[News] Israel-Palestine: Lynching, crackdowns and deaths - here's what happened last night

[Anti-Imperialist News]

middleeasteye.net
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-night-lynching-crackdowns-death>
Israel-Palestine:
Lynching, crackdowns and deaths - here's what happened last nightMay 13,
2021
------------------------------

Wednesday night saw even more violence across Israel and the occupied
Palestinian territories, with harrowing footage of lynchings and police
brutality emerging while Hamas and Israel exchanged rocket fire.

Here’s what happened in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Israel

The worse violence was in Arab-minority towns in Israel, with scores of
videos making the rounds online showing attacks described as "lynchings",
and police brutality amid Palestinian protests.

In scenes repeated across several cities, gangs of youths threw stones and
stormed shops belonging to Palestinians.

Israeli police have arrested 374 people so far.

Video footage shared widely on social media appeared to show a group of
Israelis attempting to break into a Palestinian home in Haifa.

While the family manages to repel the initial attack, police then burst
into the home and arrest and beat a number of the residents.

While MEE cannot independently verify the footage, there have been numerous
reports of violence between Palestinians and Israeli Jews in Haifa over the
past few days

Elsewhere, a video seen by Middle East Eye showed a large group of
Israelis, some carrying national flags, pelting rocks at a Palestinian car.
Another shows a group of Israelis attacking an Israeli ambulance,
reportedly carrying a Palestinian.

Footage from Akka showed a group of Israelis chanting "death to Arabs" in
Hebrew.

Another video, on Instagram, reportedly also from Akka - and too explicit
to publish - shows Israeli security forces walking away from a Palestinian
man lying motionless, eyes staring at the ceiling, on the floor of an
apartment building.

Israeli paper Haaretz
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-clashes-resume-in-central-israeli-city-of-lod-ahead-of-police-imposed-curfew-1.9800313>
reported that five Palestinians in the city seriously wounded a 30-year-old
Jewish man, after police told Palestinian shop owners to shutter stores
because of expected attacks by far-right Israelis.

In Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel Aviv, a Palestinian was pulled from his car and
lynched during a live broadcast
<https://twitter.com/kann_news/status/1392551091968040964>on an Israeli
television channel. The 33-year-old man was treated overnight and his
condition has improved, according to Haaretz
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-gantz-orders-massive-police-reinforcement-to-quell-unrest-amid-jewish-arab-clashes-1.9804113>
.

Photos of him, which are too explicit to publish, show a deep puncture
wound and major swelling on one side of his face.

Far-right Israelis had previously roamed the city attacking Arab-owned
businesses and chanting racist slogans, according to Haaretz
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-gantz-orders-massive-police-reinforcement-to-quell-unrest-amid-jewish-arab-clashes-1.9804113>
.

In Lod, called Lydd by Palestinians, where yesterday a night curfew was
announced, a video showed a group of Israelis waving flags walking towards
the town centre - accompanied by security forces.

Jewish-Israelis provoked Palestinians
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-clashes-resume-in-central-israeli-city-of-lod-ahead-of-police-imposed-curfew-1.9800313>
by approaching the mourning tent for Moussa Hassuna, a Palestinian
protester who was shot dead on Monday evening. The three Israeli suspects
arrested after his murder were released on Thursday after prominent Israeli
politicians decried their arrests.

Also in Lod, a Jewish man was shot and two others suffered stab wounds,
Haaretz
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-gantz-orders-massive-police-reinforcement-to-quell-unrest-amid-jewish-arab-clashes-1.9804113>
reported, while 20 people were taken to the Shamir Medical Centre. More
than 20 people were reportedly arrested.

Police said they had responded to violent incidents in multiple towns,
including Lod, Acre and Haifa, according to AFP.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-armed-settlers-lod-mosque-attacked-night-curfew>

Lod: Armed settlers roam streets as mosque attacked and night curfew ordered

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-armed-settlers-lod-mosque-attacked-night-curfew>

MEE correspondent Lubna Masarwa reported that groups of Israelis tried to
attack Palestinians in villages in the "northern triangle" area, where
around a third of Israel's population of Palestinian citizens live.

Unrest was also reported in southern Israel. Nineteen Jews were detained
for disorderly conduct, according to Haaretz, along with three Arabs, after
hundreds of Israeli Jews marched through the city of Beersheba, also
chanting "death to Arabs".

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz ordered a "massive reinforcement" of
border police across the territory on Thursday, saying, "we're in an
emergency", according to Haaretz
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-gantz-orders-massive-police-reinforcement-to-quell-unrest-amid-jewish-arab-clashes-1.9804113>
.
West Bank

Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on
Wednesday, as tensions flared in the occupied Palestinian territory into
the late hours of the night, with Palestinians taking to the streets to
protest against Israeli aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip and occupied
East Jerusalem, and ongoing violence targeting Palestinian citizens of
Israel.

