fighters inside the hospital compound, where displaced people were living in tents. A separate strike killed several people at a Gazan school turned shelter.

By Jin Yu Young and Matthew Mpoke Bigg, October 14, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/14/world/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-news


Deadly strikes in central Gaza overnight killed or injured dozens of Palestinians, health officials and the United Nations said on Monday, as the Israeli military hit a hospital complex where it said Hamas fighters were hiding and a separate attack damaged a school turned shelter.

 

An Israeli strike caused a tent encampment to catch fire in the courtyard of the hospital complex, Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, leaving at least four people dead and about 70 others hurt, reported Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency. Video footage taken by The Associated Press and the Reuters news agency on Monday morning shows people looking through smoking debris and trying to extinguish fires at the encampment, where displaced people were sheltering in tents at the complex in the city of Deir al Balah.

 

The Israeli military said that it had struck what it described as a Hamas command center, a claim could not be independently verified.

 

A separate attack hit a school compound in central Gaza where families were sheltering in the city of Nuseirat, according to Palestinian civil defense, an emergency service, which said that at least eight bodies had been recovered from the scene. The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports. The main U.N. agency aiding Palestinians in Gaza said the facility was to have been used as a site for polio vaccinations, as a mass anti-polio campaign in the territory resumed on Monday.

 

The strikes in Gaza followed a weekend of intense fighting along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, home of the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah. Across Lebanon, at least 51 people were killed and 174 others injured on Saturday, the Lebanese authorities said, as Israel’s weekslong assault on Hezbollah continued.

 

Here’s what else to know:

 

·      Drone attack: The Hezbollah drone strike on an army base in northern Israel that killed four soldiers this weekend has highlighted Israel’s vulnerability against attacks from unmanned aircraft. The Israeli police said on Monday that its officers had referred reports of a drone to the Air Force in the minutes before the strike, only to be told erroneously that the aircraft was Israeli, prompting the officers to close the case. The Israeli military declined to comment.

 

·      U.S. pledges forces to Israel: The United States said on Sunday that it was sending an advanced missile defense system to Israel, along with about 100 American troops to operate it. It will be the first time the United States sends forces to Israel since the Hamas-led attacks there last October. The Israeli military is weighing a retaliatory attack on Iran, which launched about 200 missiles at Israel on Oct. 1.

 

·      Peacekeeping mission: The U.N. secretary general called on Israel and others to respect a U.N. peacekeeping mission’s positions in southern Lebanon, after two Israeli tanks entered a base on Sunday and attacks last week wounded at least four members of the force.

 

·      Lebanon strike: The Lebanese Red Cross said on Monday that 18 people had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the village of Aitou in northern Lebanon, more than 70 miles from the Israeli border. The largely Christian region is not known to have been previously targeted by Israel over the past year as it has traded strikes with Hezbollah.


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5) A Gaza school turned shelter is hit in a deadly strike, the U.N. says.

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, October 14, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/14/world/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-news

A child is given a vaccination.

A child receiving a dose of the polio vaccine during the second round of the vaccination campaign, in Deir al Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Monday. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock


A strike overnight on a school compound in central Gaza where families were sheltering resulted in fatalities and damage, according to UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians.

 

The head of the agency, Philippe Lazzarini, did not name the UNRWA school in the city of Nuseirat, or provide details of the attack, but he cited reports that 20 people had been killed. The Palestinian Civil Defense, an emergency service, said on Monday that it had recovered eight bodies from a strike on a school in Nuseirat and added that other medical teams had recovered more killed.

 

The reports had not been independently verified. The facility was to have been used for the second stage of a campaign to vaccinate children in Gaza against polio, Mr. Lazzarini said, but the drive did not take place there because of “severe damage.”

 

The attack, and one on a hospital nearby, was “another night of horror” and the situation in Gaza was “a never ending hell,” Mr. Lazzarini said on social media on Monday.

 

Palestinian health authorities say that more than 40,000 people have been killed in the enclave during Israel’s campaign against Hamas, which began after the militant group launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7 last year in which around 1,200 people were killed.

 

Israel’s military did not claim responsibility for an attack on the school, but said the incident was under review.

 

In recent months, Israel’s forces have conducted dozens of airstrikes on schools that in the past year have been turned into shelters for people displaced by the war. In almost every case, it has said that the compounds were being used by Hamas, though it has not provided evidence in support of the claims.

 

Hundreds of people have been killed in the attacks, which have been criticized as a violation of international law by the United Nations and some governments.

 

The vaccination campaign restarted on Monday, a month after nearly 560,000 children under the age of 10 were given the first dose of the vaccination against the disease. Aid agencies plan to administer second doses across Gaza over the next two weeks. Israel and Hamas have agreed to pause fighting for several hours a day in areas where vaccines are being administered.

 

This time, UNRWA said in a statement that it aimed to reach 590,000 children under the age of 10 in less than two weeks, providing vitamin A in addition to the polio vaccine to support the health of children “living in extremely dire hygiene and sanitation conditions.”

 

The campaign will be run in coordination with Israel’s military to ensure that “the population will be able to safely reach the medical centers where the vaccinations will be given,” according to a statement by COGAT, the Israeli military agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories and liaises with international relief organizations.

 

More than 1,500 Israelis have been killed in the conflict, mostly during Hamas’s attack on Oct. 7. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s counterattack, including thousands of children.

 

An UNRWA spokeswoman, Louise Wateridge, said that, while the campaign was critical, “the children will inevitably return straight back into the dangerous and inhumane conditions they came from.”

 

The COGAT statement did not mention UNRWA. The agency, which has had more than 200 of its Palestinian employees killed during the war, has been key to efforts to provide shelter, food and other basic services during the war, but Israel accuses it of aiding Hamas. Israel’s parliament has taken steps toward passing a bill branding UNRWA as a terrorist organization.


