Mediterranea with Palestine Project Returns

Today marks the beginning of the second operational phase of the “Mediterranea with Palestine” project, with the arrival of the first activists of Mediterranea Saving Humans in the village of At-Tuwani, in Masafer Yatta, the rural area south of Al Khalil (Hebron in Hebrew). This region has been home to a population of about 1200 people living in around ten villages, who have been practicing nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation for 50 years.

After the first phase of the project, which lasted from June 19 to August 30, 2024, the “Mediterranea with Palestine” project continues with a new phase, which will run until December 2025 if conditions allow. We will continue to be on the ground supporting the Palestinian movement Youth of Sumud and the peace organization Operazione Colomba in a nonviolent intervention against the policies of the Israeli Occupation forces in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank. Additionally, we will establish an international observatory to collect data and testimonies on the ground in order to compile a biannual report on violence and human rights violations against the Palestinian population in the area.

Israeli Colonialism Violates International Law

Since October 7, 2023, following the killing of 1194 people, both civilians and military personnel (mostly Israeli), and the taking of 250 hostages by Hamas and other Palestinian militias, 45,936 people have been killed (according to UNRWA data as of January 13, 2025) by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip, where even designated humanitarian zones, where civilians should be able to seek refuge during attacks, are systematically bombed. Moreover, Israel has made it almost impossible for any humanitarian organization, whether institutional or international civil society, to access the Gaza Strip, aggravating the terrible humanitarian crisis, which is marked by shortages of essential goods (water, food, medical assistance, shelter).

Following investigations opened in the spring, the International Criminal Court has condemned Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Gallant, and Mohammed Deif, commander of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades in Gaza, for crimes against humanity, issuing international arrest warrants for them. The collective of these criminal policies by the State of Israel, along with the evidence gathered by several important international non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty International, leads us to define what is happening in Gaza as genocide. Israel’s aggressive policy is not limited to Gaza but also targets Arab countries and populations in the region, as evidenced by Israeli attacks against Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. This colonial project is exemplified by the Occupation of the West Bank since 1967, where Israel has been carrying out a slow but steady ethnic cleansing for decades – a process that has intensified since October 7, 2023 – against the Palestinian population.

In the past few months, violence from settlers and the Israeli army has been increasingly frequent, as occurred – just two among the unfortunately frequent attacks on the Palestinian civilian population – in August in Jit and in September in Beitia, near Nablus, where international activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi was killed by an Israeli soldier. There have also been large “anti-terrorism operations,” such as the one that killed 36 people in one week in Jenin at the end of August and beginning of September 2024. This is happening in a context where the International Court of Justice has declared Israeli settlements and outposts in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank illegal. However, through continuous and systematic violations of international law, the Israeli government has continued its colonial political project, with land expropriations, demolitions of Palestinian homes and buildings, widespread use of administrative detention, and the systematic use of torture in its prisons, as documented by the Israeli NGO B’Tselem.

Masafer Yatta: An Example of Ethnic Cleansing

As observed in the field during the first phase of the “Mediterranea with Palestine” project, the region of Masafer Yatta, like other rural areas in Area C, has been targeted by Israeli colonization since the years following the Oslo Accords, not only through physical violence but also through legal instruments, including a judicial system based on the racialization of Palestinians, the creation of “firing zones” (military areas theoretically designated for military exercises but actually used by Israel to justify land expropriation), and the de facto impossibility for Palestinians to obtain permits to build on their own land. This has created what can clearly be defined as an apartheid system. However, due to its geographical location on the border with the Green Line (the boundary between the Occupied Territories and Israel proper), the hills south of Al Khalil have been targeted for years by Israeli colonial expansion, particularly after October 7, 2023.

