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israeli settlements
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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Israel's Smotrich Responds to ICC Arrest Warrant by Announcing More War Crimes
The far-right finance minister announced that he'd respond to an arrest warrant request for his forced expulsion of Palestinians by ordering the evacuation of another West Bank village.
May 19, 2026
Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said on Tuesday that the International Criminal Court prosecutor had requested an arrest warrant against him, reportedly in response to his illegal forced expulsion of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank.
He said he planned to "fight back" by issuing an order to forcibly evict hundreds more Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank.
During a news conference, Smotrich said he'd been informed Monday evening that the ICC prosecutor had secretly requested a warrant for his arrest in April. A formal warrant has not been announced by the court, and the official charges have not yet been publicized.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the prosecutor had been considering seeking an arrest warrant against Smotrich for his role in expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled in July 2024 was a violation of the Geneva Conventions because it entailed the forced removal of residents in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The ICC prosecutor was also preparing to issue an arrest warrant against fellow far-right settler politician, Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, though there is not yet any reporting to suggest that this warrant has been issued.
Already, the ICC has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
In response to the reported warrant request for what the ICC considers a war crime, Smotrich celebrated the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank. He boasted of creating “over 100 new settlements” in the occupied territory and “160 farming outposts,” which he said helped Israel to control 247,000 acres of land in the territory.
The United Nations reported in March that over the previous year, more than 36,000 Palestinians in the West Bank had been forcibly displaced by settlement expansion and by violence committed by Israeli settlers.
Smotrich said the court's issuing of arrest warrants against him and other Israeli leaders was a "declaration of war" and said that "we will respond with war."
"From today, every economic or other target within my authority to strike—whether as Finance Minister or as a minister in the Defense Ministry—will be attacked. Not with words or gimmicks, but with actions," he said.
"I announce here and now the first target that will be attacked: immediately after my remarks, we will sign an order for the evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar," he added.
He was referring to a Palestinian Bedouin village of about 200 people on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem, which has fought a yearslong legal battle against the Israeli government following orders by Ben-Gvir for it to be demolished to make room for a settlement.
The territory is especially significant because it would link two major settlements in East Jerusalem with the Jordan Valley as part of Israel's ongoing E1 settlement project, which is aimed at constructing settlements so that they cut the Palestinian-controlled areas of the West Bank in two.
Smotrich, who has led the E1 project, declared last year that the proposal “buries the idea of a Palestinian state because there is nothing to recognize and no one to recognize."
On Tuesday, Smotrich said his order for Palestinians to leave Khan al-Ahmar would be "only the beginning" of his response to the reported warrant request.
Jasper Nathaniel, an American journalist who reports from the West Bank, explained that "Smotrich just announced the official ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian village in response to the ICC warrant for his arrest."
Observers pointed out the brazenness of Smotrich's declaration in the face of an international tribunal.
Adil Haque, a professor of law at Rutgers University and the executive editor of Just Security, noted the remarkable irony: "The ICC office of the prosecutor reportedly requested an arrest warrant for his war crimes, so he announces a new one."
Along with Ben-Gvir, Smotrich was sanctioned last year by five countries—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom—which subjected them to travel bans and asset freezes.
Ori Goldberg, an Israeli expert on Middle Eastern studies, said international punishments against Smotrich needed to be even stronger after he announced "as stark a violation of international law as possible."
"Make the warrants public. Sanction this man and everybody else who foots the bill. EU Leadership—stop making fools of yourselves as the world is torn asunder," he said. "Show Israelis... the jig is up."
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'Territorial Theft With Better Branding': Israel Keeps Advancing Its 'Yellow Line' in Gaza
One Palestinian American researcher warned that Israel is seeking "annexation without legal burden."
Apr 22, 2026
Israel's gradual advancement of its "yellow line" to occupy more territory in the Gaza Strip is fueling concerns that it is seeking to effectively annex and colonize the majority of the territory without any formal agreement.
The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Israel has been steadily pushing the truce line to take control of more Palestinian territory in the six months since a "ceasefire" was reached in October.
The yellow line drawn on the ceasefire maps had Israeli troops in control of about 53% of Gaza's territory, cramming nearly 2 million displaced Palestinians into a territory less than half the size of the one they inhabited before.
But an analysis by Forensic Architecture shows Israel has unilaterally shifted the line westward over the past six months to the point where it controlled about 58% of the strip by December in an occupation zone that continues to grow.
(Graphic by The Guardian. Source: Planet Labs PBC, March 6, 2026.)
Palestinians living in Gaza reportedly woke up to learn that large yellow concrete blocks denoting the ceasefire line had suddenly moved and that they were now living in a free-fire area, where the Israeli military considers any Palestinian person or vehicle a legitimate target.
