West Bank (also see Settler Attacks )
Updated 2024-08-29
Hebron Exposed: A Weapon of Life – Documentary The Palestinians wielding cameras against Israeli violence. Hebron Exposed: A Weapon of LifeIn this episode of BBC Arabic’s Hebron Exposed, the narrative turns to the Palestinians on the front line of the occupation. The Palestinian Human Rights Defenders (PHRD) have begun to film incidents and educate children to do the same. Unable to trust the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), filming attacks, misconduct, and abuse leads to the clips being used as evidence in court. Though sharing videos online is a non-violent form of protection, the result is often a double edged sword, with clips receiving both support and abuse https://www.journeyman.tv/film/7396
Hebron Exposed: Among the Settlers – Documentary Israeli Jews fight expulsion with expansion. Hebron Exposed: Among the SettlersIn one of the most divided cities in the world, Jewish-Arab hostility in Hebron is under strict military control. Each individual has their own sense of ‘truth’, making the war one of words as much as guns, stones, and bombs. Tours run continually, each with their own route, narrative, and maps of the area. Some want peace, others retribution, with the Jewish community continually looking to expand into what is now Palestinian territory. With camera working against camera, in this instalment of BBC Arabic’s Hebron Exposed, no one perspective seems ‘true’ or ‘right’. https://www.journeyman.tv/film/7395
2024-08-28 Israel Carries Out Deadly West Bank Raids as Tensions Rise Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the West Bank to combat what the army said was terrorist activity, the latest surge in hostilities in the Palestinian area since the start of the war in Gaza.
Ten Palestinians have been killed and 11 have been injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which said Israeli soldiers blocked access to hospitals and destroyed infrastructure in towns of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarem. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-carries-out-deadly-west-bank-raids-as-tensions-rise/ar-AA1pzHRg?
2024-08-20 Driving in Palestine w/ Rehab Nazzal On today’s show, Driving in Palestine is a research-creation project by artist Rehab Nazzal, who explores the politics of mobility she encountered firsthand while traversing the occupied West Bank between 2010 and 2020. This photography book consists of 160 black and white photographs, hand-drawn maps and critical essays in Arabic and English by Palestinian and Canadian scholars and artists. https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-august-20-2024/
2024-08-20 Religious Zionism MK calls settler violence ‘a drop in the ocean’ compared to Arab terrorism Religious Zionist MK Zvi Sukkot characterized the serious incidents of violence committed by settlers in the West Bank as a “super marginal phenomenon, a drop in the ocean compared to Arab terrorism,” the Religious Zionist MK said on Sunday. .https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/religious-zionism-mk-calls-settler-violence-a-drop-in-the-ocean-compared-to-arab-terrorism/ar-AA1p8Pyy?
2024-08-14 Extremist Israeli Leaders Slammed for ‘Reckless Pursuit’ of New West Bank Colony “My life’s mission,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is “to fight the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state”—even as an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations support independence for Palestine.
The Israeli government said Wednesday that it has completed plans for the first new apartheid settlement in the occupied West Bank since 2017, a move the country’s far-right finance minister said was due in part to increasing international recognition of Palestinian statehood amid Israel’s obliteration of Gaza and a recent World Court affirming the occupation’s illegality. https://www.commondreams.org/news/new-israeli-settlements
2024-07-26 Jewish National Fund of Canada Has Its Charitable Status Revoked Score a significant victory against apartheid, genocide and Canada’s most significant contribution to Palestinian dispossession. The powerful Jewish National Fund of Canada has reportedly had its charitable status revoked.
Under pressure from Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and others the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) instigated an audit of the JNF in 2018. JNF Canada was eventually forced to differentiate itself from its parent organization in Israel and to stop “co-mingling” its funds with that organization. JNF Canada was also instructed to stop assisting projects in the illegally occupied West Bank and initiatives supporting the Israeli military. But apparently it failed to fulfill the Revenue Agency’s requests and now the CRA has rescinded its ability to grant donors tax credits.
Revoking JNF Canada’s charitable status has been long in the making and has come at some cost for many individuals. https://truthout.org/articles/jewish-national-fund-of-canada-has-its-charitable-status-revoked/
2024-07-22 UNICEF Reports Israel Is Killing Kids at Shocking Rates Amid West Bank Assault Three days after the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is unlawful, the United Nations children’s rights agency said that after decades of being “exposed to horrific violence,” the number of children who have been killed in the West Bank since last October has skyrocketed.
