SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
israeli occupation
Occupation and Genocide Anywhere Are a Threat to Democracy and Freedom Everywhere
Not only is taking a stand against the overwhelming devastation that has been unleashed on Palestinians a duty, but also an obligation for people desiring peace and liberation for all.
May 20, 2026
Earlier this year a number of participants announced their withdrawal from Australia’s Adelaide Festival’s "Writer’s Week" following the disinviting of Australian-Palestinian author, Randa Abdel-Fattah. The event was subsequently cancelled.
This made me think of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese’s words—“The occupation of Palestine must be understood as part of a broader project of domination. This is not merely about the physical borders of historical Palestine. It is a systematic assertion of permanent supremacy that knows no border…”—delivered in her Nelson Mandela Lecture.
Indeed, the impact of the ongoing genocide and occupation not only echo far beyond Palestine, because of our shared humanity, but also because of the impact it is having on freedoms across the globe. The censorship of Abdel-Fattah is yet another example of this, and it is not only happening in Australia. Even in South Africa, a country that charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), artists are facing attempts to constrain their work.
The global wave of solidarity with Palestine has been used by some governments as a pretext to diminish freedoms by attacking the right to protest and political participation. While some did this by using laws that were already in place, others enacted ambiguous or unduly expansive legislation criminalizing Palestine solidarity and weaponizing the battle against antisemitism.
Protecting the freedom to advocate for Palestine is essential to protecting the right to protest, a fundamental tenet of democracy.
For instance in the US, Project Esther was released by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank also responsible for the odious Project 2025. The strategy’s recommendations have made their way into the policy of the Trump administration. This includes suing, firing, deporting, and defaming activists, organizations, and institutions by effectively claiming that involvement in advocacy for Palestine is material support of "a terrorist support network.” And also clamping down on college and university campuses where “more than 3,100 people have been arrested or detained.”
The United Kingdom, on the other hand, used counterterrorism legislation to ban Palestine Action. This despite an intelligence assessment report undermining the government’s claims by finding that most of the groups’ activities are “not terrorism” and the ban risked wrongfully criminalizing people. While the ban has been found to be unlawful, since put into effect in July 2025 terrorism arrests have increased by 660%, with the majority of these linked to it.
Across Europe Palestine solidarity was particularly targeted, like in Germany where the homes of pro-Palestinian activists have been raided and support for Israel has become a prerequisite for citizenship.
The effects of these actions will not be limited to Palestine advocacy and puts all movements at risk by diminishing freedoms that enable organizing across issues. So protecting the freedom to advocate for Palestine is essential to protecting the right to protest, a fundamental tenet of democracy.
Research by investigative journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory, Andrew Loewenstein, identified over 120 countries that have bought weapons or some form of repressive technology from Israel, all principally tested on Palestinians.
Israel provided military and strategic support to apartheid South Africa’s invasion of Angola, resulting in mass casualties; it is among the countries that armed perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide and Myanmar at a time it was found to be committing a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” against its Rohingya Muslim population.
In modern times Israel’s offerings have included drones, spyware, and surveillance tools. Like the Israeli-made spyware being used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an immigration agency that has been found to not only undertake abusive practices, but also violate its own policies.
For us in South Africa though, this is no surprise. The "homeland" of Bophuthatswana, where I was born and raised, was a product of the South African apartheid regime’s segregationist policies—which Israel took interest in—and stripped Black people of South African citizenship.
Like other homelands when it declared "independence" in 1977, it was shunned by the world. Despite its official stance, Israel was the only country to quietly recognize Bophuthatswana through informal connections and a quasi-diplomatic mission. A Jerusalem Post editorial in 1992 even referred to Bophuthatswana as "Africa’s Little Israel."
The backdrop of this relationship was the “clandestine alliance” between Israel and South Africa’s apartheid regime. Not only did the two countries collaborate on nuclear, but Israel would also become South Africa's largest weapons importer after the 1977 UN arms embargo and support the regime’s attempt to undermine sanctions.
It was a relationship of mutual admiration, an ideological alignment that in recent times is only matched by India’s admiration of Israel.
Apartheid had far-reaching consequences that extended beyond South Africa's borders. Along with unlawfully occupying Namibia, a colonial legacy embraced by the regime, it also launched hostilities in countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe. Similarly, Israel continues to conduct atrocities and aggression not only against the Palestinian people, but also in places like Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria. More recently, more than 300 people have been killed and scores injured following Israel's 10 minute assault in Lebanon—despite a two-week Middle East ceasefire, which Israel would afterwards claim did not include Lebanon. In the same way apartheid was deemed a threat to international peace and security, so too is the occupation and genocide in Palestine.
Not only is taking a stand against the overwhelming devastation that has been unleashed on Palestinians a duty, but also an obligation for people desiring peace and liberation for all. Because beyond the bombs, Israel has used international humanitarian law to try to justify the murder of civilians—a template being adopted by others like the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
Like the people of South Africa and oppressed people everywhere, the people of Palestine too will continue to make their rightful claim to freedom. And for the sake of humanity everywhere, people of conscience must continue to stand with them and keep the fire of freedom within reach.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The All Too Ordinary Death of Nasrallah Abu Siyam
What happened to Nasrallah was not unusual; in fact, it was entirely predictable. It reflects a pattern Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank have been forced to live with for decades.
Feb 26, 2026
I’ve grown accustomed to the violence in Palestine; to seeing my brothers and sisters stripped from their homes and taken away from life itself. That violence has always felt close. And yet, with Nasrallah Abu Siyam, it became unmistakable.
Not only was he my age, he was born just miles from my hometown. An American citizen. Living an ordinary life. Dreaming of ordinary things. And still, he was shot and killed by Israeli settlers, simply for helping guard his fam ily’s livestock in the occupied West Bank.
In nearly every way, his life mirrored mine. The only difference was where he stood. And that difference, it seems, was enough.
What happened to Nasrallah was not unusual; in fact, it was entirely predictable. It reflects a pattern Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank have been forced to live with for decades—one in which violence is routine, accountability is absent, and loss is absorbed without consequence.
Nasrallah Abu Siyam lived an ordinary life. He should have been afforded the ordinary right to keep it.
That pattern is clearest in how these moments of violence unfold. In Mukhmas, the village where Nasrallah was killed, a resident described what happened plainly:
“When the settlers saw the army, they were encouraged and started shooting live bullets.”
In other words, the presence of the occupying forces did not interrupt the violence; it emboldened it. This is a reality Palestinians have long understood— that the forces ostensibly tasked with “maintaining order” often function instead as a mechanism for enabling and inflicting violence.
