palestine
'The Land Theft Continues': Israel Announces Biggest West Bank Seizure in Over 30 Years
The Israel-based activist group Peace Now says "2024 is by far the peak year for Israeli land seizure in the occupied West Bank."
Human rights defenders on Wednesday condemned the far-right Israeli government's announcement of the largest seizure of Palestinian land—many critics bluntly called it "land theft"—in the illegally occupied West Bank in over 30 years.
On June 25, Israeli occupation authorities unilaterally declared 12,700 dunams, or 4.9 square miles, of land in the Jordan Valley "state lands." Israel's Custodian of the State's Property in the Civil Administration published the declaration on Wednesday. The move supplements previous Israeli land grabs totaling nearly 11,000 dunams (4.2 square miles) in February and March.
Combined, these are the biggest seizures of Palestinian land since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
"Land theft is a component part of colonial genocide as a social process," noted Heidi Matthews, an assistant professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto.
Muther Isaac, academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College in Jerusalem, lamented that "the land theft continues in the West Bank!"
Israel's goal, according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is to "establish facts on the ground" in service of annexing the Palestinian lands and establishing or expanding overwhelmingly Jewish colonies there. The push comes as more and more countries—nearly 150, according to Palestinian officials—officially recognize the state of Palestine and as Israeli forces continue an assault on Gaza that has been widely condemned as genocidal.
"We will establish sovereignty... first on the ground and then through legislation. I intend to legalize the young settlements," Smotrich said last month, referring to illegal outposts that are newer and smaller than established Jewish settler colonies.
"My life's mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state," he added.
Under international law, all of the settlements are illegal. Most were built on land seized from Palestinians through terrorism and ethnic cleansing during the Nakba, or catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Arabs were expelled during the establishment and consolidation of modern Israel in the late 1940s, and during the conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.
Smotrich and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "are determined to fight against the entire world and against the interests of the people of Israel for the benefit of a handful of settlers who receive thousands of dunams as if there were no political conflict to resolve or war to end," the Tel Aviv-based activist group Peace Now said in a statement Wednesday.
"Today, it is clear to everyone that this conflict cannot be resolved without a political settlement that establishes a Palestinian state alongside Israel," the group added. "Still, the Israeli government chooses to actually make it difficult and distance us from the possibility of peace and stopping the bloodshed."
That bloodshed includes a surge in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October. More than 500 Palestinians—around a quarter of them children—have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers there over the past nine months, according to Palestinian and international agencies.
Protected and sometimes aided by Israeli troops, Israeli settlers have launched multiple deadly pogroms targeting Palestinian people and property in the occupied territories since last year.
These and other previous attacks prompted the Biden administration to impose sanctions on a handful of the most extremist Israeli settlers. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also reverted to classifying Israeli settlements as unlawful, which was the State Department's position from 1978 until the Trump administration reversed it in 2019.
However, the U.S. remains Israel's staunchest international supporter, providing billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover for Israeli policies and actions that, in addition to occupation and colonization, critics say amount to apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Former Officials Say US Has 'Undeniable Complicity' in Israeli Killing, Forced Starvation of Palestinians in Gaza
"The administration’s policy in Gaza is a failure and a threat to U.S. national security," said 12 ex-officials who resigned from the Biden administration over its support for Israel's war on Gaza.
Former Biden administration officials on Tuesday sharply criticized its Gaza policy, arguing that the continued supply of weapons to Israel is not only "morally reprehensible" but also a violation of U.S. and international law.
In a joint statement, 12 officials who've resigned in protest in the last nine months set forth a list of recommendations and urged their former colleagues in the administration to use American leverage to help bring an end to the assault on Gaza.
"The administration's policy in Gaza is a failure and a threat to U.S. national security," the statement says. "America's diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to, Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza."
The other resignees & I issued a statement calling for a new policy
"This failed policy has not achieved its stated objectives—it has not made Israelis any safer, it has emboldened extremists.. while it has been devastating for the Palestinian people"
1https://t.co/PHShChrn1u pic.twitter.com/PI8L5pjcYj
— Dr. Annelle Sheline (@AnnelleSheline) July 2, 2024
The 12 signatories included former officials from a wide range of posts and backgrounds.
One was the the administration's latest defector: 24-year-old Interior Department special assistant Maryam Hassanein, who resigned on Tuesday, tellingHuffPost that "serving in the administration in any capacity does essentially make you complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians." Hassanein was the first Muslim American administration appointee to resign, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which applauded the resignation on social media. She said the administration was engaging in the "dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims."