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6) Polio Threatens Gaza Today. Tomorrow, It Could Be Cholera.

By Mohammed Aghaalkurdi, Oct. 14, 2024

Dr. Aghaalkurdi is a humanitarian worker displaced in Khan Younis, Gaza.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/opinion/gaza-polio-infectious-disease.html

A health worker is administering the oral polio vaccine to a child.

Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press


In August, health officials recorded the first case of polio in Gaza in more than 25 years, in an unvaccinated 10-month-old baby whose lower left leg became paralyzed by the virus. Sadness and frustration washed over me when I first heard the news. It is outrageous that polio — which is highly contagious and can cause paralysis, respiratory failure, cardiovascular collapse and even death — has been permitted to reappear in Gaza after being nearly eradicated across the globe.

 

In response, the World Health Organization and other groups began a huge campaign to vaccinate more than 640,000 children in Gaza. As a humanitarian worker with Medical Aid for Palestinians, I’m part of that effort. I’ve worked tirelessly with our team and the W.H.O. to monitor the quality of the vaccination process. It is a daunting task to inoculate hundreds of thousands of children in an area under constant attack, especially because two doses are needed some weeks apart. And yet against all odds, we’ve been able to administer the first doses of the polio vaccine to 559,161 children. I have been heartened by the number of parents striving to protect their children from polio in such dangerous circumstances, and I am proud to be working on this huge public health effort.

 

Nevertheless, the continued threats to these children’s lives is distressing. Israel’s military agreed to a series of “humanitarian pauses” in select locations for the vaccination campaign. But what is the logic of allowing the vaccination of children for polio today, when tomorrow they will be threatened by cholera or another disease? Or struck by bombs or other weapons? Or subject to starvation? Celebrating the success of the vaccination campaign rings hollow when other dangers facing children in Gaza remain. Because of Israel’s military offensive, we are witnessing conditions that could allow infectious diseases to run rampant throughout Gaza and break out into the rest of the region.

 

Some two-thirds of all of Gaza’s buildings may have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli military, and its siege has largely cut off access to food, water and electricity. About 1.9 million people have been displaced from their homes, myself included, and more than 10,000 children have been killed. Hospitals have been hit in what U.N. investigators call “deliberate attacks,” and only 17 out of 36 are even partially functioning.

 

This has led to a steep erosion of sanitation and humanitarian standards. A vast majority of Gaza’s 2.2 million people have been forced to evacuate into an overcrowded area that takes up only 11 percent of Gaza. This designated “humanitarian zone,” still frequently hit by Israeli military airstrikes, is far from humane. Water lines that supply the area have been cut, sewage floods the streets, and people have no choice but to live in tents because of constant evacuations and bombings. Many have been forced to use seawater contaminated with untreated sewage to wash themselves and their clothes. There is almost no soap or washing liquid available to buy.

 

As a result of these conditions, Gaza is facing a tidal wave of infectious disease that is already emerging. On a daily basis, our team’s medical points in southern Gaza now see around 180 children with skin rash diseases, such as impetigo and chickenpox. We treat what we can, but we don’t always have enough medication. Since last October, the United Nations has reported more than 40,000 cases of hepatitis A, compared with only 85 in the same period before. Cholera is not yet here yet, but many doctors fear it is only a matter of time.

 

Timely treatment can be the difference between life and death. And right now, lifesaving care is out of reach. Our colleague Natheer Khalafallah, an intensive care unit doctor at Nasser Hospital, died in late August from severe liver failure after contracting hepatitis A from polluted drinking water. Dr. Khalafallah was referred for medical evacuation from Gaza in order to get treated. But since Israel’s closing of the Rafah crossing on May 7, medical evacuations remain generally suspended. Today, an estimated 12,000 patients have been unable to leave Gaza to receive urgently needed medical care.

 

Even in the hospitals that are still functioning, shortages of all kinds of materials make these places a potential hotbed for diseases. I have seen surgeons performing complex surgeries wearing only sterile gloves, without gowns or drapes. Some have had to operate in the dark. Many have worked without antiseptic. I have seen people die from the lack of supplies and medication, or because they were too weak from malnutrition to recover from their wounds.

 

The effects of malnutrition are especially pernicious, particularly when it comes to infectious disease. Vaccines may not confer their full protection if someone is undernourished. The hundreds of thousands of children we are vaccinating against polio may still be at risk of infection simply because they are living with constant hunger.

 

The Israeli military’s daily bombardment of Gaza not only continues to push faltering health care services to their limits; it also threatens survivors of illness with injury and death. Where we work, children will be vaccinated in the morning and then arrive in the hospital in the evening as casualties from airstrikes. On Sept. 5, one hour after the vaccination drive finished for the day, my colleagues at Nasser Hospital received a mass influx of patients, including a child whose hand had been blown off in an Israeli military attack. On that same day, displaced people sheltering in tents, including children, were hit in an airstrike next to Al Aqsa Hospital.

 

An infectious disease catastrophe threatens to unfold across the region — whatever gets a foothold in Gaza will not stay in Gaza. Stopping it will require international action to push for an agreement to an immediate and permanent cease-fire. It is vital that the Israeli military end restrictions on the delivery of food, clean water and other aid that can preserve existing institutions and health care centers. Rebuilding the health care system throughout Gaza will require reopening border crossings and ending the blockade. While bringing in international doctors and establishing makeshift clinics may offer a temporary solution, an enduring health care system that responds to Palestinians’ needs quickly and effectively must be managed and led locally, based on existing infrastructure.