Time and time again, Palestinians are left to bury the result.The scale of that violence is not abstract, nor is it disputed.
Between October 2023 and October 2025 alone, more than 1,100 Palestinians were killed in the occupied West Bank by Israeli forces and settlers—229 of them children. That means more than 1 in 5 of those killed were children. In that same span of time, over 10,900 Palestinians were wounded and nearly 21,000 were detained.
And yet, none of this devastation takes place on a battlefield. There is no armed group to point to, no battle to cite. What remains is an occupied territory where civilian death, injury, and detention occur as a matter of policy and practice—not as rare or exceptional events.
By this point, it may sound like a broken record—not just from me, but from years of warnings repeating what the international community has recorded and then promptly ignored. But repetition becomes inevitable when impunity is preserved at every level.
Impunity—that, I must say—does not exist in a vacuum. It is sustained through material support, political protection, and deliberate silence. All of which the United States is deeply embedded in: in the weapons supplied, in the cover extended, and in what goes unsaid. When Americans like Nasrallah Abu Siyam—at least six of them in the past two years—are killed under an occupation supported by US authority, and little is said and less is done, that silence becomes a statement in itself.
Put simply, it is a statement of how Palestinian life—American or not—is weighed, and how little that weight has meant in the political world.
No power should have the authority to dictate which lives are expendable—and which are not. Nasrallah Abu Siyam lived an ordinary life. He should have been afforded the ordinary right to keep it. But again, that failure is not abstract. It has a name, a place, and a date.
This piece was originally published on Substack.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Is Right to Discuss His Gaza Peace Plan and the Melania Film in the Same Speech
Ironically, his framing of his plans for Gaza as in some way like the Melania film displays a Freudian slip, a rare moment of complete honesty, since both are just for show, with no reality behind them.
Feb 20, 2026
President Donald J. Trump convened his so-called “Board of Peace” in Washington, DC, on Thursday. Some two dozen formal member states attended, and a similar number of international observers.
Trump again lied in saying that he had resolved eight wars, even as he seemed intent on fomenting one against Iran. Of Gaza, where the Israeli genocide continues with less visibility, he said, “Gaza is very complex. It’s been amazing. I want to thank Steve and Jared for an amazing job. Marco’s over there watching. Everybody’s fantastic. And JD, what a job they’re all doing.”
The Gaza so-called “ceasefire” has never actually been implemented, with continued Israeli occupation of over half the strip and continued bombardment and throttling of food and medical aid. It has not moved to the “second stage,” much less the third.
Trump’s Gaza project is like most of his gaudy con games, such as his university, which never educated any students and for which he had to settle out of court; or such as his border wall with Mexico, which will never be built nor will Mexico pay for it; or such as his regime change gambit in Venezuela, where he simply colluded in a coup with Nicolas Maduro’s vice president; or such as the Jeff Bezos film about Melania that has lost at least $60 million. As we will see, he more or less admits the justice of this last comparison. That is, his Gaza plans have no concrete reality, consisting of a mere Potemkin Village. In the meantime, the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are sleeping rough and suffering food and medicine shortages and their children are not receiving an education, since Israel destroyed all the schools and universities.
Nothing constructive will come of all this verbiage and all this kowtowing to Trump by an assemblage of dictators, absolute monarchies, dusted-off generals, genocidaires, and far right-wing populists.
He said:
Albania, Kosovo, Kazakhstan have all committed troops and police to stabilize Gaza. Egypt and Jordan are likewise providing very, very substantial help, troops, training, and support for a very trustworthy Palestinian police force.
Andrew Roth at The Guardian reports that Morocco and Indonesia have also agreed to send troops. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said he would be willing to send 8,000 soldiers, and even more. President Prabowo, a former general, leads the world’s most populous Muslim country and is seeking a higher profile on the world stage.
The Guardian explains, “Maj Gen Jasper Jeffers III, the US officer appointed to command the future international stabilisation force (ISF), said the board planned to deploy 20,000 soldiers in five different sectors of Gaza, beginning with Rafah.”
This colonial military arrangement is a recipe for disaster. The foreign troops will almost certainly come into conflict with Hamas. And Israel has a long history of shelling United Nations peacekeeping troops in Lebanon. Since Trump cannot conceive of a genuine political solution that gives basic rights to the Palestinians, this overlay of foreign troops is simply a Band-Aid over a deep wound that will certainly break open again.
According to the computer-generated transcript at C-SPAN, which I had ChatGPT clean up, Trump announced:
But together, we’re committed to achieving a Gaza that is properly governed throughout the whole area is going to be, you know, so many countries that have really nothing to do with the Middle East, but they’re maybe somewhat close by.They’re all involved. They want to go in and fight. They tell me all the time, "We’d like to send soldiers to fight if it’s necessary."
And I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.
We have two countries that want to go in and do a number on Hamas.
I said, "I really don’t think it’s I hope it’s not going to be necessary because they made a promise and they promised me get rid of their weapons."
Looks like they’re going to be doing that, but we’ll have to find out.
But it’s no longer a hot bed of radicalism and terror.
And to end that we have uh today and I’m pleased to announce that Kazakhstan, Azerban, UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Usbekistan, and Kuwait have all contributed more than 7 billion dollars toward the relief package.
Trump said that he would also put in $10 billion. That is $17 billion, if it ever actually materializes. Trump’s $10 billion almost certainly will not. In fact, it is not clear where he would get it from. I presume that the US Constitution has not yet been entirely abolished and that Congress is the body that appropriates funds. In any case, it is insufficient. The United Nations estimates that rebuilding Gaza will cost $70 billion.
The premise, that the conflict is resolved, is also faulty. Israeli cabinet members continue to push for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Hamas leaders have said that they will only lay down their arms if a Palestinian government is established in Gaza. Trump instead plans a colonial administration that in some ways resembles the one established by the League of Nations after WW I, which started the whole Mideast catastrophe.
Trump said in introductory remarks:
When I took office, the war in Gaza was raging with thousands of people being killed and no end in sight.
Today, thanks to unrelenting diplomacy and the commitment of many of the great people in this room, we have 59 countries signed up on Gaza.Think of that. We have uh it’s amazing. But all the people, many really so many in this room, the war in Gaza is over. It’s over. There are little flames. Little flames.
Hamas has been I think they’re going to give up their weapons, which is what they promised. If they don’t, it’ll be, you know, they’ll be harshly met. Very harshly met. They don’t want that.
