Human Rights

26 May 2023; MEMO: The Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislation Affairs will discuss on Sunday an amendment to the law on national parks, nature reserves, national sites and memorials, which aims to impose Israeli law on such sites in the occupied West Bank, Haaretz newspaper reported.

26 May 2023; MEMO: The authorities across Israel's universities have condemned a bill that would ban flying the flag of Palestine anywhere in Israel, including in academic institutions, reported The Times of Israel.

25 May 2023; MEMO: A new bill is being proposed which will grant Israel powers to extend its crackdown on human rights groups. The Ministerial Committee on Legislation will put forward a plan on Sunday to impose a tax on 65 per cent of foreign donations to Israeli and Palestinian humanitarian and human rights groups.

25 May 2023; MEMO: The Israeli Knesset yesterday approved the new state budget for the next two years which includes investing 3.5 billion shekels ($941 million) into expanding Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

According to the Times of Israel, the majority of the funds will go towards paving new roads and improving existing ones, including highways to bypass Palestinian areas that further segregate Israeli settlers and Palestinians.

25 May 2023; MEMO: China has called on Israel to "stop encroaching" upon Palestinian territory and resources, as Tel Aviv continues to allow and approve the construction of illegal Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories.

24 May 2023; MEMO: European Union Representative in Palestine, Sven Kuhn von Burgsdorff, said Wednesday that all forms of Israeli settlement building in the West Bank are illegal, Anadolu News Agency reports.

This statement came during a visit by a delegation of European ambassadors and consuls to the Palestinian towns of Sebastia and Burqa in the northern West Bank.

25 May 2023; MEMO: As part of racist electoral campaigns being witnessed in Turkiye ahead of Sunday's presidential election, Gacrux Game Studio launched the Zafer Tourism game, which is named after the extremist Turkish Zafer (Victory) Party.

The game, available on smartphones, focuses on throwing refugees who are trying to enter an unspecified country into trucks to take them back to the country they came from.

22 May 2023; MEMO: Police in the German capital, Berlin, upheld a ban on demonstrations commemorating the Palestinian Nakba events, enforcing it by cracking down on a spontaneous protest organised by Jewish progressive figures.

22 May 2023; MEMO: The Iraqi national fencing team withdrew from the individual competitions in the World Fencing Championship in Istanbul, a qualifier for the Paris Olympics, after the competition draw pitted it against the Israeli team.

22 May 2023; MEMO: Spain issued a fresh condemnation of Israel on Monday, rejecting the rhetoric used by Israel's far-right Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, at the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in East Jerusalem, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a statement, Madrid called on Israel to "scrupulously respect the status quo of holy sites" and for all parties to "do everything possible" to avoid fresh tensions and preserve stability.