 

Children in Gaza need so much more than just a polio vaccination. They need all their rights to health and dignity to be met: the right to safety from military attacks, the right to play, the right to move, the right to education, the right to get medical care and the right to food and shelter.

 

Mohammed Aghaalkurdi leads the medical program in Gaza for Medical Aid for Palestinians.


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7) Israel tells the U.S. that it won’t target nuclear sites during its initial retaliation against Iran, officials say.

By Patrick Kingsley and Ronen BergmanReporting from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Oct. 15, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/15/world/israel-lebanon-iran-hezbollah-news

Trails of light appear in the night sky over a city.

The Israeli Iron Dome defense system intercepting ballistic missiles fired by Iran, over Ashkelon, Israel, earlier this month. Credit...Amir Cohen/Reuters


The Israeli government has told the Biden administration that it will avoid striking nuclear enrichment and oil production sites when it makes its initial response to Iran’s recent missile attack, two officials said on Tuesday.

 

Such a move would reduce the likelihood that Israel’s retaliation will immediately set off an all-out war between the two adversaries, amid concerns in Washington over being dragged into a bigger Middle East confrontation with the presidential election just weeks away.

 

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, said that Israel had agreed to focus its next attack on military targets in Iran, instead of those related to Iran’s oil industry or its uranium enrichment efforts. The pledge was first reported by the Washington Post.

 

While no final decision is believed to have been made, an Israeli retaliation could still be large in scale, possibly prompting Iran to continue the cycle of attacks. And the officials said that Israel’s assurances related only to its next attack — meaning that it could still pursue more ambitious targets in future rounds of fighting with Iran.

 

For decades, Iran has sought Israel’s destruction while Israel has pushed to collapse the Iranian regime, leading to a decades-long shadow war in which each side has secretly attacked the other’s interests and supported the other’s enemies.

 

That covert war has broken out into the open in recent months, partly because of Israel’s war with Hamas, an ally and proxy of Iran. Hamas unsuccessfully tried to persuade Iran to participate in the attack on Israel last October that prompted Israel to invade Gaza, according to documents obtained by The Times, but Iran has supported Hamas with funds and diplomatic support.

 

Iran fired a huge barrage of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel in April after Israel killed several Iranian commanders. Israel responded by striking an Iranian radar station and later killed a Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, as he visited Tehran. This month, Iran fired another huge round of missiles at Israel, partly in response to Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination — setting the Middle East further on edge as it awaits Israel’s next move.

 

U.S. officials believe that if Israel goes after Iran’s most sensitive sites, the result could be an uncontrolled escalation. President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke last week for the first time in months as relations between the two allies have sharply deteriorated, with neither side publicly mentioning Israel’s plans to respond to Iran.

 

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said: “We listen to the opinions of the United States, but we will make our final decisions based on our national interests.” The U.S. Embassy in Israel declined to comment.

 

Even if it avoids Iran’s nuclear enrichment and oil sites, Israel could still hit a wide array of military targets. They include missile and drone launchers, missile and drone storage sites, missile and drone factories, as well as military bases and major government buildings, according to two Israeli officials briefed on the planning process, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military matters. These two officials said that Israel could also strike nuclear research laboratories, even if it avoids Iran’s subterranean nuclear enrichment sites.

 

Mr. Netanyahu met with security chiefs at an intelligence base on Sunday to discuss the plan and his government has yet to agree on a specific approach, the two Israeli officials said.

 

The officials added that some Israeli leaders want to reduce tensions with Iran to reach a truce in Lebanon, where the Israeli military has launched an air and ground campaign targeting Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia. Other Israeli leaders feel they have a rare opportunity to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities at some point in the near future, and believe that fueling a bigger confrontation with Iran would help create a pretext for such a strike during future rounds of conflict, the officials said.

 

Gabby Sobelman and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.


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8) Gaza hospital blaze survivors say they are living a ‘recurring nightmare.’

By Bilal Shbair and Erika Solomon, Oct. 14, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/15/world/israel-lebanon-iran-hezbollah-news
A person looks into the window of a charred vehicle.
Palestinians in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al Balah, central Gaza, after the deadly attack on Monday. Credit...Abdel Kareem Hana/Associated Press

This was not the first time that displaced Gazans camping on the grounds of Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital awoke to Israeli strikes on the place where they were trying to find safety. But Monday’s strike overshadowed any they had survived before: flames jumping from tent to tent, shrieks of agony and bodies so charred they were unrecognizable.

 

“It is like living inside a recurring nightmare. Every time we sleep, we wake up to this same scenario of tents struck, people screaming,” said Mahmoud Wadi, a 20-year-old whose extended family had been living on the hospital grounds for months.

 

Mr. Wadi said this was the seventh strike on the hospital his family had witnessed since setting up a tent outside the facility. This time, instead of awakening in a daze to the sight of smoke rising from one spot in the camp, the heat of flames was everywhere, he said. He saw bodies “scorched and black, like giant lumps of coal.”

 

The Wadi family is one of scores of families that have set up camp in the parking lot of the compound, hoping that international laws prohibiting attacks on hospitals made the area a safe place to shelter. Instead, these families say, they have survived repeated strikes on the hospital. The latest attack, shortly after 1 a.m. on Monday, triggered a fire that set the camp ablaze.

 

The Israeli military said in a statement posted to social media that it had been targeting a Hamas command center located near the hospital. The fire that erupted afterward was likely caused by secondary explosions, it said.

 

Survivors interviewed amid the smoldering remains of the camp told The New York Times that the fast-moving fire had been fueled by the explosions of families’ cooking gas canisters and flames that fed off their plastic tents.

