2021, the deadliest year for Palestinians since 2014 according to Btselem
A man carries the body of a Palestinian child killed in an outbreak of violence during his funeral in a cemetery in the northern Gaza Strip on May 15, 2021. REUTERS - SUHAIB SALEM
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
The past year has been the deadliest for Palestinians since 2014, this is the conclusion of a new report by Btselem, the Israeli human rights NGO published Tuesday, January 4.
The figures are shivers: in all, 319 Palestinians killed by Israel in 2021, including 71 minors.
Nearby, nine Israelis were killed by Palestinians that same year.
An important contrast.
Advertising
Read more
With our correspondent in Ramallah,
Alice Froussard
First, there are all those Palestinians killed by the IDF, the report explains.
In Gaza, Btselem recorded 236 dead, almost all of them killed by Israeli bombardments during
the war last May,
in densely populated places, where civilian populations live.
In the occupied West Bank, 77 people have been killed by Israeli soldiers, the result of the Israeli military's policy of allowing live ammunition to be fired at Palestinians.
"
Senior Israeli officials, ministers, army officers, legal advisers, all justify this policy of opening fire,
" explains Dror Sadot, spokesperson for Btselem.
And they insist in speaking that these "exceptional cases" are the subject of an investigation, but in fact, these shootings are part of a routine, and hardly anyone has to account for these actions.
"
Full data available here: https://t.co/13IyipB3vN
- B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم (@btselem) January 4, 2022
The violence of the settlers
There are also these six Palestinians
killed by armed settlers
, accompanying soldiers, or Israeli civilians.
Settler violence that is part of state violence, continues Dror Sadot: “
It is a less official tool that Israel uses to take more and more Palestinian land, with the goal of creating a state only. Jew between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
"
Israel also broke a
demolition
record : 895 Palestinians, more than half of them children, lost their homes in 2021.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Palestinian territories
Israel
Israelo-Palestinian conflict