The suffocation of Sinjil

Welcome to +972’s Sunday Recap! 

Israel is blocking 6,000 UNRWA trucks from entering Gaza while children die of hunger. The world can still prevent further catastrophe if it chooses to act, writes Juliette Touma, UNRWA’s Director of Communications.

Last week, Yuval Abraham published an investigation into the Israeli army’s weaponization of cheap commercial drones to bomb civilians in Gaza (originally published on Local Call). In response, the Chinese company Autel said that it never knowingly sold or authorized its drones for use by Israel’s army — but Israeli importers say otherwise.

Shatha Yaish reported from Sinjil, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, which Israel has encaged with a towering barbed wire fence — cutting off residents from their land and leaving others exposed to settler attacks, including a recent lynching.

After a protest on Wednesday breached the Israel-Syria barrier in the occupied Golan Heights, Druze from both sides rushed to see relatives as police stood by. Oren Ziv wrote about the emotional reunions — a glimpse of what the land was and could be.

And Meron Rapoport wrote about his fellow journalist and friend Nasser Laham, one of the most senior journalists in Palestine, whom Israel arrested and then quietly released last week (originally published on Local Call). The harassment of Laham and others like Israel Frey sends a message that neither Palestinian nor Jewish journalists who criticize Israel are safe.

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