Commondreams reports: “‘Israel’s Starvation Strategy’: IDF Fires on World Food Program Team.” Al Jazeera reports today: “Attacks in Gaza, West Bank kill more than 30.”

Foreign Minister Israel Katz called Israel’s attacks in Jenin, Tulkarem and elsewhere in the West Bank a “war in every sense” to be handled “exactly as we deal with the terror infrastructure in Gaza, including the temporary evacuation of Palestinian civilians.”

In “‘Trying to Repeat the Nakba’: Israel Launches Largest Military Raids in West Bank in Two Decades” Mustafa Barghouti of the Palestinian National Initiative stated: “what we see here is Israel trying to transfer the genocide war that is conducted in Gaza and the war of ethnic cleansing from Gaza to the West Bank. And what we see here is a unilateral war from the side of a huge Israeli army, which has airplanes, which has tanks, which has a huge number of soldiers, against a basically civilian Palestinian population.

“You have to understand that the West Bank is an area that has been under Israeli military occupation continuously since 1967, so it’s an occupied territory. And now the Israeli army, which is occupying us all this time, is conducting a war on occupied people. It’s the worst and gravest possible violation of international law that governs the behavior of an occupying power.

“And their goal is very clear. It’s as the Israeli minister of foreign affairs said. It’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. … They are trying to repeat the Nakba. They are trying to repeat the ethnic cleansing that took place in 1948.”

MAZIN QUMSIYEH, [near Bethlehem], mazin@qumsiyeh.org, Skype: mbqumsiyeh
Qumsiyeh is a professor at Bethlehem University. His books include Sharing the Land of Canaan. He is founding director of the Palestine Institute of Biodiversity and Sustainability. His latest piece is an “Open Letter to U.S. Citizens.”

ISSA AMRO, [in Hebron], Issaamro@gmail.com, @issaamro
Amro is based in Hebron on the West Bank and is founder of Youth Against Settlements. He is regularly threatened, harrased and detained by the Israeli military and settlers for his nonviolent activity such as making films and attempting to prevent home takeovers.

MIKO PELED, mikopeled@gmail.com, @mikopeled
Peled is an activist and podcaster. He has done speaking tours with Amro. His books include The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.