Since Israel began its bombardment of the Palestinian territories nearly 10 months ago — with Gaza the primary target of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacks, but with West Bank communities also subjected to raids and other violence — 143 Palestinian children have been killed in the West Bank, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
The number represents a 250% increase compared to the nine months preceding the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, after which the IDF began retaliating in the occupied territories. https://truthout.org/articles/unicef-reports-israel-is-killing-kids-at-shocking-rates-amid-west-bank-assault/
2024-07-16 A Cancer on the West Bank Even before that Jewish supremacist incursion, Yigal Alon, Yitzhak Rabin’s deputy prime minister, drafted a plan calling for settlements that would extend Israel’s political boundaries to the Jordan River. Such new Jewish settlements would ring Palestinian villages and towns and separate them from one another. In 1979, when I interviewed the mayor of Halhoul, where those two teens had been murdered, he took me to a hilltop, pointed to Kiryat Arba, and said all too prophetically: “The settlements are a cancer in our midst. A cancer can kill one man. But this cancer can kill a whole people.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/16/a-cancer-on-the-west-bank/
2024-07-15 Palestine Post: West Bank International Solidarity Movement Activists Return to Bay Area On today’s show we get a report from four Bay Area activists who just returned from the West Bank doing protective presence work with the International Solidarity Movement, an attempt to deter Israel’s continued colonial land grabs in the area, where the zionist state has taken more Palestinian land in the past 9 months than in any similar time period since the early 1990s.
The International Solidarity Movement, or ISM, brings in volunteers from around the world to offer what they call a protective presence, that is, to spend time in endangered Palestinian areas, with a hope that the international presence could prevent zionist attacks.
The ISM is building up its protective presence now in the West Bank, and a group of Bay Area activists have just returned from doing that work in the West Bank areas of Massafer Yatta, and in the Jordan Valley. That group joins us this morning, using pseudonyms or first names only, because being identified as ISM activists risks being prevented from continuing the work.
Our guests are Bella, Ossa, Nina and Maria. Check out the International Solidarity Movement’s website: https://palsolidarity.org/ Follow ISM on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ismpalestine/ https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-july-15-2024/
2024-07-15 Settled In 1979, Israeli settlers and soldiers were already terrorizing residents of the Palestinian village of Halhoul and committing violence elsewhere, writes Ellen Cantarow. https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/15/settled/
2024-07-01 Palestine Post: Addressing the Lebanese Border & Report from the West Bank On this week’s Palestine Post, we speak with Rami Khouri, a Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut, and a journalist and author with 50 years of experience covering the Middle East; we also speak with Brendan Maslauskas-Dunn, an independent reporter who recently returned to the US from the West Bank. https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-july-1-2024/
2024-04-22 West Bank Pogrom ‘Underscores Urgent Need to Dismantle Apartheid’: Amnesty Amnesty International said Monday that the ongoing surge in deadly violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank “underscores [the] urgent need to dismantle apartheid” in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
For more than a week now, Israeli settlers have been attacking West Bank Palestinians in towns and villages including Al-Mughayir, Duma, Deir Dibwan, Beitin, and Aqraba, killing at least four people including a child; wounding dozens of others; and destroying homes, vehicles, and other property.v Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have either stood and watched or participated in the settler attacks, which the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and others are calling a “pogrom.”
Amnesty said the “alarming spike in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in recent days highlights the urgent need to dismantle illegal settlements, end Israel’s occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories, and its longstanding system of apartheid. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-settler-attacks-west-bank
2024-03-20 ‘That sounds like ethnic cleansing’: CNN questions lead figure in Israel’s settler movement CNN’s Clarissa Ward reports from the West Bank where the Jewish settler movement is seeking a new goal in the wake of the October 7th attack by Hamas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkXJwErm8DM
2024-03-27 How Biden Could Radically Alter the U.S.-Israel Relationship On February 1, the Biden administration issued an executive order on violent extremism by settlers in the West Bank, which has been increasing over the past several months with the world watching the war in Gaza. The Biden administration accompanied this order with sanctions on four settlers who, it charged, had directly carried out violence or intimidation. This month, the Biden administration expanded the sanctions, adding three more settlers and two illegal outposts, which it said were bases used to “perpetuate violence against Palestinians.”
