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east jerusalem
The Israeli Government Is the Real Threat to Peace and Stability in the Region
Instead of placing the burden of reform solely on the Palestinians, the U.S., Western Europe, and the Arab states should take concrete measures to force Israel to end its occupation.
Jul 08, 2025
Last week, the United Nations was scheduled to convene a special session promoting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel’s attack on Iran and the deadly exchanges that followed resulted in a postponement. While the rest of the world may have the luxury of tuning in or out to the plight of the Palestinian people, the situation in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem only worsens. Their dire state is compounded by the feckless response of most nations to the ongoing tragedy. Instead of definitively condemning the genocide and the occupation, the best they can muster are hollow and sometimes banal pronouncements urging the parties to negotiate (as if there were something about which to negotiate) or professions of their support for a two-state solution (as if that were even possible at this point).
This hasn’t stopped some from proposing “peace plans,” calling for international peacekeepers, a “reformed Palestinian Authority,” and a disarming of Hamas. But these proposals also ignore two important realities: Israel’s rejection of every element of every plan put forward to date, and the fact that the Israeli occupation is so entrenched and has so distorted the realities on the ground in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem that the way forward to Palestinian independence has become far more complicated than it was at the time of the Oslo accords.
To better understand where we are and what must be done, my company has conducted annual polls in the occupied lands in order to assess Palestinian attitudes toward their current situation and their hopes for the future. What comes through quite clearly in these surveys is that the Palestinians in all three areas are in deep distress. As a result of the unique burdensome conditions Israel has imposed on them, there are distinct differences in the opinions of respondents in each area—toward their governance, the threats they face, and their hopes for the future. These cannot be ignored.
The bottom line from our three years of polling is that the unique circumstances that Israel has imposed on Palestinians have created greater complexity in finding a path forward.
For two decades, Gaza was severed from the rest of the Palestinian population and economically strangled by Israel, with Hamas being both punished and then rewarded by the Israeli government which sought to foster a division in Palestinian ranks. This was accomplished, enabling Hamas to grow in strength.
Israel’s war on Gaza has had devastating consequences for Palestinians. Our findings were able to quantify the magnitude of their losses. Almost two-thirds report having been forced to evacuate their families four or more times in the first 18 months. Most have lost family members. A full 70% say that their homes have been totally destroyed, with majorities reporting extreme scarcity of food, water, medical services, and adequate shelter.
The three-decades-long enforced closure of East Jerusalem has severed the city’s Palestinians from their compatriots in the rest of the occupied territories. Before closure, Palestinians from the West Bank came to Jerusalem for employment and services. After closure, Palestinians in East Jerusalem lost their customers, clients, and income, and were forced to become incorporated into the Israeli economy. Since October 7, our polls show majorities reporting heightened levels of economic and political distress.
There is also increased economic insecurity in the West Bank. Because Israeli policies retarded independent economic development, the two largest employers of Palestinians in the West Bank became securing permits to work as day laborers in Israel or Israeli settlements or working for the Palestinian Authority. After the war, Israel suspended work permits and restricted the transfer of Palestinian tax revenues to the PA, forcing the PA to reduce salaries. As a result, there has been a tripling of unemployment in the West Bank and an increased impoverishment of the population.
What has also grown are the severity of threats experienced by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, emanating from settler violence, home demolitions, land seizures, forced expulsions, and raids from Israeli security forces. As a result, Palestinians report feeling increasingly threatened and insecure.
Our findings also demonstrate a Palestinian crisis of confidence in their own leadership. Palestinians in Gaza want little to do with Hamas, while those in the West Bank have diminished regard for the role of the PA. Gazans increasingly blame both Hamas and Israel for the war, and three-quarters of West Bank Palestinians are dissatisfied with the PA’s overall performance in response to the conflict. The PA, which once conveyed the promise of a Palestinian future, has increasingly come to be seen as humiliated by Israel, or even as an agent of the occupation.
These factors combined—the devastation created by the war and Israeli policies that have negatively impacted and created a loss of confidence in their leadership—define the crisis confronting Palestinians today. They know what they want—independence, security, an improved economy and better jobs, and improved services—but don’t see a clear path forward.
Flowing from this, our poll findings point to some disturbing signs of despair. When asked for their preferred strategies moving forward, the plurality of respondents in the West Bank and Gaza say they just want the situation to revert to pre-October 7 but with better paying jobs, and improved services and quality of life. And despite the finding that a majority of Gazans and a plurality of West Bank Palestinians still favor a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, almost two-thirds of respondents in all three areas say that, given current political conditions and facts on the ground, they believe the situation is now close to a one-state reality in which Israel controls Palestinians throughout Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.
