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israeli settlements
Progressive Democrats Urge US to Join Ban on Products From Illegal Israeli Settlements
"While the Trump admin attacks the move, Congress can and must act," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen.
Sep 09, 2026
As the UK, Canada, and France enact bans on goods from illegal Israeli settlements, some progressive Democrats are calling for the US to join the effort to sanction the escalating wave of state-backed settler terrorism against Palestinians in the West Bank.
"Finally, some European countries are going beyond the ritual denouncing of expanding illegal Israeli settlements and are taking action to uphold international law. It is a modest but important step," said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) in an X post on Tuesday. "While the Trump admin attacks the move, Congress can and must act."
He was joined by Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who said the trade ban was a "step in the right direction and toward ending the occupation," and added that "the US must do the same."
The Trump administration, which has often moved in lockstep with Israel, had a muted response to news of the trade ban. Trump himself has not commented on the sanction effort, and according to Axios, he did not push back when briefed on the plan by UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
But while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio says "stability" in the West Bank is a top priority, including halting the "uptick in violence," he made clear the administration opposed the actions taken by nations cutting off trade with the settlements.
"Obviously, we're not going to do what the UK did," Rubio told reporters on Tuesday.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) called the expansion of Israeli settlements "an ugly land grab carried out through violence and terrorism," and added that "any American president serious about achieving peace" should be willing to cut off trade with the settlements.
But Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a possible 2028 presidential candidate who was detained by a group of armed settlers during a trip to the West Bank in July, acknowledged that such a ban was unlikely to be enacted under Trump. He said that "the next American president" should ban trade with the settlements "and recognize a Palestinian state."
Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.), a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said he "wholeheartedly" welcomed the trade ban enacted by the UK, adding that "international law must mean something, and accountability must apply to all." However, he stopped short of saying the US should join the ban itself.
Conversely, fellow Illinoisan Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D) said the US "must take this long overdue step, and do much more to end its support for Israeli occupation and genocide."
Any effort to compel the US to restrict products from Israeli settlements would likely need to come through Congress.
In June, amid the recent historic uptick of settler attacks, Van Hollen and Castro led dozens of lawmakers in a call for the State Department to comply with an existing law that requires US loan guarantees available to Israel to decrease in accordance with its expenditure on illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Last year, Van Hollen was joined by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and three other senators in the Democratic caucus proposing legislation that would codify Biden-era sanctions on individual violent Israeli settlers, which were revoked by Trump.
However, no legislation has yet been introduced aimed at restricting trade with the settlements.
Meanwhile, Democratic Party leaders in Congress, namely House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), have not issued public statements on the international sanctions initiative.
That puts them at odds even with some pro-Israel groups, like the liberal lobbying organization J Street, which endorsed the international ban on trading with the settlements on Tuesday.
“We welcome the UK, France, and Canada’s decision to ban the import of goods produced in settlements, as well as the UK’s intention to sanction those who finance, facilitate, or construct new settlements," said the group's president, Jeremy Ben-Ami. "Support for Israeli security and strong opposition to the settlement project are not in contradiction; they go hand in hand. Israel’s closest allies are making clear that the status quo is no longer acceptable."
"We call on the US government and the European Union to pursue similar action," Ben-Ami said. "The international community must make clear that efforts to foreclose Palestinian self-determination have consequences."
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'I’ll Wear It as a Badge of Honor,' Says MP Sultana After Israel Bars Entry to 11 UK Lawmakers
"I will not be intimidated into silence," said MP Zarah Sultana. "If anything, this ban only strengthens my resolve to keep speaking out."
Sep 08, 2026
Zarah Sultana, a member of the UK Parliament, said she won't stop speaking about the rights of Palestinians after Israel banned her from entering the country on Tuesday.
"Given that this is a fascist government presiding over genocide, apartheid and an illegal occupation, I’ll wear it as a badge of honor," she said in a post to X. "I will not be intimidated into silence. I will continue to speak out against Israel’s genocide and against the UK’s complicity. If anything, this ban only strengthens my resolve to keep speaking out."
Sultana, who represents Coventry South and is a co-founder of the left-wing Your Party, was one of 11 members of Parliament whom Israel announced it was blocking from entry in retaliation after the UK joined Canada, France, and other nations to announce an import ban on goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.