Elsewhere, it was heralded as a potentially major development, a warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, particularly given that U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that they were considering sanctioning two of his coalition’s extremist members, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. https://newrepublic.com/article/179968/biden-executive-order-west-bank-us-israel-relationship
2024-03-08 UN Human Rights Chief Decries ‘War Crime’ of Rapidly Expanding Israeli Settlements “The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-settlements-2667464747
2024-02-20 The West Bank’s Unseen Conflict: Palestinians Documenting Israeli Violence | Palestine Documentary There is an invisible war going on in the West Bank. The Israeli settlers are waging a daily war on the Palestinians who remain; they harass their neighbors, attack their houses, move their livestock and generally make life unbearable for them. After years of violent resistance, a new generation of Palestinians have undertaken a new strategy and are fighting back with video cameras rather than guns. They post their videos online to show the world what is happening but what does all this mean for the possibility of peace? An in-depth and eye-opening investigation into life in the West Bank. This documentary was first released in 2013.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5JHsfYCJP0
2024-02-17 Israeli Settler Colonialism Is At An End The idea that Zionism is settler colonialism is not new. Palestinian scholars in the 1960s working in Beirut in the PLO Research Centre had already understood that what they were facing in Palestine was not a classical colonial project. They did not frame Israel as just a British colony or an American one, but regarded it as a phenomenon that existed in other parts of the world; defined as settler colonialism. It is interesting that for 20 to 30 years the notion of Zionism as settler colonialism disappeared from the political and academic discourse. It came back when scholars in other parts of the world, notably South Africa, Australia and North America agreed that Zionism is a similar phenomenon to the movement of Europeans who created the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. This idea helps us to understand much better the nature of the Zionist project in Palestine since the late 19th century until today, and it gives us an idea of what to expect in the future. https://countercurrents.org/2024/02/israeli-settler-colonialism-is-at-an-end/
2024-02-05 Amnesty Condemns Israeli Military’s ‘Shocking’ Violence Against West Bank Civilians While Israeli officials continue to claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Israel Defense Forces are targeting Hamas in their bombardment of occupied Palestine, a new report from Amnesty International on Monday details the extent to which the military has frequently used lethal force against civilians across the West Bank in addition to the more than 27,000 people it has killed in Gaza.
Calling for an investigation into possible war crimes, the group said it had analyzed four cases in which the IDF has used “unlawful lethal force” against people in the occupied West Bank and blocked medical professionals from reaching injured residents, with Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab verifying 19 videos and four photos of the incidents. https://www.commondreams.org/news/amnesty-west-bank
2024-02-01 Biden imposes sanctions on violent West Bank settlers in reprimand to Israel President Joe Biden issued an executive order Thursday that aims to punish Israeli settlers who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. As part of the roll-out, the Biden administration announced it is imposing sanctions on four individuals who have engaged in such violence, which has killed or displaced many Palestinians from their lands, two senior administration officials told reporters.https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/01/biden-executive-order-israeli-settlers-00139065?
2023-12-29 Israeli Killing of West Bank Children Hits ‘Unprecedented Levels’ in 2023 More Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2023 than in any previous recorded year, the United Nations Children’s Fund announced on Thursday. According to the agency, Israeli occupation forces have killed 124 Palestinian minors in the West Bank and East Jerusalem this year. That’s nearly four times the previous record of 36 children killed there in 2022. UNICEF also said that at least 576 Palestinian children were wounded in the occupied territories this year. https://www.commondreams.org/news/west-bank-children-2666831533
2023-12-27 IDF Soldier Allegedly Stabs Wounded West Bank Airstrike Victim in Ambulance Israeli troops on Wednesday allegedly stabbed and assaulted wounded Palestinian victims of an Israel Defense Forces drone strike that killed six people in a refugee camp near Tulkarem in the illegally occupied West Bank. Dr. Radwan Blaibla, head of Tulkarem Medical Syndicate, toldAndalou Agency that Israeli troops forcibly stopped and boarded ambulances rushing Palestinians injured in the airstrike on Nur Shams refugee camp to a hospital in Tulkarem. “One injured was stabbed in his neck by a soldier while in the ambulance, posing danger to his life,” Blaibla said. “Two others were forcibly taken out from an ambulance and were subject to kicking and beating by the rifles’ buttstocks on their injuries.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestinians-killed-in-the-west-bank
2023-12-15 Battle for the West Bank: Israeli settlers step up attacks on Palestinians While the world’s attention is focused on Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, violence is also taking place every day in the occupied West Bank. Our senior reporter Roméo Langlois has been to West Bank villages that are regularly the scene of raids by extremist Jewish settlers against Palestinians. Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, this violence has escalated, sometimes with deadly consequences. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNZXl2dbR9Y
2023-12-03 Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, briefly explained The world’s eyes have been on Gaza since Hamas’s brutal attack on Israeli citizens on October 7 and Israel’s retaliatory invasion that has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians. But another front in this long-running conflict is the West Bank, a kidney-bean shaped piece of land on the west bank of the Jordan River and to the east of Israel that is home to nearly 3 million Palestinians and would make up the heart of any future Palestinian state. Alongside those Palestinian cities and villages, however, are Jewish settlements.
