Izraelci načrtno sistematično etnično čistijo obe palestinski ozemlji – Gazo in Zahodni breg. S čimer seveda efektivno onemogočajo, da bi kdaj lahko prišlo do samostojne palestinske države oziroma do “rešitve dveh držav”.

This week the outgoing commander of Israel’s military in the West Bank condemned extremist Jewish settlers for a rise in “nationalist crime” against Palestinians. “This is not Judaism to me,” said Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, adding that it is a “dangerous mistake” to terrorize Palestinians.

Since Hamas’s October 7 assault, settler attacks on Palestinians and their property have increased, and, as a result, so has the number of Palestinians displaced from their homes in the West Bank.

But the settlers aren’t the only problem. Soldiers under Gen. Fuchs’s command have joined in the ethnic cleansing. Human Rights Watch reports that in some cases whole Palestinian communities have been uprooted “with the active participation of army units,” and in other cases soldiers failed to intervene as settlers did the uprooting. “Forced relocation” is a crime under the Geneva Conventions when conducted or abetted by a state.

Meanwhile, West Bank settlements (themselves violations of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the transfer of civilian populations to territory acquired by force) are poised to grow in size and number. Last week, the Israeli government approved 5,295 new housing units in dozens of settlements. And the government announced that it had declared 2,965 additional acres in the West Bank to be “state land”—that is, land for future settlements—in the largest single land grab since the 1990s.

Both initiatives will increase the number of settlers who live in proximity to Palestinians and so may increase the rate of ethnic cleansing (assuming that some future, more moderate, Israeli government doesn’t decide to get serious about cracking down on settler violence).

These settlement initiatives will also make hopes of a two-state solution even dimmer than they are now. On Monday, White House spokesman John Kirby lamented that “settlements continue to be counterproductive to a two-state solution.” But for some top Israeli officials, that’s a feature, not a bug. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, himself a settler, said on Twitter that the newly approved housing units were part of “building the good country and thwarting the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

Vir: Robert Wright