Israeli settlers have begun to escalate their colonization of Palestinian homes and lands in areas of the West Bank under ostensible Palestinian control, setting a dangerous precedent for Israel to completely take over the territory.
Israeli real estate companies are marketing land belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank to Jewish American buyers. We spoke to the Palestinians who are being displaced in order to make way for new Jewish settlement construction.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has vowed to wrest control of the ancient Solomon’s Pools site from the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians are responding by reclaiming the site and resisting Israeli efforts to seize more of the West Bank.
Israel has begun rebuilding the four settlements that it evacuated in the northern West Bank in 2005. Settlers and the army are trying to expel Palestinian already living in the area by making the land “impossible to live on,” residents say.
The last family in the Palestinian village of Yanoun left their home last week, joining a growing list of communities that have been erased from existence through the establishment of Israeli “shepherding outposts” in their place.