CrossFireArabia
Hard-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich:
This is the most expensive war in Israel’s history, so far costing about 250 billion shekels. This will not end there.”
marwan
By Imran Khalid
Amid the ongoing violence and devastation in Gaza, much of the world has turned a blind eye to the equally volatile but less overt conflict simmering in the West Bank. While not as brutally visible as Gaza’s plight, the situation in the West Bank is equally dangerous, threatening to ignite unrest that could destabilize the Palestinian Authority and fuel ethnic cleansing.
Israel has steadily expanded settlements, demolished homes, and seized large swaths of land, targeting civilians in the process. Yet, global attention remains fixated on Gaza and Israel’s escalating war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is as if the world has forgotten that just a year ago, many feared the West Bank, not Gaza, would become the primary battleground between Israelis and Palestinians. Over the past two decades, the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has diverged significantly between Gaza and the West Bank. After Israel’s 2005 unilateral disengagement from Gaza, the region was left without Jewish settlers, creating a different kind of friction compared to the West Bank. [1]
Settlements are expanding day by day
On March 22, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the largest West Bank land seizure since 1993, setting a new course for Israeli settlement policy [2]. The move by Smotrich to declare 800 hectares in the Jordan Valley as state land paves the way for further development of settlements in this area sharing some 50 kilometers with Jordan.
For the Palestinians, who distrust such moves, seeing them as serious threats to the creation of an independent Palestinian state — this feels like a knife in their back. It is the latest land grab that Palestinians see as a last step before creating an independent and contiguous state. Settlement expansion — which set a record last year, according to Israeli monitoring group Peace Now — has cast doubts over the feasibility of a two-state solution. The largest threat to the long term stability of the land is that, with each designation of land as state property, the probability of having peace shrinks. The ongoing expansion of settlements, land confiscation, and rising settler violence — often carried out with impunity — only compound the difficulties. In some cases, this is further exacerbated by the incident in which the Israeli army is providing either direct or tacit support.
The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Health has stated that 716 Palestinians have died in the West Bank from Israeli military and settler violence since Oct. 7, including 160 children. Today, more than 5,750 have been wounded and over 10,000 detained in siege [3]. Nearly all arrests take place without going through a proper legal process, with the detainees imprisoned under Israel’s “administrative arrest” system – a method that bypasses international standards and in many cases denies those held the right to see either an attorney or even forthright details of the charges against them.
The two-state solution is being destroyed by Israel
The Israeli government is being accused more and more of implementing an annexation plan in the West Bank. The ramifications of this should alarm all nations that have historically supported a two-state solution, as verbal assurances and well wishes do little to mitigate the reality that Israeli security forces now operate at will in Area A — sovereign Palestinian Authority territory under the Oslo Accords [4].
Adding to this escalating tension are the inflammatory statements from Israeli officials. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz over the weekend compared the military operations in Jenin and Tulkarm to those in Gaza, saying that we are at “war in every sense.” [5] His proposal of a similar evacuation process along the frontier where Palestinian civilians could be temporarily moved will only serve to add further fuel to the fire in an already volatile region.
Despite domestic political turmoil, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has artfully dodged blame as violence in Gaza and the West Bank rumbles on. He has practically dismissed calls for a two-state solution and openly defied the International Court of Justice. Netanyahu refuses to yield, a position that has crippled the fragile peacekeeping efforts in Gaza and aggravated fears of renewed violence in the West Bank. Netanyahu has now many excuses that could provide convenient cover for changes aimed at further entrenching Israeli control over the region.
The fate of the major part of the West Bank is crucial; without it, any prospective two-state solution will be dashed. Within Netanyahu’s ruling coalition are elements who seem intent on this very outcome, exerting considerable influence over the prime minister. In this context, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz’s inflammatory rhetoric about the West Bank is more than just careless language — it may be a deliberate signal of the government’s intentions. As Netanyahu’s administration edges closer to what appears to be a calculated annexation strategy, the international community should question whether this is not only a consequence of policy but its very purpose.