You know, all the stuff like they don’t mind dying. They told me that’s not true. Everyone said, “Oh, they don’t mind dying.” No, they don’t want to die. They said, “We don’t want to die. People don’t want to die.”
The ceasefire was held and every last remaining hostage, both living and dead, has been returned back home. Think of that. That was an impossibility.
And we did hundreds of hostages, but the last 20, and I always said to Steve and Jared, I said, “The last 20 are going to be very tough. Very, very tough.” And we got them back.
We got the living back. And then we only got about 16 of the dead. And we said, “Well, you got to get them all. You promised them all.”
And they dug and dug and dug. You can imagine it’s a job that’s brutal.
And Hamas really did a lot of that work. And you got to give them credit for that. They uh they brought the last last one home a week ago.
And we got all 28 of them living and dead.
The amazing thing because I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The the parents of the dead, they knew their boy was dead. This case boys, all boys, men. But to the parents’ boys, they knew their boy was dead.
They wanted that dead body as much as if he were alive.
And when they got them back, there was great sadness, but there was great joy, too.
They wanted it as much as the people that got their sons back alive.
But we got a lot of people before those 20, Steve, what nobody talks about, but you know, hundreds of people.
Uh we did a good job and you guys did a fantastic job.
I want to thank every nation that helped us achieve this monumental breakthrough saving countless lives and really bringing peace and bringing the concept of peace because nobody thought peace in the Middle East.
I’ve always heard peace in the Middle East is impossible and it’s turned out not to be.
And we do have some work to do with Iran. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. It’s very simple. They can’t have you can’t have peace in the Middle East if they have a nuclear weapon.
And they can’t have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been told that very strongly.
Since the hard one ceasefire of last October, the United States and our partners have facilitated the delivery of vast amounts of humanitarian aid, numbers that nobody’s ever seen before.
In November, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved the Board of Peace.
And last month in Davos, we welcomed over two dozen members to this very important new organization and we are very closely working with the United Nations...
First I had an escalator that stopped. You know that it’s going up. Boom.
It’s lucky my movie star first lady was in front of me because I put my hand on a certain part of her body and I was able to stop my fall. otherwise because she had no trouble.
I said, “Boy, that was a very sharp stop, Johnny.”
So, I said, “That was strange. I’ve I’ve been on a lot of escalators. It’s never happened before. Usually, it stops very slowly. This was just boom, but our first lady was right in the proper location for me.”
I’m waving to people and uh she was holding on a little tighter. She knew what was happening. She did. She said she
That’s a very successful movie out right now. like number one. Can you believe this? And it’s a big movie big movie star.
And I always say it’s trouble because I always say there’s not room in one family for two stars. I told that we can’t have two stars in one family.
So I don’t know what that means, but it’s not it’s not good.
But it is good because we’re proud of her. She did a People in the United States love the first lady and she did the movie and it’s become the biggest selling documentary in 20 years. Can you believe?
The theaters are all packed. Women especially, they go back and they see it two or three times, four times.
I include the comments about the escalator and Melania and the part of her body and Trump losing his balance and his description of her as a movie star because Jeff Bezos funded a boondoggle flick that has earned $16 million on a $75 million production budget. These sorts of passages, which suggest mental imbalance, are usually edited out by the MSM. This one speaks eloquently about how the Trumps are at the center of his thinking even when he is discussing Gaza.
Ironically, his framing of his plans for Gaza as in some way like the Melania film displays a Freudian slip, a rare moment of complete honesty, since both are just for show, with no reality behind them.
I’m glad, and I think everyone is glad, that the living Israeli hostages were released and the remains of the dead were returned to their grieving families. Hamas’ hostage-taking, targeting innocent civilians for the most part, was an egregious war crime.
But it is astonishing that this man could jabber on like that about Melania and about his so-called ceasefire in Gaza for all that time and never mention the way its Palestinian population has been genocided, Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, and tens of thousands of its innocent civilians slaughtered, including 19,000 children. And while it is true that he, unlike Joe Biden, forced the Israeli government to reduce the intensity of its campaign substantially, he hasn’t actually brought peace to the strip, where Israel has killed hundreds in recent months and where it continues to brutalize the civilian population.
Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, United Arab Emirates, United States, and Uzbekistan are founding members of the BOP, and the following countries have indicated an intention to join: Albania, Belarus, Cambodia, Egypt.
The list consists for the most part of small countries or medium powers hoping to ingratiate themselves with the president for their own reasons. The US is the only democracy, if it is one anymore. Turkiye has become a competitive authoritarian regime and Israel rules 5 million Palestinians militarily without affording them any right to vote on their own destinies. Western Europe indignantly rejected Trump’s overtures.
Critics have complained that Trump, who made himself chairman of the board for life, is attempting to replace the United Nations—which he has defunded in an attempt to destroy it—with a body under his personal control.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing constructive will come of all this verbiage and all this kowtowing to Trump by an assemblage of dictators, absolute monarchies, dusted-off generals, genocidaires, and far right-wing populists. Palestinians are huddling in tents atop the rubble of their former homes, and babies are dying of hypothermia. We can talk about the “ceasefire” when that situation has been remedied.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Before It Even Began, This Year’s UNGA Revealed Its Bias Toward Israel
Despite a theme centered on peace and a strong commitment to safeguarding fundamental human rights, this year’s session is already exhibiting deep cracks that hint at a stark contradiction between the UN General Assembly's stated ideals and its actions.
Sep 25, 2025
The United Nations is often regarded as the global community’s foremost symbol of peace and problem solving. Each September, world leaders gather in New York City for the annual General Assembly, a weeklong summit that is framed as the pinnacle of diplomacy and international cooperation. This year’s 80th session opened on Tuesday, September 23, under the theme: “Better together, 80 years and more for peace, development, and human rights.”
While the 2025 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) boasts a laundry list of urgent global issues, the question of Palestine is poised to take center stage. Against the backdrop of deepening humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, and a recent wave of announcements by many Western countries formally recognizing Palestinian statehood, the world is watching closely to see how global leaders will respond.
However, despite a theme centered on peace and a strong commitment to safeguarding fundamental human rights, this year’s session is already exhibiting deep cracks that hint at a stark contradiction between the UNGA’s stated ideals and its actions. It was already evident—even before the proceedings had begun—that this forum is not structured to advance concrete action to end the atrocities unfolding in occupied Palestine but, rather, to further Israeli interests.
