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Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, Tzipi Livni. [Photo by AWAD / AFP via Getty Images]
Former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni has said Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is “dismantling the State of Israel”, accusing it of allowing armed settler militias, parallel legal systems and indefinite occupation to undermine the basic foundations of statehood.
In remarks shared on X, Livni wrote in full: “A sovereign state has territory, one law for all, and a monopoly on weapons. Israel has no agreed-upon borders, there is no longer one law and justice for all but a religious system of law and justice in parallel to the state’s laws, and there are armed and violent militias that run rampant as they please. The government of Israel is dismantling the State of Israel.”
למדינה ריבונית יש טריטוריה, חוק אחד לכולם ומונופול על הנשק. לישראל אין גבול מוסכם , כבר אין חוק ומשפט אחד לכולם אלא מערכת חוק ומשפט דתי במקביל לחוקי המדינה, ויש מיליציות חמושות ואלימות שמתפרעות כרצונן . ממשלת ישראל מפוררת את מדינת ישראל .
The comments by Livni come amid mounting evidence of escalating settler attacks across the occupied West Bank and growing international condemnation of Israel’s system of rule over Palestinians.
The growing consensus of the global human rights community is that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid. B’Tselem says Israel operates “a regime of apartheid” across the territory under its control, while Human Rights Watch has said Israeli authorities are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.
In recent weeks, illegal Israeli settlers have carried out a series of fresh attacks on Palestinian communities across the occupied West Bank, amid mounting evidence that the violence is becoming more organised and more brazen.
Earlier this month, settlers intensified assaults on Palestinian villages and towns while exploiting movement restrictions imposed by the Israeli army, with rights groups and medical teams saying road closures and checkpoints delayed ambulances from reaching the wounded.
Settler violence has taken the form of coordinated raids on multiple Palestinian areas at once. Settlers have raided Palestinians in 13 locations across the occupied West Bank over two days, setting fire to homes and vehicles, smashing windows, throwing stones at Palestinian cars and beating residents.
Some of the worst attacks targeted villages near Jenin, Nablus and Salfit, leaving several Palestinians injured and causing widespread property damage.
More than 1,100 attacks by settlers have been carried in the West Bank this year, including assaults on villages, farmland and Palestinian property, often under the protection of Israeli forces. Nearly 19,000 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers had been recorded since the start of the year, underlining the broader climate of repression facing Palestinians across the country.
This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won.Keir Starmer explains that UK is participating defensively in Trump and Israel’s criminal war for Israel’s genocidal expansion in Iran and states that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to his map of ‘the New Middle East’ during his address to the United Nations General Assembly, Sept. 22, 2023. | Richard Drew / AP
As the U.S.- Israeli wars across West Asia widen, a clearer picture is emerging of Israel’s long-term strategic and ideological objectives, and they go far beyond claims of “security” or “self-defense.”
This week, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made that reality explicit. Speaking publicly amid Israel’s escalating assault on Lebanon, he declared that Israel’s northern border “must be the Litani River,” calling for the outright conquest and annexation of southern Lebanon.
This is not fringe rhetoric. It is a statement from a senior cabinet minister, and one that aligns with military actions already underway on the ground.
Israeli forces are not merely striking Hezbollah positions. They are systematically reshaping southern Lebanon: Vital [b]ridges over the Litani River have been destroyed, cutting off civilian movement and isolating the south from the rest of Lebanon. Entire villages are being leveled and depopulated, as the Israeli government calls for the demolition of homes and other civilian infrastructure. This has led to over a million Lebanese already being displaced.
Rather than taking temporary battlefield measures, the Israeli army is putting in place the material preconditions for territorial reorganization.
Military planners and political leaders are increasingly aligned around the idea of a permanent “buffer zone” south of the Litani. Such language has historically often preceded de facto annexation, and Smotrich’s statement removes any ambiguity. The goal is a permanently expanded Israel.
