Chronology: July 16, 2016 – October 15, 2016

ABBREVIATIONS

• AFP, Agence France-Presse

• AJE, Al Jazeera English

• Al Arabiya

• AP, The Associated Press

• BBC

• Bloomberg

• CNN

• DS, Daily Star (Lebanon)

• Dawn

• The Guardian

• Gulf News, GN

• Haaretz

• Hürriyet Daily News

• JP, The Jerusalem Post

• JT, The Jordan Times

• NYT, The New York Times

• RFE/RL, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

• Reuters

• VOA, Voice of America

• WP, The Washington Post

• WSJ, The Wall Street Journal

Arab-Israeli Conflict

See also Israel, Jordan, Palestinian Territories, Qatar, Syria

July 18: A Palestinian stabbed two Israeli soldiers with a screwdriver at a checkpoint near the ‘Arrub refugee camp near Hebron. The soldiers suffered minor injuries and seriously wounded the assailant, whose brother had been killed after attacking soldiers with an axe at nearby Gush ‘Etzion Junction in April. [Haaretz, 7/18]

July 19: A 12-year-old boy was killed at a demonstration in the Palestinian town of Ram when Israeli border police fired rubber-coated bullets into the crowd. The Israelis denied having used guns, saying they only used tear gas and stun grenades in response to protesters throwing a Molotov cocktail at them. At least 204 Palestinians and 33 Israelis had been killed in clashes since October 2015. [Reuters, 7/20]

Aug. 3: The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed the Youth Bill, which would allow for the imprisonment of children as young as 12 for acts of terrorism. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, criticized the bill and the state’s treatment of Palestinian children more broadly. As of July 2016, at least 414 Palestinian children were being held in Israeli prisons. [AJE, 8/3]

Aug. 4: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) destroyed the homes of the two Palestinian cousins charged with carrying out the June 8 shooting in a Tel Aviv restaurant that left four dead. The houses were located in the West Bank city of Yatta, south of Hebron. The two men had not yet been convicted of the crime, and the demolition left many of their family members homeless. [AJE, 8/4]

Israel accused Palestinian Muhammad al-Halabi, Director of World Vision’s Gaza office, of funneling millions of the Christian charity funds to Hamas. Halabi denied the charges, and it remained unclear whether the claims were substantiated. Halabi’s attorney and local human rights organizations claimed that he had been tortured by the Israeli Security Agency, known as the ISA or the Shin Bet, during his arrest. [AJE, 10/9]

Aug. 9: B’Tselem reported that Israel’s Civil Administration bulldozed five prefabricated buildings in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Khayr in the West Bank for being built without a permit. The five total buildings had housed 27 people, 16 of whom were minors. Critics argued that the move reflected government initiatives to clear land to expand settlements, particularly the nearby settlement of Carmel. Three of the buildings had been built with funds from the European Union, and the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor estimated that Israeli demolition of EU projects had amounted to an estimated loss of $72 million. [Haaretz, 8/9]

Aug. 21: Following a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip into Sderot in southern Israel, the IDF retaliated by firing missiles into the northern Gaza Strip. No deaths or injuries were reported from the missile attacks on Gaza, aside from minor shrapnel injuries. [AJE, 8/21]

Sept. 22: Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmud ‘Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), spoke at the United Nations General Assembly where the two rehashed their fundamental disagreements. Netanyahu accused the PA of rejecting peace and criticized the UN for bias against Israel. ‘Abbas cited Israeli settlements in the West Bank as the main obstacle to a peaceful two-state solution. [Guardian, 9/22]

Oct. 6: Over a two-day period, rockets were fired from northern Gaza into Sderot, resulting in an IDF retaliation targeting Hamas infrastructure with tank fire and airstrikes. The incident resulted in no reported casualties on either side, though one Palestinian bystander was injured. An organization claiming loyalty to the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), Ahfad al-Sahaba, took responsibility for the rocket strike. Hamas...