Since the Six-Day War of June 1967, the state of Israel has planned and funded Jewish outposts throughout the West Bank; other settlers have moved in without the state’s explicit backing. The settlers believe they have a right to be there, even though most of the international community views the settlements as illegal.
These populations are largely separated by Israel’s complex security infrastructure, including military checkpoints, armed patrols, a separation barrier, and color-coded identification cards and license plates. This system dictates all aspects of daily life for West Bank residents. Some settlers have for years harassed and attacked the Palestinians living there, often with impunity and occasionally with the support of Israeli soldiers. In the weeks since October 7, however, the rate of violence has significantly increased. It is already the deadliest year since the Second Intifada, and is getting bad enough for the eyes of the world to occasionally leave Gaza and look to the West Bank. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israeli-settler-violence-against-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-briefly-explained/ar-AA1kT14w
2023-11-27 Israeli Forces Kill at Least 8 West Bank Palestinians Amid Surge in Violence As the fragile truce held through the weekend, Israeli forces continued deadly attacks on the occupied West Bank, killing at least eight Palestinians, including two children. According to local health officials, at least five of those deaths came during another raid on the Jenin refugee camp. This is a resident of Jenin. Fatina Ghoul: “They enter houses and demolish them and damage them. They just inflict destruction. They did not arrest any youth from here. It is just a matter of destruction.” Over 200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/27/headlines/calls_mount_to_extend_truce_as_dozens_of_hamas_captives_and_palestinian_prisoners_freed
2023-11-17 DIFFERENT TACTICS, SAME WAR: THE PERILS OF TREATING ISRAEL’S WEST BANK OFFENSIVE AS SEPARATE FROM GAZA The horrors in Gaza are just one part of Israel’s unified system of controlling Palestinians from the river to the sea.
Violence by Israeli forces and settlers has escalated sharply over the last six weeks, in a year that is already the deadliest for Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank in 20 years. With all eyes on Gaza, where Israel has killed well over 11,000 Palestinians, about half of them children, the West Bank is treated by journalists, policymakers, analysts, and Israel itself as a separate, distinct front, as if compartmentalized. Israel’s head of the Shin Bet, the country’s internal security service, has warned that settler violence could contribute to the West Bank “erupting,” hurting Israel’s war in Gaza. The U.S. has been urging Israel repeatedly to rein in settler violence in the West Bank, warning that it could become another front in this war. “They’re attacking Palestinians in places they’re entitled to be,” President Joe Biden said. But the West Bank already is a front; it is part of the same war. https://theintercept.com/2023/11/17/gaza-west-bank-israel-war/
2023-11-10 “I Want American Workers to Be United to Make the Occupation Costly, to Make the Israeli Apartheid Costly.” Every day, the Palestinian civilian death toll is rising dramatically as Israel continues its genocidal bombing and ground invasion of Gaza and settler and military violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank intensifies.
“It’s a closure, it’s a curfew, in many places in the West Bank,” says Issa Amro. “It’s not normal life these days. Soldiers are everywhere, settlers are everywhere, people are afraid to leave their homes, they don’t go to work, they don’t go to school, they don’t go to universities.”
After losing touch with Issa during the day because he was escaping from settlers who were chasing him in Hebron, we managed to reconnect over the phone and record a nine minute conversation about the hell working people in Palestine are going through right now and what their fellow workers in the United States and Canada can do to stop the slaughter. Issa is a Palestinian human rights defender living in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. He is the co-founder and former coordinator of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Days prior to this recording, Issa was evicted from his home in Hebron and tortured by Israeli troops.
I was attacked and beaten and tortured on Oct. 7 by Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers in armed uniforms. Yes, to Oct. 7, Israeli settlers in army uniforms and Israeli soldiers kidnapped me from my house, the yard, and they handcuffed me, blindfolded my eyes, tied my mouth, and beat me, beat me, beat me, and I was put in very bad condition, spitting on me, taking selfies with me, celebrating, beating me up, and cursing and insulting me all for 10 hours. And that was so painful, to be tied with plastic cuffs for 10 hours continuously. Until now, I have back problems and back pain, and I have hand issues. I’m suffering from that. I’m not able to move my fingers well and I don’t feel well after the blood was not reaching my fingers for 10 hours. That was Oct. 7. Then settlers and soldiers attacked my house many times, raided my house, damaged my yard at the time, and then they evicted me by force from my house. https://inthesetimes.com/article/issa-amro-palestinian-activist
2023-11-13 ‘They call us terrorists’: Inside the Palestinian resistance forces of Jenin, West Bank Israel continues to unleash hell upon the 22-by-5-mile concentrated area of Gaza, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with relentless airstrikes and indiscriminate bombings of hospitals, residential buildings, schools, and other civilian sites. As besieged Palestinians shelter and flee and die within the walls of their cage in Gaza, Resistance forces are mobilizing to rise up against an Occupation that has presided over lives for 75 years.
