Palestine: The Month in Pictures: April 2015

The Electronic Intifada

6 May 2015

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Children walk inside a school in Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus on 14 April.
(Moayad Zaghmout / Reuters)

Israeli forces shot and killed five Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during the month of April.
The first Palestinian child to be killed by Israel this year, 17-year-old Ali Abu Ghannam was slain by Border Police at a checkpoint in the al-Tur neighborhood of Jerusalem on 24 April. The police claimed that the teen charged at occupation forces with a knife but Abu Ghannam’s family dismissed the accusation as a fabrication to cover up a killing “in cold blood.” His mother told media that her son had gone out that night to attend a wedding party, and was not carrying any weapon.
In a similar case, 18-year-old Muhammad Yahiya died of bullet wounds sustained near Israel’s wall in Araqa, a village near Jenin. The youth’s father said that his son was “assassinated in cold blood” while walking with his friends after a family wedding. An Israeli army spokesperson said that Yahiya was shot after he “refused to halt” while “attempting to breach the security fence.”
Muhammad Karakra was shot dead at Sinjil junction near Shilo, an Israeli settlement north of Ramallah on 8 April after allegedly stabbing two Israeli soldiers, one of whom was critically injured.
In Beit Ommar village near Hebron, Ziyad Awad, 27, was killed when soldiers opened fire on the funeral of his cousin, Jaafar Awad, 22, who died from complications stemming from a severe illness contracted while in Israeli prison.
Twenty-year-old Mahmoud Abu Jheisha was killed by Israeli forces outside the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron after allegedly stabbing a soldier, who was reported as moderately injured.
Also in the West Bank, two pregnant Palestinian women and their husbands were injured when they were run over by an Israeli-plated vehicle near al-Nabi Elias village in the Qalqiliya area. The driver fled the scene.
A 25-year-old Israeli man died after he was hit by a car driven by a Palestinian man at a bus station in East Jerusalem; an Israeli woman was seriously wounded in the same incident. Palestinian media reported that the motorist claimed it was an accident but Israeli media reported that the man confessed that it was a planned attack.

Gaza

Two young Palestinian men were reported killed in accidents while working in tunnels used to smuggle commercial goods from Egypt into the besieged Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces continued to open fire on Palestinian civilians in Gaza’s boundary areas on a daily basis, causing injuries. Meanwhile, Egyptian naval forces fired at Palestinian boats approaching Egyptian waters.
Rafah crossing, the sole entry and exit point for the vast majority of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents, remained closed during April. The crossing has been closed since late October except for 12 days on which it was opened with restrictions.
A Palestinian child was killed mid-month when a fire broke out in his family’s home north of Gaza City. The fire was caused by candles lit during a power outage.
By the end of the month, electricity outages increased from 12 to 16 hours per day to up to 20 hours per day after fuel delivery for the operation of Gaza’s power plant was halted during Israeli holidays and due to damage to fuel pipelines on the Palestinian end, the United Nations monitoring group OCHA reported.
Meanwhile, six months after a ceasefire ended 51 days of intensive shelling of Gaza, there is still virtually no reconstruction of the tens of thousands of homes destroyed there.

Yarmouk

On 29 April, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, condemned Syrian government shelling and aerial bombardment of Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus.
Days earlier, Syria’s envoy to the UN told the Security Council that the camp had been vacated and only terrorists and male civilians remain.
Thousands of Yarmouk’s remaining 18,000 residents fled last month after the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, infiltrated the camp and entered into battle with Palestinian armed groups in the camp.
Once home to the largest Palestinian community in Syria, most of Yarmouk’s 150,000 residents fled after it became an arena of fierce fighting between opposition and government forces in late 2012. Dozens of residents starved to death there after government forces and allied groups in the camp imposed an ongoing siege on the camp.
The commissioner-general of UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, said that thousands of civilians remained in Yarmouk late last month.

