While the Biden administration claims to oppose “unilateral steps that make a two-state solution harder to achieve,” Israel has already crossed the “red line” of annexation.
An Israeli government body that represents 72,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank has published a map of its jurisdiction that shows only Jewish settlements– simply removing scores of Palestinian villages and the cities of Ramallah and al-Bireh. The map was published by the Binyamin Regional Council on a webpage titled “Build Your Future With Us” that is designed to attract American Jews to move to “northern Jerusalem suburbs.”
18-year-old Muhammad Murad Souf was killed Tuesday after carrying out a stabbing near the illegal Ariel settlement in the occupied West Bank that left three Israeli settlers dead.
The new settlements would effectively cut East Jerusalem off from the southern West Bank. “Politically, this is a strategic plan that will strike a blow at the possibility of a Palestinian urban continuum in East Jerusalem,” settlement watchdog Peace Now said in a report.
Israeli settlers stabbed a Palestinian man to death on Tuesday evening in the northern occupied West Bank district of Salfit. Witnesses say settlement security guard fired shots into the air as a group of settlers began assaulting Palestinians in the area. During this attack one settler approached Ali Harb, 27, and stabbed him directly in the heart.
On May 31, General Mills announced that it had divested from its business in Israel and would stop making Pillsbury products in an illegal West Bank settlement. The move came after a two-year campaign by the American Friends Service Committee, which called on consumers to boycott Pillsbury products until they stopped manufacturing on stolen land. Michael Arria speaks with the AFSC’s Economic Activism Director Dov Baum about the successful boycott campaign, and what comes next.
On May 31 General Mills announced that it divested its stake in its Israeli subsidiary. For the last two years the company has been targeted by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) over the fact that some of its Pillsbury products are manufactured in an illegal Israeli settlement.
An Israeli government plan to officially register the land in East Jerusalem could effectively and irreversibly lead to the confiscation of vast swaths of Palestinian property. Ahmad Amara discusses the dire implications of this move for the people of Jerusalem, and the future of the city.
Days before Israel announced that it is going ahead with 4,000 new settlement units, U.S. ambassador Thomas Nides — who was reportedly briefed on the plans — says “I really respect this government… they really want to do the right thing,” and he is “thrilled to work with them.” And Joe Biden is a Zionist, and so is Nides: ‘Everything I do is about strengthening a democratic Jewish state’ As for Palestinians– they should “believe in their heart that there’s still an opportunity for a two-state solution.”
American media and politicians underplay how rightwing Israel is in order to salute it as a robust democracy. The reality is that Israeli politicians are under “brutal” pressure from the right– and legislator Idit Silman stepped down from the coalition government this month because she was getting physically attacked and threatened on the street for her participation in a government that wasn’t vocal enough in its support for “Judea and Samaria,” biblical terms for the West Bank.