Human Rights Glance
On July 20, around ten masked men raided the Palestinian hamlet of Ibsiq in the northern Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank. They arrived in a two car convoy, dressed in Israeli military-issue fatigues, and carried assault rifles fitted with green laser pointers.
While their vehicles blocked the road, they stormed into a cluster of homes. At gunpoint, they forced a Palestinian family to their knees and warned them they had 48 hours to evacuate Area C and go to Area B—referring to technical designations of control in the West Bank under the Oslo Accords. Area C is under full Israeli control and Area B is technically under Palestinian civil administration but shares security control with Israel. The masked men said they would “return and burn the community down,” if the family did not evacuate to Area B.
I had been staying with an elderly Palestinian couple for five days in Ibsiq to document settler violence amid rising threats against the community. As the men approached, I asked one of them who he was. They looked like soldiers, but the vehicles in which they arrived had yellow civilian license plates. These masked assailants were members of the hagmar— settler reservist militias formally attached to the Israeli army and tasked with “security” in West Bank settlements.
The men dragged me behind a fence where four of them beat me until I required hospitalization. They stole the phone of an International Solidarity Mission activist who tried to record the attack.
My host, Abu Safi, who was 84, had little choice but to leave his home after that raid by the hagmar. The family packed up their belongings accumulated over decades in the house and moved to a nearby location in Area B. Abu Safi died of a heart attack soon afterwards.
How Israel Organizes and Arms Settler Militias to Terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank
ICE Has A Plan To Arrest Undocumented Migrants Voluntarily Leaving U.S.: Memo
The Trump administration has put together a plan to send immigration agents to the U.S.-Mexico border to catch migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and are trying to return home voluntarily around the holidays, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by HuffPost.
Under the plan, ICE agents would work with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers in “targeted operations” at land ports along the southern border. They would arrest people “attempting to self-remove” after being in the U.S. without legal authorization.
Agents would target commercial buses passing through ports of entry into Mexico, according to the plan document, which was labeled “sensitive.”
Travelers who have no immigration or criminal records and who don’t pose a public-safety risk would be considered “voluntary returns” to their home countries. Others would be processed according to their current immigration cases, the document states, suggesting they would be detained and face formal deportation proceedings.
Israeli raids and settler attacks deepen humanitarian crisis in West Bank
A spike in Israeli military raids and settler violence across the occupied West Bank is driving new displacement, shutting schools and disrupting essential services for tens of thousands of Palestinians, the UN relief coordination office, OCHA, said in its latest humanitarian update Friday.
Between 25 November and 1 December, four Palestinians, including one child, were killed by Israeli forces, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank so far this year to 227.
Nearly half of all fatalities in 2025 were recorded in the Jenin and Nablus governorates.
Large-scale operations in Jenin and Tubas governorates alone affected more than 95,000 Palestinians last week.
In Tubas, wide-ranging raids, curfews and bulldozer activity caused extensive damage to homes, roads and water networks, displacing families and cutting water supplies to nearly 17,000 people.
Child Amputees in Gaza Use Makeshift Prosthetics as Israel Restricts Medical Supplies
Ten-year-old Rateb Abu Qleiq sat in a rusted chair in front of his tent in Deir al-Balah. As he spoke, he unconsciously swung his right leg, which was amputated just below the knee, back and forth—the stub tracing a short arc in the air. On his lap he cradled a makeshift prosthetic, nothing more than a piece of plastic sewage pipe outfitted with an orange covering secured by a piece of string.
“My leg is gone,” Rateb told Drop Site. “This pipe doesn’t make up for my leg.”
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-child-amputees-makeshift-prosthetics-limbs-israeli-restrictions-hamad-hospital
Rateb was severely wounded in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis earlier this year that killed his mother and brother. His right leg was crushed and had to be amputated. He has undergone five surgeries in his abdomen since the attack.
“I felt sad that I’m no longer like the other kids because my leg was amputated. I don’t know how to play with them. I wish I had a leg so I could play with my friends,” he said.
Desperate to move again, Rateb and his cousin fashioned the prosthetic leg out of a plastic sewage pipe he found in the street. “I don’t want to give up, and my determination is strong. I dream of having a real prosthetic limb,” Rateb said. “If my leg hadn’t been cut off, the first place I’d go is the field to play football. I want to return to our home and have my mom, my dad, and my leg with me.”
“When he first wore it, he was so happy, as if it were his real leg, he would walk on it. But poor thing, because it was made of plastic, it started to hurt his leg. No matter what, it’s still just a sewage pipe,” Rateb’s uncle, Mohammed Abu Qleiq, told Drop Site. “It doesn’t replace a real prosthetic limb, and it doesn’t make up for his leg. But this was the simplest thing we had.”
Trump administration orders review of refugees cleared under Biden
The Trump administration has ordered a review of all refugees already cleared to enter the U.S. during the Biden era and may require them to undergo a re-interview, according to a memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services obtained by USA TODAY.
All refugees admitted between Jan. 20, 2021, the day before former President Joe Biden took office, and Feb. 20, 2025 will have their applications re-reviewed even if they were already admitted entry to the U.S., according to the memo, which is dated Nov. 21. Refugees admitted outside that time frame could also be re-reviewed, the memo states.
Refugees who were already admitted also may need to submit to another interview to prove they face "past persecution or a well-founded fear," according to the memo. Refugees whose applications are rejected will have no pathway to appeal the decision, it reads.
Almost 197,000 refugees were admitted to the U.S. from 2021 to 2024, an increase from the 118,000 admitted during Trump's first term, but still less than under any other president for the previous half-century, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Trump to end temporary protected status for Somali immigrants in Minnesota
Donald Trump said on Friday night that he’s “immediately” terminating temporary legal protections for Somali migrants living in Minnesota, further targeting a program seeking to limit deportations that his administration has already repeatedly sought to weaken.
Minnesota has the nation’s largest Somali community. Many fled the long civil war in the east African country and were drawn to the state’s welcoming social programs.
But how many migrants would be affected by Trump’s announcement that he wants to end temporary protective status could be very small. A report produced for Congress in August put the number of Somalis covered by the program at just 705 nationwide.
Congress created the program granting temporary protective status (TPS) in 1990. It was meant to prevent deportations of people to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife or other dangerous conditions.
The designation can be granted by the homeland security secretary and is granted in 18-month increments.
The president announced his decision on his social media site, suggesting that Minnesota was “a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity”.
Mahmoud Khalil sues Trump officials over ‘collusion’ with anti-Palestinian groups
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who participated in protests at Columbia University and was detained by Ice earlier this year, has filed a lawsuit demanding the Trump administration release its communications with anti-Palestinian groups he says contributed to his March arrest and efforts to detain him.
The groups, a number of which have boasted about their involvement in sharing dossiers on Palestine activists with the administration, have claimed credit for Khalil’s arrest, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is part of the legal team representing Khalil, and they say there is evidence that indicates the Trump administration “acted on information and misinformation – provided by these groups in cracking down” on Khalil and other pro-Palestine activists.
“For months, shady organizations and individuals carried out a smear and harassment campaign designed to intimidate and silence me,” said Khalil in a statement to the Center for Constitutional Rights.
“The public deserves full accountability for every bad actor who helped make that possible, including those at Columbia who fabricated and amplified these smears and opened the door for state retaliation against Palestinian speech.”
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