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(Jerusalem) – Video footage, photographs, witness statements, and medical records indicate that two 17-year-old boys whom Israeli forces shot and killed on May 15, 2014 posed no imminent threat to the forces at the time. The boys, who had been participating in a demonstration in the West Bank, were apparently shot with live ammunition, Human Rights Watch said.

A protracted territorial struggle has been waged in recent years in many parts of the West Bank between settlers seeking to expand the areas under their control and annexing as much land as possible and Palestinian landowners interested in farming their land. The civilian security coordinators (CSCs) and the civilian guarding squads that operate in the Israeli settlements on the West Bank are among the most influential parties in this struggle. The CSCs are agents of the army, in that they are subject to the Military Justice Law and hold policing powers, but they are appointed by the settlements and see themselves as representing the settlements’ interests. This conflict of interests, combined with the absence of a clear definition of their powers and weak supervision of their actions, creates daily friction and clashes between the CSCs and settlement civilian guard usquads, on the one hand, and Palestinians farmers, on the other. In many cases the end result is that Palestinian landowners are unable to farm their land.

With the agility of a seasoned Border Patrol veteran, the woman rushed after the students. She caught up with them just before they entered the exhibition hall of the eighth annual Border Security Expo, reaching out and grabbing the nearest of them by the shoulder. Slightly out of breath, she said, “You can’t go in there, give me back your badges.”

The astonished students had barely caught a glimpse of the dazzling pavilion of science-fiction-style products in that exhibition hall at the Phoenix Convention Center. There, just beyond their view, more than 100 companies, including Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Verizon, were trying to sell the latest in futuristic border policing technology to anyone with the money to buy it...

Family and neighbors buried Noha Katamish the day after she died from the effects of tear gas fired into her home by Israeli forces in Aida Refugee Camp Monday. The 45-year-old mother of one daughter suffered from asthma, which likely compounded the choking effects of the gas grenade that was fired through her living room window as soldiers invaded the camp.

Ma’an News quoted an Israeli military spokesperson as saying that, “The death was not linked to the use of riot dispersal means by the army, including tear gas.” It is unclear how the military could make such a definitive statement before any investigation was possible.

The following report highlights three local and international companies that manufacture “non-lethal” crowd control weapons. These weapons are currently used by Israeli authorities and security forces, mainly to suppress non-violent demonstrations in the occupied Palestinian territories, in violation of the right to freedom of expression and association. Despite the fact that they are often labeled as “nonlethal” weapons, they have already been proven as potentially lethal in different incidents around the world, when the use of these weapons led to the death of demonstrators.

The report focuses on three types of weapons as case studies: tear gas canisters, which are produces and marketed by Combined Systems, Inc. (CSI) and M.R. Hunter; “the Scream”, manufactured by Electro-Optics Research & Development (EORD) and LRAD; and “the Skunk”, which is manufactured by Odortec, with the supporting companies: Man and BeitAlfa Technologies. The report will highlight the harmful consequences of these weapons, including their potentially lethal effects. The occupied Palestinian territories are being used as a lab for testing new civil oppression weapons on humans, in order to label them as “proven effective” for marketing abroad.

The High Court of Justice is preparing to hear arguments on a petition brought by Arab residents of East Jerusalem against the state’s funding of private security guards to protect Jewish residents in several East Jerusalem settlement compounds.

About 370 private security guards in the state’s employ are active within the borders of Jewish settlement compounds in East Jerusalem that are home to approximately 2500 residents. The 67 million shekel annual budget for securing these settlements comes from the Ministry of Housing. The petition, filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in October 2011 on behalf of itself and the Arab residents, alleges that the security guards employed by the state are a de facto private police force in the exclusive service of Jewish residents.

Hundreds of Palestinians took part in a funeral march today for Said Jasir, an 85-year-old man from the West Bank village of Kfar Qaddum.

According to Palestnian medical sources, Jasir died after the Israeli army shot tear gas into his house during a protest in the village on New Year’s Day. After inhaling tear gas, Jasir was evacuated to the hospital in Nablus, were he died a few hours later.

After the funeral, youth from the village marched to the area near the settlement of Kedumim, and clashed with the Israeli army.

Six-year-old Mousab Sarahnin lost an eye after Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated steel bullets just after he stepped off a bus at the Fawwar refugee camp, near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, on 27 September.

“Mousab was walking beside his mother, clutching her dress … the soldier shot him directly in the head,” Sheikh Jibreen Sarahnin, the boy’s uncle, told The Electronic Intifada.

AUGUSTA, Maine — The way law enforcement agencies in Israel work together to deal with threats is a model the United States can learn from, the chief of the Maine State Police said after returning from a weeklong training trip to the Middle East nation.

The New York Police Department opened its Israeli branch in the Sharon District Police headquarters in Kfar Saba. Charlie Ben-Naim,  a former Israeli and veteran NYPD detective, was sent on this mission.

You don’t have to fly to New York to meet members of the police department considered to be the best in the world — all you have to do is make the short trip to the Kfar Saba police station in the Sharon, where the NYPD opened a local branch.

William “Drew” Dodds, the salesperson for StrongWatch, a Tucson-based company, is at the top of his game when he describes developments on the southern border of the United States in football terms. In his telling, that boundary is the line of scrimmage, and the technology his company is trying to sell -- a mobile surveillance system named Freedom-On-The-Move, a camera set atop a retractable mast outfitted in the bed of a truck and maneuvered with an Xbox controller -- acts like a “roving linebacker"...

New York - In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured.

