{"id":2917,"date":"2025-11-21T17:17:48","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=2917"},"modified":"2025-11-21T17:17:48","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T17:17:48","slug":"despite-gaza-ceasefire-we-havent-seen-the-worst-btselem-chief-israel-palestine-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=2917","title":{"rendered":"Despite Gaza ceasefire, \u2018we haven\u2019t seen the worst\u2019: B\u2019Tselem chief | Israel-Palestine conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div aria-live=\"polite\" aria-atomic=\"true\">\n<p><strong>Washington, DC \u2013<\/strong> Yuli Novak, the executive director of the Israeli human rights group B\u2019Tselem, has a warning for politicians in the United States and across the world: The situation in Israel-Palestine is \u201cdisastrous\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the US-brokered ceasefire that scaled back the Israeli attacks in Gaza, Novak told Al Jazeera this week that the conditions are more dangerous than ever.<\/p>\n<section class=\"more-on\">\n<h2 class=\"more-on__heading\">Recommended Stories<!-- --> <\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">list of 3 items<\/span><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">end of list<\/span><\/section>\n<p>\u201cOur warning is that we haven\u2019t seen the worst,\u201d she said, stressing that Israel must be held accountable for its abuses in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past two years, numerous human rights groups have released reports accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza \u2014 a campaign to destroy the Palestinian people.<\/p>\n<p>United Nations investigators, for instance, determined that Israel\u2019s actions in the territory matched the definition of genocide under international law.<\/p>\n<p>But B\u2019Tselem provided another layer of analysis with its landmark report, called Our Genocide, in July.<\/p>\n<p>It dissected the decades-long history of Israeli policies that laid the groundwork for the carnage in Gaza, including the apartheid system, demographic engineering, the systemic dehumanisation of Palestinians, and a culture of impunity for abuses.<\/p>\n<p>Those conditions, Novak said, have been further entrenched since the war began.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs long as these things are still in place, we are very concerned that the violence that we\u2019ve seen is not over,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4120673\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4120673\" style=\"width:770px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-arc-image-770 wp-image-4120673\" src=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/521f3b41-a2e4-41de-adf7-9b65295776a31-1763683170.jpg?w=770&amp;resize=770%2C578&amp;quality=80\" alt=\"B'Tselem executive director Yuli Novak and field research director Kareem Jubran\" fetchpriority=\"low\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4120673\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">B\u2019Tselem executive director Yuli Novak and field research director Kareem Jubran speak to Al Jazeera in Washington, DC, on November 20 [Ali Harb\/Al Jazeera]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2 id=\"killings-continue\">Killings continue<\/h2>\n<p>Since the ceasefire started, Israel has killed at least 360 Palestinians in Gaza, including 32 in a wave of air strikes across the territory earlier this week.<\/p>\n<p>The Israeli government has also continued to impose restrictions on humanitarian aid to the enclave, including on temporary shelters needed to replace tents for tens of thousands of Palestinians who faced flooding earlier this month.<\/p>\n<p>Israel\u2019s war on Gaza has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians and turned most of Gaza into rubble.<\/p>\n<p>In the occupied West Bank, conditions have been worsening, with intensifying settlement expansion and deadly Israeli military raids.<\/p>\n<p>On Thursday, Human Rights Watch released a report documenting that Israeli forces forcibly displaced 32,000 Palestinians from their homes in Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams.<\/p>\n<p>Israeli settlers have also increased their attacks, regularly descending on Palestinian villages to torch homes and vehicles and at times kill civilians \u2014 often with the protection of the Israeli military.<\/p>\n<p>Novak stressed that settler attacks are a form of Israeli state violence.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are Israeli civilians living in the West Bank being armed by the state. Sometimes, many of them wear [army] uniforms. Sometimes these are soldiers on reserve duty that are on a break,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Some Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have condemned settler violence, but Novak dismissed the move as a ploy to blame Israel\u2019s policies on a \u201csmall group of crazy settlers\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Novak also highlighted that most of the killing and destruction in the West Bank is carried out by official Israeli forces, not settlers. \u201cSo this is another arm of the violence that Israel inflicts on Palestinians,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"meeting-us-lawmakers\">Meeting US lawmakers<\/h2>\n<p>Novak and her B\u2019Tselem colleague Kareem Jubran have been in Washington, DC, this week, where they met with US lawmakers, including Democratic Senators Peter Welch, Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen, as well as Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.<\/p>\n<p>Novak said the group wants to stress the need for accountability for the genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are talking about a governing system, the Israeli system, that conducted genocide for two years \u2014 war crimes on a daily basis \u2014 and got away with it with no accountability,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe current situation is probably the most dangerous that we\u2019ve ever been in because not only this violence and this criminality took place, it was also normalised, and in any moment, it can start again, go back to the same scale.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>US President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that there is peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years because of the truce he helped broker in Gaza.<\/p>\n<p>And earlier this week, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution backing the US president\u2019s 20-point plan for Gaza, which calls for an end to the fighting, gradual Israeli withdrawal and the deployment of an international force to the territory.<\/p>\n<p>The plan would also see Hamas disarm and Gaza\u2019s governance handed over to an international commission, dubbed \u201cthe Board of Peace\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>It has no accountability or compensation mechanism for the horrors that Israel unleashed on Gaza for two years.<\/p>\n<p>Novak said Trump\u2019s plan is disconnected from the reality on the ground.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt just allows everybody to move on, instead of dealing with the situation and demanding Israel not only to be held accountable but also stop this kind of systematic oppression over the Palestinians,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"trump-s-plan\">Trump\u2019s plan<\/h2>\n<p>Since the Security Council embraced the ceasefire deal, Israel has faced less international pressure. Even the push for measures like suspending the country from the Eurovision singing contest and European football have lost momentum.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, Germany announced it was lifting restrictions on weapons exports to Israel, citing the truce.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is probably what scares us the most because we see regression here,\u201d Novak said.<\/p>\n<p>Jubran, B\u2019Tselem\u2019s field research director, also stressed the need for accountability, saying that the previous rounds of wars on Gaza from 2006 onwards enabled the genocide.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s what allowed the genocide system to be more brazen in order to do its crime against the Palestinians in Gaza,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the lack of political or legal accountability, Novak hailed the growing international public awareness of Israel\u2019s atrocities, which she said politicians are choosing to ignore.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf there is something that gives us hope in this really, really terrible moment, it is the fact that many people around the world are able to see through the Israeli propaganda and just to make sense of what their eyes saw, and some of the voices of the victims were able to come out from Gaza and from the West Bank,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo people do understand. We are in the moment where people need to demand their leaders and politicians to hold Israel accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC \u2013 Yuli Novak, the executive director of the Israeli human rights group B\u2019Tselem, has a warning for politicians in the United States and across the world: The situation in Israel-Palestine is \u201cdisastrous\u201d. Despite the US-brokered ceasefire that scaled back the Israeli attacks in Gaza, Novak told Al Jazeera this week that the conditions [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}