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Starting in the early afternoon on Thursday, thousands of Jewish Israelis poured through Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate and began their yearly rampage through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, celebrating Israel’s seizure of East Jerusalem in 1967. The crowd — made up largely of religious Zionist youth — roamed around looking for people to harass and attack. Because relatively few Palestinians were present by the time the march began, they turned much of their attention to journalists and Israeli left-wing activists: interfering with filming, spitting, shoving, snatching phones, and chanting slogans including “may your village burn,” “Muhammad is dead,” “a Jew has a soul, an Arab is a son of a bitch,” and “death to Arabs.” “This day is a very special day to me: it’s the day the Jews got control of the Western Wall,” Nathan, an American Jew from Brooklyn who preferred not to give his last name, told +972. “It’s very sad to me that after the [1967] war Arabs were allowed back — that was a big mistake, and I hope they won’t make those mistakes in Gaza and in Lebanon.” By Oren Ziv and Charlotte Ritz-Jack, in partnership with Local Call. Read now through the link in the bio. /jerusalem-flag-march-2026/

"From 80,000 Palestinians living in the city itself, and another 40,000 in the villages surrounding Jaffa, 3,000 to 4,000 people remain. This is one of the most successful ethnic cleansing of the 20th century. When you walk in Jaffa, especially us Palestinians who live in Jaffa, we keep questioning what happened to the people who built these buildings." Listen to the full episode of The +972 Podcast featuring Abed Abou Shhadeh through the link in the bio. /podcast-remembering-nakba-urban-palestine/

I live in Nablus in the West Bank, which is surrounded by a wall that prevents me from traveling to see the rest of the country. To do that, you need the golden ticket: the Israeli military movement permit. Before late 2020, I had only received random short-term permits, but that year, for the first time, I got a permit for six months. I felt this was an opportunity to go beyond the 18 percent or less [of Israel-Palestine] where I can typically move. I also come from a family that lost properties in 1948. My grandmother was originally displaced from Beisan [now the Israeli city of Beit-She’an], where her family owned banana farms along with their house. And my grandfather lost a shop that he rented in downtown Haifa. I had both a personal and a communal connection to the Nakba — I grew up hearing about it and learning about it, but I had never seen these depopulated sites myself. Once I got that permit, I decided that the main thing I wanted to do was visit the depopulated villages and the major Palestinian cities. I first joined tours organized by Palestinian rights organizations like Zochrot and Baladna, and later started going on my own. Then I teamed up with a friend, and we went almost every possible weekend, because I knew this could be a temporary opportunity. Read the full interview with Ahmad Al-Bazz by Yahel Gazit through the link in the bio. /palestinian-destroyed-villages-nakba-photography/

Thousands marched through Jerusalem’s Old City today for the annual Flag Day, with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir among the participants. The march was marked by participants chanting anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian slogans. Videos by @oren_ziv , Charlotte Ritz-Jack, and @standing.together.english .

Jaffa once was a cosmopolitan city, the closest port to Jerusalem and a crossroads linking North Africa, West Asia, and Europe. It had a rail line to Damascus, a feminist movement, aristocrats and laborers, and a thriving civic and cultural life. Then, within a few years after 1948, it was gone. Of the 120,000 Palestinians who had lived in Jaffa and its surrounding villages, only 4,000 at most remained. The new Israeli state seized and repurposed the city’s institutions — its banks, theaters, athletic fields. The Palestinians who remained were confined behind barbed wire in a ghetto and assigned rooms in houses that were not theirs, while their own properties were confiscated under laws designed to make that dispossession permanent. Within a few years, and until the turn of the century, one of the Arab world’s most vital cities had turned into the slums of Tel Aviv. Abed Abou Shhadeh is a community organizer and researcher raising his own children in Jaffa, the city his great-grandfather refused to leave. In this episode, released on the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, we speak with Abou Shhadeh about how the catastrophe of 1948 unfolded specifically in Jaffa. He interrogates the dominant image of the Nakba as one defined primarily by the depopulated villages of rural Palestine, arguing that understanding what happened in the cities — and to the Palestinians who remained there — is essential to understanding Palestinian life in Israel today. Abou Shhadeh also reflects on the parallels he sees between the ethnic cleansing of Jaffa in 1948 and the destruction of Gaza today, and warns that the radically remade landscape of his own hometown shows why proposals to turn Gaza into a riviera are far from implausible. Listen to the new episode of The +972 Podcast through the link in the bio. /podcast-remembering-nakba-urban-palestine/

