More than the lack of humanitarian aid, it was the incessant artillery fire that made Youssef flee the Jabalia refugee camp, much worse, he says, than the air raids. Buildings have been destroyed and there have been no rescuers for several weeks to go and save the victims, he reports. “I left because of the random strikes. There are no more safe places in the region. Houses, hospitals… Bodies lie in the streets and dogs eat them.”

In Israel minors aged 12 to 14 can be sentenced to prison and held in a facility until they turn 14, at which point Israeli law permits transferring them to jail .In Israel, criminal responsibility starts at age 12, but prison sentences could only be applied from age 14. The new provision is temporary, set to be in force for five years, but it may be renewed in two-year periods after its expiration.

Israel has historically obstructed political solutions that would bring about a fully sovereign Palestinian state,  Yezid Sayigh, an expert on Israel-Palestine and the Middle East for the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank in Beirut, told Al Jazeera.“Israel has assassinated many Palestinian leaders before and it will continue doing that. Nothing has ever changed because, fundamentally, successive Israeli governments – even under Labour, not just Likud – have been unwilling to cede territory or cede genuine Palestinian sovereignty,” he said.“The result: [Israel] has locked itself into permanent conflict and they have continued all this time to prefer military responses because they put themselves into a position where there are no political solutions,” he added.Netanyahu appears to be continuing that trend.

Mainstream academia and media still refuse to define the Zionist project as a colonial, or as it is referred to more accurately a settler-colonial project. However, as Israel intensifies the colonisation of Palestine in the next year, that might prod more individuals and institutions to frame the reality in Palestine as colonial and the Palestinian struggle as anticolonial and dispense with tropes about terrorism and peace negotiations.