View this email in your browser FEBRUARY 16, 2025
The day Israel came for the booksellers
Welcome to +972’s Sunday Recap! Here’s your wrap-up of the latest articles from our contributors, including our colleagues at Local Call.
In the days since Jan. 27, when the Israeli military opened passage and then withdrew from the Netzarim Corridor in the middle of Gaza, over half a million Palestinians have crossed back into the northern half of the Strip. Yet for many, as Ahmed Ahmed reports, the joy of coming home has been tempered by the overwhelming destruction and little humanitarian aid that reaches the north — as Gazans struggle to envision any future there.
On Sunday, Feb. 9, Israeli police raided East Jerusalem’s world-famous Educational Bookshop and detained its owners, Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna, who spent the subsequent two days in prison before being released and placed under house arrest. Oren Ziv spoke with the Munas’ relatives, who described how the police seized a selection of books — including a children’s coloring book — as proof of ‘inciting content and support for terrorism.’
Josh Leifer wrote about Nachala, the far-right Israeli settler movement that aims to recolonize Gaza. Capitalizing on the war, Nachala has pushed to rectify what it sees as the ‘historical injustice’ of Israel’s 2005 disengagement from the Strip, and if the ceasefire falters, the group is ready to pounce — with little standing in its way.
“Operation Iron Wall,” Israel’s largest military operation in the West Bank since the Second Intifada, has displaced 40,000 Palestinians from four refugee camps since it was launched on Jan. 21. Wahaj Bani Moufleh photographed the extreme destruction that Israeli forces have wrought upon civilian infrastructure — from bulldozing roads, to leveling entire residential blocks.
And as people around the world watch “No Other Land” — the Oscar-nominated documentary about the struggle and resilience of the Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta in the face of Israel’s efforts to expel them — the West Bank villages are still being erased. Basel Adra, a co-director of the film, wrote about how Israel settlers are raiding and burning the villages, while soldiers arrest and abuse residents and demolish their homes.
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PHOTOS, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: Displaced Palestinians return to their destroyed homes in Tel al-Hawa, Gaza City, Jan. 29, 2025 (Ali Hassan/Flash90), Mahmoud and Ahmed Muna appear in court after their arrest during an Israeli police raid of their Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem, Feb. 10, 2025 (Oren Ziv), Daniella Weiss at the Nachala Hanukkah celebration, calling to resettle Gaza, in the Israeli city of Sderot, Dec. 26, 2024 (Yossi Alon/ Flash90), Israeli soldiers forcibly displace Palestinians in Nur Shams refugee camp on February 10, 2025 (Wahaj Bani Moufleh), Israeli forces demolish Palestinian homes in She’ab al-Bottom in Masafer Yatta, in the West Bank, July 8, 2024 (Basel Adra/Activestills).
Local Call is co-published by Just Vision & 972 – Advancement of Citizen Journalism, the latter of which is also the publisher of +972 Magazine.
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