“The army is implementing a large-scale engineering project: constructing a ground barrier stretching for many kilometres along the line.” An in-depth Haaretz investigation into what’s becoming the new border in Gaza: the Yellow Line and its deadly impact on Palestinians🧵
“The area around the line is an active firing zone, with ongoing Israeli airstrikes, artillery shelling and small-arms fire. According to the UN, more than 200 Palestinians, many of them civilians, have been killed in its vicinity.”
Will Edmond, the head of Doctors Without Borders' mission in Gaza: "Over the past months we have treated many patients who were injured by gunshots and explosives around the Yellow Line while carrying out daily tasks. People don't know exactly where it is
And are injured [...] while going to their homes, getting water or collecting firewood. Another problem is that as the line steadily moves west, essential services such as water points and healthcare sites are being swallowed into the Yellow Line…"
“The separation line leaves more than half of the Strip in IDF hands, and there is currently no detailed mechanism regulating a withdrawal from it [...] Some 2.1 million Gazans are now crowded into less than half the area they lived in before the war”
“The Yellow Line was intended to be temporary, but more than five months have passed since U.S. President Donald Trump published his plan to end the war and outline stages of a phased IDF withdrawal. In practice, the army is deepening its hold on the area.”
“Analysis of satellite imagery shows that the IDF has established positions across the northern, eastern and southern Strip. It currently holds at least 32 outposts, most of them built before the cease-fire.”
“Many of the outposts are located amid the ruins of former agricultural and residential areas. Two were built on sites where mosques stood prior to the war, and another is located on a cemetery destroyed during the fighting.”
"Another manifestation of the consolidation of the separation line are earth berms erected north, east and south of the Hamas-controlled area along the Yellow Line. Their total length exceeds 17 kilometers (10.5 miles), about 40 percent of the line's full length (45 kilometers)."
Read the full investigation by @YardenMichaeli in @haaretzcom:
While attention is again focused on Iran, a major shift is unfolding in the West Bank. For the first time since the Oslo Accords, Palestinians are being expelled from Area A, under PA administration. The IDF is seizing land near Jenin to build a military base. Why it matters 🧵
For more than a year, the IDF has been conducting an operation in the West Bank dubbed “Iron Wall.” As part of the operation, the IDF has repeatedly raided the Palestinian refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams. In many ways, it resembled practices we’ve seen in Gaza.
45,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced and, for the most part, are still not allowed to return. The IDF demolished entire residential blocks and loosened rules of engagement, permitting opening fire at anyone who was deemed to be “messing with the ground”.
The IDF has toughened the apartheid death penalty law in the West Bank. From this Sunday onward, the death penalty for Palestinians will apply in the West Bank. The version adopted by the military is even harsher than the original formulation passed by the Knesset 🧵
The original formulation only classified killings committed with the aim of denying “Israel’s existence” as punishable by death, making it virtually inapplicable to settler terrorists. The version adopted by the IDF for the West Bank maintains the law’s apartheid character,
But makes it even easier to apply against Palestinians by introducing the denial of “the authority of the military commander in the area” as additional grounds for the death penalty. The West Bank version also weakens the presumption of innocence, as Adallah claims.
🟡Israel’s Yellow Line in Gaza has shifted. Israel now controls 59% of the territory, up from 53% in October when the “ceasefire” came into effect. The IDF is entrenching its presence in the area, so the Yellow Line could become a new de facto permanent border 🧵
The expansion of the Line has swallowed many essential services, such as water points and healthcare sites, and, more importantly, has cost dozens of people their lives. For the IDF, the Yellow Line is a “kill zone” with extremely permissive rules of engagement.
As our soldier testifier described it:“...anyone who enters it is sentenced to death [...] tons of civilians are killed [because] they [were] simply in the wrong place”. The Line is constantly moving and is partially unmarked. breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/da…
⚠️Trigger warning: sexualised violence. "I don't have any answers at all. There's no forgiving what I've done." Executions, torture, abuse, cover-ups, and disproportionate destruction. Read these extremely important soldiers' testimonies (published in @haaretzcom):
"Five Palestinians crossing the line they weren't allowed to cross, heading for northern Gaza. The battalion commander gave an order to overwhelm them with fire, even though they hadn't been confirmed as armed or anything like that.
A few hours later, a [buldozer] buried them in the sand. [...] The one who survived was put in a cage at the outpost, and they said we had to wait for a Shin Bet man to interrogate him [...] Suddenly, a few soldiers called me, so I went with them to the cage.
Israel approved the establishment of 34 settlements in the West Bank. New settlements are de facto approved by the state all the time, even if Israel only recognises them retrospectively. These are special. Their locations were selected after extensive and deliberate planning.🧵
Many of the new settlements are expected to be established in areas where, without the state’s deeper involvement, their establishment would be impossible: private Palestinian land, firing zones, and the northern West Bank, where there has not been any Israeli presence before.
At least 3 new settlements are expected to be established in “firing zones”. The IDF has used firing zones as a tool for land grabs for decades. Masafer Yatta is the most well-known example: in 1980, the lands and homes of 12 Palestinian communities there became a “firing zone”.
The border police officers who massacred the Bani Odeh family won’t be questioned, as the evidence allegedly shows they shot “out of fear for their lives.” Two parents and their two children were killed, and the two surviving children were beaten. Let’s look at the “evidence” 🧵
Nine days ago, the Bani Odeh family were returning home at night from a Ramadan shopping trip. There were four children in the car, aged 5-11, one of them blind. The border policemen, who were in the area undercover, approached the Bani Odeh family’s car.
Police claim the car had accelerated toward them. They responded by firing dozens of bullets. All four victims were shot in the head. Officers gave no warning, didn’t call on the car to stop, didn’t fire into the air, and didn’t aim at the tires. And what about witnesses?