Israeli military strikes continue across Gaza, leaving nowhere safe. Between 18 March and 9 April 2025, there were some 224 incidents of Israeli strikes on residential buildings and tents for internally displaced people (IDPs). In some 36 strikes about which the UN Human Rights Office corroborated information, the fatalities recorded so far were only women and children.
H.E. Dr. Ola Awad, President of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), on Thursday 03/04/2025, highlighted the Palestinian children’s situation, as follows:
Combatants’ testimonies describe how areas were destroyed to create ‘a death zone of enormous proportions’
The Security Cabinet decided last night (29/3/25) to allocate NIS 335 million for the construction of a road between Elazariya and A-Za’im, known as the “Fabric of Life Road” or the “Sovereignty Road.” In practice, the construction of the road will create a separate road system for Israelis and Palestinians (an apartheid road), which will allow Israel to close off a vast area in the heart of the West Bank to Palestinians by diverting Palestinian traffic to a special bypass, and to annex the entire Ma’ale Adumim area to Israel and build the E1 plan.
PUBLIC DOSSIER OF OPENLY AVAILABLE EVIDENCE ON THE STATE OF ISRAEL’S ACTS OF GENOCIDE AGAINST THE PALESTINIANS IN GAZA AS AT 4 FEBRUARY 2025
The war in Gaza has killed nearly 16,000 children since October 2023, most of whom have died in indiscriminate bombings. Yet a deeply unsettling subset of these deaths stands apart – children arriving at trauma centres with gunshot wounds.
Israel has increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians as part of a broader effort to undermine their right to self-determination and carried out genocidal acts through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities, according to a new report issued today by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel.
For decades, human rights organizations have exposed egregious abuses carried out by states across the globe. Yet, simultaneously, other national and transnational civil society actors have waged war on these human rights organizations to shield rights-abusive states from accountability. These assaults have increasingly resulted in the normative claims of human rights organizations being sidelined while rights-abusive laws and policies gain further ground. This article uses Israel as its primary case study to interrogate these civil society wars and their effects on human rights. Examining the work of Israeli and pro-Israeli civil society actors in bolstering apartheid and shielding the state from criticism, I highlight three strategies—native dispossession, lawfare, and advocacy—that civil society actors use to enable apartheid. I go on to show how these actors adopt liberal tactics to protect, reproduce, and facilitate apartheid and to attack human rights defenders. By way of conclusion, I argue that the dominant paradigm informing human rights NGOs needs to be modified and their remit needs to be extended to include civil society actors that contribute to the perpetuation of social wrongs.
The year 2024 is characterized by a policy of reducing Palestinian space in Areas C and B and expanding Israeli presence in these areas. In fact, this year marks the most significant reduction in Palestinian presence and rights in the West Bank, with an unprecedented weakening of law enforcement against settlers regarding construction violations and violence against Palestinians.
B’Tselem Executive Director Yuli Novak said: “Israel’s complete disregard for international law in the war in Gaza is now being replicated to the West Bank, at this stage mainly in the north. The military activity there, as yet on a smaller scale than in Gaza, is already causing indiscriminate and disproportionate killing and destruction. In 15 months of war in Gaza, the government’s actions made it clear that Israel has no intention of fulfilling its obligations under international law. It is likely to continue blatantly flaunting its duty to protect lives and human rights, and to uphold basic moral and humanitarian standards, unless the Israeli leadership is held truly accountable for its crimes against the Palestinian people”.