The bottom line from our three years of polling is that the unique circumstances that Israel has imposed on Palestinians have created greater complexity in finding a path forward. Current efforts of the international community focus on what Palestinians must do. But the real threat to peace and stability is the Israeli government which has rejected any and all proposals that call for an end to their assault on Gaza, withdrawal of their forces, a role for the PA in Gaza, and any suggestion that Palestinian independence or sovereignty be on the agenda. It is this intransigence that must be addressed. Instead of placing the burden of reform solely on the Palestinians, the U.S., Western Europe, and the Arab states should take concrete measures to force Israel to end its occupation, impose an international trusteeship with a peacekeeping force in the occupied territories, and make a long-term commitment to assisting Palestinians in establishing representative governance in an independent sovereign state—all of which our polling shows majorities or pluralities of Palestinians support.
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'Assault on Children': UNRWA Condemns Israeli Raids on East Jerusalem Schools
"Now, nearly 800 girls and boys—some as young as 6 years old—are left in shock and trauma."
May 08, 2025
Israeli occupation forces enforced a ban on the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees on Thursday by storming three schools in East Jerusalem, terrorizing children and staff as they shuttered the facilities and drawing condemnation from human rights defenders.
According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, heavily armed Israeli security forces raided the schools in the Shu'fat refugee camp in illegally occupied East Jerusalem, detaining one UNRWA employee and forcing around 550 children out of their classrooms as the invaders closed the facilities.
"As a result, UNRWA was forced to evacuate all children across the six schools it runs in East Jerusalem," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said. "Now, nearly 800 girls and boys—some as young as 6 years old—are left in shock and trauma."
"Storming schools and forcing them shut is a blatant disregard of international law," Lazzarini added. "These schools are inviolable premises of the United Nations. By enforcing closure orders issued last month, the Israeli authorities are denying Palestinian children their basic right to learn. UNRWA schools must continue to be open to safeguard an entire generation of children."
The International Court of Justice—which is also weighing a genocide case against Israel over the U.S.-backed Gaza onslaught—is considering whether the Israeli government's ban on UNRWA violates international law.
Hundreds of UNRWA staffers and their relatives have been killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip since October 2023. Israel has bombed many UNRWA schools-turned-shelters in Gaza, including a Tuesday "double-tap" airstrike on school in the al-Bureij refugee camp that killed at least 30 of the more than 2,000 people sheltering there.
UNRWA officials also accuse Israeli forces of torturing kidnapped agency workers in a bid to elicit false confessions that they took part in the October 7, 2023 attack. UNRWA and much of the international community have condemned such allegations as baseless.
In the West Bank, which includes East Jerusalem, Israeli forces launched Operation Iron Wall in January. Israel says the invasion is targeting resistance fighters largely based in West Bank refugee camps. However, tens of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced by the offensive, which has killed numerous civilians.
According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 900 Palestinians including nearly 200 children have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 2023. Attacks by Israeli settler-colonists, sometimes aided by Israeli troops, have also killed, wounded, displaced, and terrorized West Bank residents as Israel's far-right government forges ahead with plans to steal more land from Palestinians, ethnically cleanse them, and open the door to further Israeli colonization.
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Outrage as Israeli Police Raid Beloved Palestinian Bookstores in Occupied East Jerusalem
"The attempt to crush the Palestinian people includes harassment and arrest of intellectuals," said the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem.
Feb 10, 2025
The leading Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem was among those voicing outrage Monday in response to an Israeli police raid on a pair of renowned Palestinian-owned bookstores in illegally occupied East Jerusalem over the weekend.
Haaretz reported that after confiscating books they claimed were "inciteful," Israeli officers on Sunday arrested the owners of the two branches of the Educational Bookshop.
"The Educational Bookshop chain is the most well-known bookstore chain in East Jerusalem, with three locations on Salah al-Din Street and in the American Colony Hotel complex," the Israeli newspaper noted. "The stores specialize in Arabic and English books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the history of Jerusalem, and they are well-known to researchers, diplomats, journalists, and tourists."
Mourad Muna, the brother of Mahmoud Muna—one of the shop owners who was detained—said Israeli police "used Google Translate" to determine which books to seize. Among the books confiscated was one titled, "From the River to the Sea: A Colouring Book."
"They even found a Haaretz newspaper with a picture of the hostages and asked what it was, saying it was incitement," said Mourad Muna. "They took every book with a Palestinian flag on it."
The owners were arrested on suspicion of "violating public order."
B'Tselem said in response to the raid that "Israel is continuing its war on the entire Palestinian people."
"The attempt to crush the Palestinian people includes harassment and arrest of intellectuals," the group said. "Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna, well-known figures in the Jerusalem cultural scene, run the Educational Bookshop—a meeting point for cultural and political discussion. Israel must immediately release them from detention and stop persecuting Palestinian intellectuals."
In the wake of the raid and arrests of the Educational Bookshop owners, Haaretz reported that "protesters gathered outside the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court" in a show of opposition ahead of a hearing on the detention of Mahmoud and Ahmad Muna.
"Diplomatic representatives from the Netherlands, the U.K., Belgium, Brazil, France, Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, and the E.U. all visited the courthouse in Jerusalem where the hearing is due to take place, to show support for the bookshop owners," the Israeli newspaper added.
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