Unlike in the northern West Bank and especially in the Gaza Strip, where violence is intense and intermittent, in these territories Israeli violence has been continuous for decades, with the aim of making daily life unbearable for the Palestinian community. The goal is twofold: to prevent access to essential sources of livelihood (such as preventing olive harvesting, threatening and attacking shepherds and flocks, killing goats and sheep, poisoning fields, and damaging electrical cables and pipelines) and to directly target and intimidate people (by threatening and injuring residents, expropriating land) in order to drive the Palestinian population out of these areas and into ghettoized cities in Area A. In most cases, these attacks are carried out by settlers with the complicity of the occupying Israeli forces (police, army, border police), who often witness the violence without intervening or do so only to persecute the local population, as happened on July 19 at Shaeb al Botom.

On May 29, the Israeli government transferred numerous legal and military powers from the army to the civil administration in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, effectively putting these powers in the hands of settlers. This decision further accelerated the escalation of violence after October 7, as settlers now exercise powers previously exclusive to the army, creating a legal gray zone with the figure of the “settler-soldier” (usually settlers serving as reserve soldiers in the army) and, on the other hand, enjoying near-total impunity for any actions due to the complicity of Israeli authorities.

In this context, nonviolent resistance based on the concept of Sumud (“perseverance” in Arabic) is intrinsically tied to the love for one’s land, which the Palestinian population does not wish to leave, and which settlers want to take by any means at their disposal. We, as Mediterranea, want to support this form of resistance, not by imposing our will or actions, but by becoming a tool at the disposal of the Palestinian civilian population in Masafer Yatta.

The Need for an International Observatory

As we did this summer, in the coming months, we will be in the village of At-Tuwani to support the Palestinian civilian population and carry out interposition activities against the actions of the Israeli Occupation forces, together with Operazione Colomba, which has provided us with the expertise gained over 20 years of presence in the region, and the Palestinian nonviolent resistance movement – particularly Youth of Sumud – with whom many other international and Israeli groups, including Ta’ayush, also collaborate.

In the current local and international context, where Israel, with the complicity of the international community and particularly with the active support of Western countries, is violating international law and the human rights of the Palestinian population with impunity, we, as Mediterranea, want to complement our nonviolent interposition with an additional form of activism on the ground: the creation of an international observatory to document human rights violations and crimes against humanity carried out by the Occupation forces in Masafer Yatta.

During the first phase of the “Mediterranea with Palestine” project, we were witnesses to a process of “targeting” international activists with arrests by the police and violent settler attacks, as occurred in the attack that took place on the night of July 3–4 in the village of Khallet at Daeba. As confirmed by Israeli Public Security Minister Ben Gvir, who last spring created an internal task force within the Israeli police to target the presence of international activists, the Israeli government seeks to eliminate any form of international activism in support of the Palestinian people within the Occupied Territories. The reason is very clear: the ethnic cleansing carried out by the Occupation forces must not be told by inconvenient witnesses, who not only use their privileged passports to carry out interposition activities but also their voices to report in Italy, Europe, and the world the crimes Israel commits against the Palestinian population.

Therefore, the second phase of “Mediterranea with Palestine” will be characterized by the creation and constant activation of an international observatory structured through the cataloging of incidents, needs, and demographic trends in the area. We will document every type of abuse and violence committed by the Occupation forces, from invasions of private property for intimidation purposes to physical assaults on the Palestinian population and international activists, including the theft and killing of livestock, field and building fires, and the demolition of homes in Palestinian villages.

The testimonies, data, and evidence collected will be processed into a biannual report to be presented to various levels of Italian, European, and international institutions in order to provide a comprehensive and detailed overview of what is happening in the Masafer Yatta region and to push our institutions to take action.

For this reason, as we have been doing for years in the Mediterranean with timely actions of documentation and denunciation of human rights violations against people on the move, we will similarly be in Palestine to systematically witness and denounce the crimes against humanity Israel is committing in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank.

The possibility that a person could drown without anyone being able to witness it, without anyone doing anything to help them, simply because with their passport they cannot exercise their freedom of movement, is unacceptable. Similarly, it is unacceptable that a person sees their human rights violated simply because they are Palestinian, and that their people have no right to peace, justice, and self-determination.

Because Mediterranea wants to be where it is needed.