Where there is occupation, there is resistance, and numerous Palestinian resistance groups exist across the Occupied Territories. These groups consist of occupied subjects turned freedom fighters—those who have been directly targeted by Israel, who have witnessed their friends and families die at the hands of occupying forces, and who have been labeled “terrorists” for resisting their slow extermination. In Jenin, a 1km square ghetto-like refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, and the target of numerous Israeli incursions, there are many who have chosen the path of armed resistance, and many who felt they had no other choice.
For those who suffer under the direct oppression and daily practices of apartheid—including the suspension of human and civil rights, military-imposed blockades and checkpoints restricting people’s movements, the demolition of homes and killing of family members—there comes a breaking point. Generations of Palestinians, born into Occupation and violence, do not live a life of dignity. As they describe, under these conditions, they have nothing to live for and nothing to lose, and they have everything to fight for.
In July of this year, before the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks and Israel’s genocidal retaliatory offensive in Gaza, The Real News Network spoke to members of the community in Jenin refugee camp about their lives under Occupation, the role of the Resistance there, and the fight for freedom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WfLVa1u4pk
2023-11-09 The Unseen Second Front of Israel’s War on Palestinians Emboldened by the world’s silence, Israeli settlers are working hand in hand with the military to terrorize Palestinians throughout the West Bank. As the world’s eyes have been focused, understandably, on the atrocities Israel has been committing in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has been intensifying its assaults on Palestinians living in the West Bank. Israel has cordoned off Palestinian communities, blocking the entrances and restricting movement in and out, while settlers have been allowed to roam freely across rural areas, firing eagerly at Palestinians who cross their paths. At the same time, the Israeli military has stepped up their raids all across the West Bank of Palestine. Stories of abject cruelty and torture have emerged, as soldiers and settlers have together rounded up Palestinians and, in at least one case, allegedly stripped, blindfolded, sexually assaulted, and even urinated on them. More than 165 Palestinians have been killed over the last three weeks in the West Bank alone, with at least 2,200 arrested thus far. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-unseen-second-front-of-israel-s-war-on-palestinians/ar-AA1jHWAZ
2023-11-04 Amid Genocidal Fury in Gaza, Israel’s Zionist Ambitions Unleashed in the Occupied West Bank Guterres was calling the world’s attention to Israel’s long record of severe criminal provocations in occupied Palestine, which have been occurring ever since it became the occupying power after the 1967 war. The occupier, a role expected to be temporary, is entrusted in such circumstances with upholding international humanitarian law by ensuring the security and safety of the occupied civilian population, as spelled out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Israel reacted so angrily to Guterres’s entirely appropriate and accurate remarks because they could be interpreted as implying that Israel “had it coming” in view of its severe and varied abuses against people in the occupied Palestinian territories, most flagrantly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
It has also been forgotten in reacting to Israel’s tactics in Gaza that from day one, the extremist government has initiated a shocking series of violent provocations across the occupied West Bank. Many have interpreted this undisguised unleashing of settler violence as part of the endgame of the Zionist project, aimed at achieving victory over the remnants of Palestinian resistance.
There is little reason to doubt that Israel deliberately overreacted to 7 October by immediately engaging in a genocidal response, particularly if its purpose was to divert attention from the escalation of West Bank settler violence, exacerbated by the government’s distribution of guns to “civilian security teams.” The Israeli government’s ultimate plan seems to be to end once and for all UN partition fantasies, lending authority to the Zionist maximalist goal of annexation or total subjugation of West Bank Palestinians. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gaza-west-bank
2023-10-10 How West Bank Settlements Led to the Conflict in Gaza The pilgrimage took place on the night of October 4. A long line of buses entered the city of Nablus in the West Bank. They carried Jewish worshippers to Joseph’s Tomb, a contested holy site whose attraction—especially for religious West Bank settlers—is precisely that it is located inside the Palestinian city.
To protect the pilgrimage, the Israeli army sent three battalions of soldiers—a significant military operation. Those battalions were part of a larger-than-usual Israeli military deployment in the West Bank, where Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and settler attacks on Palestinians, had steadily escalated in recent months.