Another signatory was Harrison Mann, the most senior military official to have left in protest of the Gaza war. Mann had been a major at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He made the news this week when he toldThe Guardian that Israel was seeking out a war with Lebanon for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political gain.
Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year-old State Department veteran who resigned in May over a key report, dealing in part with whether Israel was blocking humanitarian aid to Gazans, that she says contained "patently false" findings, was also among the statement's signatories, as was Lily Greenberg Call, a former Interior Department official who was the first Jewish American appointee to resign in protest of the administration's war policy.
The joint statement, timed to come on the week of Independence Day, warns that the U.S. government is risking its international credibility and the safety of its own citizens by putting a "target on America's back."
The authors argued that the administration was "willfully violating multiple U.S. laws and attempting to deny or distort facts, use loopholes, or manipulate processes to ensure a continuous flow of lethal weapons to Israel." They cited the Leahy Laws that forbid providing military support to forces engaged in human rights violations.
The U.S. provides Israel with billions of dollars per year in military aid and has significantly increased its support during the war. In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill providing at least $15 billion in military funds for Israel.
The former officials called for an end not just to the U.S. supply of weapons for the war but also the "diplomatic cover" the U.S. provides for Israeli military occupation and settlements in Palestinian territory. The administration should announce that U.S. policy is "to support self-determination for the Palestinian people," they wrote.
The 12 ex-officials also called for an "immediate expansion" of humanitarian aid to Gaza and funding to help rebuild the territory.
Their statement comes as Israel continues to pummel Gaza with strikes that kill Palestinian civilians. Nearly 38,000 Gazans have been killed in the last nine months, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Several strikes that killed Palestinian civilians, including a massacre in Rafah in late May that killed at least 45, have been undertaken with U.S.-made weapons, forensic analyses have showed.
The conditions for those that have survived the Israeli bombardment are dire, with Gazans forced to live amid sewage and debris.
"Civilians in Gaza are clinging to their dignity under the most inhumane conditions," Sigrid Kaag, United Nations senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The war has not merely created a humanitarian crisis, it has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery," she said.
'Complicit in the Genocide': First Muslim Biden Appointee Resigns Over Gaza
"This administration has chosen to uphold the status quo instead of listening to the diverse voices of staff urgently demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians."
A political appointee at the U.S. Interior Department on Tuesday became the youngest—and first Muslim American—appointee of President Joe Biden's to resign as his administration continues to "fund and enable Israel's genocide of Palestinians."
"Marginalized communities in our country have long been denied the justice they deserve. I joined the Biden-Harris administration with the belief that my voice and diverse perspective would lend a hand in the pursuit of that justice," Special Assistant and Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Maryam Hassanein, 24, said in a statement.
"However, over the past nine months of Israel's genocide in Gaza, this administration has chosen to uphold the status quo instead of listening to the diverse voices of staff urgently demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians," she added. "I am resigning today from my position as a Biden administration appointee in the Department of the Interior."
Hassanein toldHuffPost that she decided to resign because "I came to understand that even if the agency I'm working at is not producing foreign policy, serving in the administration in any capacity does essentially make you complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians."
Palestine defenders applauded Hassanein's resignation—which made her at least the 11th American official to step down over U.S. support for Israel's war on Gaza, according to HuffPost.
"We welcome this principled resignation by another Biden administration official who took up their post believing they could help the nation, but instead realized they were becoming complicit in the administration's enabling of the far-right Israeli government's genocide in Gaza," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
"President Biden, whose administration has lost all credibility on the issue of human rights, must reverse course and end our nation's complicity in genocide, forced starvation, and ethnic cleansing," Awad added. "He must demand an immediate and permanent cease-fire, an end to the occupation, and justice for the Palestinian people."
The Biden administration has been Israel's staunchest supporter, even after 270 days of what United Nations officials, human rights experts, and countries led by South Africa in an International Court of Justice case all call a genocidal assault on Gaza's 2.3 million people. Despite this, Biden has approved billions of dollars in military assistance and provided diplomatic support for Israel.
According to Palestinian and international agencies, at least 37,925 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed by Israeli forces, while upward of 87,000 others have been wounded and at least 11,000 people are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of destroyed or damaged buildings.
Israel has also been accused of deliberately starving Gazans—dozens of whom have died of malnutrition—via a crippling siege and blockade of the coastal enclave.