New housing projects are seen in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Givat Ze’ev, June 18, 2023
ISRAELI government proposals to build 3,500 new homes for settlers in the occupied West Bank took a step forward today, when far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the project had received planning permission.
“We continue to build the country!” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the scheme received approval from the Higher Planning Council, which authorises West Bank construction. “The enemies try to hurt and weaken us, but we will continue to build.”
The decision concerns 300 new homes in the Kedar settlement and 2,350 in Maale Adumim. It also advances a previously approved plan to build nearly 700 homes in Efrat to its final approval stage.
Mr Smotrich unveiled the plan in February, prompting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to say that was “disappointed.”
The number of new settlement housing units approved in the West Bank since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government took office has now risen to 15,775, according to Israeli activist group Peace Now, which is the highest number for a 15-month period since the watchdog began keeping count.
The government is withholding all information about the nine Israeli military jets that have landed in the UK since the bombing of Gaza began, raising suspicions about further British complicity in war crimes.
The UK government admitted last month that nine Israeli military aircraft had landed and taken off in Britain since 7 October.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had initially refused to give any information on the number of flights, but Declassified independently found six Israeli Air Force (IAF) operated planes landing in Britain.
Soon after the Declassified revelations, the MoD reversed course and admitted the nine flights, in response to a parliamentary question from Kenny MacAskill, the Alba MP for East Lothian.
But MacAskill recently requested further information about those flights.
When he asked what the IAF planes were carrying, when they arrived and departed, and which British airports they landed at, the MoD refused to answer.
Defence minister James Heappey told him: “It is standard practice for the Ministry of Defence to routinely authorise requests for limited numbers of allies and partners to overfly the UK and use UK air bases.”
But he added: “For operational security reasons and as a matter of policy, the MoD does not offer comment or information relating to foreign nations’ military aircraft movements or operations.”
‘No comment’
MacAskill also requested information on the next destination of the nine IAF planes that took off from Britain. The MoD again refused to answer.
Heappey said: “It is our longstanding Defence policy to not comment on third country flight information.”
He added: “The Diplomatic Flight Clearance policy is a robust practice and the basis on which a foreign partner may or may not be granted permission to utilise UK air bases is dependent on the nature and purpose of their activity, which is assessed in line with Defence internal policy.”
This position, which has also been applied to US Air Force flights related to Gaza using British territory, means UK bases operate as effective ‘black sites’ for foreign militaries.
Demonstrators march for a Gaza cease-fire in San Francisco on November 18, 2023. (Photo: Brett Wilkins/Common Dreams)
“It is long past time for the United States to use its leverage and uphold U.S. law to end Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and have this war come to an end.”
A broad coalition of advocacy groups on Tuesday launched an emergency online campaign to pressure U.S. lawmakers to support an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza.
Demand Progress, Oxfam America, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Win Without War, Common Defense, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and 23 partner groups started CeasefireAction.com, which includes a searchable database of each member of Congress and where they stand on the cease-fire issue, as well as a tool for contacting lawmakers to urge them to publicly support a cease-fire.
“It is long past time for the United States to use its leverage and uphold U.S. law to end Israel’s indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and have this war come to an end,” said Seth Binder, director of advocacy at the Middle East Democracy Center, a coalition member. “The humanitarian catastrophe that millions of Palestinians are suffering through and its seismic moral and strategic consequences should compel members of Congress to do everything in its power to secure a cessation of hostilities.”
Have your members of Congress spoken out to call for a #CeasefireNow?
Find out and take action 👇. This is a crucial moment for our advocacy. So many lives and futures are at stake. https://t.co/z3cgqss00g
According to the database, 164 of the 536 members of Congress “support some form” of cessation of hostilities in Gaza. All of them are Democrats, plus independent Sens. Angus King (Maine) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.). Seventy-six lawmakers “fully support” a cease-fire.
The launch of CeasefireAction.com comes as Israeli forces continue their relentless bombardment, invasion, and starvation of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, around 90% of whom have been forcibly displaced. According to Palestinian and international humanitarian officials, more than 102,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli bombs and bullets, with at least 7,000 others missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of some of the hundreds of thousands of homes and other buildings destroyed or damaged by Israeli bombardment.
Israel’s conduct in war, along with statements by members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government and Knesset lawmakers, are cited in a South Africa-led genocide case filed in the International Court of Justice in The Hague. On January 26, the ICJ issued a preliminary ruling that found Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide and ordered the country’s government to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocidal acts.
As Israeli forces are poised for a major ground invasion of Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million Palestinians—the vast majority of them forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza—are sheltering, “it is more urgent than ever that Congress and the [Biden] administration support an immediate, permanent cease-fire,” said Demand Progress policy adviser Hajar Hammado.