Three mornings after the pilgrimage, Hamas terrorists poured across the border between Gaza and Israel and committed atrocities that I can no longer bear to describe, and that will remain in my nightmares. According to first reports, some troops that would normally have defended that border were in the West Bank.
And yet, the West Bank settlement enterprise played multiple roles in creating the current crisis, and one critical implication of the war is that the settlements are a security burden that Israel cannot afford. https://prospect.org/world/2023-10-20-west-bank-settlements-conflict-gaza/
2023-10-19 Israeli Troops and Settlers Attack Palestinians in Occupied West Bank, Push Death Toll to 69 In the occupied West Bank, health officials say at least seven Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and armed settlers over the past day amid mounting military raids and arrests. Sixty-nine Palestinians have been killed in similar attacks since October 7. Major protests across the West Bank have also taken aim at the ruling Palestinian Authority, which has launched a violent crackdown on demonstrations. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/19/headlines/gaza_death_toll_nears_3_800_as_israels_siege_and_bombardment_enters_13th_day
2023-10-13 With All Eyes on Gaza, Israeli Soldiers and Settlers Kill Dozens of West Bank Palestinians While the world watches Israel’s military pulverize Gaza amid anticipation of an imminent ground invasion of the besieged strip, Israeli soldiers and settlers—who are receiving thousands of assault rifles from the government—have killed dozens of Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past week, officials there said on Friday. https://www.commondreams.org/news/settler-attacks-west-bank?
2023-05-23 Israel’s Far-Right Government is a Gift to Settlers In December 2022, Israel elected the most far-right government in its history, one that has stated that expanding settlements is its top priority. That’s left Palestinians fearful of a widespread land-grab by settlers and more violence in the occupied West Bank. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km-ciyqmAus
2023-03-08 Why the Huwwara Pogrom was Inevitable In early January, as Israel was forming its most openly extreme right-wing government yet, Nadav Tamir, a former Israeli diplomat and current lobby group director, gave a prescient warning . Tamir said that Zvika Fogel , a previously little-known figure who now chairs the Israeli parliament’s National Security Committee, openly “articulates the venomous truth” of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party, a key player in Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. Where Ben-Gvir might wish to mask his extremist aims in the language of moderation, Fogel “has been proudly saying the quiet part out loud, and he is worth listening to,” Tamir said.
Fogel played that role on Monday, praising the “deterrent” effect after hundreds of settlers attacked Palestinian communities in the northern West Bank, setting fire to Palestinian homes and vehicles.
Breaking the Silence, a group of whistle-blowing Israeli veterans, said on Monday that “the Huwwara Pogrom was state-sanctioned violence.” Represented at the highest levels of the government, “settlers rampaged with impunity because they know they have the state on their side,” Breaking the Silence added. And that includes Israel’s military, whose primary function in the occupied West Bank is to protect settlers living in Jewish-only colonies built in violation of international law. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, pointed to the “synergy” of cooperation: “the settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it.”https://www.blackagendareport.com/why-huwwara-pogrom-was-inevitable
2022-12-08 Israel’s ultra nationalist settlers who brought the far right to power Now in Israel, the most far-right government in the country’s history is about to take power, at the end of a year marred by soaring levels of deadly violence. The new government, being brought together by four-time prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, includes ultranationalists who have advocated the annexing of the West Bank and deporting those they deem “traitors”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BETNqgBCjwc
2022-11-00 Israel is Demolishing Palestinian Villages for a Firing Zone FEATURING SAMI HURAINI – Israeli forces are in the midst of a major demolition of Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the southern part of the occupied West Bank that is going largely unreported. The demolition project of numerous villages in the Palestinian region of Masafar Yatta is considered the largest forced expulsion of native Palestinian people from their homes in 55 years. Farmers have been attacked and imprisoned, schools are being destroyed. The demolition takes place months after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the area inhabited by about 1,200 Palestinians can be bulldozed to make way for an Israeli military training ground. https://risingupwithsonali.com/israel-is-demolishing-palestinian-villages-for-a-firing-zone/
2022-06-22 Expert Q&A: Israel’s Expulsion of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta On May 4, 2022, the Israeli supreme court ruled that Israel could expel more than 1,000 Palestinians from their homes in the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank, ostensibly to make way for a training zone for Israel’s occupying army.
While Israel routinely destroys the homes of Palestinians, including entire communities, the expulsions in Masafer Yatta are the largest single such forced displacement carried out by Israel since it began its military occupation of the West Bank in 1967. The United Nations, European Union, and human rights organizations have condemned the displacements as illegal and at least 15 members of Congress have called on Israel to stop.