What is now unfolding in Lebanon follows the pattern already visible in Gaza. Israeli officials and lawmakers have repeatedly called for the resettlement of Gaza by Israeli settlers and the absorption of large portions of its territory into Israel. Many in Israeli leadership have even called for the depopulation of Gaza to build a Jewish majority in the territory. The destruction of entire cities like Rafah and Beit Hanoun has already emptied former population centers of their residents.
In Lebanon, Israeli leaders are explicitly invoking this precedent. Government figures have urged applying the “Gaza model” to southern Lebanon, meaning the destruction of villages, displacing populations, and then redefining control on the ground.
Gaza and Lebanon are thus not two separate wars; they are two avenues in pursuit of the same strategy. While bombs fall in Gaza and Lebanon, the West Bank is undergoing its own transformation. Israeli settler violence, mass expulsions, and military raids have intensified alongside open political calls to formally annex that territory, as well. Entire Palestinian communities are being pushed off their land, often under direct protection of the Israeli military.
There is no large-scale bombardment as in Gaza and Lebanon, but the goal of removing the population and normalizing such actions remains the same.
At the same time, Israel has expanded its military operations deeper into Syria, targeting Iranian-linked infrastructure and asserting “freedom of action” across the country. Just this week, Israeli forces entered the Syrian city of Qunetra, set up road blocks, and arrested residents, as if Israel already had legal jurisdiction over this Syrian city.
These strikes are being framed as preemptive defense, but taken together with operations in Gaza and Lebanon, they reflect a broader doctrine. Israel is showing it intends to reshape the entire region through force, regardless of sovereignty.
The messianic vision of a Greater Israel
What ties these fronts together is not simply conflict with Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran. It is a coherent territorial and political project known as The Greater Israel Project. Proponents of this idea have long called for Israel to expand its borders south into Egypt and northward and westward to the Euphrates River. Their claim is based on Biblical passages that say God promised these lands to Abraham’s descendants.
While this idea was once rightfully scene as fringe, religious fanaticism, it has become increasingly mainstream. U.S. Ambassador to Israel and famed Chritisan Zionist Mike Huckabee recently endorsed such a vision during an interview with Tucker Carlson. Even the supposed secular and “liberal” leader of the Israeli opposition, Yair Lapid, said he supported the idea of expanding Israel to match the biblical description.
What’s happening on the ground shows that such talk is not simply empty rhetoric for religious constituents but a plan being put into action. Smotrich’s statement is significant not because it is shocking, but because it is consistent. It articulates openly what Israeli policy has been implementing incrementally: the use of war to redraw borders and reshape demographics across the region.
These wars by Israel are materially enabled and politically shielded by the United States. The current escalation—particularly the joint U.S.-Israeli war against Iran—has created the conditions under which these expansionist, fanatical aims can be pursued under the cover of a broader regional conflict.
The Trump administration continues to frame these actions as part of a defensive alliance, but the outcome on the ground expanding war, mass displacement, and the steady erosion of national sovereignty across multiple countries.
The danger of the current moment lies in its normalization. Greater Israel was once an idea the fascist right wing carefully whispered about only among like-minded people. Today, it has become official policy of the Israeli government, with the backing of the United States.
The question is no longer whether such plans exist. It is whether they will be allowed to proceed unchallenged. If the Litani River becomes Israel’s new northern border, it will not be the end of the process. From there, history suggests, the map will not stop changing.
As with all op-eds and news analytical articles published by People’s World, the views expressed here are those of the author.
J.E. Rosenberg grew up in an extremist, religious Zionist household in the U.S. After moving to Israel as a young adult, he changed his world views. He left Israel and is now a member of the Communist Party.
Keir Starmer explains that UK is participating defensively in Trump and Israel’s criminal war for Israel’s genocidal expansion in Iran and states that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/Donald Trump warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog, says that it’s easy atm, she only needs to report war crimes supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner are called evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
News outlets often preferred euphemisms like “displacing” or “resettling” to the more accurate “ethnic cleansing, as in this CBC headline (2/4/25).
