内容摘要：At their worst, the flooding isolated about 50,000 people and submerged roads in the country’s most populous state.

At their worst, the flooding isolated about 50,000 people and submerged roads in the country’s most populous state.

in the occupied West Bank this year.“Now, soldiers enter the village daily – and with the clear intention of killing,” Azim added. “We will resist construction – peacefully, of course. The landowners will not give up their land.”

The mayor called for condemnation of intensifying military violence in the village and the targeting of children, notably the army’s fatal shooting of 14-year-old Ahmad Jazar in January.For its part, the Israeli state argues that the village of Sebastia will not be affected by the archaeological work, as it lies outside the boundaries of the proposed national park.But Sebastia Archaeological Museum curator and lifelong resident, Walaa Ghazzal, says the plans are an escalation in Israel’s plans to eventually expel residents and business owners and prevent Palestinians from accessing the town, its ruins, and the sprawling hills and olive fields around it.

Ghazzal told Al Jazeera that “residents are afraid of the future”, especially those near the ruins.“The situation is very dangerous,” she said. “Soon, they will prevent us from going to the archaeological site.

“In my opinion, we have only months before we are told to leave our homes,” Ghazzal added. “We are seeing the future in

and in the camps [in the West Bank]. They are trying to erase us.”Despite vast evidence, the question of whether the military will be launching a crackdown aimed at banishing the apparently systematic practice is moot. Even so, pressure for accountability is growing.

Rights groups say the practice of using human shields has been going on in the occupied Palestinian territories for decades. Breaking the Silence, a whistle-blower group gathering testimonies of former Israeli soldiers, cites evidence of what one high-ranking officer posted to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank back in 2002 called “neighbour procedure”.“You order a Palestinian to accompany you and to open the door of the house you want to enter, to knock on the door and ask to enter, with a very simple objective: if the door blows up, a Palestinian will be blown up, and soldiers won’t be blown up,” said the officer, ranked as a major.

In 2005, an Israeli Supreme Court ruling explicitly barred the practice. Five years later, two soldiers were convicted of using a nine-year-old boy as a human shield to check suspected booby traps in the Gaza City suburb of Tal al-Hawa.It was reportedly the first such conviction in Israel.