Since the court’s decision, between 50-60 people have had their homes destroyed by the army. The families are refusing to leave their villages, so most of them have relocated to tents or small caves. After the initial demolitions, the army returned and confiscated the tents, displacing those families yet again.
Two villages in Masafer Yatta, Khalit Al Dabee and Al-Taban, received notification recently that every structure in their villages will be demolished in the coming days. Homes, animal pens, everything. We’re expecting this large-scale demolition at any time.
And there’s been a dangerous new development: the army sent a letter to the Palestinian Authority [which administers parts of the West Bank under overall Israeli control] notifying them that they intend to do training exercises involving the firing of weapons in a large swathe of Masafer Yatta in the coming days, and that they may remove all inhabitants from that area. This could impact six communities in Masafer Yatta. https://imeu.org/article/expert-qa-israels-expulsion-of-palestinians-from-masafer-yatta
2022-05-05 Israel upholds expulsion order against West Bank hamlets Israel’s Supreme Court has upheld a long-standing expulsion order against eight Palestinian hamlets in the occupied West Bank, potentially leaving at least 1,000 people homeless, an Israeli rights group representing the villagers said Thursday.
The verdict, issued late Wednesday as Israel largely shut down for its Independence Day, marks the end of a more than two-decade legal struggle by Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta region of the southern West Bank to maintain communities they say go back decades. “Without warning in the middle of the night, the Israeli High Court of Justice published a verdict with unprecedented consequences,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has represented the residents throughout the process, said in a statement. https://apnews.com/article/business-middle-east-israel-west-bank-364aae76aa6e9ac43043c275bc86c54b
2021-07-08 The draconian law used by Israel to steal Palestinian land Al Jazeera spoke to several experts who said the eviction did not reflect a change of Israeli policy and only displayed how the Israeli state deploys its instruments to facilitate systematic theft of Palestinian property.
Instead of being reprimanded by the state for illegally confiscating land that did not belong to them, the settlers were made a promise.
The Israeli media reported Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new prime minister and a staunch supporter of illegal settlements, offered the settlers a deal – the state would ascertain whether the land can be classified as “state land” and if yes – the conclusion the state is expected to arrive at – it would be handed over to the settlers even though it lies in Palestinian villages.
Hagit Ofran, executive director of the Settlement Watch programme at the Israeli NGO Peace Now, surmised it for Al Jazeera. “It was published: The settlers leave; the houses remain; the army puts up a military post; the government starts the process of declaring state lands,” Ofran said.
Israel legalises such outposts or settlements by deploying a draconian interpretation of the Ottoman law that if the land was not cultivated for several years in a row it would become the property of the state. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/8/how-israel-backs-settlers-to-confiscate-palestinian-lands
2020-06-26 Letter to President Trump – June 26, 2020 Do you think you have enough on your table these days? Wait until the Israeli government, fortified economically and militarily by U.S. taxpayers, illegally annexes a large region of the Palestinian West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, next month. That is the declaration of the Israeli Prime Minister.
This flagrant violation of international law, once again confirmed by various countries and the United Nations, is expected to unleash crushing repression and violence which will be broadcast and shown by photojournalists around the world. This annexation will lead to demonstrations condemning you and the Prime Minister. Inside Israel, there is strong opposition from retired high military and security officials, as well as members of the Knesset from which the Prime Minister is not seeking approval. Sound familiar?
The collateral damage from this unilateral seizure of thirty percent from what is left of Palestinian land (the West Bank is about 20 percent of the original Palestine) will include a rupture of warming relations between Israel and nearby Arab countries, especially Jordan, alienating your friend Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, and lead to unintended consequences that will be arriving at your door as the Covid-19 pandemic widens. Even with your limited attention to detail, your inability to recognize the consequences of international disputes, and your short attention span, you should be able to envision how much time and energy this war crime will take from you.
For the Palestinians, there will be more dread and devastation. Half of their food comes from the Jordan Valley. It would spell the end of the “two-state solution,” and lead to the possible dissolution of the Palestine Authority security arrangements with the Israeli occupation. That would mean more Israeli patrols, more destruction of homes, more innocent Palestinian casualties, and more responsibility on you stemming from your reckless, mindless endorsement of annexation several months ago.
You can prevent these calamities. First, you need to stop your bigotry against the Palestinian Arabs and desperate Syrian Arab refugees that make you a leading anti-Semite against the Arab peoples. https://nader.org/2020/06/29/letter-to-president-trump-june-26-2020/
2014-07-17 Pounding Gaza – World’s Largest Open-Air Prison An already troubling humanitarian crisis has intensified with the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, an area about twice the size of the District of Columbia that has about three times as many residents (1.8 million). Israel has been using its highly touted precise missiles to hit numerous targets. This collective punishment, a war crime per se, wreaks havoc on civilians and their life-sustaining infrastructure.
