Palestinian communities vanish as Zionist settlers ramp up violence: NRC

News Network
August 14, 2023

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Extremist Israeli settlers have been violently taking over Palestinian lands and forcing hundreds of Palestinians to leave their homes, leading to the disappearance of some Palestinian communities off the map, an independent humanitarian organization says.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said in a report on Thursday that around 500 Palestinians from seven communities have been forcibly displaced over the past 20 months.

“There are entire Palestinian communities being wiped off the map, a shameful legacy of unrelenting violence, intimidation and harassment perpetuated by Israeli settlers and, in some cases, encouraged by Israeli authorities,” Ana Povrzenic, NRC’s country director for Palestine, said.

She added, “The rapid establishment of settlement outposts and takeover of Palestinian land is choking Palestinian communities, destroying their livelihoods, and putting Palestinian lives at risk. Palestinians have no choice but to flee, leaving behind their homes, schools, and jobs.”

It warned that more and more Palestinian communities will be forcibly displaced if Israel is not held accountable.

Lately, a dozen families, comprising 89 Palestinians, among them 39 children, were forcibly displaced from Ras At-Tin village, east of Ramallah, following increased settler harassment and intimidation.

Israeli settlers took over the community’s grazing lands and established a vineyard next to an Israeli military base.  

The NRC highlighted that some 60 Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank are at heightened risk of forcible displacement due to Israeli settler and soldier violence, settlement expansion, and Israel’s fairly discriminatory policies and practices, including its unlawful planning and zoning regime.

“Without holding Israel accountable, more and more Palestinian communities will be forcibly transferred,” warned Povrzenic. “How many more Ras At-Tins must there be before the international community acts?”

More than 700,000 Israelis live in over 279 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

While all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, the occupying regime has stepped up settlement expansion in blatant violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued illegal settlement expansion.

Israel withholding bodies of 30 Palestinians

Meanwhile, the Israeli regime has reportedly been withholding the bodies of 30 Palestinians since the beginning of the current year, of whom 11 were prisoners.

Eight of the fallen Palestinians hailed from the northern West Bank city of Jenin, six from Nablus, five from Ariha, three from Ramallah, four from al-Ouds, and the last four from al-Khalil.

Mohammed Eliyyan, a lawyer, published the names of the Palestinians whose bodies are being withheld, adding that he will continue publicizing the names in "support of the martyrs’ families."

The handing over of bodies is always done through the Palestinian civil liaison office, the Palestinian body in charge of coordinating civil affairs with the occupying Israeli regime.

Between 2007 and 2015, Israel stopped the practice of withholding Palestinian bodies.

Then came the Palestinian October 2015 Intifada (uprising), during which the number of Palestinian retaliatory operations against Israeli forces and settlers increased, often ending with the killing of the suspected attackers. Israeli forces then began once again to withhold the bodies of those killed. 

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News Network
November 22,2025

Mangaluru: Police Commissioner Sudheer Kumar Reddy C H has warned of strict action against individuals spreading rumours and attempting to create insecurity within the Muslim community and fuel hatred between Hindus and Muslims through social media.

Referring to a recent social media post alleging that police personnel had entered a masjid premises to check whether beef was being cooked, the commissioner said miscreants were attempting to push their communal agenda. 

“A group of people, both from Mangaluru and abroad, are trying hard to spread rumours. For the past 10 days, they have been attempting to rake up old issues, highlight routine matters as controversies, or fabricate news altogether,” he said.

He reiterated that any such attempts to disturb communal harmony would invite legal action. “Cases will be registered and the accused will be brought to book,” he stated.

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News Network
November 24,2025

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Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

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Agencies
November 22,2025

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New York/Washington: US President Donald Trump has again claimed to have solved the conflict between India and Pakistan, repeating his assertion during a meeting with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in the Oval Office.

Mamdani flew to Washington DC for his first meeting with Trump in the White House on Friday. Trump said he “enjoyed” the meeting, which he described as “great.”

During remarks in the Oval Office, with Mamdani standing next to him, Trump repeated his claim that he solved the May conflict between India and Pakistan.

"I did eight peace deals of countries, including India and Pakistan,” he said.

On Wednesday, Trump had said he threatened to put 350 per cent tariffs on India and Pakistan if they did not end their conflict, repeating his claim that he solved the fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called him to say “we're not going to go to war.”

Since May 10, when Trump announced on social media that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “full and immediate” ceasefire after a “long night” of talks mediated by Washington, he has repeated his claim over 60 times that he “helped settle” the tensions between India and Pakistan.

India has consistently denied any third-party intervention. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians. India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the conflict after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile strikes.

Mamdani emerged victorious in the closely-watched battle for New York City Mayor, becoming the first South Asian and Muslim to be elected to sit at the helm of the largest city in the US.

He had been the front-runner in the NYC Mayoral election for months and defeated Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and political heavyweight former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent candidate and was officially endorsed by Trump just hours before the elections.

Indian-descent Mamdani is the son of renowned filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani. He was born and raised in Kampala, Uganda and moved to New York City with his family when he was 7. Mamdani became a naturalised US citizen only recently, in 2018.

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