The war in Gaza serves as a smokescreen to the escalation of settler expansion and violence in the West Bank, writes Dan Steinbock. Meanwhile, Biden’s hawks refocus on Iran. Last of a 5-part series.
Sept. 8, 2006: Israeli soldier checking IDs of four Palestinian men on a 4 men on a tractor in the West Bank city of Nablus. (Michael loadenthal, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
This is the final article in a five-part series. Here is part one, two, three and four.
By Dan Steinbock
The World Financial Review
he Jewish settlements have fostered a de facto one-state reality in Israel, wherein Israelis have rights and Palestinians don´t. Meanwhile, talks for a two-state solution have been stalling since 2014. Rhetoric aside, Prime Minister Benhamin Netanyahu’s government has “engaged in actions that annex the West Bank and threaten the prospects for a just and lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
In the past, periods of heightened security tension and military operations have ensured an opportunity for settlers to establish facts on the ground. After the brutal attack by Hamas, the alarming trend of increased settler violence has rapidly escalated.