With over 1,700 explosive strikes so far, the Israeli military has pounded homes, schools, mosques, electric and water facilities, municipal buildings, health clinics, moving vehicles, a home for the seriously disabled and even tiny agriculture areas. As a result of these attacks, over two hundred and thirty Gazans have died and over seventeen hundred have been injured so far, about eighty percent are civilians, a majority of whom are women and children, according to UN observers.
That is only part of the continuing war against Gaza. For years, Israel has maintained a siege/blockade, restricting the importation of adequate food, medicine, water, electricity, construction materials and other necessities needed by the refugees in the world’s largest open-air prison. These daily deprivations have taken a deadly toll. Fatalities, sicknesses, untreated cancers have resulted. Half of the children are seriously malnourished due to the dire poverty associated with the Israeli air, land and sea encirclement. (There are even harsh restrictions on Gazan fishermen.) https://nader.org/2014/07/17/pounding-gaza-worlds-largest-open-air-prison/
2013-05-30 To Kerry: Get Israeli Peace Leaders Before Congress The new Secretary of State John Kerry taking four trips to the Israeli/Palestinian region in the past two months means yet another U.S. effort for a negotiated peace process between the Palestinians (under ruthless occupation) and the very dominant Israelis. Why should the prospects be any better than the failed attempts by the esteemed former Senator George Mitchell, and his predecessors?
As senator with a “grade A” from the powerful pro-Israeli government lobby AIPAC, Secretary Kerry has forged a coalition of Israeli and Palestinian businessmen behind a $4 billion economic assistance plan for the West Bank and Gaza. He is also tapping into the significant Israeli public opinion behind a two-state solution.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is outwardly going through the motions of supporting peace negotiations but demands preconditions and no cessation of expanding Israeli colonies in Palestine. Netanyahu knows how to play the U.S. government like a harp. He talks about negotiations for peace, but remains intransigent. Back in 1996, he told an applauding joint session of Congress that Israel’s mature economy would no longer need U.S. foreign aid. Today, Israel is a prosperous, bigger economy but is still receiving U.S. foreign aid.
The problem is that almost nobody in Israel – hawks, peace advocates, or those in the middle – believes anything will come out of Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy. Here are some reasons why. There is no pressure on Netanyahu’s governing coalition to wage peace. Nor is there any pressure that Netanyahu recognizes from the Palestinian/Arab side. Palestinians are continually subjugated, impoverished, divided internally and on the losing end of the casualty toll by a ratio exceeding 400 to 1. Israel can strike targets in Palestine at will. https://nader.org/2013/05/30/to-kerry-get-israeli-peace-leaders-before-congress/
2012-11-20 Israel-Palestine – what is the U.S. national interest? Israeli elections are coming up in January so it is Palestinian hunting season again. Israeli cynics call it a time “for mowing the grass.” Out comes the well-worn playbook by Israel’s militaristic government that has worked to silence Israeli politicians and citizens who want a two-state solution. This is an opportunity to use and test advanced weaponry from the U.S., compliments of U.S. taxpayers, and squelch ongoing peace efforts, small and large, by Palestinians, Israelis and international peace advocates.
The playbook’s first chapter is provocation to upset a tense but workable truce with Hamas, the elected government of Gaza. Hamas was encouraged at its creation years ago by both Israeli and U.S. backers to counter the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Bit of a blowback there.
Back to Israel’s playbook, chapter two can be called the instant, mandatory resolutions by the puppet show in Congress and the automatic one-sided mantra by the White House. “Israel has a right to defend itself,” said President Obama, from the occupied, besieged, defenseless Palestinians, whose lands, water, homes, businesses and freedom of movement are being taken relentlessly by the raiding Israeli government that is not content with possessing 78 percent of traditional Palestine. Finally, chapter three of the playbook is to make sure that the Israeli government advocates dominate the U.S. media – the talk shows, the news slants, and the opinion columnists. This is becoming less easy in an internet age. Which might explain that, along with homes, water wells, rescue teams, an ambulance, and other civilian installations, the Israeli air force already has bombed the office building housing Palestinian television studios and hosting media from the western world, including Fox TV. That is one indelicate way to tell these western journalists to get out of Gaza so that the truth about the immense civilian suffering and war crimes can no longer be told by them. https://nader.org/2012/11/20/israel-palestine-what-is-the-u-s-national-interest/
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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict
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