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Israeli occupation

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Israeli settlement near the Palestinian village of Al Maasarah, just south of the West Bank town of Bethlehem on February 19, 2011. (Photo: Najeh Hashlamoun/APA Images)

On Sunday Israel approved plans for 1,300 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank, in the first move of its kind since US President Joe Biden took office.  Later this week, the Israel Higher Planning Committee is expected to meet to push forward plans for an additional 2,862 units.

Israeli soldiers preventing access for locals and activists from olive groves during harvest season in Salfit, The West Bank on Oct. 11, 2021. Palestinian land on the outskirts of the town of Salfit was annexed in the last year to a new Jewish outpost although Palestinians hold land deeds for the land. During an attempt to break the white line zoning a closed military zone in the groves, the army used stun grenades and arrested three activists. (Photo by Matan Golan/Sipa USA)

A photo of an armed Israeli soldier, surrounded by dozens of his fellow soldiers, standing on the back of a Palestinian man as he lie face down in the ground went viral on Palestinian social media this week.

The photo was taken in the midst of a brutal Israeli crackdown on activists as they attempted to escort a group of Palestinian farmers to their land in order to harvest their olive trees in the al-Ras area west of Salfit, in the northern occupied West Bank.

Israel's Iron Dome system intercept rockets launched from the Gaza Strip towards Israel, as seen from Gaza strip, on May 19, 2021. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/APA Images)

Giving Israel $1 billion in fungible money for a weapon system will only encourage further war crimes. The progressive legislators who wanted to remove those billion dollars from the spending bill were doing the right thing.

Protests have continued in the Palestinian village of Beita against the establishment of a settler outpost on the village’s land. Israeli forces have continued to violently suppress protests, killing two more Palestinians over the past month. “For more than 100 days we have been resisting against the occupation and the settlers,” Abed al-Fattah Hamayel, a local activist in Beita, told Mondoweiss. “And everyday the situation is becoming even more volatile. The soldiers are just waiting for any excuse, or just the right moment to kill anyone.”