Earlier this month, President Donald Trump said that the US will “take over the Gaza Strip” and “own” it for the “long-term” (AP, 2/5/25), and that its Palestinian inhabitants will be “permanently” exiled (AP, 2/4/25). Subsequently, when reporters asked Trump whether Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza under his plan, he said “no” (BBC, 2/10/25).
After Trump’s remarks, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (Reuters, 2/5/25) said “it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing.”
Navi Pillay (Politico, 2/9/25), chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, said that
Trump is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing.
Human Rights Watch (2/5/25) said that, if Trump’s plan were implemented, it would “amount to an alarming escalation of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.”
Clarity in the minority
Amnesty International (2/5/25) called Trump’s proposal to forcibly transfer the population of Gaza a flagrant violation of international law”—but the phrase “international law” was usually missing from news reports on the plan.
I used the news media aggregator Factiva to survey coverage of Trump’s remarks from the day that he first made them, February 4 through February 12. In that period, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post combined to run 145 pieces with the words “Gaza” and “Trump.” Of these, 19 contained the term “ethnic cleansing” or a variation on the phrase. In other words, 87% of the articles these outlets published on Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza chose not to call it ethnic cleansing.
A handful of other pieces used language that captures the wanton criminality of Trump’s scheme reasonably well. Three articles used “forced displacement,” or slight deviations from the word, while five others used “expel” and another nine used “expulsion.” Two of the articles said “forced transfer,” or a minor variation of that. In total, therefore, 38 of the 145 articles (26 percent) employ “ethnic cleansing” or the above-mentioned terms to communicate to readers that Trump wants to make Palestinians leave their homes so that the US can take Gaza from them.
Furthermore, the term “international law” appears in only 27 of the 145 articles, which means that 81% failed to point out to readers that what Trump is proposing is a “flagrant violation of international law” (Amnesty International, 2/5/25).
A ‘plan to free Palestinians’
A Wall Street Journal op-ed (2/5/25) hailed “Trump’s Plan to Free Palestinians From Gaza”—in the same sense that the Trail of Tears “freed” the Cherokee from Georgia.
Several commentators in the corporate media endorsed Trump’s racist fever dream, in some cases through circumlocutions and others quite bluntly. Elliot Kaufman (Wall Street Journal, 2/5/25) called Trump’s imperial hallucination a “plan to free Palestinians from Gaza.”
While the Journal’s editorial board (2/5/25) called what Trump wants to do “preposterous,” the authors nonetheless put “ethnic cleansing” in scare quotes, as if that’s not an apt description. The paper asked, “Is his idea so much worse than the status quo that the rest of the world is offering?”
Sadanand Dhume (Wall StreetJournal, 2/12/25) wondered why “If Indians and Pakistanis Can Relocate, Why Can’t Gazans?” To bolster his case, Dhume noted that 2 million people died as a result of the India-Pakistan partition, and cited other shining moments in 20th century history, such as Uganda’s expulsion of Indians in the 1970s. That these authors implicitly or explicitly advocate Trump’s plan for mass, racist violence demonstrates that they see Palestinians as subhuman impediments to US/Israeli designs on Palestine and the region.
Bret Stephens (New York Times, 2/11/25) wrote that
Trump also warned Jordan and Egypt that he would cut off American aid if they refused to accept Gazan refugees, adding that those refugees may not have the right to return to Gaza. The president’s threats are long overdue.
Ethnically cleansing the West Bank
Al Jazeera (2/26/24): “Settler violence is a central part of the Israeli state’s policy and plan to ethnically cleanse the occupied Palestinian territory.”
A similar pattern exists in coverage of the West Bank, where evidence of ethnic cleansing is hard to miss, but corporate media appears to be finding ways to do just that.