 

“The most difficult scene you can experience is seeing your neighbors burning alive and not being able to do anything to rescue them,” said Abed Musleh, a 25-year-old who fled northern Gaza and was sheltering in a tent in the parking lot with his wife, two children, and his four sisters. He estimated the fire burned at least 30 tents. Residents scrambled to find any buckets not burned in the blaze to try and help rescuers put out the fire.

 

The Palestinian health authority said four people died and over a dozen were injured, but that the death toll would likely rise. Later Monday, Doctors Without Borders, which has medics operating in Gaza, said five people were killed and dozens were wounded, some with severe burn injuries.

 

Despite the repeated strikes, Mr. Musleh had no plans to leave. He cannot find anywhere else to go, he said, and he still couldn’t imagine that any other place would be safer than a hospital.

 

Israel has come under repeated criticism for hitting civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, during the yearlong war in Gaza. A U.N. report last week accused Israel of a deliberate policy to destroy the health care system. The Israeli military has said it acted on information that Hamas was operating from the hospital compound, and it has repeatedly said that it tries to avoid civilian casualties.

 

But for Gaza’s two million people, an increasingly common refrain is that nowhere is safe — and that, with more than 90 percent of the population displaced, there are few places left to go.

 

Mohammed Ramadan, whose family of 10 survived but lost their tent, said he felt trapped by impossible options: “There are no safe places, and no places left to shelter in.”


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9) The Law Enforcement Officers With Surprising Power

By Maurice Chammah, Oct. 15, 2024

Mr. Chammah, a staff writer at The Marshall Project, is the author of “Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/opinion/sheriff-power-trump.html

An illustration of a sheriff playing with a toy town.

Micha Huigen


Four years ago I drove to a small town in rural Missouri to meet the parents of Billy Ames, who were suing the St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department over his death. An autopsy said the cause was a meth overdose, and jailers admitted they had strapped Mr. Ames to a restraint chair. While reporting on the case for The Marshall Project, I learned that other facilities had banned restraint chairs, medieval-looking devices that experts say can make it harder to spot a medical crisis.

 

I visited the jail and it felt like a dungeon, with moldy walls and little sunlight. The man in charge, Sheriff Daniel Bullock, once joked that this place was his personal bed-and-breakfast. He denied wrongdoing and said if I published anything false I shouldn’t come back. I watched my speed as I drove out of town.

 

St. Francois County has about 67,000 residents, and soon after my story came out Sheriff Bullock won his 2020 Republican primary with 6,185 votes and cruised to re-election. The Ames family ended up settling for $1.8 million, and former detainees brought a class-action lawsuit over the jail conditions. Then, this past August, Mr. Bullock lost in the primary, after more than three decades in power, with just 1,981 votes. The winner received 3,800.

 

Those numbers reflect voters’ typical disinterest in sheriff elections. But we ignore sheriffs at our peril. They wield tremendous power over investigations, arrests and policies that can mean the difference between life and death. A CBS News investigation found that in 2022, more than 27 people died in the custody of sheriffs for every 100,000 arrested, compared with fewer than 10 in the custody of the police.

 

So it’s worth your time to look up your local sheriff and see whether he or she is up for re-election this year. Given how many people ignore these races, your vote may have outsize influence over how all sorts of policy questions play out in your community. Consider that Mr. Bullock won his first primary race in St. Francois County, in 1992, by just 22 votes.

 

Police chiefs are usually appointed in cities, while sheriffs are often elected in counties to be chief law enforcement officers. They can have a vast range of roles, from running the jail to patrolling the streets and securing the courthouse. “In rural areas they are often medics, marriage counselors and coroners,” writes the journalist Jessica Pishko in her recent book, “The Highest Law in the Land.”

 

After reporting in Missouri, I teamed up with the political scientists Mirya Holman and Emily Farris on a survey of sheriffs, and we heard back from 500 of them — roughly one in six in the country. Ms. Holman and Ms. Farris draw on the survey in a new book, “The Power of the Badge,” to argue that sheriffs shape how laws around immigration, guns, health and much else play out at the local level, by deciding how aggressively to enforce those laws. Sheriffs determine, for example, whether their deputies check the immigration status of the people they pull over.

 

Americans inherited the office of sheriff from England, where kings appointed them to enforce orders and collect taxes. The colonists decided to undermine the crown’s power by holding elections. They were often among the first elected officials in newly settled territories, and some still evoke the Old West — or at least John Wayne movies — by donning cowboy hats. Less romantic are the shameful chapters when sheriffs facilitated violence against Native Americans and chased Black people escaping slavery.

 

Sheriffs made a splash in the 1990s, when several joined the National Rifle Association to fight a federal requirement to run background checks on people buying guns, and the Supreme Court sided with them. One of those sheriffs, Richard Mack of Arizona, expanded on his victory by starting the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. The group argues that sheriffs have more authority within their counties than the state or federal government. Scholars call this belief fanciful, but it was held by nearly half of the sheriffs I surveyed with Ms. Holman and Ms. Farris. Mr. Mack’s group has “successfully radicalized a generation of sheriffs to believe that the office has seemingly unlimited power and autonomy,” Ms. Holman and Ms. Farris write.

 

This may explain why many sheriffs refused to enforce Covid lockdown orders in 2020, even as some of their own jails became hotbeds of infection. Some later joined former President Donald Trump’s effort to prove that the 2020 election was stolen. According to Reuters, the Michigan sheriff Dar Leaf unsuccessfully asked the courts to let him seize voting machines and “assigned investigators to grill local clerks.”

 

Mr. Trump is a big fan of sheriffs and often appears with them at rallies. While in office, he brought them to the White House and encouraged them to help the federal government arrest, detain and deport undocumented immigrants. If Mr. Trump is re-elected, he will likely try to reinvigorate these partnerships.