Following a year of record violence against Palestinians in the territory, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the import ban was in response to the "ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank—perpetrated by settler terrorists."
Israel has reacted with fury at the move, closing the British consulate in East Jerusalem, which handles relations with Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.
Also banned from the country are UK Labour MPs Diane Abbott, Richard Burgon, John McDonnell, and Naz Shah; Green MPs Siân Berry, Ellie Chowns, Carla Denyer, Adrian Ramsay, and Hannah Spencer; as well as Jeremy Corbyn, who led the Labour Party from 2015-20 before co-founding Your Party with Sultana in 2025.
Remarking on his and his colleagues' ban from the country, Corbyn said Israel's treatment of Palestinians was "the real scandal."
"I have visited all parts of Palestine on several occasions, where I have witnessed the horrors of occupation, as well as the resilience and humanity of the Palestinian people," Corbyn wrote on X. "They are the ones who suffer from Israel's apartheid. It is their freedom which is egregiously curtailed, alongside thousands of Palestinian refugees who are denied the right of return."
He added: "As the world wakes up to the genocide in Gaza, it is shocking that Israel continues to deny entry to UN investigators and international journalists. Israel doesn't want the world to see what it is doing—but we can never give up in our attempts to expose the truth."
Israel also banned Fahad Ansari, a lawyer who has represented Hamas’ political wing in court in the UK and—like Sultana—said on X, “I am neither British nor an MP but do take this as a badge of honor (although pretty sure I’m already a persona non grata in the apartheid state).”
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'Must Be Just the Beginning': UK, France, Canada Move to Ban Imports From Israeli Settlements
"Today, we refuse to be bystanders to further suffering and to the destruction of the two-state solution," said UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband.
Sep 08, 2026
The United Kingdom, France, and Canada joined forces on Tuesday to ban imports of goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, where settlers and soldiers are assailing, displacing, and killing Palestinians at an unprecedented rate with the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
"Today, we refuse to be bystanders to further suffering and to the destruction of the two-state solution," Ed Miliband, the UK's foreign secretary, said in a speech to the House of Commons. Miliband pointed to the Israeli government's recent approval of construction projects that would evict Palestinian communities and "place settlements directly between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, cutting through the heart of Palestine."
"Let’s be clear what this means: the creation of a set of facts on the ground to make the two-state solution unviable," said Miliband, in what was described as the UK government's most forceful condemnation of Israeli conduct in the West Bank to date. "The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank—perpetrated by settler terrorists. And all too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians."
Miliband said the UK government would "take action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion" and penalize "those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements." He said the sanctions would be in place within six to nine months.
Miliband emphasized that in banning imports from Israel's West Bank settlements, the UK was not acting alone. The British foreign secretary noted that France and Canada will also "ban the import of goods from illegal settlements," joining "the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Norway—which have either banned goods or are in the process of doing so."
Jean-Noël Barrot, France's foreign affairs minister, wrote on social media that France is cutting off imports from illegal Israeli settlements "because the West Bank is on the brink of explosion: unchecked expansion of colonization in violation of international law, surge in violence perpetrated by extremist settlers against Palestinians, acts of terror denounced by the Israeli authorities themselves."
"France cannot, through its trade, support a situation that threatens the security of Israelis and Palestinians alike, as well as peace and stability in the region," Barrot wrote. "Europe must uphold the same imperative."
In a joint statement on Tuesday, the foreign ministers of 12 nations—the UK, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden—said that the situation in the West Bank is "rapidly deteriorating amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project."
The foreign ministers confirmed their "intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law, or that they are actively considering these and other measures, in accordance with their national procedures."
"In this regard, the UK, France, and Canada welcome the important action already taken by Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium, and will bring forward national measures to ban trade in settlement goods," the statement continued. "The government of Israel must immediately halt the expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence, and investigate allegations against Israeli forces."
Advocates largely welcomed the governments' announcements while stressing that they should be the starting point for more sweeping action to confront the Israeli government's illegal annexation efforts in the West Bank and crimes against humanity across the Palestinian territories, including the decimated Gaza Strip.
"Today’s announcement is the result of many years of work by campaigners and Palestinians themselves fighting to end severe injustice," said Nick Dearden, director of the UK-based advocacy group Global Justice Now. "We know this move will be very popular in Britain. But it must be just the beginning. How can we cooperate with a military guilty of the most serious abuses of international law? How can we trade with a country that stands accused of genocide at the world’s highest court?"
Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, dismissed the UK government's sanctions announcement as "largely performative," but said they also "reflect the impact of relentless public pressure on the current government."
"The UK is legally obliged to take serious measures to end its complicity with the State of Israel, not merely with the settlements, per the [International Court of Justice]," said Barghouti. "While Miliband says, 'We will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two-state solution,' he has not said how the UK will stop its active contribution to the Israeli-US led destruction of the international legal system and the drive towards a might-makes-right order."
US and Israeli officials responded furiously to the UK's sanctions announcement. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's extremist national security minister, called for the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem, while Israel's finance minister demanded the expulsion of the British ambassador.
Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, characterized the UK's trade ban as "discrimination against the Jewish people" and suggested that individual American states such as Florida could retaliate against the British government.
US Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), a rabidly pro-Israel lawmaker and anti-Muslim bigot, wrote on social media that "Florida is one of Britain’s largest trading partners" and signaled that the state could move to boycott UK goods.
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Israeli Finance Minister Demands Expulsion of UK Ambassador Over Settlement Trade Ban
The United Kingdom's Labour government is set to announce a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Sep 08, 2026
The United Kingdom on Tuesday is expected to announce a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a plan that prompted a furious response from far-right Israeli and American officials even as British diplomats privately acknowledged that the new sanctions package would be mostly symbolic.
"Expel the British ambassador tonight!" Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote in a social media post ahead of the official announcement. "We will not be a doormat trampled by an antisemitic government, in a country conquered by radical Islam, trying to save itself from economic and social decline by attacking Jews and the State of Israel."
UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, who is Jewish, is set to unveil the trade ban as the Israeli government aggressively accelerates its unlawful land grabs and expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank, where violent rampages by Israeli settlers have reached unprecedented levels. The trade ban was developed after the Israeli government advanced a plan to build more than 1,200 new settlement homes in the West Bank.
The Guardian reported Monday that "in his statement to MPs, Miliband is expected to use firmer language than his recent predecessors in calling out the humanitarian injustices suffered by Palestinians in Gaza."
"The steps he lays out are likely to fall short of the full set of demands made by Palestinian advocacy groups," the outlet added, "but they will still be seen as a sign that the UK is moving beyond traditional rhetorical support for a two-state solution towards active steps to forestall the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank—widely seen as intended to destroy the prospect of a Palestinian state."
New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham reportedly spoke with US President Donald Trump on Monday about the impending trade ban, which drew condemnation from the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
Behind the scenes, according to Bloomberg, UK diplomats "privately told the US that the sanctions are largely symbolic and will have no material impact on the UK’s wider relationship with Israel on trade or security, in a bid to soothe the Trump administration’s response."
Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, told The Guardian that a ban on trade with Israeli settlements would be an "absolutely important" change in UK government policy.
Nick Dearden, director of the UK-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, wrote on social media that "a settlement ban is welcome but we must go further."
"Hope the government will include services and will announce new bans of weapons sales and military coordination tomorrow," Dearden added. "The comms is an improvement but we need action."
Reuters reported that the impact of the policy move on bilateral trade with Israel is "likely to be minimal, with details unclear of how the UK will differentiate between goods originating in West Bank settlements [and] products made in Israel."
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33 Dems Help Pass House Bill That Would Strip Funds From Colleges That Boycott Israel
"The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel,” said one analyst.
Sep 03, 2026
The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed what critics say could be one of the most severe infringements on free expression in recent memory—a bill that could effectively require colleges and universities to do business with Israel or risk losing federal funds.
As Israel's genocide in Gaza and accelerating ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank continue to fuel protests, the bill is the latest piece of legislation aimed at punishing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which uses nonviolent economic tactics to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and human rights abuses.
HR 4795, introduced in July 2025 by Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), is known as the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act. But Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, described it as an "Orwellian" turn of phrase for what the legislation actually does.
"The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel,” she told Responsible Statecraft. “And if they're not doing that, they're pro-BDS and anti-Israel.”