The Associated Press found in January that at least 77 Palestinians have been shot on sight when they've found themselves on the wrong side of the yellow line or even just near it, even though the line's boundaries are ill-defined and fluid.
They are among more than 730 Palestinians who have been killed since the "ceasefire" began in October, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which has accused Israel of thousands of violations.
According to The Guardian, some displaced people, such as those who lived near the Salah al-Din road, which spans the length of Gaza from north to south, suddenly found themselves targeted by Israeli forces, who also began demolishing homes and other buildings and constructing new ones.
Though the yellow line was supposed to be set up as a temporary measure under US President Donald Trump's "peace plan" for Gaza before control of the strip is transferred back to Palestinians, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff Eyal Zamir described it as a "new border" with Gaza back in December, around the time it reportedly began to move.
Eyal Weizman, an Israeli architect and the head of Forensic Architecture’s research agency, recently wrote that the IDF appears to be turning this portion of Gaza into a permanent occupation zone.
The group found that seven new military outposts have been built along the yellow line, including one on what was once a cemetery.
While these areas began as "piles of earth and rubble" organized into crude enclosures, Weizman said that in recent months the roads leading to them have been asphalted, electricity poles have been erected, and buildings and communications towers have gone up inside the bases.
"The bases no longer appear to be the provisional arrangements that Trump’s ceasefire plan claims them to be, but permanent instruments of occupation," he wrote. "The newly paved roads connect the bases to a matrix of control that is linked to Israel’s road network and communications grid."
He noted that Israel's illegal settler movement, which has several powerful representatives in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has been "lobbying hard for the Israeli government to start constructing settlements within the vastly expanded buffer zone."
Defense Minister Israel Katz said in December that Israel would "never leave Gaza" and spoke of plans to turn IDF military outposts into civilian settlements similar to those that have gradually taken over the West Bank through the violent displacement of Palestinian residents.
Ahmad Ibsais, Palestinian American law student and author of the newsletter State of Siege, wrote for the Al-Shabaka Palestinian Policy Network that by drawing a yellow line, Israel is seeking to consolidate its control over Palestinian land without formally annexing it—in other words, "annexation without legal burden."
"Borders are typically established through bilateral agreements, adjudication, or mutual recognition under international law," he wrote. "By contrast, the so-called Yellow Line in Gaza functions as a de facto military demarcation associated with ceasefire arrangements and enforced through Israeli operational control."
"It shapes civilian movement and territorial control without constituting a formally delimited boundary," he continued. "In effect, it constitutes territorial theft with better branding, operationalizing US President Donald Trump’s plan for the continued colonization of Gaza."
Israel declared a similar yellow line about 5-10 kilometers into Lebanese territory, giving the IDF effective control over around 55 towns and villages. The military has reduced many homes and entire villages south of this line to rubble in what Katz has described as a "Gaza model" being applied to Lebanon.
Assistant editor Maya Rosen recently wrote for Jewish Currents that the policy of conquering and settling Lebanon has become "mainstream" in Israeli politics and enjoys broad public support.
Ahmad Baydoun, an architect and open-source intelligence researcher at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has warned that with this land grab, Israel was seeking to take control of the valuable Qana Gas Field, which is estimated to be capable of producing between $20 billion-$40 billion worth of natural gas exports for Israel. In 2022, a maritime agreement brokered by the US established that control of the field belonged to Lebanon.
Like in Gaza, the Israeli military has forbidden the more than 600,000 Lebanese inhabitants of villages below the line or within a newly established "buffer zone" from returning indefinitely. Katz has said they'll be allowed to return once the "safety and security of the residents of the north [of Israel] is ensured."
Given that Israeli settler groups have already begun mapping out new settlements and advertising plots of land for sale in southern Lebanon, Weizman said Katz was making what is by design "an impossible demand" meant to entrench the land grab.
"This exemplifies the circular logic of Zionist settler-colonialism: settlements are built to mark and protect the state’s border, but that makes them vulnerable to attack, and so a buffer zone is established to protect them," he said. "Afterward, this buffer zone is itself settled to mark and protect the newly expanded borders, at which point another buffer zone becomes necessary."
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Assault on Journalists Shows How Israeli Military Acts 'In Service of The Settler Movement': CNN Reporter
"Messiah complexes, talk of revenge, and the use of force against journalists are just symptoms of what's been happening to the army over the past three years," said one Israeli journalist.
Mar 28, 2026
Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces on Friday were caught on camera assaulting and detaining a crew of CNN journalists while they were reporting from the occupied West Bank.
A video of the incident posted on social media by CNN Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond shows the CNN crew walking near the Palestinian village of Tayasir, which in recent days has come under assault from Israeli settlers who established an illegal outpost in the area.
