Category World News

The Israeli military will demolish 25 residential buildings in the occupied West Bank’s Nur Shams refugee camp this week, according to local authorities.

Abdallah Kamil, the governor of the Tulkarem governorate where Nur Shams is located, told the AFP news agency on Monday that he was informed of the planned demolition by the Israeli Defence Ministry body COGAT.

Faisal Salama, the head of the popular committee for the Tulkarem camp, which is near Nur Shams, said the demolition order would affect 100 family homes.

Israel launched Operation Iron Wall in the occupied West Bank in January. It says the campaign is aimed at combating armed groups in refugee camps in the northern West Bank.

Human rights organisations have warned that Israel is using many similar tactics it used in its genocidal war against the Palestinian people in Gaza to seize and control territory across the occupied West Bank.

“This is part of a wider campaign that has persisted for about a year, targeting three refugee camps and demolishing or damaging a total of about 1,500 homes in the past year, and forcibly displacing 32,000 Palestinians,” said Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from the West Bank’s Ramallah.

Palestinians and human rights organisations say such demolitions are an attempt to “cage in” Palestinians and alter the geography in the West Bank, she added.

On Monday, a dozen displaced Nur Shams residents held a demonstration in front of armoured Israeli military vehicles blocking their way back to the camp. They protested against the demolition orders and demanded the right to return to their homes.

The head of the Palestinian National Council, Rouhi Fattouh, said that the Israeli decision is part of “ethnic cleansing and continuous forced displacement”, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

‘Social death’

Omer Bartov, a professor of holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, told Al Jazeera that Israel was “dehumanising” the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank.

“[It is creating] a growing situation of social death, which is a term that was used to describe what happened to Jewish populations in Germany in the 1930s. That is, that your population, the Jewish population of Israel, increasingly has no contact with the people on the other side, and it exists as if they don’t exist,” he said.

“It dehumanises the population because you treat it as a population that has to be controlled, and it dehumanises the people doing it because they have to think of that population as being lesser than human.”

Aisha Dama, a camp resident whose four-floor family home, housing about 30 people, is among those to be demolished, told the AFP she felt alone against the military.

“On the day it happened, no one checked on us or asked about us,” she said.

“All my brothers’ houses are to be destroyed, all of them, and my brothers are already on the streets,” said Siham Hamayed, another camp resident.

Nur Shams, along with other refugee camps in the West Bank, was established after the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes in what is now Israel.

Venezuela’s government has lashed out at the European Council over its decision to renew sanctions against the South American country until 2027, calling the measures “a complete failure”.

The sanctions, first introduced in 2017, include an embargo on arms shipments to Venezuela, as well as travel bans and asset freezes on individuals linked to state repression.

In a statement shared by Minister of Foreign Affairs Yvan Gil Pinto, Caracas said the sanctions are coercive and contrary to international law, adding that they underscore the European Union’s lack of autonomy on the global stage.

On Monday morning, the European Council announced its plans to renew sanctions on Venezuela until January 10, 2027, citing “persistent actions undermining democracy and the rule of law” and human rights violations under the administration of President Nicolas Maduro.

The punitive measures include an embargo on weapons and military equipment, a ban on exporting equipment to Venezuela that could be used for internal repression – such as light weapons, ammunition, and surveillance technology – and travel bans affecting government officials, military personnel, and judges linked to human rights violations.

‘Futile’ sanctions

According to the European Union, 69 people were subject to asset freezes and travel bans under the sanctions as of January this year.

The European Council said the sanctions will remain in place until the Venezuelan government makes “tangible progress on human rights” and the rule of law and takes steps towards genuine dialogue and a “democratic transition”.

But the Venezuelan government rejected the sanctions as “futile”,  describing them as part of “an erratic foreign policy lacking autonomy” and slamming “the European Union’s growing irrelevance as an international actor”.

The EU’s sanctions renewal comes amid a mounting military threat by the administration of US President Donald Trump, which has massed forces off the Venezuelan coast and threatened land attacks on the country. The White House also announced financial sanctions on three of Maduro’s nephews and six oil tankers and shipping firms linked to them last week.

Experts say the EU’s sanctions differ from those of the US, as they have a political focus rather than targeting the vital oil sector.

The trial has begun for a Wisconsin judge accused by the administration of US President Donald Trump of helping a man evade immigration authorities, and therefore obstructing the president’s mass deportation drive.

The proceedings, which began with opening statements from both federal prosecutors and lawyers for Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan on Friday, could be a bellwether in Trump’s efforts to punish local officials for resisting his federal immigration campaign.

Prosecutors allege that Dugan led 31-year-old Eduardo Flores-Ruiz through a back door after she told agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to speak to the chief judge about whether they were allowed to arrest people in the courthouse.

Assistant US Attorney Keith Alexander alleged that Dugan said she would “take the heat” for helping Flores-Ruiz, who had appeared in court on a state charge.

“[The ICE agents] did not expect a judge, sworn to uphold the law, would divide their arrest team and impede their efforts to do their jobs,” Alexander said.

Defence attorney Steven Biskupic, meanwhile, said the judge had no intention of obstructing agents and was following the court’s policy in directing them to speak to the chief judge.

Dugan faces up to six years in prison if convicted on charges of obstruction and concealment. Flores-Ruiz was subsequently detained by immigration authorities and deported, officials said.

Critics have accused the Trump administration of using Dugan’s case to chill opposition among local officials.

Many jurisdictions across the country have policies that prevent local authorities from directly coordinating with federal immigration officials.

While those policies are not illegal, the Trump administration has vowed to prosecute anyone it considers to be obstructing enforcement.

The administration has also issued broad warnings to so-called “sanctuary cities” as it has ramped up enforcement at courthouses and loosened restrictions on making arrests at sensitive locations like churches or schools.