“We need an end to the violence, a release of [Israeli] hostages, and the free flow of humanitarian aid to alleviate the immense scale of suffering,” Hammado added. “This new tool, CeasefireAction.com, empowers constituents to hold their members of Congress accountable for their stances in this critical moment. A temporary, six-week cease-fire is not enough—we need an immediate, permanent cease-fire now.”
The Biden administration—which is seeking an additional $14.3 billion in U.S. military aid for Israel atop the nearly $4 billion it already gets from Washington each year—has pushed for a temporary cease-fire deal ahead of Ramadan in recent days under intensifying pressure from the U.S. public.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday said that “given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate cease-fire for at least the next six weeks.”
“People in Gaza are starving,” Harris said. “What we are seeing every day in Gaza is devastating. We have seen reports of families eating leaves and animal feed, children dying from malnutrition and dehydration. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration—which twice sidestepped congressional review to expedite weapons transfers to Israel since October 7—is preparing to send thousands more bombs to the country’s military.
An Israeli soldier sitting on an armored personnel carrier as it moves out of Gaza on February 26, 2024. (Photo: Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)
“Everyone knows that the U.S. could end this today if we wanted to,” said one analyst.
A new poll released Tuesday revealed that a majority of Americans want to the U.S. government to stop supplying the Israeli military with weaponry to carry out its brutal assault on Gaza that has killed over 30,000 Palestinians, most of them civilian men, women, and children.
As organizers called on Democratic voters in at least seven states to vote “uncommitted” on their Super Tuesday primary ballots on Tuesday to help push the Biden administration to demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, the YouGov poll provided another measure of Americans’ growing outrage over their government’s material and political support for the “genocidal” campaign by Israel’s far-right government.
Commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the poll of 1,000 U.S. adults asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement: “The U.S. should stop weapons shipments to Israel until Israel discontinues its attacks on the people of Gaza.”
Fifty-two percent of people said they agreed with the statement, while just 27% said they disagreed.
CEPR co-director Mark Weisbrot noted that while the call for a cease-fire “can mean different things to different people… the support for halting weapons shipments is specific and unambiguous.”
Less than two weeks after scientists projected that at least 6,500 people would likely die in Gaza in the coming months even in the case of an immediate, permanent cease-fire, Weisbrot said many Americans may have “already moved past” the idea that a cease-fire is sufficient.
All this is to say that the American public may have already moved past the idea of a “ceasefire.” We all see the images on TV. The heartache of 30,000+ dead– most of them women and children.
“Support for stopping U.S. weapons shipments to Israel has gained traction in recent days,” noted CEPR, “as the Gaza death toll has surpassed 30,000 people, about two-thirds of them women and children.”
Since the Biden administration’s approval of weapons shipments to Israel since October, Israel has decimated civilian infrastructure across Gaza while also blocking nearly all humanitarian aid, leaving the entire population facing “crisis-level hunger” that is approaching famine in some areas.
“We have the power to stop this. Everyone knows that the U.S. could end this today if we wanted to,” said Weisbrot, posting a video of European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell calling on U.S. President Joe Biden and other Western leaders to “provide less arms” to Israel, considering Biden’s stated belief that too many civilians are being killed.
We have the power to stop this. Everyone knows that the U.S. could end this today if we wanted to. This is Josep Borell, the highest official of the European Union in charge of foreign policy, telling the United States government that they need to do something, like cut weapons… pic.twitter.com/F9y8zwgPxj
Tuesday’s poll revealed that ending weapons shipments for Israel is popular across the political spectrum.
Sixty-two percent of people who voted for Biden in 2020 agreed that the U.S. should end shipments, while only 14% disagreed.
CEPR pointed out that “Among those who did not vote in the 2020 presidential elections—a key group containing voters that both Democrats and Republicans would like to turn out this year—fully 60% agreed that the U.S. should block weapons shipments.”
The latter result is one “that the Biden campaign should be worried about,” said Weisbrot. “These are the voters Biden needs to turn out to expand his base.”
People who voted for former Republican President Donald Trump in 2020 were the only group in which a majority opposed halting weapons shipments, with 55% saying the shipments should continue. Thirty percent said they should stop.
THE government’s “independent” adviser on political violence and disruption has received funding from pro-Israel groups while pushing for a crackdown on pro-Palestine protests, Declassified UK revealed today.
Former Labour MP John Woodcock — ennobled as Lord Walney for backing Boris Johnson in the 2019 election — was assigned in 2021 to produce a report investigating “the extreme fringes on both ends of the political spectrum” in Britain.
…
During his time as a Labour MP, he was appointed chairman of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) in 2011. He embarked on a trip funded by LFI, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Portland Trust the same year.
Lord Walney also accepted funding from the Australia-Israel Cultural Exchange during his time as an MP.
In January this year, while preparing to deliver his report concerning Palestine protests in Britain, Lord Walney visited Israel as part of a parliamentary delegation organised by the European Leadership Network, with flights and accommodation paid for by the organisation. He kept the trip under wraps and did not post about it on social media.
