In Part Two of the in-depth article from the Intercept on Israel’s decades-long campaign against Palestinians, read about how the Israeli military partners with settlers, using harassment, violence, and clandestine moves, to control Palestinian land. Palestinians are left with noncontiguous “Bantustans,” where they are still unable to live in peace.
Ideological Israeli settlers, determined to make life miserable for Palestinians, often resort to violence (with Israeli military cover). Ali Harb’s death is one example – and the settler may get away with murder.
The death of Hamdy Na’asan, shot in the back, was not an unexpected or isolated event. Amira Hass reports: “Land that is hard to steal by means of Israeli laws – the masterpiece of our finest legal scholars – is stolen by means of the settlers’ violent, sacred fire and code of silence.”
In 2018, the government advanced thousands of housing units, including most which can be found in isolated settlements deep inside the West Bank, outside Israel’s pre-1967 borders. These are settlements that, in any two-state solution, Israel will have to evacuate. According to Peace Now, those who build these places have no intention of achieving peace and a two-state solution.
The latest announcement, which as an aside was cynically passed on Christmas while most Western governments are on holiday, shows that Netanyahu is willing to sacrifice Israeli interests in favor of an election gift to the settlers in an attempt to attract a few more votes from his right-wing flank.
Palestinian rights groups and local governments have challenged an Israeli law that seeks to the annex of parts of the West Bank. The Israeli government responded to the petition, stating that “the Knesset [is permitted] to legislate laws everywhere in the world” and that it is authorized “to violate the sovereignty of foreign countries via legislation that would be applied to events occurring in their territories.”
Instead of gradually transferring power to the PA as required by the Oslo Accords, Israel is handing it to settlers, says former US State Department official Frank Lowenstein.