Jonathan Cook reports on Israeli soldiers breaking the silence on what they’ve done. “Whatever a soldier believes when they begin their military service, there is no way to behave ethically in the occupied territories,” Ido Even-Paz, a former Israeli soldier says. “It’s a system in which Palestinians are always treated as inferior… Every day the job is to inflict collective punishment…”
The Trump administration is shaping its policy toward Israel and a potential peace settlement with the Palestinians in ways that may seem surprising for a president who had appeared to offer the government in Jerusalem a blank check on the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and other issues.”
Trump’s evolving settlement policy appears more lenient toward Israel than the Obama administration’s, but not as lenient as sought by many of Israel’s strongest backers. There may be more continuity with past policy on Israel and on Iran than many foreign policy analysts had expected.