With the rise of the Occupy Wall Street, a new generation of mostly middle class Americans is learning for the first time about the militarization of their local police forces. And they are learning the hard way, through confrontations with phalanxes of riot cops armed with the latest in "non-lethal" crowd control weaponry. Yesterday's protests in Oakland, California were the site of perhaps the harshest police violence leveled against the Occupy movement so far. Members of the Oakland Police Department and the California Sheriff's Department attacked unarmed protesters with teargas canisters, beanbag rounds, percussion grenades, and allegedly with rubber bullets, leaving a number of demonstrators with deep contusions and bloody head wounds. It is not difficult to imagine such scenes becoming commonplace as the Occupy protests intensify across the country.

The police repression on display in Oakland reminded me of tactics I witnessed the Israeli army employ against Palestinian popular struggle demonstrations in occupied West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh, Ni'lin and Bilin. So I was not surprised when I learned that the same company that supplies the Israeli army with teargas rounds and other weapons of mass suppression is selling its dangerous wares to the Oakland police.

Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank village of Bil’in had no cause to ring in the New Year as tragedy struck the Abu Rahmah family for the fourth time in three years.

After inhaling tear gas fired by the Israeli military at a December 31 demonstration, 36-year-old villager Jawaher Abu Rahmah died the next day from cardiac arrest. Rather than admit wrongdoing, the Israeli military briefed behind closed doors friendly bloggers who then shamefully blamed her death on cancer, or failing that, on an “honor killing.”

Previously, Jawaher’s 29-year-old brother Bassem was killed by the Israeli military in April 2009 when he was hit in the chest with a high-velocity tear gas canister...

Israel Defense Forces soldiers recently resumed the use of prohibited tear gas canisters to disperse demonstrations in the West Bank.
                                                                                              
These tear gas grenades, which are in effect 40 mm rounds with a range of 250 meters, were responsible for numerous serious injuries and at least one death. In March 2009, the U.S. peace activist Tristan Anderson was hit in the head by one of these canisters while demonstrating against the West Bank separation barrier in Na'alin. Anderson was critically injured and was hospitalized in a minimally responsive state for several months after the incident. He has recovered some physical and mental functions. In April 2009, Bassam Abu Rahma, of Bil'in, died immediately after being hit in the chest by a tear gas grenade. The incident is still under IDF investigation...

Israeli military exports to South America have been on the rise in the recent years. Brazil is gearing up to become the gateway for Israeli military technology and companies. Israel continues to be a top supplier of the Colombian military. Ecuador, while not having extensive military ties with Israel, has recently purchased drone aircraft. Chile, already a buyer of Israeli arms, also has expressed interest in similar drone technology.

It is the goal of this report to analyze these trends, both in light of recent events and also as they relate to the history of Israeli involvement in South America. We will highlight that it is impossible for South America’s democratic governments to reconcile protection of human rights - whether at home or abroad - with military ties and arms trade with Israel.

Any military ties with Israel support the state’s policies of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, policies whose sustainability depends on Israeli military capacities and the profits deriving from its military industry,  and adversely affect the Palestinians and their struggle. Israel has developed an indigenous military industry that produces much of the equipment used by its military.  International buyers help ensure the survival of the Israeli military industry.

He stands on a small sandy hilltop wearing a bright yellow t-shirt, cigarette in hand. He is calling out to the soldiers on the other side of the fence “Do not shoot, do not shoot. There are children and internationals here, do not shoot.” Thin white wisps of tear gas linger in the gentle breeze, a moment of calm in the confrontation.

Suddenly a tear gas canister whizzes past the camera making an audible “clunk” as it hits something to the right. He tries to let out a scream, but all he manages is a stifled yelp. One can almost hear his breath being cut short as the projectile punctures his chest. Another muted scream of pain. He falls to the ground then jumps up quickly, running a few steps before collapsing again.

His body rolls a few times as he hits the ground, his limbs flapping loosely underneath him. Two fellow demonstrators run to him, looking almost surprised and unsure of what has just happened. They turn him over, lifting his shirt and calling his name. But he is unresponsive. His eyes are open but his body lies motionless. His bright yellow shirt now quickly growing a wet red stain over his heart...

Commencing with the quantitative attributes of the industry, the chapter will first show that private policing armament in Israel has significantly raised the number of firearms circulating through the streets and homes, distinctly accelerating small-arms proliferation.  It will also outline the scope and dimensions of the private policing industry active in Israel...  The following two sections of the chapter then go on to describe how the spread and growth of private policing have deepened Israeli militarization in unprecedented ways...  Finally, addressing the strongly gendered implications of these developments, I will trace ways in which the process of militarization, enhanced by the private policing industry in Israel and the accelerated proliferation of the arms it sanctions, has intensified exsiting gender disrimination and violence against women.

As part of the collective punishment policy adopted by the Israeli forces against the Palestinian civilians accused of carrying out attacks against Israeli soldiers or/and settlers, on Thursday dawn, 17 August 2017, Israeli forces demolished a house belonging to ‘Adel Hasan Ahmed ‘Ankoush in Deir Abu Mesh’al village, northwest of Ramallah.  ‘Ankoush was killed by the Israeli forces on 16 June 2017. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) accordingly condemns this new crime, which is added to the series of Israeli crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt).  PCHR also emphasizes that the crime is part of the Israeli forces’ collective punishment policy against innocent Palestinians in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that prohibits collective penalties and reprisals against protected persons and their property. PCHR calls upon the international community to offer protection to the civilians in the oPt and ensure the application of the aforementioned convention.