In perhaps the most glaring example of UN hypocrisy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is currently the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant and whose government has officially been charged with genocide by the UN itself—has been granted a prominent platform and is scheduled to address the UNGA this Friday, September 26. In stark contrast, Palestinian delegates have been denied US visas, effectively banning them from attending in person. While virtual participation has been permitted, the message is unmistakable: Netanyahu will quite literally have the stage to blast propaganda in attempt to justify Israel’s genocide, while Palestinian voices remain largely sidelined.
This year’s UNGA—with Netanyahu present and genocide apologists like Baerbock taking prominent roles—allows global leaders to save face without delivering any substantive change.
This blatant evidence of UN bias in favor of Israel, and its broader complicity in Israel’s genocide, has been further reinforced by the election of former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock as president of this year’s UNGA. During her tenure as Germany’s foreign minister, Baerbock pursued a staunchly pro-Israel agenda, offering unwavering support for Israel’s ongoing violence in Gaza and the West Bank. Notably, in October 2023, she blocked a European Union declaration calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
As thoroughly detailed in a recent press release by the National Lawyers Guild International Committee, Baerbock’s record of militarism clashes with the stated mission of the United Nations and, of course, the theme of this General Assembly. Under Baerbock’s supervision, Germany approved arms deliveries to Israel totaling €485.1 million ($554.3 million), a record figure. She justified this support by echoing the Israeli government's claims about Hamas’ alleged use of human shields, stating that Hamas was “playing with human suffering, using women and children in Gaza as human shields, hiding its weapons under supermarkets, apartment blocks, even hospitals.”
It should be noted that the very leaders who have feigned solidarity with Palestine over the past few weeks—offering merely inadequate recognitions of Palestine statehood but no meaningful actions to end the genocide—were the ones who elected Baerbock to this position and will, more likely than not, refrain from boycotting Netanyahu’s appearance before the UNGA.
The overt influence of Israeli interests at this year’s UNGA reflects a longstanding pattern of systemic bias within the United Nations. From its early endorsement of resolutions that laid the groundwork for a Zionist ethnostate, to the enduring structural power imbalances—most notably the US veto, consistently weaponized to enable Israel and block ceasefire efforts—the UN has repeatedly failed the Palestinian people. Far from being a neutral arbiter, it has proven both ill-equipped and, at times, complicit in the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.
The staunch unwillingness of the UNGA, and the broader UN system, to challenge Israel or intervene in its ongoing genocide was made starkly clear just last year. The UNGA set a September 18 deadline for Israel to withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territories, citing an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice that affirms the illegality of the Israeli occupation. Israel, of course, ignored the demand; the deadline came and went without consequences, once again exposing the UN’s reliance on empty words rather than meaningful action.
And we are already witnessing a similar pattern of nonaction this year. While heads of state like France’s Emmanuel Macron attempt to use the UNGA to cleanse their reputations with hollow statements and symbolic gestures, it is crucial to recognize not only the UN’s ineffectiveness but also its role in perpetuating genocide and deflecting international outrage. Essentially functioning as a performative media spectacle, this year’s UNGA—with Netanyahu present and genocide apologists like Baerbock taking prominent roles—allows global leaders to save face without delivering any substantive change.
Words alone are not enough. Merely recognizing a Palestinian state does not end the genocide. What’s needed is an arms embargo, targeted sanctions, and other concrete measures that exert real pressure on Israel and force an end to its ongoing extermination campaign against the Palestinian people. In the face of sustained atrocities, including Israel’s current brutal assaults on Gaza City, and broader regional aggression by Israel throughout the Middle East, these lukewarm gestures by world leaders and the UNGA are nothing short of unacceptable.
Keep ReadingShow Less
In Palestine, Food Is a Way to Survive, Resist, and Come Together
For the past two years, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have continued Indigenous practices in the face of deprivation and foreign occupation.
Sep 12, 2025
Food—and the denial of it—has come into sharp focus with the Israeli occupation’s mass starvation and genocide in Gaza and the increasing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. Famine has been officially declared in Gaza.
The United Nations World Food Programme had estimated that at least 470,000 people have been enduring famine-like conditions in Gaza, a number growing by the day as the siege and blockade of food into Gaza continues
One in 5 children in Gaza suffers from "severe malnutrition" as of late July. When food is available to buy, the prices of essentials are astronomical, and privatized food aid delivery remains erratic, unsafe, and cruel, with several people shot dead while attempting to secure anything they can get to feed their families.
Amid these atrocities and the images of emaciated Palestinians, it is vital to remember that across every village in Palestine, food has not just been a means to survive but the connective tissue to our culture, identity, liberation, resistance, and to our land. Centuries-old food practices live on in the homes of the steadfast residents that remain. The ingredients and where and how they are grown may have changed as a result of decades of occupation and colonial violence, but customs and flavors endure.
Palestinians adapt and resist, and have done so for almost 80 years.
Agricultural practices and communities have adapted and been transformed. Some have vanished with decades of displacement and extermination, while others have stood firm and celebrated a resurgence. Recipes have evolved to make use of new ingredients connected to the struggle for land and resources, and traditions like al-ʿAwna, a system of collective agricultural labor, embody this spirit of adaptation and resilience. Rooted in mutual aid, al-ʿAwna has long repelled colonial tactics of extermination and displacement by providing communal opportunities to cultivate land, acquire food, cook, and support one another.
For Palestinians, food has been a means to prevail.
A History of Adaptation and Mutual Aid
During the Nakba (the catastrophe) of 1948, more than 530 Palestinian villages were forcibly displaced. People were cut off from their land and farms and lost access to growing Indigenous produce. Many became refugees overnight, pushed into Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries and compelled to take up work in urban areas as settler colonialism eroded links to land and agricultural traditions.
Today, Palestinians have to increasingly buy rather than grow their own food, but the meals prepared with these staple ingredients still feature in kitchens and on dinner tables.
Before 1948, farmers from Silwan, a Jerusalem neighborhood, would grow black-eyed beans and green chard in the Bustan area. Foraging for ingredients like khubayza, nettle, milk thistle, and mulberry leaves was and is still practiced in Palestine. Seeds were distributed among Palestinian communities to grow native fruits and vegetables, including a recent initiative in northern Gaza called Thamara that distributes these seeds to those living in tent camps as a result of Israel’s ongoing military onslaught in the Strip.
Food as solidarity
While Palestinians may have been separated from their land where they grew wheat and sesame, their dishes persisted through new recipes and food traditions from different towns and villages, fused into new culinary traditions. Rummaniyeh—a lentil and eggplant stew cooked in pomegranate juice—was modified by Palestinians from Lid and Ramleh who were displaced into Gaza. There, they added Gazan flavors like ‘ein jarada (dill seeds and chili) and red taheini (sesame sauce), giving birth to a distinct new flavor.