[1] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-explained-israels-2005-gaza-disengagement-plan-and-full-siege-order-4466132
[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/22/israel-seizes-800-hectares-of-palestinian-land-in-occupied-west-bank
[3] https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/humanitarian-situation-update-204-west-bank
[4] https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20240326-israel-s-largest-land-seizure-since-oslo-accords-deals-fresh-blow-to-palestinian-statehood
[5] https://www.timesofisrael.com/katz-slams-borrell-for-saying-he-called-for-displacement-of-west-bank-palestinians/
This opinion is reprinted from the Anadolu news agency.
CrossFireArabia
The current Israeli leaders come from everywhere around the world but not from these indigenous lands: Collectively termed Palestine! Theses immigrants have no connection to these territories, yet they are forcing themselves here as if they are the owners while colonizing its real people which include Muslims, Christians and Jews.
CrossFireArabia
Senior Israeli military officers have accused the country’s political leadership of inciting escalation in the occupied West Bank.
The officers said far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich are “directly responsible” for the rise in violence in the occupied territory, warning that the situation could spiral into a full-blown uprising, with many young Palestinians already facing unemployment and lack of opportunities.
“We are trying to prevent the population from fully joining the violence,” a military officer told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, adding that the ongoing Israeli restrictions have exacerbated tensions in the area.
Israel’s latest assault in the occupied West Bank is not a counterterrorism operation as it claims, but an attempt to “fortify the occupation”, says Palestinian reporter Leila Warah.
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) September 4, 2024Read analysis: https://t.co/u2Y5Nlt118
LIVE updates: https://t.co/iLTdOCJTtG pic.twitter.com/tUIbGR7clF
Attacks on Palestinians by illegal Israeli settlers also push young Palestinians to join armed groups in the West Bank, the daily warned.
“This situation can’t continue. We are on the verge of a major explosion in Judea and Samaria (West Bank),” another senior military officer said.
The Israeli officers warned that provocations by government officials as Ben-Gvir’s intrusions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque and his attempts to allow Jewish prayers at the flashpoint site risk inflaming tensions in the West Bank and the whole Arab world.
Last week, the Israeli army launched its largest military operation in the northern West Bank in two decades, killing at least 40 people and causing massive destruction in the area.
Tensions have intensified throughout the occupied West Bank as Israel persists in its offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 40,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since last Oct. 7.
At least 692 individuals have since been killed and more than 5,700 injured by Israeli gunfire in the occupied West Bank since that time, according to the Health Ministry.
BREAKING | Israel's cabinet decides to:
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) June 27, 2024Expand settlements in the West Bank and legalize 5 settlement outposts classified as illegal.
The escalation follows a significant ruling by the International Court of Justice on July 19, which declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territories unlawful and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem according to Anadolu.
CrossFireArabia
Israeli beachgoers hurled abuse and shouted at Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir as he visited a Tel Aviv beach with his family, Friday. They demanded that he leaves the beach at once.
One man kept shouting at the extremist prime minister in the Netanyahu government in front of the camera as he walked with his family and surrounded by bodyguards.
The incident is trending on the social media. The man kept shouting at Ben Gvir. “killer….murderer…the kidnapped are killed in Gaza! the kidnapped are killed in Gaza! Murderer. A killer and a trip to the sea. On the beach….
…don’t come here…Killer of childhood! Kidnapping killer. You are a murderer. Killer. The Abductees in Gaza are dead. Dead because of you! They die because you kill them! You are a killer. How dare you walk on the beach…” the man kept telling Gvir who appeared all smiles and tried to show that everything was normal.
A 27-year-old threw wet sand at Ben Gvir and run into the sea with the body guards pounded on her and arrested her where she spent one night in jail.
He later wrote “I arrived today for a few hours with my family at the beach in Tel Aviv and was warmly received by the beachgoers. A small group of left-wing protesters on the beach started shouting at me and calling for me to leave. It’s their right, this is freedom of speech, but the beach doesn’t belong to their father.”
Together with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, he insists that the war on Gaza – now in its 11th month – continues regardless of the release of the hostages and that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stops the slaughter they will leave his government and mean its downfall.