As the outlet described:
[The bill] would bar colleges that receive federal funds from engaging in what it defines as a “nonexpressive commercial boycott” of Israel, including “refusals to deal” or terminating business relationships in order to limit commercial ties without a “valid business reason.” The law would require these institutions to submit annual certification that they were giving students and faculty access to academic programs in Israel on the same terms as programs in other countries.
In a brief opposing the bill, Friedman argued that it was not just forcing universities to do business with Israel, but with its settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. With backing from the Israeli state, violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has exploded to never-before-seen highs this year, according to the United Nations.
"This legislation," Friedman wrote, "sets up a situation in which the alleged absence of engagement with any Israeli partner/party, including in settlements, will become the basis for an accusation of boycott, putting universities in the position where, if they universities want to avoid being accused of boycotting Israel/settlements, they will need to adopt an affirmative policy of prioritizing maximal engagement/partnership with Israeli entities (including in settlements)."
The bill passed by a 237-169 vote, with support from all but two Republicans—Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). And although the vast majority of Democratic voters now hold negative views of Israel, 33 Democrats also voted in favor of the bill.
The legislation now heads to the narrowly Republican-controlled US Senate, where it would need 60 votes to advance.
Introducing the bill last year, Gottheimer said it was necessary because BDS was an "antisemitic, hate-fueled... movement" that "seeks to destroy Israel—and has no place on our college campuses."
But even critics of the BDS movement, like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chafed at its potential chilling effect on protected speech.
"No matter how strongly I oppose the BDS movement, I also believe that those who engage in BDS have a First Amendment right to do so," Nadler said before voting against the bill. "The First Amendment right to free speech does not apply only to agreeable speech."
He cited a letter sent to Congress by the ACLU opposing the bill's contention that schools should need a "valid business reason" to cut ties with Israel.
"Many of those engaged in boycotts of Israel do so not for commercial reasons, but because they wish to express their political opposition to the policies of the Israeli government—matters of overwhelming public concern and debate in the present moment. HR 4795’s labeling such boycotts as ‘non-expressive’ does nothing to change this reality," the letter said.
The bill comes as members of Congress, especially Democrats, are under increasing scrutiny for their support from pro-Israel lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose political spending arm has poured more than $104 million into supporting its preferred candidates this election cycle.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has spent more than six months embroiled in a costly war with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played a key role in persuading him to launch.
"We just got dragged into a war by Benjamin Netanyahu. He's bragging about it," Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) told Julian Andreone of Drop Site News. "That's about as embarrassing as you can get... So let's leave universities alone."
Aaron Regunberg, a contributing editor at The New Republic, described it as outrageous that Democrats who supported the bill were "actively joining the far-right's war on higher education in order to shield a genocidal ethnostate that most Americans increasingly want nothing to do with."
Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said the bill was "another effort to single out Israel for special treatment and erode Americans’ rights on its behalf."
"Will it be your child who can’t afford to go to college after 33 Democrats voted with Republicans to help Trump defund US universities? Because it certainly won’t be any of theirs," he said. "Shame on them for joining the attack on our schools and constitutional rights on behalf of Israel."
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Amnesty Warns Israel Is 'Brazenly Expanding Its Annexation Agenda' in Occupied West Bank
"Any states providing assistance to Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements or other war crimes risk complicity in international crimes against Palestinians."
Sep 03, 2026
Amnesty International said Thursday that the far-right Israeli government's recent flurry of land confiscation orders in the illegally occupied West Bank "deepens Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise and further undermines the rights of Palestinians," who are facing an increasingly destructive and deadly wave of settler violence.
The new Amnesty report noted that in July alone, the Israeli military signed "at least 15 land confiscation orders covering approximately 200 dunams (20 hectares) of land in Areas A and C in the Jenin governorate in the north of the occupied West Bank, with the apparent goal of connecting two planned Israeli settlements in the area: Emek Dotan and Noa." Those two settlements are among the more than 30 approved this year by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"These latest confiscation orders from Area A show how Israel is now brazenly expanding its annexation agenda to areas that have been under the control of the Palestinian authorities since the Oslo Accords," said Heba Morayef, Amnesty's region director for the Middle East and North Africa. "States with close trade and political relationships with the Israeli government must urgently take action to pressure Israel to rescind these land confiscation orders. Any states providing assistance to Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements or other war crimes risk complicity in international crimes against Palestinians."