 

Many sheriffs — who remain disproportionately white and male — appeal to conservatives through aggressive rhetoric on immigration. Recently, a few have been trying to court progressives: A couple of Florida sheriffs told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that they won’t help Mr. Trump deport undocumented immigrants.

 

Two years ago, Sheriff Javier Salazar of Bexar County, Texas — which encompasses San Antonio — responded to the overturning of Roe v. Wade by announcing on Facebook: “I will not persecute Texas women.” As more states pass laws criminalizing reproductive health care, sheriffs will undoubtedly play a role in deciding who faces investigation and arrest at the local level. In states where abortion remains legal, they already exert control over whether people can access such health care from jails.

 

So if abortion rights are guiding your choice in the presidential race, don’t ignore the names at the bottom of the ballot.


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10) Boeing Seeks to Line Up Billions in Financing as Strike Goes On

The aerospace giant said it could raise as much as $25 billion in debt or equity over the next three years, including a $10 billion line of credit.

By Niraj Chokshi, Oct. 15, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/business/boeing-financing-strike.html

An airplane, with the word “Boeing” on its side, takes off from a field with mountains in the distance.

A strike by 33,000 machinists has brought Boeing’s production of commercial aircraft in the Northwest to a virtual halt. Credit...Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Boeing on Tuesday announced steps to improve its financial position as costs mounted and a strike by its largest union entered its second month.

 

In two regulatory filings, the company said that it could raise as much as $25 billion by selling debt or stock over the next three years and that it had entered into a $10 billion credit agreement with a group of banks, which it has not yet drawn on.

 

“These are two prudent steps to support the company’s access to liquidity,” Boeing said in a statement. The banks are BofA Securities, Citibank, Goldman Sachs Lending Partners and JPMorgan Chase.

 

The moves come days after the company revealed about $5 billion in new costs and announced a restructuring that included plans to cut 17,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its work force.

 

The strike, which began a month ago, is costing Boeing tens of millions of dollars a day, according to various estimates. Most of the workers who walked out are involved in production of commercial airplanes, bringing much of that work to a virtual halt, though one major airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, is manufactured at a nonunion factory in South Carolina.

 

Talks between the company and the union representing 33,000 striking employees, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, broke down last week, with Boeing retracting its latest contract offer and each side blaming the other for intransigence.

 

Julie Su, the acting labor secretary, visited Seattle on Monday to meet with Boeing and the union, the union said in a statement.

 

The strike is very likely costing Boeing about $1.3 billion in capital a month, according to calculations by Sheila Kahyaoglu, an analyst at Jefferies, the investment bank. Given those costs and its need for more debt, raising $10 billion by selling new shares would provide the company “considerable flexibility,” Ms. Kahyaoglu said in a research note.

 

Last week, S&P Global Ratings said it was considering lowering Boeing’s credit rating, depending on how long the strike lasts, to junk status, a downgrade that would raise Boeing’s borrowing costs. The company’s debt totals nearly $58 billion, up from about $9 billion a decade ago.

 

Boeing hasn’t reported an annual profit since 2018 and has been struggling since two fatal crashes of the 737 Max, the company’s most popular plane, in 2018 and 2019. Those accidents cost the company billions of dollars and severely damaged its reputation. In January of this year, a door panel on a 737 Max 9 jet blew open during an Alaska Airlines flight, renewing concerns about the company’s planes. The Federal Aviation Administration has limited Boeing’s production of Max jets until it improves production quality.

 

The chief executive of one of the world’s largest airlines, Tim Clark of Emirates, said recently that Boeing could be forced to seek bankruptcy protection if it was not able to issue more shares to improve its financial position. “Unless the company is able to raise funds through a rights issue, I see an imminent investment downgrade with Chapter 11 looming on the horizon,” Mr. Clark told The Air Current, an aerospace news publication.

 

Boeing’s share price was up about 1 percent on Tuesday morning.


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11) Where a Million Desperate People Are Finding Shelter in Lebanon

Schools, clubs and parks have become places of refuge as the displaced seek safety amid Israeli bombings.

By Alissa J. Rubin, Photographs by David Guttenfelder, Oct. 16, 2024

Alissa J. Rubin and David Guttenfelder reported from Tripoli, Beirut and Mina, Lebanon, over several days and interviewed and photographed dozens of people for this article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/16/world/middleeast/israel-lebanon-displaced-hezbollah.html

A man standing in rubble near heavily damaged buildings and the remains of car holds three bags and looks down. Nearby, a few others are searching through the ruins.

Most worrying of all, humanitarian organizations say, is that almost every day in Lebanon, a new place is bombed, and more people are forced to flee.


At dusk, the parking lot of Tripoli’s Quality Inn is packed with cars and families milling about. Children’s shouts fill the air, reminding some of better times, when the hotel hosted weddings and birthdays parties.

 

Now, though, the cars in the lot are dusty and battered, the families sit on patches of grass, their faces worn with worry, and the children play in a drained swimming pool. That is because the Quality Inn has been transformed into one of the biggest shelters in Tripoli for displaced Lebanese fleeing Israeli bombing in the country’s south.

 

“I am lucky. I am with my whole family, and we just want this war to end so we can go home,” said Hassan al-Aaker, 54, voicing a rare note of optimism even though he has no idea whether his house near the southern coastal city of Tyre will still be standing when he finally does go home.

 

In Lebanon, the displaced are practically everywhere. In Beirut, the capital, where many are staying, they have set up makeshift tents on the corniche by the sea, crafting shelters out of stray metal poles, bits of awnings and blankets. In the city’s parks and squares, some families have placed floor coverings on the ground, anchoring them with cases of water and folded blankets. Others are taking shelter anywhere that they can, mostly in schools but also in unfinished buildings.