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Palestinian girls stand in a doorway in Jabaliya, northern Gaza Strip, that previously housed a mural of a weeping woman, 2 April. Reportedly painted by the British street artist Banksy, the mural had decorated the remains of a home destroyed by Israeli shelling last summer. A Gaza man said he was tricked into selling the mural for a paltry sum of 700 shekels ($180).
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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Manal Tamimi, a prominent figure in her village’s grassroots resistance movement, is treated by medics after she was shot in the leg with a live bullet fired by an Israeli soldier during the weekly protest against the occupation in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on 3 April.
(Anne Paq / ActiveStills)

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Palestinian students in Gaza City take part in a protest to show solidarity with refugees living in Syria’s Yarmouk camp, which is besieged by government forces and was recently overrun with ISIS fighters, 8 April.
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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Palestinians living in temporary housing after their homes were destroyed by Israeli shelling last summer bail rain water from outside their shelters in Beit Hanoun, the northern Gaza Strip, on 12 April.
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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Palestinian protesters hold photos of prisoner Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian lawmaker, during a protest marking Palestinian Prisoners Day outside the Ofer military prison near the West Bank town of Beitunia on 16 April.
(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

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Fighters with the Qassam Brigades stand near a model of a Hamas-manufactured drone during a ceremony marking the eleventh anniversary of the death of former Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in the eastern Gaza City district of Shujaiya on 17 April.
(Mohammed Asad / APA images)

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Palestinian children take part in a Gaza City protest to show solidarity with prisoners held in Israeli jails on 20 April.
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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Palestinian journalists and activists in front of the Red Cross office in the West Bank city of Nablus protest against Israel’s detention of journalist Amin Abu Wardeh, 21 April. Abu Wardeh was one of 27 Palestinians who were arrested during a late-night raid on their houses during a wide-scale arrest campaign in Nablus and its suburbs a few days previously.
(Ahmad Al-Bazz / ActiveStills)

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Supporters of rival Palestinian political parties attend a rally prior to Student Council elections at Birzeit University on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah on 21 April.
(Shadi Hatem / APA images)

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A Palestinian man carries his child on 22 April as he looks out of his Gaza City house that was damaged by Israeli shelling last summer.
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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Palestinians in Gaza City take part in a symbolic funeral for Jaafar Awad, who died of a severe illness contracted while in Israeli prison, 11 April. Ziyad Awad, Jaafar’s cousin, was shot dead by Israeli forces during the former prisoner’s West Bank funeral.
(Mohammed Asad / APA images)

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Thousands of Palestinian citizens in Israel take part in the March of Return on the lands of the destroyed village of Hadatha, near Tiberias, on 23 April. The march is held every year on Israel’s Independence Day to commemorate the dispossession of Palestine and to advocate for the right of the Palestinian refugees and internally displaced to return to their land and property.
(Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

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Artist Jihad Al-Ghoul, 23, works at his house in Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on 25 April. Al-Ghoul said that he lost his leg in an Israeli attack on the camp in 2008.
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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The room of Palestinian teenager Ali Said Abu Ranam in his East Jerusalem home on 25 April. Police said the 17-year-old approached a checkpoint with a butcher’s knife and tried to attack soldiers who shot him.
(Faiz Abu Rmeleh / ActiveStills)

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Palestinians mourn during the funeral of Muhammad Yahiya in Araqa village near the West Bank city of Jenin on 28 April. Yahiya was shot dead by Israeli forces, who claim that the teen refused an order to halt while “attempting to breach the security fence.” The 18-year-old’s father said the youth was “assassinated in cold blood.”
(Shadi Hatem / APA images)

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A Palestinian woman harvests wheat in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on 28 April.
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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Palestinian youths call for an end to internal political divisions and for opening Rafah crossing, Gaza City, 29 April.
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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Palestinian workers crush stones and cement blocks from houses destroyed by Israeli shelling last summer in the eastern Gaza City district of Shujaiya on 30 April.
(Mohammed Asad / APA images)

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Aysha Ali, the wife of Ibraheem Mustafa, a blacksmith, sharpens a handmade knife at their small workshop in Gaza City on 30 April.
(Ashraf Amra / APA images)

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Palestinian farmers harvest carrots in Tammun village near the West Bank town of Tubas on 30 April.
(Nedal Eshtayah / APA images)

 

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