The occupied Palestinian territories are witnessing a coordinated escalation in which settler attacks on the ground overlap with the political plans of the Israeli occupation government to impose a new geographical reality.
In parallel with the campaign of raids and the burning of mosques in Ramallah and Nablus, plans to gnaw at the land are accelerating by declaring sovereignty over Hebron and expanding the scope of ground control in Gaza under the name of the "Yellow Zone."
4 Palestinians injured in Nablus
On the ground, four Palestinian citizens were injured at dawn on Wednesday, June 17, as a result of a campaign of incursions and large-scale raids carried out by the Israeli occupation forces, coinciding with violent attacks launched by settlers in various areas of the occupied West Bank.
Palestinian sources reported that a group of settlers set out from a settlement outpost established on the lands south of the town of "Beita" in the Nablus governorate, and attacked the homes of citizens in the areas of "Bir Quza" and "Al-Hariq", and smashed a number of vehicles and windows of one of the houses, before the residents confronted them, as the occupation army stormed the area and beat the citizens, which led to the injury of four of them.
In a related context, settlers infiltrated the town of "Jaljalia" north of Ramallah at dawn and set fire to the Great Mosque, which resulted in charring its internal walls and causing material damage before the residents brought the fire under control, and the settlers also wrote racist and inflammatory slogans on its walls.
The settlers also stormed the Al-Farouq Mosque in the neighboring village of "Al-Nubani Farms" and burned its facilities and contents, and the attack coincided with the closure of the iron gate at the entrance to the city of "Rawabi" by the occupation army to search cars and restrict the movement of citizens. These attacks are an extension of a recurring pattern that included the burning of the Muhammad Fayyad Mosque in the town of Duma last March, and the entrance to the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq mosque west of Nablus last February.
Arrest Campaign in Jenin
The occupation forces carried out a campaign of arrests that included five citizens, where they arrested the young man Muhammad Hassan Nassar after vandalizing the contents of his house in the village of "Beit Qad", east of Jenin, and arrested the two young men, Khalil Shehab and Nimr Khreiush from the city of Nablus and Askar camp, in addition to the arrest of a young man from the neighborhoods of the city of Qalqilya, and another from the village of "Beit Iksa", northwest of Jerusalem, which witnessed field investigations and the conversion of one of its houses into a military barracks.
In Bethlehem, a military checkpoint was erected in the "Ash Ghorab" area, east of Beit Sahour, causing a suffocating traffic crisis.
The Battle of Powers in Hebron
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's remarks regarding the withdrawal of planning and building powers from the Hebron municipality and the cancellation of the 1997 Hebron Agreement sparked a wave of Palestinian condemnation.
Smotrich's announcement came during the groundbreaking ceremony for a new settlement on Mount Tarosa near the town of Dura, west of Hebron, in the presence of Minister of War Israel Katz, where the head of the Knesset's Judea and Samaria Committee, Zvi Sokot, confirmed that Israel is now the only body authorized to approve construction projects.
While the Israeli Foreign Ministry was quick to deny the cancellation of the agreement, claiming that the decision was limited to amending the building powers of the Jewish community as a result of the municipality's lack of cooperation, data from the Palestinian Committee for Resistance to the Wall and Settlements showed that the Netanyahu government has approved the establishment of 103 new settlement sites since its formation about three and a half years ago. In reactions:
The Palestinian presidency warned of the danger of unilateral measures that undermine the two-state solution, and called on the US administration and the international community to intervene immediately, while Hebron Governor Khaled Dudin described the decision as "terrorist", recalling that the Old City and the Tomb of the Patriarchs are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as exclusive Palestinian sites.
For his part, Palestinian Minister of Endowments Mohammed Najm called for unifying popular efforts to protect the Temple Mount as an authentic Islamic endowment.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad considered the move a prelude to the imposition of full annexation, and called on the Palestinian people to activate all forms of resistance to confront these policies, while Hamas indicated that there was positive progress in the negotiations, contrary to Israeli reports.
Gaza: "Creeping Annexation" and the Yellow Zone with US Support
In the Gaza Strip, the Hebrew Channel 13 revealed that the administration of US President Donald Trump recently prevented a large-scale military operation that Israel was planning to carry out in the Gaza Strip, after US officials expressed their displeasure and asked for the plan to be postponed.
The Israeli occupation army has recently moved to implement a plan of "creeping and quiet annexation" of land by expanding the areas it controls, which are classified under the "yellow zone".
Diplomatic sources indicated that this expansion of the yellow line was already carried out on the ground in several areas to expand control without entering into an open confrontation with international mediators, taking advantage of the mediators' anger at Hamas' behavior in the negotiations and alleging that they did not fulfill the commitments made by the Trump administration and the Arab mediators.
Petition in Congress against the E-1 settlement project
Diplomatically, 85 members of the US House of Representatives signed an urgent political petition addressed to the White House, calling on President Donald Trump's administration to intervene immediately diplomatically to rein in Israel's settlement plan known as "E-1" in the occupied East Jerusalem area.
In their memorandum, the MPs stressed that the bill represents a violation that threatens the stability of the region, as it completely isolates the occupied city of Jerusalem from its Palestinian geographical surroundings and eliminates any future political horizon, considering that this parliamentary move represents pressure to prevent the right-wing government from exploiting the American cover to gnaw more land.
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