 

The Lebanese government postponed the start of the school year and designated 1,000 schools as shelters, Ivo Freijsen, the Lebanon representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in an interview. Tourist hotels — there are many in Lebanon, which was a major destination for foreigners until the war — are filled with displaced families who can afford them.

 

A Rapid Displacement

 

Of a population of around six million, including about two million Syrian refugees, just over one million people have been forced from their homes by the bombings, the United Nations and the Lebanese authorities say.

 

Even the most experienced humanitarian workers say they have been startled by the intensity of the attacks and the rapidity with which people have fled.

 

“Although we had planned for large numbers of people potentially becoming displaced, the speed with which things unfolded — uprooting over one million people in one week — was a surprise,” said Mr. Freijsen, who has worked in war-torn countries for 30 years. In a fast-moving situation like this one, he added, the funds and supplies on hand fall far short of meeting people’s needs.

 

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that as of last week, nearly 700,000 people in Lebanon had been displaced since last October — most in recent weeks — and that about only 186,000 had found places in collective shelters. Others are staying with family members or in rented apartments or hotels, according to the Lebanese government and aid groups.

 

In addition, nearly 400,000 Lebanese and Syrians have left the country in recent weeks, according to the International Organization for Migration, and more than half of those, about 276,000, have crossed into Syria, as of last week, according to the U.N. refugee agency; of those, about 70 percent are Syrian and about a third are Lebanese.

 

Help Transcends Divisions

 

Despite Lebanon’s long history of sectarian tensions that spilled into civil war in the 1970s and lasted 15 years, volunteers from every background across the country have rallied to help. In one of the coolest nightclubs in Beirut, Skybar, the owners have given over the hulking mostly windowless building to displaced families and organized large numbers of volunteers to help out. Its many bars have become dividing lines between families and places to stack blankets, pots and clothes; its dance floor has been subdivided by stacks of mattresses.

 

Beirut’s parks and squares have become outdoor kitchens where local volunteers are mounting extraordinary efforts to prepare food for the displaced.

 

In one such kitchen, in a park opposite a public school turned shelter, Hezbollah boy scouts and volunteers prepare 6,000 meals every day. They cook in four or five cauldrons — one for potatoes, another for eggplant, or for fish or chicken, depending on the day. Dozens more volunteers, mostly young women, sit at long tables rolling the fresh food into sandwiches, wrapping them in paper, stacking them on trays and handing them to other volunteers to distribute.

 

Even with all of the effort, the sheer numbers of displaced are overwhelming these resources, said humanitarian organizations. If the war drags on into the winter, no one knows if the volunteer effort can be sustained or how short of cash the Lebanese government — already reeling from five years of economic calamity — will be, or whether it will be able to supply even the bare necessities for the displaced.

 

Most worrying of all is that almost every day, a new place is bombed, and more people are put to flight.

 

“What we’re seeing now is this vast number of people that are arriving and don’t have a support network, an extended family they can stay with or money to rent a place to stay in a hotel,” said Juan Gabriel Wells, the country director for the International Rescue Committee. “And then some are moving for a second or third time because the places they first went are no longer safe.”

 

Both Mr. Wells and Mr. Freijsen of the U.N. refugee agency noted that the recent bombing of Lebanon’s Bekaa region was troubling not only because it forced more people to move, but also because it is a rich farming area that feeds much of the country.

 

One of the largest concerns, however, is the rapid and huge shift of Shiites from the Dahiya — a collection of neighborhoods on the southern outskirts of Beirut — and from southern Lebanon into Sunni Muslim and Christian communities in the center and north of the country. Lebanon has a bloody history over the past 50 years of sectarian strife between Shiites, Sunnis and Christians, and many fear that uprooting large segments of the population could create dangerous friction.

 

So far that has not happened. Instead, people of all backgrounds have pitched in to accommodate the displaced, and nowhere more than in Tripoli, the country’s second-largest city, its mayor said.

 

“Tripoli is a predominantly Sunni city, and when Hezbollah was in charge there was tension,” said the mayor, Riad Yamak. “But the displacement of people in despair, that is totally different. They are Lebanese like us, and the municipality has welcomed them with open arms.”

 

In just the past two weeks, some 13,000 displaced Lebanese, mostly Shiites, have arrived in the city center, he said, while another 35,000 have ended up in towns in the surrounding countryside.

 

And some 750 have found refuge in Tripoli’s Quality Inn, where volunteers do what they can to make them feel at home — organizing a clothes closet; supplying mothers with disposable diapers, laundry soap and baby formula; and providing water and two daily meals with the help of the World Food Program and other United Nations assistance. The volunteers have started a free pharmacy and are hoping to bring in a mobile clinic, said Jinane Mombayyed Skaff, a social worker.

 

‘My House Was Like a Little Kingdom’

 

But not everyone is so lucky, relatively speaking, to find a place like the hotel.  Among the less fortunate were five members of the al-Ali family, who had ended up in a dark, deteriorating school building a few miles away that the principal and volunteers were struggling to make cheerful.

 

The al-Ali family had started hearing distant explosions a year ago, the father, Mohammed al-Ali, said, when Hezbollah and Israel began trading fire at each other after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel last Oct. 7 that the Israeli authorities said killed roughly 1,200 people. But in their small village of Ain Qana in the coastal hills of southern Lebanon, the war seemed far away.

 

That changed in September, when Israeli planes began bombing in Nabatieh, the nearest large town. Amina al-Ali, 40, begged her husband to take them away — their two college-aged children and younger son Hussein, who is autistic and was terrified by the blasts. But Mr. al-Ali, a carpenter, had just finished building the family’s home and was reluctant to leave.