"Alongside Israel’s forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Area C," Morayef added, "these measures illustrate in action the Israeli authorities’ determination to intensify its formal annexation of Palestinian land across the occupied West Bank.”
Amnesty's analysis came amid another wave of settler violence in the West Bank over the past 24 hours. The BBC reported early Thursday that "funerals have taken place for two Palestinian teenagers who local officials say were killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in an attack on their village in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday."
"The village council in al-Mughayyir told the BBC that Omar al-Nassan, 19, and Khalil Abu Alia, 16, were killed as they tried to stop Israeli settlers stealing sheep and that confrontations broke out," the outlet noted. "The Israeli military stated that its forces had entered the village to provide security for an Israeli civilian and police trying to retrieve livestock. It said they fired on and struck what it called 'key instigators' of a 'violent disturbance,' in which Palestinians threw stones at its troops."
The United Nations has tallied an average of nearly seven settler attacks per day in the West Bank this year, the highest number on record.
Amid the settler rampages as well as the ongoing genocidal assault on the Gaza Strip, the Israeli government has advanced "its controversial E1 settlement plan in violation of international law with an announcement that it has opened tenders for the construction of 1,234 Israeli homes in the occupied West Bank," Amnesty noted on Thursday.
"If implemented, the plan would isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestinian territory and will effectively divide the West Bank in two, making Palestinian movement across these areas of the occupied Palestinian territory more difficult and further fragmenting Palestinian communities," the group said.
Last last month, the European Union's diplomatic service called on the Israeli government to "withdraw the tender, halt its E1 plans as well as all other settlement expansion projects, and ensure accountability for settler violence."
But Morayef said Thursday that the international community must do much more than issue statements condemning the Israeli government's actions.
"States with close trade and political relationships with the Israeli government must urgently take action to pressure Israel to rescind these land confiscation orders," said Morayef. "Any states providing assistance to Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements or other war crimes risk complicity in international crimes against Palestinians."
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USDA Agribusiness Integration With Israel Subsidizes Settler Expansionism
While Congress advances the US-Israeli military integration plan, Israel and the US attempt to expand their “soft power” through agritechnology development across the region.
Aug 02, 2026
Congress’ proposed National Defense Authorization Act’s Section 219 ‘US-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative’ would require the countries to expand intelligence sharing and grow joint weapons research and production, including artificial intelligence surveillance, lethal drones, arms, tanks, and munitions. This comes as Israel’s military decimation of Gaza, apartheid rule over the West Bank, and occupation of southern Lebanon have triggered opposition across the world. Meanwhile, a more subtle, parallel violence grows in the form of US-funded Israeli agricultural occupation of Palestinian lands. This partnership expands Israel’s regional control spatially and financially, with US backing, but with little public knowledge.
Three years into the deliberate starvation of Gaza, the US and Israel have expanded and entrenched their longstanding agricultural cooperation through the US-Israeli Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD-ISUS). Despite global allegations of genocide against Palestine, weaponizing hunger and even of food aid itself, BARD-ISUS just approved $13.2M US for research and development of Israeli agritech on Palestinian lands.
Established in 1978 by the US and Israeli governments, BARD-ISUS has granted a total of nearly $430 million USD (as of 2024) to over 1,700 projects. In the US, the USDA Agricultural Research Service is on 19% of projects and top universities include University of California Davis (11% of projects); Cornell University (7%); and University of Florida (5%). Universities or public agencies in 48 US states (all except Alaska and North Dakota) have hosted hundreds of BARD-ISUS grants over decades. Nearly $84 million USD has gone to research grants partnering with California land grant institutions alone. The US Farm Bill has allocated additional funds to BARD-ISUS to go directly to agritech research, but also to fund Israeli postdoctoral fellows to be placed at US universities and Israeli graduate students to conduct research with US teams.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives version of the Farm Bill (HR 7567—Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026), tucks in a proposed expansion of BARD to signatories of the Abraham Accords—a 2020 mechanism by which the Trump regime pressures regional countries to normalize relations with Israel, in this case with additional promises for hundreds of millions of dollars of agritech transfer. The House passed another bipartisan amendment (H.R.7587 United States-Israel Agriculture Cooperation Improvement and Expansion Act) reiterating the expansion of BARD to Abraham Accord signatories, which also fast tracks commercialization of ag tech research in and with Israeli institutions and companies, while expanding the overall budget of BARD to $12M each year until 2030. The US Senate Committee on Agriculture has approved the extension of BARD-ISUS funding until 2031, with an allocation of $20 million per year ($80 million overall), atop the lucrative annual proceedings BARD receives from its $110 million endowment. Tellingly, as of 2020, BARD funding can now go to Israeli agricultural research projects in the West Bank’s Area C and the occupied Golan Heights.