The crew are then accosted by armed members of the IDF, who order them to sit down. After the crew complies with their commands, the soldiers come to seize the journalists' cameras and phones that are being used to record the incident.
A soldier then puts CNN photojournalist Cyril Theophilos in a chokehold and forces him to the ground. Writing about the assault later, Theophilos said that the soldier "pushed and strangled me," adding that this kind of violence "is just a symptom of the IDF's actions in the West Bank."
According to Diamond, the CNN crew were subsequently detained for two hours. During that time, Diamond wrote, it became clear that the ideology of the Israeli settlers movement was "motivating many of the soldiers who operate in the occupied West Bank" and that the Israeli military regularly acts "in service of the settler movement."
For instance, one IDF soldier acknowledged during conversations with the CNN crew that the settler outpost near Tayasir was unlawful under both international and Israeli law, but insisted "this will be a legal settlement... slowly, slowly."
The soldier also said he wanted to exact "revenge" on local Palestinians for the death of 18-year-old Israeli settler Yehuda Sherman, who was killed last week by a Palestinian driver. Palestinians who witnessed Sherman's killing have said that the driver was trying to stop Sherman from stealing sheep.
The IDF issued an apology to CNN over the incident, insisting that "the actions and behavior of the soldiers in the incident are incompatible with what is expected of IDF soldiers."
However, this apology was deemed insufficient by Barak Ravid, global affairs correspondent for Axios.
"Apologies are not enough," he wrote on social media. "There is a need for clear accountability. 99.9% of the time there is zero accountability."
The soldiers' actions also drew condemnation from Haaretz reporter Bar Peleg, who argued that problems in the IDF have only grown worse under the far-right government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Messiah complexes, talk of revenge, and the use of force against journalists are just symptoms of what's been happening to the army over the past three years," Peleg said. "The chief of staff and the commanding general can write another thousand letters and wave flags all they want, but the process already seems irreversible."
Palestinian human rights activist Ihab Hassan argued that incidents like the one captured by CNN are all too common for the IDF.
"The Israeli army arrests and assaults journalists, while settlers who commit horrific crimes against Palestinian civilians enjoy total impunity," he wrote. "This is state-backed terrorism."
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‘No More Military Aid for Netanyahu,’ Says Sanders as Israel Ramps Up West Bank Takeover
"It’s not just Gaza," the senator said. "Netanyahu’s extremist government is supporting the violent annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank."
Dec 22, 2025
As Israeli settlers escalate attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank as part of a furious state-backed annexation push, US Sen. Bernie Sanders said it was yet another reason to suspend military aid to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"It’s not just Gaza," the independent Vermont senator wrote on social media Sunday. "Netanyahu’s extremist government is supporting the violent annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank. This is illegal and immoral, and decades of American silence have enabled it."
"NO MORE MILITARY AID FOR NETANYAHU," he concluded.
Sanders was responding to a feature published in the New York Times that same day, which examined the rapid expansion of illegal settler outposts over the past two decades, and the further acceleration after October 7, 2023, when Israel’s more than two-year genocidal assault began in Gaza following a Hamas-led attack.
The report provides data from the Israeli activist group Peace Now, which found that in 2024 and 2025, Israelis built more than 130 new outposts in the West Bank.
Despite the fact that they are illegal under both Israeli and international law, the settlers constructing these outposts operate with the support of the Israeli military and government.
As the Times reports:
The unrelenting violent campaign by these settlers, that critics say is largely tolerated by the Israeli military, consists of brutal harassment, beatings, even killings, as well as high-impact roadblocks and village closures. These are coupled with a drastic increase in land seizures by the state and the demolition of villages to force Palestinians to abandon their land.
Many of the settlers are young extremists whose views go beyond even the far-right ideology of the government. They are not generally operating on direct orders from Israel’s military leadership. But they know the military frequently looks the other way and facilitates their actions.
In many cases, it is the military that forces Palestinians to evacuate or orders the destruction of their homes once settlers drive them to flee.
Just in 2025, the report says, settlers and the military have razed more than 1,500 Palestinian structures, double the annual average from before 2023. Since the war began, more than 4,000 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has also declared a record number of areas in the West Bank to be "state land," meaning that they are off limits to Palestinians and that Israelis can use them to build more settlements.
Far-right forces in the Israeli government have been overt about the intention of these settlements: to carve up the West Bank so thoroughly that a contiguous Palestinian state becomes effectively impossible. Netanyahu has often reiterated his position that under his watch, a Palestinian state will never be created.
In August, as the Israeli government approved a massive 3,400-home settlement project in the heart of the occupied West Bank, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—himself a settler and one of the leading representatives of the far-right settler movement in Netanyahu’s cabinet—boasted that the project “buries the idea of a Palestinian state,” adding that “Every town, every neighborhood, every housing unit... is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.”