 

“I built it with my own hands, room by room. The only thing I had left to do was to paint it,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “I had picked a beige for the walls and a brown for the trim.”

 

But then the Israeli forces sent an immediate evacuation order. Not even taking time to lock the windows or doors, the al-Ali family joined the tens of thousands of other families fleeing from southern Lebanon toward Beirut on roads jammed with cars.

 

For now, Mr. al-Ali has only his memories to fall back on.

 

“My house was like a little kingdom. We grew grapes and lemon and olives,” he said as he scrolled through photographs of his carpentry work — tables with curved legs, beds with mirrored headboards and bureaus.

 

“We want this war to stop and to return to the countryside, to our home, and live our life normally, quietly, so my son and daughter can return to university,” he said softly. “We want nothing but this.”


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12) Israel Strikes Near Beirut For First Time in Days

The attacks, which also hit southern Lebanon, came after the United States expressed concerns about the bombardment of the Lebanese capital. Israel’s military said it had aimed at Hezbollah targets.

By Euan Ward, Victoria Kim and Gabby Sobelman, Oct. 16, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/16/world/israel-lebanon-iran-gaza-news

Bilal Kashmar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Israel’s military carried out airstrikes early Wednesday in Hezbollah-dominated areas in southern Lebanon and outside Beirut. They were Israel’s first attacks in days near the Lebanese capital and came a day after the United States said that it had expressed concerns about the scale of Israel’s weekslong bombardment there.

 

The strikes in southern Lebanon hit municipal buildings in Nabatieh and killed at least six people, including the city’s mayor, Lebanese officials said. The attacks targeted a meeting of the municipal council, according to Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati. The Israeli military said that it had struck Hezbollah targets in and around Nabatieh, one of the largest cities in southern Lebanon, many of whose residents have fled after recent Israeli evacuation warnings.

 

Two strikes in Beirut’s southern outskirts, in the neighborhood of Haret Hreik, were aimed at underground weapon storage facilities used by Hezbollah, Israel’s military said in a statement. They came about an hour after a spokesman for the Israeli military had issued a warning in Arabic to residents to move at least 500 meters away from a building in the area.

 

Haret Hreik, which was heavily damaged by Israeli airstrikes in the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, is part of a collection of neighborhoods south of Beirut known as the Dahiya, where the armed group holds sway. Since last month, Israel has repeatedly struck in and around the area as part of an offensive to kill leaders of Hezbollah and to take out its arsenal.

 

On Tuesday, a State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters that the United States had conveyed to Israel concerns about the civilian toll of its weekslong bombing campaign in Beirut, during which many of the strikes have been in the Dahiya. “When it comes to the scope and nature of the bombing campaign that we saw in Beirut over the past few weeks, it’s something that we made clear to the government of Israel we had concerns with and we are opposed to,” Mr. Miller said.

 

Here’s what else to know:

 

·      Gaza aid: A day after the United States publicly warned Israel of consequences within 30 days if it does not allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza, there was no official response from the Israeli government. Israel said it had let 50 aid trucks into northern Gaza on Wednesday “in accordance with international law.” That is a fraction of what aid agencies say is needed in northern Gaza, where the United Nations has said that Israel “has tightened a siege” as it steps up military operations against Hamas.

 

·      Northern Lebanon: The U.N. human rights office called on Tuesday for an investigation into an Israeli airstrike a day earlier that killed at least 21 people in the Christian village of Aitou in northern Lebanon, citing potential violations of international laws.

 

·      Medical evacuations: The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Israeli government to explain why there appeared to be no comprehensive system to facilitate evacuations of sick Gazans who are not involved in the Hamas-Israel war to other countries for treatment.

 

·      THAAD crew arrives: A team of U.S. military personnel reached Israel before the arrival of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, which is intended to thwart attacks by Iran, the Pentagon said in a statement on Tuesday. It did not say when the missile defense system would be operational.


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13) Israel permits a small amount of aid into northern Gaza after the U.S. issues a warning.

By Matthew Mpoke Bigg, October 16, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/16/world/israel-lebanon-iran-gaza-news

People crowd around an outdoor kitchen.

Distributing meals at a charity kitchen in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, in September. Credit...Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock


A day after the United States said it had told Israel that a failure to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza could prompt a cutoff of military supplies, one of the starkest U.S. warnings since the war began, there was no official response from the Israeli government.

 

COGAT, the Israeli government agency that oversees policy in Gaza and the West Bank, insists that it is not limiting aid to Gaza and has blamed humanitarian agencies for failing to distribute the supplies it admits into the enclave after screening. On Wednesday, it announced that it had inspected and permitted 50 aid trucks to enter northern Gaza from Jordan — carrying food, water, medical and other supplies — “in accordance with international law.”

 

That is a fraction of what aid agencies say is needed to offset a severe hunger crisis in Gaza, especially in the north, where the United Nations has said that Israel “has tightened a siege” this month as it steps up military operations against Hamas.

 

“People have run out of ways to cope, food systems have collapsed and the risk of famine is real,” the U.N. World Food Program said this week of northern Gaza.

 

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sent a letter addressed to Israel’s minister of defense, Yoav Gallant, and its minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, saying that Israel had 30 days to allow more aid into Gaza or the United States, Israel’s main military supplier, would consider cutting off military aid.

 

The letter describes the humanitarian situation as “increasingly dire” and criticizes Israel’s government for halting commercial imports, preventing aid workers from moving from south to north Gaza, confining the population into a narrow coastal strip and for a burdensome process of vetting what aid can enter the enclave.

 

Israel should enable a minimum of 350 aid trucks per day to enter, to allow people confined into a so-called humanitarian zone on the coast to move inland before winter and also take other measures, the letter said.

