Truth Be Told….

Palestinian groups, Monday, said Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi “will remain an icon” for the Palestinian struggle on the local and international levels. 

Eygi, 26, a dual citizen of Türkiye and the US, was shot dead by Israeli forces during a Friday protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita in the occupied West Bank.

In a statement, the National and Islamic Forces, an umbrella that includes most of the Palestinian groups, said: “Martyr Aysenur will remain an icon for the struggle and fighting at the Palestinian and international levels.”

“Many solidarity activists join our Palestinian people in the activities of the popular resistance in the towns and villages that are exposed to (Israeli) colonization and expropriation,” the statement read.

The Palestinian groups considered Eygi’s death as a confirmation of Israel’s implementing of the policies of killing, expulsion, and ban-of-entry for international solidarity activists.

The statement stressed the importance for punishing Israel for its indifference towards the life of international solidarity activists who stand against Israeli occupation and settlements construction on the occupied Palestinian territories.

Early on Monday, hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus paid farewell to activist Eygi. The funeral procession began from Rafidia Government Hospital in Nablus, with mourners walking through several streets, chanting slogans condemning Israeli actions and praising foreign supporters, according to an Anadolu reporter.

Eygi’s body is expected to be transported to Türkiye.

The Israeli military has yet to comment on the specifics of the incident or the findings of the autopsy.

Eygi’s killing echoes the case of American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed in a similar manner in 2022.

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West Bank Journalists Need Protection From Israeli Violence

The Amman-based Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists condemns the ongoing violations committed by the Israeli occupation forces against journalists in the occupied West Bank.

“What is happening in the Palestinian territories in terms of persecution and systematic violations against journalists is horrific and dangerous,” the CDFJ stated last Thursday.

“The scenes shown by television networks showing the occupation bulldozers raiding journalists and firing live bullets directly at them, despite them wearing press badges and clothing that identify them,” are not acceptable.

“The West Bank has become like the Gaza Strip, with no safe place for journalists to practice their profession and carry out their work,” the CDFJ added.

The independent organization noted “the Israeli occupation targeted with live bullets seven journalists, directly and deliberately, riding in three press vehicles, clearly wearing press protection, in an area where there was no “field activities” on their way to the town of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin.”

The CDFJ noted also the occupation forces also blew up the broadcast room of Radio Nas in Jenin.

The Amman-based organization called for the monitoring and documenting violations against journalists in the cities of the West Bank, calling on the United Nations, international human rights organizations, and the media to “take urgent action to protect them from deliberate Israeli targeting.”

The Israeli occupation forces began its aggression on the northerns part of the West Bank, since 28 August, and which resulted in the killing of 34 Palestinians, including 19 in the city of Jenin, eight in Tulkarm, four in Tubas, and three n Hebron, bringing the death toll in the West Bank since 7 October, 2023 to 685.

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Military Eye: Israel, West Bank and Karamah’s Deadly Operation

Military and strategic expert Dr. Nidal Abu Zeid said the Karamah Crossing operation is casting its shadow over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as the occupation army from now may step up its security measures.

He pointing out to the repeated statements and warnings issued by the occupation army to its so-called home front point to the fact.

Abu Zeid added to the Jordan24 news website that the West Bank may witness martyrdom operations in the coming period in response to the increase security violations committed by the Israeli occupation.

Abu Zeid pointed out that the current calm and the decrease in the intensity of operations suggest that the occupation army is presently involved in intelligence gatherings to search for what he termed as “high-value targets.”

Regarding to what is happening in the West Bank, Abu Zeid pointed out that the Israeli occupation have already headed to the Balata camp in Nablus. He pointed out this indicates that occupation forces maybe now  heading towards the center of the West Bank, then towards the southern camps and finally target Hebron.

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Jenin: ‘We Will Only Raise The Palestinian Flag Here’

The Israeli occupation forces have continued their onslaught on Jenin and its camp for the eighth consecutive day.

The onslaught resulted in the killing of 19 people, the injury and arrest of dozens with widespread destruction of citizens’ properties and infrastructure, including water and electricity networks, according to Wafa.

On Tuesday, 16-year-od Lujain Abdul Raouf was killed, and four journalists injured, including WAFA photojournalists Muhammad Mansour and Ayman Noubani, in an Israeli army siege of a house in the village of Kafr Dan, west of Jenin.

The occupation forces also raided several houses in the Al-Hadaf neighborhood on the outskirts of Jenin camp, tampered with their contents and destroyed their furniture.

The occupation forces stormed the Al-Zahraa neighborhood in the city and bulldozed the infrastructure and streets, while water continues to be cut off from most of the city’s neighborhoods and the camp.

