Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed on Sunday to establish a mechanism to curb violence during a meeting aimed at preventing already surging violence from escalating further when the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins later this week.

In a statement issued at the end of a meeting in Egypt that was also attended by U.S., Egyptian and Jordanian officials, the parties also emphasized the necessity of both Israelis and Palestinians preventing any actions that would disrupt the sanctity of Holy Sites in Jerusalem during Ramadan.

US Congresswoman Betty McCollum said on Saturday that more and more Americans reject their government’s complicity in Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian children and families.

“More than ever before, Americans do not want the U.S. to be complicit in Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian children & families,” McCollum said in a tweet, adding:

“Not $1 of U.S. aid should be used to imprison Palestinian children in military detention facilities, or used to tear down their homes.”

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich dismissed the existence of a Palestinian people in a speech he delivered in Paris on Sunday.

“There is no such thing as Palestinians because there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” said Smotrich who heads the Religious Zionist Party.

“Who are the [real] Palestinians? I am Palestinian,” he said.

He recalled his family’s 13 generations in the Land of Israel, mentioning his grandmother who had been born in the northern border town of Metula over a hundred years ago before the creation of the state.

'The American Jewish community and our American political leaders need to recognize and acknowledge this is a different day and it can't be the same old responses' a protest organizer said

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Israeli regime’s murder of Rachel Corrie, an American pro-Palestine activist, in the Gaza Strip, but her parents are still battling for accountability and justice. 

Corrie, a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was crushed to death by a 60-tonne Israeli armored bulldozer on March 16, 2003, while acting as a human shield to stop a Palestinian home from demolition in the Rafah refugee camp.

A Gallup poll published on Thursday shows an increasing trend of American Democrats sympathizing with Palestinians.

According to the poll, 49% of their sympathy now lies with the Palestinians, as opposed to 38% with Israelis.

On March 16, four Palestinians, including a teenager, were killed by undercover Israeli officers during a raid in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

The Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security service and police said in a joint statement that members of the elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit “neutralized” two wanted Palestinian gunmen inside Jenin after receiving intelligence about their whereabouts.

Twenty years ago on March 16, the world got a tragic glimpse into what the state of Israel was going to become. Given the green light in the Oval Office by President George W. Bush, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – “a man of peace," Bush said at the time – started the now-inevitable march to apartheid and the murderous treatment of the Palestinians against whom the main battle would be waged.

Last month, a Palestinian rights group filed a federal complaint against George Washington University (GW), alleging the institution allows discrimination against Palestinians to persist unabated on campus.

Palestine Legal filed a federal complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, demanding it investigates what the organization describes as a “years-long, hostile environment of anti-Palestinian racism.”

B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives for a future in which human rights, liberty and equality are guaranteed to all people, Palestinian and Jewish alike, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Such a future will only be possible when the Israeli occupation and apartheid regime end. That is the future we are working towards.