Legal scholars Alice Panepinto and Triestino Mariniello wrote an article for Al Jazeera (2/26/24) headlined “Settler Violence: Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Plan for the West Bank”:
Supported by the Israeli security forces and aided and abetted by the government, settler violence is a central part of the Israeli state’s policy and plan to ethnically cleanse the occupied Palestinian territory in order to establish full sovereignty over it and enable settlement expansion.
The authors noted that, at the time they wrote their article, 16 Palesti nian communities in the West Bank had been forcibly transferred since October 7, 2023.
In October 2024, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese found that throughout the Gaza genocide, “Israeli forces and violent settlers” have “escalated patterns of ethnic cleansing and apartheid in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.” In the first 12 months after October 7, Albanese reported, “at least 18 communities were depopulated under the threat of lethal force, effectively enabling the colonization of large tracts” of the West Bank.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (2/10/25) said that Israel’s “latest ethnic cleansing efforts” entail “forcibly uproot[ing] thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank,” accompanied by
the bombing and burning of residential buildings and infrastructure, the cutting off of water, electricity and communications supplies, and a killing policy that has resulted in the deaths of 30 Palestinians…over the course of 19 days.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) (2/10/25), Israeli military operations in Jenin camp, which expanded to Tulkarm, Nur Shams and El Far’a, displaced 40,000 Palestinian refugees between January 21 and February 10.
Unnoteworthy violations
I used Factiva to search New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post coverage and found that, since Panepinto and Mariniello’s analysis was published just under a year ago, the three newspapers have combined to run 693 articles that mention the West Bank. Thirteen of these include some form of the term “ethnic cleansing,” a mere 2%. Nine more articles use “forced displacement,” or a variation on the phrase, 31 use “expel,” 11 use “expulsion” and five use some variety of “forced transfer.”
Thus, 69 of the 693 Times, Journal and Post articles that mention the West Bank use these terms to clearly describe people being violently driven from their homes—just 10%. Many of the articles that address the West Bank are also about Gaza, so the 69 articles using this language don’t necessarily apply it to the West Bank.
Of the 693 Times, Journal and Post pieces that refer to the West Bank, 106 include the term “international law.” Evidently, the authors and editors who worked on 85% of the papers’ articles that discuss the West Bank did not consider it noteworthy that Israel is engaged in egregious violations of international law in the territory.
‘Battling local militants’
The Washington Post (2/2/25) captioned this image of IDF bombing with Israel’s claim that it was “destroying buildings used by Palestinian militants.”
Rather than equip readers to understand the larger picture in which events in the West Bank unfold, much of the coverage treats incidents in the territory discretely. For instance, the Wall Street Journal (1/22/25) published a report on Israel’s late January attacks on the West Bank. In the piece’s 18th paragraph, it cited the Palestinian Authority saying the Israeli operations “displaced families and destroyed civilian properties.” In the 24th paragraph, the article also quoted UNRWA director Roland Friedrich, saying that Jenin had become “nearly uninhabitable,” and that “some 2,000 families have been displaced from the area since mid-December.” Palestinians being driven from their homes are an afterthought for the article’s authors, who do nothing to put this forced displacement in the longer-term context of Israel’s US-backed ethnic cleansing.
A Washington Post report (2/2/25) on Jenin says in its first paragraph that the fighting is occurring “where [Israeli] troops have been battling local militants.” The article then describes Palestinian “homes turned to ash and rubble, cars destroyed and small fires still burning amid the debris.” It cited the Palestinian Health Ministry noting that “at least five people were killed in Israeli strikes in the Jenin area, including a 16-year-old.”
Establishing a “troops vs. militants” frame at the outset of the article suggested that that is the lens through which the death and destruction in Jenin should be understood, rather than one in which a racist colonial enterprise is seeking to ethnically cleanse the Indigenous population resisting the initiative.
The rights of ‘neighbors’
This New York Times piece (2/4/25) acknowledges that Israeli settlements have “steadily eroded the land accessible to Palestinians”—but doesn’t call this process ethnic cleansing.
