West Bank |

Jan 18

Sorry COGAT, infographics can’t whitewash Israel’s occupation

A key element of Israel’s military regime in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT), an occupation that will complete fifty years in June, is the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) unit, which is overseen by the Ministry of Defence.

COGAT, whose operating budget in 2015 was nearly half a billion shekels, describes itself as “responsible for implementing the government’s policy in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and vis-à-vis the Gaza Strip.” Read more

Dec 21

UN report: Palestinian development impossible without ending Israeli occupation

As Israel and its advocates promote a depoliticised framework of economic improvements for Palestinians under military occupation, a new United Nations (UN) document is required reading.

Late last month, the UN Country Team in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) published an extensive, 180-page report on “the state of development in Palestine as the Israeli occupation of its territory enters its 50th year.” Read more

Dec 19

Israeli settlements and Palestinians: Even the ‘moderates’ want segregation

The settlers of the Amona outpost are but a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands who live in colonies, established by Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory since 1967. Their fate has seen Benjamin Netanyahu challenged by the pro-settler right both inside and outside his coalition government.

For some, the fact that the court-mandated removal of settlers living on privately owned Palestinian land is taking place at all proves that Israel is not, in fact, being led by the “settler lobby”.

For others, the fact that such a protest, and contrived “compromise”, can be generated over one outpost suggests that a large-scale settler withdrawal is perhaps impossible. Read more

Sep 4

Are Israeli soldiers shooting to maim?

Israeli leaders like to boast they have “the most moral army in the world”, a claim made by everyone from Ehud Barak to Binyamin Netanyahu. Over the last decade, however, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have been the subject of stinging criticism and well-documented allegations of war crimes, particularly with respect to offensives in the Gaza Strip. Read more

Aug 6

Displace, demolish, construct, repeat: the time-tested Israeli way

“[Israeli] settlement activity…is corrosive to the cause of peace,” the statement began, describing Israel’s recent steps as merely “the latest examples of what appears to be a steady acceleration of settlement activity that is systematically undermining the prospects for a two-state solution”.

Settlement construction and the demolition of Palestinian homes, it went on, “is part of an ongoing process of land seizures, settlement expansion, legalisations of outposts, and denial of Palestinian development that risk entrenching a one-state reality of perpetual occupation and conflict”. Read more

Aug 4

How much Palestinian land do Israeli settlements really eat up?

The Israeli government and its supporters routinely play down the significance of West Bank settlements as an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. One recent example of this came from a Jewish Agency spokesperson, who tweeted: “Jewish communities in the West Bank take up under 2% of the land; that is, over 98% of the West Bank contains no Jewish residents at all.”

So is this true – and exactly how much of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) do Israel’s settlements take up? Read more

Jun 10

49 facts about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip

This week marked the 49th anniversary of Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. So here are 49 facts about a military regime that has lasted almost half a century. Read more

May 21

The Palestinian Nakba goes far beyond one day in 1948

The late Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe famously said of settler colonialism that “invasion is a structure not an event”.

These are words worth remembering, in this three-week period between Nakba Day and Naksa Day, which mark respectively Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947 to 1949, and the beginning of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip on June 5, 1967.

Anniversaries are important, but they can also mislead: the Nakba began long before the formal establishment of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948, and it has continued ever since. Read more

May 6

Calling time on Israel’s rejection of Palestinian statehood

The former deputy mayor of Jerusalem had a stark warning for his American audience. Using official figures, Meron Benvenisti showed how the Israeli government had “proceeded methodically and effectively toward de facto annexation of the West Bank.” In terms of the West Bank’s “part in a solution” with the Palestinians, said Benvenisti, the time is “five minutes to midnight.”

Sounds pertinent? In fact, that speech was given 34 years ago, in 1982. Read more

Feb 25

In Israel, racism is the law

On January 3, two Palestinians were removed from an Aegean Airlines flight from Athens to Tel Aviv, after Jewish Israelis claimed that they constituted a “security risk”. The incident made headlines worldwide. A month later, a Tel Aviv-based cleaning company sparked outrage with a flyer that priced its staff based on ethnicity. The story was also covered around the world.

For some, these kinds of episodes are proof of the racism that critics claim permeates Israeli society; for others, they are examples of isolated bigotry and idiocy. In fact, neither interpretation is quite right. While stories resonate and go viral, they can mask the fact that in Israel racism is the law. Read more