These culinary delights revolved around the concept of takaya (soup kitchens), an Islamic tradition based on communities looking after one another. Solidarity was the basis of food cooked and eaten together.
Many takaya were built hundreds of years ago, with Hebron’s itikea established in the 12th century and still in use today. Others followed during the Ottoman era, such as the Fatmeh Khatun itkiea in Jerusalem near Al-Aqsa Mosque, two takayas in Gaza, one in Al-Bireh, and another one in Jenin. Over time, traditions of takaya and giving became prevalent in every Palestinian town and village. Ouneh and faz’a, cultures of mutual aid through funding and community help, were also established to support those in need. Their existence defies settler colonialism ensuring survival and a sense of community despite threats of erasure (see Jerusalem in the Malmouk Era: History and Architecture, Taawon Publishers, Jerusalem, 2024).
Adapting and handing down recipes in spite of a decades-long history of erasure and dispossession is a way of resistance and for traditions to endure.
Six years ago, an initiative was launched in rural Jerusalem to prepare meals for resisters on Mount Sbih that settlers were attempting to occupy. Another itikea was launched in Jerusalem for hospital patients from Gaza who came to the city to receive treatment.
The occupation has realized that there is strength in our traditions of mutually preparing food and passing our recipes through generations. That is why it has targeted takaya across Palestine, destroying some 42 of them in recent years. But my research has consistently shown that our people and our food can overcome this, too.
Food as Memory
For so many Palestinians, certain dishes are tied to an event and a place in time and can evoke strong memories. Jarysheh, a dish of cracked wheat, meat broth, dried yogurt, and lamb, was a hallmark of weddings and funerals in Lifta and Dayr Yasin. But as elders such as Im Ibrahim, a woman from Dir Yasin, recalls: Jarysheh has not been made for a wedding since the Nakba—it is too deeply connected now with funerals and a sense of loss and death from the infamous Dayr Yasin Massacre on April 9, 1948.
Efforts to elevate Palestinian cuisine and food traditions can help prevent food appropriation and theft by the occupation. Adapting and handing down recipes in spite of a decades-long history of erasure and dispossession is a way of resistance and for traditions to endure.
Food Sovereignty, Survival, and Resistance in the Present Day
Today in Gaza, the soil is forever contaminated with heavy metals from the relentless Israeli bombardment. According to a recent estimate of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Gaza is left with only 1.5% of cropland that is accessible and suitable for cultivation. Last month, in a violent assault on Palestinian food sovereignty, Israeli occupation forces raided and destroyed a Palestinian seed bank in the West Bank city of Hebron. A few weeks ago, in the village of Al-Mughayyir near Ramallah, the Israeli military carried out raids, demolished homes, and seized land. In addition to all the violence and forced displacement against the people of Al-Mughayyir, the Israeli army also uprooted 3,000 olive trees from their land, leaving them without land and olives and struggling for the minimum to survive.
For the past two years, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have continued Indigenous practices in the face of deprivation and foreign occupation. Hundreds of takaya have sprung up across the strip and few in Tulkarem and Jenin. Food and money donations pour in, and volunteers help cook food. They have become the primary source of cooked meals for the majority of the displaced population.
What is happening in Palestine today, the starvation and bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli occupation, not only threatens people’s immediate food security, dignity, and health but severely imperils Palestinian food sovereignty. Adaptive practices with deep roots in Palestinian traditions are our hope. They are a means to survive both as people and as a culture and serve as a stark example of Palestinian resilience, resistance, and sense of community. There may no longer be Jarysheh at weddings or black-eyed beans on the farms of Bustan, but there is nevertheless a collective will to survive and, together with our food, outlive the forces that try to erase us.
Keep ReadingShow Less
How the UN Can Act Decisively to End Genocide in Gaza
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel.
Sep 03, 2025
One year ago, the United Nations General Assembly demanded that Israel must end its occupation of the Palestinian Territories within 12 months.
The General Assembly voted, by 124 votes to 14, with 43 abstentions, for a strong resolution that not only “demanded” an end to the occupation within a year, but called on all countries to refrain from trade involving Israeli settlements and from transfers of weapons “where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that they may be used in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The General Assembly was meeting on September 18, 2024, in an Emergency Special Session, invoking the “Uniting For Peace” principle to act where the UN Security Council has failed to do so. The General Assembly had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the legality of the Israeli occupation and the legal consequences arising from it, and the new resolution was triggered by the court’s ruling, on July 19, 2024 that the Israeli occupation is unlawful and must end “as rapidly as possible.”
A year later, Israel has failed to comply with any of the demands of the 124 states. On the contrary. It has escalated its genocide in Gaza by cutting off nearly all food, medicine, and humanitarian assistance; launching relentless bombardments; expanding ground incursions; and displacing virtually the entire population. All over the world, people are calling on leaders and politicians to do whatever it takes to put a stop to this holocaust before it goes any further.
As world leaders gather again in New York for another UN General Assembly beginning on September 9, how will they respond to Israel’s ever-escalating genocide and continued occupation and expansion of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem? Grassroots political pressure is building on all of them to turn the strong words in ICJ rulings and UN resolutions into meaningful action to end what the vast majority of the world recognizes as the most flagrant genocide of our time.
Countries have taken individual actions to cut off trade with Israel and cancel weapons contracts. Turkey announced a total trade boycott on August 29, and closed its airspace to Israeli planes and its ports to Israeli ships. Twelve members of the Hague Group, formed to challenge Israeli impunity, have formally committed to banning arms transfers and blocking military-related shipments at their ports. Sweden and the Netherlands have urged the European Union to adopt sanctions on Israel, including suspending the EU-Israel trade deal.
But most of the 124 countries that voted to demand an end to the occupation have done very little to enforce those demands. If they fail to enforce them now, they will only confirm Israel’s presumption that its corrupt influence on US politics still ensures blanket impunity for systematic war crimes.
What will be left to salvage of Palestine if the UN can only counter Israel’s genocide and America’s bombs with endless court rulings, resolutions, and declarations, but no decisive action?