In recent weeks, Israeli authorities have issued stop-work orders — the first step before demolition — for 52 greenhouses in Jayyous located east of the separation barrier. This week, dozens more greenhouses located on the other side of the wall also received demolition orders. The fact that the orders apply to structures within 300 meters on either side of the barrier and cite no specific security rationale suggests that their goal is to clear the area of Palestinian agricultural presence altogether. Elsewhere in the West Bank the damage is already being felt. In the east — particularly in the water-rich Jordan Valley and the herding communities on its margins — settler militias have spearheaded the campaign of expulsion against Palestinian farmers and shepherds, using outposts and herding farms to seize land, while the army plays a supporting role. But while settler attacks on Palestinian communities in other parts of the West Bank have received considerable public attention, the assault on agriculture in the western West Bank has largely flown under the radar. Full report by Meron Rapoport for @mekomit.co.il and @972mag . Photos by @timna_or_ .

Stepping into the third annual “People’s Peace Summit” as a Palestinian journalist was uncomfortable. While the previous two gatherings took place during the peak of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this year’s conference came at a moment when the prospect of a peaceful future feels somehow even more distant, despite the so-called “ceasefire.” I arrived at Expo Tel Aviv last Thursday with one question in mind: Would the conversations taking place in its halls ever reach the broader Israeli public? And if so, how could ideas of equality, mutual understanding, and sustainable political solutions resonate in a society that has, particularly in recent years, moved so far away from such concepts? By Samah Watad. Read now through the link in the bio. /israeli-left-peace-conference-palestinians/

@noavi of @gazafreedomflotillalotilla speaks to +972 Magazine about why she and other activists are again attempting to break the Israeli siege on Gaza.

Almost overnight, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers lost their jobs as their entry permits were revoked. Thousands of Gazans, once the backbone of this workforce, were detained or left stranded in the West Bank. In the months that followed, residential construction in Israel fell by 95 percent, while production on farms declined by 80 percent. The “security concerns” used by Israel to justify the move — suggesting that workers could exploit their access to assist Hamas in the war — do not stand up to scrutiny. Research by institutions tied to Israel’s own security establishment, such as the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), indicates that permit-holding Palestinian workers are almost never involved in militant activity, including on October 7. “It’s a form of collective punishment,” Niezna said. “Banning Palestinian workers makes no sense from a security standpoint; it only makes sense as part of a political project of occupation and annexation.” Against the backdrop of settler violence in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza, Niezna reasoned, undermining the Palestinian economy is intended to squeeze out the last breaths of Palestinian self-sufficiency and political autonomy. By Charlotte Ritz-Jack and Dana Mills. Read now through the link in the bio. /israel-palestinians-migrant-workers-labor-force/

On the morning of April 13, I returned to teaching after a month and a half without classes due to the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Like all the other teachers at my school, located near my village of Umm Al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank, I was eager to hear the familiar chatter of children’s voices filling the classrooms again, to see them back at their desks, and to resume the fragile routine of learning that we struggle so hard to maintain here in the South Hebron Hills. But that morning, something was terribly wrong. More than 50 of our students were missing. This was not because they did not want to come to school, or because their families had kept them home. They were absent because the dirt path connecting their homes to their school had been sealed off by Israeli settlers. The previous night, the security guard from the settlement of Carmel, together with a teenage settler who lives there, installed a barbed wire fence across the valley path that the children of Umm Al-Khair have been using for over 40 years. By dawn, the route was gone. By Tariq Hathaleen. Read now through the link in the bio, or comment the word "link" to get the link in your invoice. /umm-al-khair-school-path-israel-settlers/

Omar Abu Rajab packed his belongings into black trash bags. A few days earlier, while the 60-year-old was grieving the recent loss of his mother, representatives of the Jerusalem Municipality had knocked on his door and served him a demolition order for the small apartment he shares with his wife in Al-Bustan — a section of the Silwan neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem that is currently at the heart of a rapidly intensifying Israeli expulsion campaign. Faced with the demolition order and the prospect of a fine worth thousands of dollars for the trouble of having his house razed by the municipality, he chose not to wait for the bulldozers. Instead, he opted for the cheaper option: tearing his home down himself. The Jerusalem Municipality claims that homes like Abu Rajab’s were built illegally, without the necessary permits. “There are no permits,” Abu Rajab told +972 Magazine, explaining that Israel makes it almost impossible for Palestinians in East Jerusalem to receive the necessary authorization to build legally. By Shatha Yaish. Read now. Comment the word "link" to get the link in your inbox. /al-bustan-east-jerusalem-self-demolition/