The New York Times (2/4/25) published an article on Republican bills that would require US government documents to refer to the West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” the name that expansionist Zionists prefer. The report discusses how Trump’s return to office “has emboldened supporters of Israeli annexation of the occupied territory.”
The piece notes that hundreds of thousands of Israelis have “settled” the West Bank since Israel occupied it in 1967, and that Palestinians living there have fewer rights than their Israeli “neighbors.” The author points out that “the growing number and size of the settlements have steadily eroded the land accessible to Palestinians.”
Yet the article somehow fails to mention a crucial part of this dynamic, namely Israel violently displacing Palestinians from their West Bank homes. Leaving out that vital information fails means that readers are not a comprehensive account of the ethnic cleansing backdrop against which the Republican bills are playing out.
Recent coverage of Gaza and the West Bank illustrates that, while corporate media occasionally outright call for expelling Palestinians from their land, more often the way these outlets support ethnic cleansing is by declining to call it ethnic cleansing.
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Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
Palestinians inspect the rubble of a house after an Israeli airstrike in the village of Burqin in the West Bank on January 23, 2025. (Photo: Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“This echoes the tactics Israeli forces have employed in Gaza.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that Israel’s military is applying “lessons” learned during its bombardment of Gaza to recent attacks on the West Bank—and a leading human rights group warned that as in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces’ actions are resulting in “significant humanitarian consequences.”
Operations like “Iron Wall” in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin and a “surge in settler attacks” that have been backed by the IDF “have heightened insecurity, displacement, and severe restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement,” said the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) on Thursday.
Iron Wall began Tuesday, with the IDF launching airstrikes and ground attacks in the West Bank two days after a cease-fire took effect in Gaza.
At least 12 Palestinians have been killed in the Iron Wall attacks and 40 people have been injured, including medical workers, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.
After months of warnings from rights organizations that the IDF cut off access to essential services for Gaza residents with a near-total humanitarian aid blockade and the relentless bombardment of the enclave, the NRC said that Israeli forced have “increased checkpoints, roadblocks, and other physical barriers throughout the West Bank.”
“These measures further fragment Palestinian communities, restrict access to essential services, and prevent humanitarian agencies, like NRC, from reaching the communities we serve,” said the group.
The latest violence in the West Bank is part of a broader trend, with Israel having begun launching airstrikes in the territory after October 7, 2023, for the first time since the Second Intifada in 2000-05.
The IDF launched Iron Wall in Jenin two weeks after a shooting attack that Israel blamed on gunmen in the refugee camp, which has long been a hub for Palestinian resistance groups and is also home to more than 24,000 Palestinians who are registered in the camp.
Katz said in a statement Wednesday that with the Jenin raid, the IDF is applying “the first lesson from the method of repeated raids in Gaza.”
“We will not allow the arms of the Iranian regime and radical Sunni Islam to endanger the lives of [Israeli] settlers [in the West Bank] and establish a terrorist front east of the state of Israel,” he said.
In addition to the attacks in Jenin, masked Israeli settlers have been filmed setting fire to homes and vehicles in towns across the Israeli-occupied territory in what the Israel-based human rights group B’Tselem called an effort to “impose a ‘price tag’ for the release of Palestinians” as part of the cease-fire agreement in Gaza.
Residents told Al Jazeera that “constant gunfire and explosions” have been heard in Jenin since Iron Wall began, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) reported that the IDF has left the camp “nearly uninhabitable.”
An estimated 2,000 families have been displaced from the Jenin area since December, according to the agency.
“We are seeing disturbing patterns of unlawful use of force in the West Bank that is unnecessary, indiscriminate, and disproportionate. This echoes the tactics Israeli forces have employed in Gaza,” said Angelita Caredda, NRC’s Middle East and North Africa regional director. “Under international law, Israel must bring its occupation of Palestinian territory to an end as rapidly as possible. Until then, it must fully comply with its obligations as an occupying power, including the protection of civilians.”