In response to this unconscionable state of affairs, Palestine’s UN representative has formally asked the UN to authorize an international military protection force for Gaza to help with the delivery of humanitarian aid and protect civilians. So has the largest coalition of Palestinian NGOs, PNGO, as well as pro-Palestine groups and leaders such as Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins. There’s a growing global movement calling for the UN General Assembly to take up this request in another Emergency Special Session when it meets this month. That would be well within the authority of the General Assembly in a case like this, where the Security Council has been hijacked by the US abuse of its veto power.
Whether or not this initiative for a protective force succeeds, the truth is that the governments of the world already have countless ways to support Palestine—they simply need to muster the political will to act. Israel is a small country that depends on imports from countries all over the world. It has diversified sources for many essential products, and, although the United States supplies 70% of its weapons imports, many other countries also supply weapons and critical parts of its infernal war machine. Israel’s dependence on complicated international supply chains is the weakest link in its presumption that it can thumb its nose at the world and kill with impunity.
If the large majority of countries that have already voted for an end to the occupation are ready to back their words and their votes with coordinated action, a UN-led trade boycott, divestment campaign, and arms embargo can put enormous pressure on Israel to end its genocide and starvation of Gaza, and its occupation of Palestine. With full participation by enough countries, Israel’s position could quickly become unsustainable.
Two years into a genocide, it is shameful that the world’s governments haven’t already done this, and that their people have to plead, protest, and push them into action through a dense fog of spin and propaganda, while leaders mouth the right words yet keep doing the wrong things.
Many people compare the problem the world faces in Israel to the crisis over apartheid South Africa. The similarity lies not only in their racism, but also in the Western countries’ shameful complicity in their human rights abuses and lack of concern for the lives of their victims. It is surely no coincidence that the United States, with its own history of genocide, slavery, and apartheid, acted as the main diplomatic supporter and military supplier of apartheid South Africa, and now of Israel.
But it took over 30 years, from the first UN arms embargo and oil sanctions in 1963 to the final lifting of UN sanctions in 1994, before UN action helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was not until 1977 that the UN even made its arms embargo binding on all members. In the case of Israel and Palestine, the world cannot wait 30 years for its actions to have an impact. What will be left to salvage of Palestine if the UN can only counter Israel’s genocide and America’s bombs with endless court rulings, resolutions, and declarations, but no decisive action?
In a world that is truly united to end Israel’s genocide, threats of US and Israeli retaliation would isolate the United States and Israel more than those they target.
One initiative that will be debated and voted on in the General Assembly is the one advanced by France and Saudi Arabia. In July they hosted a high-level UN conference on the “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the implementation of the Two State Solution.” But its agenda is weak, and it avoids any strong action to pressure Israel to end the genocide or the occupation.
The first steps the declaration calls for are a ceasefire in Gaza, the restoration of the Palestinian Authority’s control of Gaza, and then the deployment of an international military “stabilization” force. But Israel has already rejected the first two steps, and critics warn that a stabilization force would mean foreign troops deployed in Gaza, not to protect Palestinians from Israeli bombs and bulldozers, but to police them, contain resistance, and reinforce Israeli demands.
Moreover, the declaration contains no enforcement mechanism. Instead, it offers only carrots—promises of recognition, trade, and arms deals—while Israel pays no price for continuing its crimes.
And while the declaration could pave the way for more Western countries to join the 147 countries that already recognize Palestine as an independent state, without concrete pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza and end the occupation, such recognition risks being symbolic at best—and, at worst, may embolden Israel to accelerate its campaign of mass killing, settlement expansion, and annexation before the world can act.
What is urgently needed is for the General Assembly to hold an Emergency Special Session to vote on a UN protection force, as well as a UN-led arms embargo, trade boycott, and divestment from Israel, conditioned on ending the genocide in Gaza and the post-1967 occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The arms embargo and economic measures against Israel should be binding on all UN members, with the full support of the UN secretariat, which can provide staff to organize and supervise them, in coordination with UN members. China, the largest supplier of Israeli imports, and Turkey, which was the third largest before it cut off trade with Israel, should both be ready to take leadership roles in a UN boycott and arms embargo. The European Union collectively does even more trade with Israel than China, and has failed to unite against the genocide, but strong UN leadership could help Europe to overcome its divisions and join the campaign.
As for the United States, its role in this crisis, under former President Joe Biden and now under President Donald Trump, is to encourage Israel’s crimes, provide unlimited weapons, veto every Security Council resolution, and oppose every international attempt to end the slaughter. Even as majorities of ordinary Americans now side with the Palestinians and oppose US military support for Israel, the oligarchy that rules America is as guilty of genocide as Israel itself. As the world comes together to confront Israel’s crimes, it will also have to confront the reality that Israel is not acting alone, but in partnership with the United States of America.
Aggressors and bullies get their way by dividing their enemies and picking them off one at a time, as the world has seen the European colonial powers and now the United States do for centuries. What every aggressor or bully fears most is united opposition and resistance.
Israel and the US currently apply huge political pressure against countries and institutions that take action to boycott, sanction, or divest from Israel, as Norway has by its decision to divest its sovereign wealth fund from Caterpillar for supplying bulldozers to demolish homes in Palestine. In a world that is truly united to end Israel’s genocide, threats of US and Israeli retaliation would isolate the United States and Israel more than those they target.
Recent UN General Assemblies have heard many speeches lamenting the UN’s failure to fulfill its most vital purpose, to ensure peace and security for all, and how the veto power of the five permanent members (P5) of the Security Council prevents the UN from tackling the world’s most serious problems. If, at this year’s UN General Assembly, the world can come together to confront the holocaust of our time in Gaza, this could mark the birth of a reenergized and newly united UN—one finally capable of fulfilling its intended role in building a peaceful, sustainable, multipolar world.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Palestinian Women on Hunger Strike to Demand Israel Return Body of Peace Activist Killed by Israeli Settler
"Whatever the occupation forces will do, whatever the settlers will do, we will persist," said the mother-in-law of slain activist Awda Hathaleen.
Aug 04, 2025
More than 60 Palestinian women have launched a hunger strike to demand Israel return the body of a peace activist killed by an Israeli settler last week in the occupied West Bank.
The body of Awda Hathaleen, who was shot and killed on Monday as Israeli settlers moved in to bulldoze his village, is still being held by Israeli authorities.
Meanwhile, his killer—Yinon Levi, a notorious settler who has been sanctioned by several governments, at one point including the United States before President Donald Trump lifted the sanctions—has been set free after a brief period of house arrest.
Hathaleen, who appeared last year in the documentary No Other Land, was highly regarded among peace advocates in Palestine, Israel, and the United States—where he was scheduled for an interfaith speaking tour before he was abruptly deported by the U.S. government in June.
