The Israeli settler movement and its allies in the government have submitted a plan to build 100 new outposts in Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank. The move would effectively eliminate the Oslo Accords.
Israel’s conditioning of its withdrawal from southern Lebanon on the disarmament of Hezbollah mirrors its strategy in Gaza: insist on terms that are impossible to implement to justify its constant state of war.
Israel is stoking a financial crisis in the West Bank by withholding funds from the PA. Among the sectors most affected is education, where teachers’ salaries have been cut, and classes have been shuttered. The impacts might last a generation.
Israel is methodically dismantling any Palestinian presence in most of the West Bank and erasing Palestine from the map. But the way it’s unfolding doesn’t make the headlines.
Sam Abu Haikal was riding in his parents’ car through Hebron when Israeli soldiers opened fire. His mother is in intensive care, and his father, wounded in the hand, buried him alone the next morning. He was only seven months old.
A new Israeli digital registry imposes de facto sovereignty over 60% of the West Bank. Palestinians must register under Israeli authority or risk losing their land, but Israeli legal loopholes are designed to invalidate their claims either way.
As Israel indefinitely withholds Palestinian customs revenues, public hospitals have cut hours and slashed healthcare workers’ salaries. Patients are left to navigate a system running on interns and half-capacity labs.
European governments are finally being forced to condemn Israel as its crimes have become impossible to ignore. But they are scapegoating National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir rather than confronting the system he represents.
Even if Netanyahu and his right-wing allies are ousted from government, Israel’s genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and the wars against Lebanon and Iran enjoy broad support across the Israeli political spectrum.
The Israeli Knesset is considering a bill that would place Palestinian historical sites in the West Bank under direct Israeli civil law, stripping them of their protected status under international law. Experts say it’s annexation in all but name.