 

The letter appeared to depart from the U.S. approach of “hectoring” Israel’s government to allow more aid, according to Michael Hanna, U.S. program director for the International Crisis Group think tank.

 

As a result, it gives the administration “the possibility of having a really serious conversation” with Israel about aid, but some policymakers in Israel would likely view its eventual outcome as an affirmation of the status quo, Mr. Hanna said.

 

The British government added to the pressure, urging Israel to ensure civilians are protected and aid routes remain open. It called an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to discuss the issue.

 

At the meeting, the U.N.’s acting humanitarian chief, Joyce Msuya, told the Security Council that it needed to act to address the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza.

 

“The level of suffering in Gaza defies our ability to capture it in words, or even to comprehend its scale,” she said. “Reality is brutal in Gaza, and it gets worse every day, as the bombs continue to fall, as fierce fighting continues unabated and as supplies essential for people’s survival and humanitarian assistance are blocked at every turn.”

 

Aid workers say that extreme hunger in Gaza has been growing for months. The 30-day deadline falls after the U.S. presidential election, potentially making it politically easier for President Biden to take tougher action against Israel than he has so far been willing to.

 

Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, told reporters on Tuesday that aid into Gaza “has fallen by over 50 percent from where it was at its peak” during the war. According to COGAT figures, at least 465 relief trucks entered Gaza over the first half of October, compared to roughly 2,500 over a similar period last month.

 

On Tuesday, a total of 145 aid trucks entered Gaza through border crossings in the north and south, COGAT said. It added that 610 trucks of aid permitted into Gaza “are waiting for collection” inside the enclave.

 

Aid groups, for their part, argue that the Israeli military has made it difficult to distribute what little aid is getting into Gaza, often refusing permission for convoys to pass Israeli checkpoints and sometimes firing on them. In addition, Israel’s invasion of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza in May led to the closure of the border crossing there, one of the main conduits for aid.

 

“The last couple of months, they have not been good at all,” Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, said in an interview on Tuesday.

 

The U.S. letter also provided a significant show of diplomatic backing for UNRWA at a time when Israel’s Knesset is considering bills that would declare it a terrorist organization. The United States is deeply concerned about the bill and restrictions on UNRWA that would devastate the humanitarian response at a critical moment, the letter said.

 

A panel of global experts said in June that almost half a million Gazans faced starvation because of a catastrophic lack of food. This has also made it harder for people to recover from illnesses and war-related injuries amid a health care system that has been devastated by the conflict.

 

“Medical needs are overwhelming,” the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said on Tuesday.

 

Aaron Boxerman and Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.


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14) Britain sanctions West Bank settlers and organizations amid rising violence.

By Ephrat Livni, October 16, 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/10/16/world/israel-lebanon-iran-gaza-news

The darkened interior of a burned out house after an attack by Jewish settlers. Plates and debris litter a table, illuminated by light from the window.

The burned remains of a house in Jit in the occupied West Bank that was attacked by Jewish settlers in August. Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times


Britain has imposed financial sanctions on three Israeli settler outposts and four organizations in the occupied West Bank that it said had supported and sponsored violence against Palestinians in the area, amid a sharp spike in such incidents in the last year.

 

“The inaction of the Israeli government has allowed an environment of impunity to flourish where settler violence has been allowed to increase unchecked,” David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, said Tuesday in a statement. He added, “As long as violent extremists remain unaccountable, the U.K. and the international community will continue to act.”

 

The British action follows similar moves taken by its government, the United States and others to address rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank since the Hamas-led attack in Israel set off a war in Gaza a little over a year ago.

 

Earlier this month, the U.S. similarly sanctioned individuals and organizations that State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said were “creating an environment where violence and instability thrive.” The U.S. government has taken at least a half dozen similar actions against Israeli settlers and groups supporting or inciting settler violence in the West Bank this year.

 

Britain in its statement said the measures “follow an unprecedented rise in settler violence in the West Bank over the last year,” noting that the United Nations has recorded more than 1,400 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities since last October. The violent encounters often drive Palestinians off their land, the British statement said, allowing Israeli settlers to seize the territory.

 

The international community largely considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal, and many of the outposts are illegal under Israeli law, too. But they are often tolerated by the Israeli government and sometimes subsequently legalized, granting them formal access to services like running water, electricity, building permits and funding. The far-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been expanding settlements.

 

Palestinians have long argued that the settlements are a creeping annexation enforced by armed settlers and the Israeli military, carving territory that should become a Palestinian state into an unworkable patchwork and steadily pushing Arabs out of their homes and farms.

 

The recent increase in settler violence has also drawn condemnation from the Israeli authorities. In August, after a riot by Israeli settlers on the Palestinian town of Jit, Mr. Netanyahu’s office issued a statement decrying the attack and pledging to prosecute settlers who acted criminally.

 

But Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition has outspoken supporters of settlements in the West Bank, most notably Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. Both vocally oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state, and their proclamations and policies have emboldened some settlers.

 

This year, Britain, France, Canada, and the U.S. have all imposed sanctions on settlers and organizations that they have said were violating the human rights of Palestinians, destabilizing the West Bank and threatening security for everyone in the area. “The measures taken today are part of wider U.K. efforts to support a more stable West Bank, which is vital for the peace and security of both Palestinians and Israelis,” Britain’s statement said on Tuesday.

 

Canada and the United States on Tuesday also took action against a group and individual they said were tied to a Palestinian terrorist organization operating in the West Bank and Gaza. In a statement, the Treasury Department said it had designated Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, commonly known as Samidoun, as a “sham charity” that raises funds internationally for humanitarian support while actually funding the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. designated as a terrorist organization in 1997.


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