Israeli police have refused to return Hathaleen's body to family members for a burial unless his family agrees to hold a quick funeral under cover of night, outside the village, with no more than 15 people in attendance.
The family refused these restrictive conditions, saying: "Awda is not a thief. We will not bury him in the dark."
Following Hathaleen's killing, Israeli forces have also arrested at least eight others from the village—including Hathaleen's brother.
According to Middle East Eye:
Israeli forces have raided family homes in the village each night since the killing, arresting their husbands and brothers and beating other family members.
"A woman would be not properly dressed, lying in bed, and they would come in and open the door and say, 'We want your husband, we want your brother'," Ikhlas Hazalin, Hathaleen's sister-in-law, told Middle East Eye on Thursday.
"Whenever they didn't find whom they were looking for, other family members would be beaten–his brother, or one of his family members—until the wanted person was brought in."
Hazalin added: "I've never seen such brutality."
On Thursday, 60 women from Hathaleen's village of Umm al-Khair launched a hunger strike, demanding the Israeli military occupation release his body and free the eight others currently being held in detention.
"I found him soaked in his blood," Hathaleen's mother told Al Jazeera. "I started calling his name: 'Awdah!...Awdah!' But he wasn't responding."
"I am on hunger strike until they hand me my son's body," she said. "I want to smell him."
Hathaleen's wife, Hanady, said that their three children—none of whom is older than five—have spent recent days crying for their dad.
"The moment his father was killed, Mohammed was next to him, shouting, 'My God! My God!'," she said. "Mohammed is only two-and-a-half years old."
Her husband's death was the result of the government-backed settler violence he'd spent years attempting to resist. Since October 2023, nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by the military and settlers in the West Bank, while Israel has demolished nearly 3,000 family homes, according to the United Nations.
In 2025 alone, there have already been more than 750 documented attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians or their property, which the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) says is a 13% increase from the previous year. Home demolitions ordered by Israeli authorities forcibly displaced over 1,200 Palestinians in the first half of the year.
The eight people from Umm al-Khair currently being held in detention are among more than 3,000 being held without charges by the Israeli military under administrative detention. Meanwhile, according to the human rights group Yesh Din, 94% of settlers who wage violence against Palestinians walk away without even facing criminal charges.
Allegra Pacheco, head of the West Bank Protection Consortium, described the attack on Umm al-Khair as a microcosm of this grave power imbalance.
"The people who were injured are in prison. The people who tried to prevent this are in prison. The people who acted in self-defence are in prison," she told Middle East Eye. "And the guy with the smoking gun—the guy who shot the gun on video—is sitting at home and drinking coffee."
Hathaleen's family says the military's refusal to let him have "the proper funeral that he deserves" is yet another indignity that they intend to resist.
On Thursday, his wife and nieces announced that they would not eat until his body was returned. Dozens of other women soon joined them across the village—ranging from teenagers to those in their 70s.
Many men in the village have said they will also join if the military continues to hold Hathaleen.
Israeli peace activists have joined in calls for Hathaleen's body to be returned to his family and for other Palestinian prisoners to be freed. Over the weekend, dozens of protesters marched through West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, leading to four arrests.
(Video: International Solidarity Movement)
"He was a great activist and a great man," said Hathaleen's mother-in-law, Fatme, in a video posted by the International Solidarity Movement. "Our hearts are in pain for him."
"We already had dizziness and fainting from hunger and thirst. Doesn't matter," she said. "Whatever happens to us, we will continue until he is returned to us."
The hunger strikers say they hope their sacrifice will put enough international attention on the Israeli authorities that they'll be pressured to return Hathaleen's body and free their friends and family without conditions.
"We will persist," Fatme Hathaleen said. "Whatever the occupation forces will do, whatever the settlers will do, we will persist."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'May His Memory Be a Revolution': Palestinian Peace Activist Killed by Israeli Settler After Being Deported by Trump
Awda Hathaleen was described as "a teacher and an activist who struggled courageously for his people."
Jul 28, 2025
A Palestinian peace activist has been fatally shot by a notorious Israeli settler who was once the subject of sanctions that were lifted this year by U.S. President Donald Trump.
In June, Awda Hathaleen—an English teacher, activist, and former soccer player from the occupied West Bank—was detained alongside his cousin Eid at the airport in San Francisco, where they were about to embark on an interfaith speaking tour organized by the California-based Kehilla Community Synagogue.
Ben Linder, co-chair of the Silicon Valley chapter of J Street and the organizer of Eid and Awda's first scheduled speaking engagement told Middle East Eye that he'd known the two cousins for 10 years, describing them as "true nonviolent peace activists" who "came here on an interfaith peace-promoting mission."
Without explanation from U.S. authorities, they were deported and returned to their village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills.
On Monday afternoon, the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) reported on social media that Awda Hathaleen had been killed after Israeli settlers attacked his village and that a relative of his was also severely injured:
Activists working with Awda report that Israeli settlers invaded Umm al-Kheir with a bulldozer to destroy what little remains of the Palestinian village. As Awda and his family tried to defend their homes and land, a settler opened fire—both aiming directly and shooting indiscriminately. Awda was shot in the chest and later died from his injuries after being taken by an Israeli ambulance. His death was the result of brutal settler violence.
Later, when Awda's relative Ahmad al-Hathaleen tried to block the bulldozer, the settler driving it ran him over. Ahmad is now being treated in a nearby hospital.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz later confirmed these events, adding:
An eyewitness reported that the entry of Israeli settlers into Palestinian private lands, riding an excavator, caused a commotion, and the vehicle subsequently struck a resident named Ahmad Hathaleen. "People lost their minds, and the children threw stones," he said.
A friend and fellow activist, Mohammad Hureini, posted the video of the attack online. The settler who fired the gun has been identified by Haaretz as Yinon Levi, who has previously been hit—along with other settlers—with sanctions by former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration and other governments over his past harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank.
As the Biden State Department wrote at the time:
Levi consistently leads a group of settlers who attack Palestinians, set fire to their fields, destroy their property, and threaten them with further harm if they do not leave their homes.
The sanctions were later lifted by U.S. President Donald Trump. However, they'd already been rendered virtually ineffective after the intervention of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has expressed a desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlements.
Brooklyn-based journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who has covered other cases of settler violence for Zeteo described Levi as "a known terrorist who's been protected by the Israeli government for years," adding that, "One of the only good things Biden did for Palestine was sanction him."
Violence by Israeli settlers in the illegally-occupied West Bank has risen sharply since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and the subsequent 21-month military campaign by Israel in Gaza.
Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by settlers during that time. More than 6,400 have been forcibly displaced following the demolition of their homes by Israel, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The killing of Awda Hathaleen—who had a wife and three young children—has been met with outpourings of grief and anger from his fellow peace activists in the United States, Israel, and Palestine.
Issa Amro, the Hebron-based co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements, described Awda as a "beloved hero."
"Awda stood with dignity and courage against oppression," Amro said. "His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice."
Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham, who last year directed the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, described Awda Hathaleen as "a remarkable activist," and thanked him for helping his team shoot the film in Masafer Yatta.
"To know Awda Hathaleen is to love him," said the post from JVP announcing his death. "Awda has always been a pillar amongst his family, his village and the wider international community of activists who had the pleasure to meet Awda."
Israeli-American peace activist Mattan Berner-Kadish wrote: "May his memory be a revolution. I will remember him smiling, laughing, dreaming of a better future for his children. We must make it so."
Keep ReadingShow Less
With the World's Eyes on Gaza, Israel Continues Its War on the West Bank
Every action Israel has undertaken, especially since the commencement of its devastating genocide in Gaza, has been carefully calculated to culminate in the irreversible annexation of the West Bank.
Jul 27, 2025
Israel is meticulously following a textbook model of instigating unrest in the occupied West Bank.
The latest such provocations consisted of stripping the Palestinian-run Hebron (Al-Khalil) municipality of its administrative powers over the venerable Ibrahimi Mosque. Worse, according to Israel Hayom, it granted these powers to the religious council of the Kiryat Arba Jewish settlement, an extremist settler body.
Though all Jewish settlers in occupied Palestine can be qualified as extremists, the approximately 7,500 inhabitants of Kiryat Arba represent a more virulent category. This settlement, established in 1972, serves as a strategic foothold to justify subjecting Hebron to stricter military control than virtually any other part of the West Bank.
Kiryat Arba is infamously linked to Baruch Goldstein, the U.S.-Israeli settler who, in February 1994, unleashed a horrific attack. He opened fire at Muslim worshipers kneeling for dawn prayer at the Ibrahimi Mosque, mercilessly killing 29. This bloodbath was swiftly followed by another, where the Israeli army brutally cracked down on Palestinian protesters in Hebron and across the West Bank, murdering an additional 25 Palestinians.
This level of systemic pressure and oppression will ultimately lead to a popular explosion.
Yet, the Israeli Shamgar Commission, tasked with investigating the massacre, resolved in 1994 that the Palestinian mosque, a site of profound religious significance, was to be grotesquely divided: 63% allocated to Jewish worshipers and a mere 37% to Palestinian Muslims.
Since that calamitous decision, oppressive restrictions have been systematically imposed. These include pervasive surveillance and, at times, unjustifiable, extended closures of the site, solely for exclusive settler use.
The latest decision, described by Israel Hayom as "historic and unprecedented," is profoundly dangerous. It places the fate of this historic Palestinian mosque directly into the hands of those fanatically keen on acquiring the holy site in its entirety.
But the Ibrahimi Mosque is merely a microcosm of something far more sinister underway across the West Bank. Israel has exploited its war in Gaza to dramatically escalate its violence, carry out mass arrests, confiscate vast tracts of land, systematically destroy Palestinian farms and orchards, and aggressively expand illegal settlements.
Though the West Bank, previously largely subdued by joint Israeli military pressures and Palestinian Authority crackdowns, was not a direct party to the October 7, 2023 assault nor the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, it has inexplicably become a major focus for Israeli military measures.
In the first year of the war, over 10,400 Palestinians were detained in Israeli army crackdowns, with thousands held without charge. Furthermore, hundreds of Palestinians have been forcibly ethnically cleansed, largely from the northern West Bank, where entire refugee camps and towns have been systematically destroyed in protracted Israeli military campaigns.
Israel's overarching aim remains the strangulation of the West Bank. This is achieved by severing communities using ubiquitous military checkpoints, imposing total closures of vast regions, and the cruel suspension of work permits for Palestinian laborers, who are almost entirely dependent on the Israeli work market for survival.
This insidious plan also explicitly targeted all Palestinian holy sites, including the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem, and the Ibrahimi Mosque. Even when these shrines were nominally accessible, age restrictions and suffocating military checkpoints make it difficult, at times utterly impossible, for Palestinians to worship there.
In August 2024, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted that his relentless, violent campaign against the West Bank was part of confronting the "broader Iran terror axis." Practically, this statement served as a green light for the Israeli army to treat the West Bank as an extension of the ongoing Israeli genocide on Gaza. By mid-July 2025, over 900 Palestinians had been killed by the Israeli army in the West Bank, while at least 15 were murdered by settlers.
As Palestinians were pushed further against the wall, with no centralized strategy by their leadership to meaningfully resist, Israel exponentially increased its illegal settlement constructions and the brazen legalization of numerous outposts, many built illegally even by Israeli government standards.
Israel's actions in the West Bank were not a sudden deviation but consistent with a long-standing, insidious scheme. This includes a plan solidified by the Israeli Knesset in 2020 that allowed Israel to officially annex the West Bank. Israel's ultimate goal has always been to confine the majority of Palestinians into Bantustan-like enclaves, while asserting full control over the vast majority of the region.
In August 2023, extremist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir articulated this sinister vision: "My right, the right of my wife and my children to move around Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank] is more important than freedom of movement for the Arabs."
More coercive measures swiftly followed, including Knesset laws to significantly curtail the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East operations, and further legislation to entrench de facto annexation. Last May, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich audaciously announced 22 more settlements. On July 2, 14 Israeli ministers made a public call on Netanyahu to immediately annex the West Bank.
In fact, every action Israel has undertaken, especially since the commencement of its devastating genocide in Gaza, has been carefully calculated to culminate in the irreversible annexation of the West Bank—a process that would inevitably be followed by declaring native inhabitants persona non grata in their own homeland.
This level of systemic pressure and oppression will ultimately lead to a popular explosion. Though suppressed by the brutality of the Israeli army, the terror of armed settlers, and the suppressive actions of the Palestinian Authority, the breaking point is fast approaching.
Those in the West who preach hollow calls for calm and deescalation must understand the region is hurtling toward the brink. Neither diplomatic platitudes nor sterile press releases will suffice to avert the catastrophe. They are advised to act decisively against Israel's destructive policies, and they must act immediately.
Keep ReadingShow Less
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.
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More Stories
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy