Title: How Settler Violence is Fuelling West Bank Tension
Authors: Donald Macintyre & Quique Kierszenbaum
Affiliation: Independent Journalist, Independent Documentary Photographer, Videographer and Producer Based in Jerusalem
Organization /Publisher: The Guardian
Date/Place: November 30, 2021/UK
Type of Literature: Article
Word Count: 3000
Keywords: West Bank, Naftali Bennett, Oslo Accords, B’Tselem
Brief:
The article discusses the increasing violence in the West Bank as an expansionist strategy of Zionists. The author argues that the top political bargain Naftali Bennett struck was not implementing his dream of annexing de jure key parts of the West Bank, but his government would focus on policies within Israel itself: no annexation but no end to the occupation. The recent intrusion of Al Mufakara, which Israel’s liberal daily Haaretz called a “pogrom,” is the highest-profile event—being used as a strategy to try to clear many of the 300,000 Palestinian residents in the rural 60% of the occupied West Bank designated as Area C in the Oslo accords. The Israeli government uses different techniques to complicate the daily life of Palestinians living in villages like Al Mufakara. The Palestinians in these areas are refused to access utilities, build clinics and schools, and they pay five times more for water than Israelis. The “state land” of tens of thousands of acres are allocated to settlers, and many Palestinian homes have been served with military demolition orders. B’Tselem has reported a new kind of “unauthorized” outpost – 40 “farms” across the West Bank, gradually seizing pasture and vital water sources from Palestinians. The author concludes that the IDF’s claim to the wellbeing of all residents in the area and that it acts to prevent violence is false because settler violence is part of a calculated strategy for dispossessing Palestinians of their land.
By: Razia Wadood, CIGA Senior Research Associate
