West Bank Bedouins driven out by settler violence

The West Bank burns as the ceasefire holds in Gaza

With a ceasefire in force in Gaza, the Israeli army and settlers have intensified their attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank. Amid the exchange of captives, images showing legions of Hamas reinforcements puncture the narratives in Israeli media.

The Palestinians facing mass eviction in the West Bank

 

Fears are mounting among more than a thousand Palestinians that Israel’s army will soon force them to leave their homes in the occupied West Bank.

Our Middle East Correspondent, Yolande Knell, looks at why - and meets the residents of Masafer Yatta as well as those trying to help them.

Why does Israel want to annex the West Bank? | Start Here

Israel has occupied the West Bank for decades. But now Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to take even more control through annexation. So how will this change things for Palestinians? Why is this happening now? And what does the US presidential election have to do with it?

Will annexation of the occupied West Bank trigger turmoil?

Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to seize more of the occupied West Bank in line with US 'Middle East plan'.

The illegally occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are at the heart of any future Palestinian state, as envisaged by the Palestinian Authority.

But, occupied by Israeli forces since 1967 and now threatened by annexation, such a state looks increasingly impossible.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to declare sovereignty over illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank including the strategic Jordan Valley. 

Hong Kong and the Uighurs: How far will China go?

We discuss the Hong Kong protests and China's crackdown on Uighurs and debate US policy on illegal Israeli settlements.

Hong Kong protests: Are police using excessive force?

The US ramped up the pressure on Hong Kong this week over its handling of anti-government protests that have dragged on for months in the self-governing Chinese territory.

Congress passed two bills aimed at supporting protesters; they include measures that would allow for sanctions against officials responsible for human rights abuses in Hong Kong. The move infuriated China, which warned of "strong countermeasures" if US President Donald Trump signed off on the bill.

Can nonviolence end the Israeli occupation?

We speak to Palestinian human rights activist Issa Amro about his upcoming Israeli military trial.

Issa Amro has been dubbed by some "the Palestinian Gandhi". A prominent human rights activist in the occupied West Bank, who's been recognised by both the European Union and the United Nations, he has been a tireless advocate for nonviolent resistance.

Rather than being embraced by political leaders on both sides, in September Palestinian security forces arrested him for a post on Facebook in which he criticised the Palestinian Authority for arresting a journalist.

Amro is also awaiting trial in an Israeli military court for a series of charges, dismissed by international rights groups as baseless.

Speed Sisters: Palestine's All-Female Racing Car Team (video)

Bold, fearless and tearing up tracks across the West Bank: meet the first all-female racing car team in the Middle East.

Despite a tangle of roadblocks and checkpoints, a thriving street car racing scene has emerged in the occupied West Bank. Held at improvised tracks, the races offer a release from the pressures and uncertainties of life under military occupation. 

Brought together by a common desire to live life on their own terms, the Speed Sisters have joined the ranks of dozens of male drivers competing against each other for the title, for bragging rights for their hometown, and to prove that women can go head-to-head with the guys.

Weaving together their lives on and off the track, Speed Sisters sheds light on the rivalries that exist within the team, the pressures the women feel from their communities, and their drive to go further and faster than anyone thought they could.

Does the two-state solution still have a future?

Protests in the occupied West Bank as Israeli police attempt to dismantle the illegal settlement of Amona.

Israel's government says the Amona outpost is illegal, but it is referring to Israeli law. Under international law all settlements on occupied land are illegal.

Barely 300 people live in Amona, but with so much attention focused on this one, small place, is the international community losing sight of the bigger issues that surround Israel's illegal settlement programme?

Israeli settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem have grown dramatically over the past few decades.

The settler population has more than doubled over the last 30 years and now stands at around 600,000. Of that, 400,000 settlers live in Palestinian territory in the West Bank and the remainder in occupied East Jerusalem.

Two Schools in Nablus: Learning to Die

In 2007, we followed pupils and teachers struggling to get or deliver an education in the West Bank. What has changed?

In 2007, Al Jazeera's Witness strand commissioned a special series, Two Schools in Nablus, from filmmakers Tom Evans and George Azar, which documented the extraordinary daily struggle of getting and delivering an education under the constant threat of violence and intimidation.

In this episode of the series, Learning to Die, things were about to get much worse for pupils and teachers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank town.

The Wanted 18 (video)

The incredible story of 18 cows that became Israel's most wanted fugitives and symbols of Palestinian resistance.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has borne witness to numerous tragedies but in The Wanted 18, an award-winning and astonishing true story, animation, claymation and interviews highlight an absurd footnote in the history of the bitter foes.

Set in the late 1980s against the backdrop of the first Intifada, The Wanted 18 begins with residents from the predominantly Christian Arab village of Beit Sahour in the occupied West Bank deciding to buy 18 cows and produce their own milk as a co-operative.

Wanting self-sufficiency and an alternative to Israeli goods, the residents, many of whom have never seen a cow, smuggle the herd into their village and begin to learn the fine art of milking.

Their venture is so successful that the collective farm becomes a landmark and the cows local celebrities - until the Israeli army takes note and declares the farm "a threat to the national security of the state of Israel".

Area C

Instead of transferring to Palestinian control, the biggest 'Area' in the West Bank remains firmly in Israeli hands.


Under the Oslo Accords, the 1993 interim agreement between Israel and the PLO, the Occupied West Bank was divided into three Areas, A, B, and C, which were placed under different jurisdictions.

The largest and the most contentious of these, Area C, was supposed to pass to Palestinian control but in the last two decades the exact opposite has happened. Israel has retained control of an area comprising over 60% of the Occupied West Bank.


"Area C constitutes a real disaster," says Dr Hussein Al-Rimmawi of Birzeit University in the West Bank. "Most of the Israeli settlements have been built in Area C. It's under full Israeli control, particularly security. Palestinians have no authority over this."

The whole Palestinian people have been affected and individual communities like the villages of Al Maleh, Kafr Qaddum and Aqaba have suffered.

Boycott Israel

Can an international boycott of Israeli goods and services help end its occupation of Palestinian lands?

As Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian lands grinds on, economics and commerce are becoming new battle lines, an embargo being the latest weapon of resistance for Gaza and the West Bank.



A small demonstration in the Palestinian city of Ramallah in March 2015 might not have seemed like much - with a symbolic mound of Israeli-sourced groceries being dumped in the street - but it marked the moment when Palestinians began to officially boycott Israeli products for the first time in two decades.


The idea of a boycott is not new, of course. For over ten years activists around the world have been urging an embargo of Israeli and foreign companies which profit from the occupation. But the ferocity of last summer's Israeli assault on Gaza, which attracted widespread international condemnation, has helped galvanise the movement known as Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). The BDS campaign is internationally supported and wants to emulate the success of the comprehensive international embargo that helped end apartheid in South Africa.