In addition to airstrikes and ground attacks, the governor of Jenin, Kamal Abu al-Rub, told Agence France-Presse that Israeli military bulldozers have destroyed all roads leading to the camp and to the nearby hospital. Twenty Palestinians from villlages in the Jenin area have been detained since Iron Wall began on Tuesday, according to the governor.
“What we are seeing in Jenin camp is horrific, said one paramedic trained by Doctors Without Borders. “People are targeted while being evacuated, and the wounded cannot be reached by ambulance.”
In 2024, Israeli demolitions in the West Bank reached a record high, said the NRC, with 1,768 structures destroyed. IDF soldiers and settlers killed at least 499 Palestinians in the territory last year.
U.S. President Donald Trump has selected at least two nominees for high-level diplomatic positions—Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) for U.N. ambassador and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee for ambassador to Israel—who have expressed support for right-wing Israeli officials’ claim that Israel has a “Biblical right” to the West Bank.
Amid the settler violence and Jenin raid, Caredda called on the international community to “take decisive action to stop these violations and end the occupation.”
“Impunity for serious violations of international law has allowed Israel to unlawfully escalate violence in the occupied West Bank,” said Caredda.
Itamar Ben-Gvir in June 2021. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / שי קנדלר
Following ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants against top Israeli officials over Gaza’s genocide, Ben-Gvir bluntly threatened to escalate the situation in the West Bank, confirming Israel’s disregard of international law.
Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir stormed Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron (Al-Khalil) in the southern occupied West Bank on Friday, November 22, accompanied by thousands of Israeli settlers.
A Palestinian citizen from a local committee working to defend Hebron city from Israeli violations told Anadolu Ajansı that Ben-Gvir and the settlers escorting him performed Talmudic rituals for the Jewish holiday Chayei Sarah (Life of Sarah) inside the mosque. He added that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) imposed a curfew on the old city of Hebron, where the Ibrahimi Mosque is located, banning Palestinians from reaching the area during the settlers’ raid.
Meanwhile, the director of the Ibrahimi Mosque Mutaz Abu Sneineh informed media outlets that the IOF closed the mosque to Muslim worshipers and employees through Saturday evening. The Ibrahimi Mosque itself has also been the site of numerous settler attacks. In 1994, extremist settler terrorist Baruch Goldstein entered the mosque during a prayer and open fired, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers and injuring over 100.
While settler violence against Palestinians has a long history that goes back to the period of the British Mandate in Palestine, the rise of extremist leader Ben-Gvir since 2019 has been accompanied by a sharp uptick in attacks and provocative acts. Ben-Gvir has been labelled by Israeli and western media alike as a provocateur, pyromaniac, ultranationalist, and an extremist settler.
Ben-Gvir has been part of Netanyahu’s government, playing a key role in shaping politics and decision making, since 2022 as the Minister of National Security. Ben-Gvir’s illegal attacks and provocations would not be possible without his government’s policies and rhetoric which explicitly back settler violence.
Israel’s new Defense Minister, Yisrael Katz, announced on Friday the suspension of administrative detention for Israeli settlers who carry out attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Authority slammed Katz’s decision as it would further encourage settlers to commit more crimes against Palestinians.
In a statement issued on Friday, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said that Katz’s decision “would encourage supremacist colonists to commit acts of terrorism against Palestinians and their properties and further foster their impunity.” The Ministry also called for effective international action to restrain settler “militias” and protect the Palestinians from their violence.
Katz’s decision may be seen as part of the plan recently declared by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for the West Bank annexation early November. The plan was re-iterated by Ben Gvir, who called for implementing it in response to the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants orders for top Israeli officials on Thursday, November 21.
According to analysts, Israeli ministers aim at fueling the situation in the West Bank to find a pretext to end the Oslo Accords which granted the Palestinian Authority self-governance over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and to undermine international efforts for a two-state solution.
