Portside

The picturesque Palestinian village of al-Walaja, located between Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, is known for its verdant landscape, agricultural terraces and numerous springs.

Around 150,000 people took part in the Great March of Return, Ahmad Abu Artema, a commemoration of Palestinians killed by Israel forces during the general strike against the 1976 Israeli annexation of land. This year, Israeli fire killed 16 Palestinians and injured another 1400.

The protests were organized as “The Great March of Return,” a nonviolent gathering of Palestinian refugees who demand the right to return to their families’ homes inside Israel.

Thousands of Arab Bedouins in Israel's Negev desert are denied power, water, sewage, and roads by the state. And their villages are under constant threat of demolition.

"...Palestinian children in particular are in dire need of “safe spaces.” Since Palestinian homes and neighborhoods are subjected to frequent night raids, schools are usually one of the sole places where children are confident in their safety"

Currently, an estimated 75 Palestinian children from East Jerusalem are being held in Israeli prisons and detention centers.

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In many ways the Security Council vote is Obama’s last hurrah, the swan song not only of his presidency but of unequivocal American support for a two-state solution and opposition to Jewish settlements.

In testimony at his manslaughter trial for summarily executing a disarmed Palestinian attacker, Elor Azaria, an Israeli Defense Force sergeant, is openly describing the violence, de-humanization, hatred, and settler domination that define the Israeli occupation. But make no mistake; he’s not breaking his silence, he is unrepentant. This is the trial of a soldier who committed a crime, and of an entire system mobilized to brand him as an “unrepresentative” lone gunman.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Michael Chabon speaks with The Forward’s Naomi Zeveloff at the end of his weeklong tour of the Israeli Occupied West Bank earlier this month. Chabon was a member of a literary tour organized by the Israeli group, Breaking the Silence, which collects and distributes testimonies of Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories. He termed the occupation “the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.”