Destroying streets

The occupation forces continue to destroy the center of Jenin city, as the occupation bulldozers razed Cinema Street and large parts of Hospitals Street to the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital, and destroyed shops in the Cinema Roundabout area and re-razed the Post Street.

The occupation bulldozers attacked a group of journalists while they were covering the destruction of the Cinema Roundabout and the surrounding shops, and opened fire directly at them, which resulted in their injury.

In Al-Jabariyat neighborhood, the occupation forces stormed the house of the detainee Zakaria Al-Zubaidi and detained his brother Yahya after vandalizing and destroying the contents of the house.

The occupation forces also continued their large-scale detention campaigns of young men in the Jenin camp and the villages of Al-Silah Al-Harithiya, Al-Yamoun and Kafr Dan west of Jenin.

They stormed the town of Qabatiya fired at citizens’ houses, Tuesday night, and resulted in the shooting of a young man in the chest while he was inside his home.

The Israeli army also detained an ambulance crew while transporting an emergency medical case to the Khalil Suleiman Governmental Hospital in Jenin and assaulted a number of them.

The Israeli occupation forces stormed the village of Muthalath Al-Shuhada, south of Jenin, deployed snipers on the roofs of several houses, raided six houses, detained a number of citizens before withdrawing from the town according to the Palestinian news agency.

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Palestinians: Down But By No Means Beaten!

Palestinian analysts confirm the military operation launched by the Israeli occupation on the camps in the northern occupied West Bank – “Summer Camps” – aim to eradicate the resistance through excess force and the destruction of their popular base and is considered more dangerous than the “Defensive Shield” operation it carried out in the occupied West Bank in 2002.

Palestinian political analyst Ismat Mansour stressed the most dangerous thing about the last Israeli military operation emanates from what Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said about evacuating the residents of the camps to humanitarian places to carry out cleansing operations,” a sentence also made by the army spokesman when the operation was launched.

“The goal of these military operations are clear, and represented in destroying the Palestinian infrastructure and turning the camps into uninhabitable places with creeping and gradual ethnic cleansing,” Mansour told Quds Press.

Mansour attributed these plans to the declared programs of the Israeli occupation government and “its structure, ideology, and agenda – highlighted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to resolve the conflict,” in reference to the aim to annex the West Bank to the occupation state.

Therefore Mansour called for “the necessity of working to find a unified collective plan that mobilizes all [Palestinian] energies to confront this criminal mentality.”

Expert Azzam Abu Al-Adas considers the current Israeli military operation in the West Bank is far “more dangerous than that of the Operation Defensive Shield carried by the Jewish army in 2002.”

He pointed out “when Operation Defensive Shield was executed, the Palestinian factions were present in the West Bank and existed in terms of infrastructure, finance, and military, and had the ability to rebuild their forces and compensate for losses. Now, the factions have been dismantled financially, militarily, and socially.”

“Operation Defensive Shield was carried out at a time when the number of settlers in the West Bank was barely 70,000, and now it is 800,000, which means that eliminating the resistance will increase the encroachment of the army and settlers,” according to his thinking.

Abu Al-Adas pointed out head of the Israeli government of occupation Benjamin Netanyahu, “is in dire need of a victory, and since he failed to achieve it in Gaza, he will claim this such an image in the West Bank raise his popularity, especially among the settlers and will increase his chances in the upcoming elections, which he intends to run for.”

“In 2002, the occupation was still living under the shock of the then prime minister Ariel Sharon who entered Al-Aqsa Mosque in 2000, and Al-Aqsa Mosque was out of the game, but now if Israel succeeds in eliminating the resistance act it means the building of the synagogue which Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir talked about and displacing the people of Jerusalem” becomes more real.

The occupation forces began a large-scale military operation targeting resistance fighters in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas in the northern West Bank at dawn Wednesday, where large Israeli forces invaded all areas, cities and camps in the northern West Bank from several axes, calling it operation “Summer Camps”.

The Israeli media reported the military operation is the largest since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and carried out with the Israeli warplanes, army, Israeli Internal Security Service (Shabak) and other undercover forces with the use of helicopters and fighter jets extensively.

Operation Defensive Shield was a military operation carried out by Israel to occupy and attack areas of the Palestinian Authority, after the Palestinian soldier Abdul Basit Odeh carried out the Park Hotel operation, which is considered one of the largest suicide operations in the history of the Palestinian resistance.

For Israel the main goal of the operation was to eliminate the second Palestinian Intifada which began in 2000 after Sharon, as prime minister, stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“Operation Defensive Shield” was launched on 29 March, 2002 and ended on 10 May.

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