TV News LIES

Israel’s security cabinet has signed off on plans to formalise 19 illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, in a move Palestinian officials say deepens a decades-long project of land theft and demographic engineering.

Israeli media reported on Friday that the decision also revives two northern West Bank outposts dismantled during the 2005 “disengagement”.

The Israeli press outlet Ynet claimed the plan “was coordinated with the US in advance”, while Channel 14 said the push came from far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – a settler himself and one of the most hardline figures in Israel’s governing coalition.

Settlement expansion, though illegal under international law, is widely accepted across Israel’s political spectrum.

Palestinian officials condemned the decision, warning that it accelerates Israel’s annexation drive.

Mu’ayyad Sha’ban of the Palestinian Authority’s Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission described it as another step towards erasing Palestinian geography, saying it underscored growing fears about the future of the territory.

Hamas condemned the plan as a dramatic escalation. In a statement, the group said the move “constitutes a dangerous escalation in the annexation and Judaisation project” and reflects a government that “treats Palestinian land as colonial spoils and desperately seeks to entrench a settlement reality, ultimately aiming for complete control over the West Bank”.

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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”.

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