The funding increase to BARD-ISUS and expansion of eligibility to Abraham Accords nations indicate a coercion of regional powers to normalize relations with Israel at a time of mass popular support for Palestinian sovereignty.
While BARD research appears at first glance to be apolitical “basic science” efforts to “improve crop productivity and resilience,” their website contains no mention of Palestine, or even euphemistic mentions of conflicts over land in the region. The well-funded BARD-ISUS has “generated a multitude of agricultural innovations, practices, and patents, impacting economies, industries, academia, and human health in both countries and beyond, with a high return on investment”—a claim that erases Palestinian land and agriculture, and distracts from the violence of settler occupation and genocide.
This year’s BARD grants were the “the highest funding amount awarded in the last 20 years,” indicating an entrenchment of US and Israeli academia and agrobiotech industries. The domestic relevance for this BARD expansion becomes acute amid the Farm Bill’s deference to the 2025 HR 1’s $187 Billion cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Even atop the ongoing deprivations in Gaza, BARD expansion comes as millions of people in the US in need are being kicked off SNAP, USDA employees are facing mass layoffs, and US farmers are reeling from the impacts that US and Israel’s attacks on Iran have had on fertilizers and fuel prices. Increasing funding for Israeli ag tech redirects resources away from urgent domestic agrifood needs.
The BARD-ISUS expansion also comes at a time when Israel and the US rapidly expand their targeting and destruction of not just Palestinian food systems and agricultural production, but rural and agrarian communities across Southwest Asia, in what Paul Kohlbry has termed “agrarian annihilation.” Israel continues to target Palestinian and Lebanese farmers and food systems, from the deliberate starvation of Gaza documented by international law and global civil society to the destruction of farms and waterways in the Occupied West Bank and now southern Lebanon. Israeli forces, funded by the US, continue to attack Palestinian villages, destroy agricultural lands, capture waterways, and kill farmers and pastoralists throughout the West Bank—with settler attacks hitting an “all-time high” in July 2026 according to the United Nations. The West Bank’s Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills have long endured Israeli settlements and violence—all of which have proliferated in recent years and especially in recent months. In the Jordan Valley, where an estimated 65,000 Palestinians farm some of the most fertile land in the West Bank, B’Tselem has recorded repeated demolitions of Palestinian water cisterns—structures that families build to collect rainwater because they are legally barred from connecting to piped water networks.
The expansion of USDA-funded agritechnologies—and BARD pressure for corporate commercialization—undermines the viability of Palestinian and Lebanese food security and food sovereignty; unchecked, it jeopardizes the long-term stability and viability of rural communities in the region who are increasingly displaced with these US-subsidized high-tech ag research projects. Rather than establish accountability for Israeli forces’ years of deliberate famine in Gaza, such funding subsidizes more land dispossession and obscures the well-documented starvation of Palestine with claims of agribiotechnology research for Global Food Security. BARD-ISUS just launched a new Food Security Technology Accelerator to “support collaborative R&D projects between Israeli and American agritech researchers and corporations, so as to “foster innovation in food security.” How can the countries responsible for massive food insecurity and famine across the region claim to be able to “foster food security”?
While Congress advances the US-Israeli military integration plan, Israel and the US attempt to expand their “soft power” through agritechnology development across the region. The funding increase to BARD-ISUS and expansion of eligibility to Abraham Accords nations indicate a coercion of regional powers to normalize relations with Israel at a time of mass popular support for Palestinian sovereignty. This would deploy more USDA funds to agritech development in countries willing to support an Israeli regime perpetrating genocide in Palestine, invading Lebanon, and initiating a war with Iran. In short, this USDA multimillion dollar agribusiness integration with Israel subsidizes expansionism and impunity—further undermining any authentic peace in the region.