Early in the morning, Israeli forces killed two Palestinians - 16-year-old
Rashid Abu Arreh from the northern West Bank city of Tubas, and 28-year-old
Hussein al-Titi from the Fawwar refugee camp near Hebron - during two of a
series of raids across the West Bank, in which Israeli forces arrested 40
Palestinians.

Later on Wednesday, local media reported that Israeli forces shot and
killed another Palestinian man allegedly involved in a shooting attack
south of Nablus that reportedly left two Israeli soldiers injured.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-west-bank-three-killed-day>

Israel army kills three Palestinians in West Bank in span of a day

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-west-bank-three-killed-day>

Palestinian media identified the man as 36-year-old Mohammed Omar Saeed, a
former prisoner from the Ras al-Ain area of Nablus.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) Ministry of Health confirmed all three
deaths, adding that at least 27 Palestinians had been injured across the
West Bank during confrontations with Israeli forces that lasted into the
late hours of Wednesday night.

Several other areas in the occupied West Bank witnessed confrontations,
reported MEE correspondent Shatha Hammad.

Twenty people were hospitalised in Hebron, the scene of much of the
violence; seven in Nablus, and five in Tulkarem.

There were also violent crackdowns in the villages of Al-Mughayer, east of
Ramallah, and Jayyus, northeast of Qalqilya, on the morning of the first
day of Eid al-Fitr.

In the afternoon, the Israeli army announced that one of its operatives had
been run over near the Givat Asaf settlement, which is built on land around
Ramallah. The army said the suspected attacker fled the scene and i still
the focus of a manhunt.

The Israeli army also deployed military checkpoints, and launched campaigns
of arrest and detention against Palestinians.
Gaza

The death toll from the Israeli air strikes on Gaza, now in their fourth
day, reached 83 on Thursday, while Hamas continued to fire retaliatory
rockets towards Israeli cities, causing casualties.

According to Wafa <http://wafa.ps/Pages/Details/23626> news agency, Gaza
rescue crews recovered the bodies of a Palestinian couple from under the
rubble of a building at dawn on Thursday; Israeli forces on Wednesday night
had targeted Sheikh Zayed City in the town of Beit Lahia, in the northern
Gaza Strip.

Gaza's health ministry on Thursday said 17 children and seven women were
among the dead, while 487 people had been wounded.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/Israel-Gaza-children-and-women-killed-raids-international-calls-calm>

Gaza attacks: More children killed in Israeli raids as calls for calm grow

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/Israel-Gaza-children-and-women-killed-raids-international-calls-calm>

In Israel, six civilians, including a five-year-old child, have been killed
as a result of the missiles fired by Palestinian armed factions, according
to Israeli media
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-flare-up-teen-father-killed-in-city-of-lod-as-central-israel-comes-under-gaza-1.9796891>.
One soldier has also been killed.

Meanwhile, Israel's army on Thursday said it had received a rocket warning
in the north of the country, the first time the alert has been triggered
there since hostilities soared earlier this week.

The approximately 1,500 rockets fired from Gaza since Monday by the Qassam
Brigades, the Hamas movement's military wing, had so far set off warnings
in southern and central Israel, but not in the north, the army said.

However in the small hours of Thursday morning, alarms not only sounded in
the economic capital Tel Aviv in the middle of the country - where
residents rushed to shelters - but also in Jezreel Valley in the north.

The missiles led an incoming flight to be diverted away from Ben Gurion
Airport on Thursday, with the plane landing in a southern airport designed
to serve as a wartime alternative to its main international gateway outside
Tel Aviv, aviation tracker Avi Scharf said on Twitter.

The army also said in a tweet
<https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1392616491053461508> that it had targeted
"strategically significant buildings belonging to Hamas & a Hamas naval
force squad".

The targets of the air strikes included Hamas' main bank and
counterintelligence infrastructure, the army added.
Jerusalem

Confrontations broke out in several areas in Jerusalem, according to MEE
correspondent Latifeh Abdellatif, including in Al-Issawiya, Al-Tur, Sheikh
Jarrah and Damascus Gate.

According to the Palestinian health ministry, 51 people in the city were
hospitalised overnight.

Israeli ultra-nationalists also attacked Palestinian youths, including one
who was stabbed on Jaffa Street, and others in Silwan.

Another Palestinian was wounded in the Al-Suwana neighbourhood.

As for Sheikh Jarrah, where attempts to forcibly displace Palestinian
families sparked country-wide protests, security forces cracked down on
Palestinians while protecting groups of settlers throwing stones and water
bottles at them.

The police accompanied dozens of heavily armed settlers into the
neighbourhood, Abdellatif reported, and didn’t stop them ransacking the
area.

The violence looks to be far from over. Text messages seen by MEE on
Thursday appear to show plans by Israeli far-right gangs to mount further
attacks against Palestinians on Thursday night.
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