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'Only Getting Worse': Global Alarm Mounts Over Israel's Assault on Occupied West Bank
"Settler attacks are now the leading cause of Palestinian injuries in the West Bank," said the Carter Center.
Jul 29, 2026
United Nations Human Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani on Wednesday issued a dire warning about violence being carried out in the occupied West Bank by both Israeli armed forces and Israeli settlers, which she said is "only getting worse."
Noting that eight Palestinians, including a boy, have been killed in the West Bank in just the last week, Shamdasani decried actions taken by the Israeli government to tighten control of the occupied territory and expand illegal settlements.
"Settlers and Israeli security forces, often acting together, have attacked local communities, assaulting families, destroying and confiscating property, and burning mosques," said Shamdasani. "Movement restrictions are now tighter, blocking Palestinians from reaching essential services."
The UN Human Rights spokesperson also expressed alarm at "open calls by Israeli leaders for revenge and collective punishment against Palestinian communities, accompanied by threats to turn the West Bank into another Gaza."
Shamdasani encouraged the international community to "act urgently and in unison to halt the continuing killing and dispossession of the Palestinian people, and to bring an end to the Israeli occupation."
In a Tuesday statement, the Carter Center similarly highlighted rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, pointing to a recent report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimating an average of six settler attacks per day against Palestinians.
"Settler attacks are now the leading cause of Palestinian injuries in the West Bank," the center explained, "and more than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced by settler attacks and home demolitions this year—double the daily rate of the previous three years."
The center likewise urged the international community to "take urgent diplomatic, legal, and economic action to pressure Israel to fulfill its obligations under international law to curb settler violence, ensure accountability, protect civilians, and end policies that enable settlement expansion and annexation."
According to the anti-occupation Israeli group Peace Now, officials on the Higher Planning Council on Wednesday were scheduled to discuss authorizing more than 1,200 housing units in four West Bank settlements, which would bring the cumulative number of housing units approved this year to over 8,000.
This comes on top of the nearly 28,000 housing units approved by the council last year, which Peace Now described as "an unprecedented record and the highest annual figure since the establishment of the settlement enterprise in the West Bank."
Peace Now added that the Israeli government has significantly sped up the process for approving new settlement construction in recent years after scrapping earlier rules requiring the Israeli defense minister to sign off on new building projects in the occupied territories.
"In recent weeks, we have witnessed a change where the Higher Planning Council meets every week and approves several hundred housing units in each meeting," explained Peace Now. "In this way, the government seeks to normalize planning in settlements and attract less public and international attention and criticism."
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Smotrich Condemned for Plan to 'Illegally Seize' Gaza After Calling for Israel to ‘Complete the Conquest’ and Build Settlements
Palestinian resistance groups called it a "dangerous criminal escalation" and a "fully-fledged war crime."
Jun 30, 2026
Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "complete the conquest" of Gaza on Monday and send Israeli settlers to colonize the territory.
"We are prepared to establish three settlements in the northern perimeter immediately, the moment we receive the green light from the prime minister and the minister of defense," Smotrich said in a video filmed from the city of Sderot, which sits less than a mile from the wall separating the Gaza Strip from Israel.
Smotrich claimed that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) currently "[hold] nearly 70% of the Gaza Strip."
“We must complete the conquest of the remaining 30%,” he said, adding that they need to “defeat Hamas and above all we need to establish a belt of Jewish settlements within the territory of the Strip as a protective border for Sderot and all the communities of the Gaza envelope.”
Smotrich, who has overseen the rapid, violent acceleration of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank—considered illegal under international law—has been quite blatant about his desire to expand settlements into Gaza as well, reversing Israel’s withdrawal of settlers from the territory in 2005.
At a settlements conference last year, he said that “Gaza will be totally destroyed" and that its residents would be "concentrated" in a narrow southern strip while the rest of the territory "will be empty." He celebrated that Gazans would become “totally despairing” and seek “relocation” elsewhere, allowing Jewish Israelis to move in.
As the movement of settlers into the West Bank has ramped up, along with the destruction of Palestinian homes, Smotrich has said that the use of settlements to carve up the West Bank was "killing the idea of the Palestinian state."
Netanyahu has never said explicitly that he wants to resettle Gaza, but he did say last month, during a speech at an illegal West Bank settlement, that he'd ordered the military to seize 70% of Gaza in violation of the boundaries drawn up under last year's ceasefire agreement, which put Israel in temporary control of about 53% of the territory.
The peace plan laid out by US President Donald Trump, backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution, which underpins the ceasefire signed in October, states explicitly that "Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza."
The Resistance Committees in Palestine, a collection of armed groups in Gaza working closely with Hamas, described Smotrich's call to build settlements in the strip a "dangerous criminal escalation" and a "fully-fledged war crime" in a statement on Tuesday.
They described it as "a scheme to settle the conflict and impose a fait accompli in the context of the genocidal war" and a "dangerous development aimed at sabotaging the efforts of mediators and guarantors to solidify the ceasefire agreement and liquidate the Palestinian cause and presence in Gaza."
Assal Rad, a fellow at the Arab Center in Washington DC, emphasized that Smotrich was hardly a fringe figure.
"This isn’t a random person," she said. "He’s a high-ranking Israeli official declaring the intent to illegally seize Gaza."
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Israel Escalating Ethnic Cleansing in West Bank 'Before the Eyes of the Entire World': Amnesty
"This is not the work of rogue actors," said the human rights group's secretary general. "What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation."
Jun 10, 2026
The international community is allowing the Israeli government to carry out an explicit policy of "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians in the West Bank that is rapidly accelerating, according to a report out Wednesday from Amnesty International.
The human rights group said the world must intervene to stop what it described as a campaign of forcible displacement, rampant state-backed violence by Israeli settlers, demolitions of Palestinian homes, and tightening restrictions on Palestinian access to land and water.
Using United Nations data, Amnesty determined that at least 117 predominantly Bedouin and herding communities faced full or partial displacement between January 2023 and April 2026, with about 45 communities totally depopulated.
Nearly 6,000 people were forced from their homes during that time, roughly 17% of the Palestinian population in the Israeli-controlled Area C's Bedouin and herding communities.
Amnesty found that Israeli authorities demolished more than 3,400 Palestinian homes and structures in Area C during that time, displacing more than 3,000 Palestinians.
The group describes this systematic displacement as explicit Israeli state policy. The government advanced plans for more than 50,000 settler housing units from 2023-25 and authorized 102 new settlements by April 2026, the largest number ever approved by an Israeli government.
This has coincided with a dramatic increase in violence by armed Israeli settlers, who have set fire to homes and farmlands, vandalized schools and agricultural equipment, cut electricity lines and dumped water tanks, and beaten and killed Palestinian residents.
The UN's Office on the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs calculated that four settler attacks have occurred per day on average in the roughly two years following October 7, 2023, and have only grown more frequent this year, particularly after Israel and the US's joint attack on Iran, which was followed by an invasion of Lebanon that has also entailed mass destruction of homes and the forced displacement of over a million residents.
In several documented cases, armed settler attackers have been escorted or accompanied by Israeli soldiers, who have at times taken part in the destruction.
“Over the past three and a half years, Israeli authorities have accelerated a state-sponsored campaign of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, uprooting, dispossessing, and forcibly transferring Palestinian communities," said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general.
"This is not the work of rogue actors or what the international community has repeatedly labeled as extremist settlers, organizations or one or two ministers," she said. "What we are witnessing is deliberate, state-led annexation, in complete violation of international law unfolding before the eyes of the entire world."
The report comes just a day after a group of Western nations—including the UK, Canada, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway—announced coordinated sanctions against Israeli individuals and organizations accused of financing and enabling settler violence in the West Bank.
However, Amnesty argued that these measures were too narrow.
"These limited measures are woefully insufficient to address the state campaign of ethnic cleansing and the systemic violations that have been rapidly increasing before the eyes of the international community,” Callamard said.
She said states, "particularly those with influence over Israel," including the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, and other European Union and Arab States, needed to "ban all trade, investment, and any form of cooperation or financial assistance that contribute to Israel’s unlawful occupation, system of apartheid, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."
Callamard added that states "must impose targeted sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against Israeli officials directly implicated in these acts." She included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right settler politicians like Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as well as settlers who have allegedly committed acts of murder, like Yinon Levi, who was filmed last year shooting and killing human rights activist Awda al-Hathaleen and was released from custody after a day.
Callamard said, "Without accountability, Palestinian communities across the West Bank will vanish before our eyes."
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