On Sunday, Israel’s cabinet approved another 19 Jewish-only settlements across the West Bank, raising the total number to more than 200 in the territory, up from around 140 three years ago. Smotrich said with the new construction, Israel was “putting the brakes on the rise of a Palestinian terror state.”Until recently, the official policy of the US government has been one of opposition to settlements, even as their construction continued largely unimpeded.
During his second term, President Donald Trump has talked out of both sides of his mouth. While promising Arab leaders that Israel would not annex the West Bank as he sought to broker a ceasefire, his administration has often expressed tacit, and occasionally overt, support for settlement expansion.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres denounced the rapid expansion of settlements, saying it “continues to fuel tensions, impede access by Palestinians to their land, and threaten the viability of a fully independent, democratic, contiguous, and sovereign Palestinian state.”
In July, as reports of famine out of Gaza grew increasingly dire due to Israel's blockade of humanitarian aid, Sanders sponsored a Senate resolution to block $675 million in US weapons sales to Israel.
Though the vote was far from passing, 27 members of the Democratic caucus—a majority, for the first time—voted in favor. Sanders said it suggested that "the tide is turning" with respect to attitudes towards Israel's actions within the party.
In an AtlasIntel poll published on Friday, 62% of respondents said they opposed US financial support for Israel, compared with 20% who supported it. 50% of respondents said they "totally oppose" weapons to Israel, while just 9% said they "totally support" it.
Despite this, the most recent military spending bill, passed last week, provides another $650 million in military aid for Israel, up $45 million from the previous package, despite the implementation of a ceasefire in Gaza.
The bill also included an unprecedented measure requiring the executive branch to assess how the US can supply additional weapons to Israel to fill in "gaps" from embargoes imposed by other nations over the country's human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.
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New Campaign Targets Companies Profiting From Illegal Israeli Settlements in West Bank
"We cannot allow international companies and governments to profit from occupation, dispossession and human suffering," said one peace advocate.
Sep 15, 2025
A collective of more than 80 different groups on Monday announced a new campaign aimed at companies that do business with illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The campaign, called "Stop Trade With Settlements," is being sponsored by more than 80 civil society organizations, including Oxfam International, and it names multiple companies including Barclays Bank, Siemens, and Carrefour as firms that are benefiting from selling goods and services to the settlements.
In a statement introducing the campaign, Oxfam explained why "ending trade with settlements is a necessary step to uphold human rights, protect Palestinian livelihoods, stop Israel’s settlement expansion, and end the unlawful occupation" of the West Bank.
"Over the last four years, Israel has significantly accelerated its settlement activities in the West Bank," the organization said. "Most of these approvals were granted for settlements located 'deep into the West Bank,' further fragmenting Palestinian territory and imposing new movement restrictions on Palestinians."
"The revival of the ‘E1’ plan... is effectively cutting off Palestinian movement between the northern and southern West Bank," the group added, referring to the E1 settlement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on last week. The plan will "bury" the possibility of a Palestinian state by cutting East Jerusalem off from the rest of the West Bank.
Oxfam then walked through how these firms are profiting from doing business in the West Bank.
German travel conglomerate TUI, for example, offers a bus tour through the West Bank for tourists to meet with settlers who are illegally living on Palestinians' land.
Siemens, meanwhile, was found to have provided "equipment and services for settlement-linked transportation infrastructure including a rail deal worth over €1 billion."
The report singled out Barclays for providing $18.1 billion in loans to settlement-linked firms over a three-and-a-half-year period, which the report said made it "the third largest creditor of corporations complicit in settlement trade."
Anne-Marie Clements, engagement officer at the Catholic charity Justice and Peace Scotland, spoke of her recent trip to the occupied West Bank, where she met Palestinians who "told me of land confiscation, settler violence, home demolitions, military checkpoints and the denial of water: all daily realities of the occupation that make life unbearable."
Clements said the reality on the ground in the West Bank made it imperative for her organization to support the campaign.
"The Stop Trade With Settlements campaign shines a light on how the illegal settlements, an integral part of the occupation, are sustained through trade," she said. "Ending this trade is not just a political necessity but a moral imperative. We cannot allow international companies and governments to profit from occupation, dispossession, and human suffering."
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As Israeli Genocide Intensifies, Majority of Americans Support Palestinian Statehood
"Israel has lost the support of the world, including the American people," said policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs.
Aug 20, 2025
As the US backs Israel's plans to occupy Gaza and expand illegal settlements in the West Bank, a solid majority of Americans say the world should recognize a Palestinian state.
According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Wednesday, 58% of Americans believe that every country in the United Nations should recognize a Palestinian state, compared with just 33% who said they should not and 9% who said they were unsure.
In recent weeks, as Israel's blockade of humanitarian aid has inflicted mass starvation across the enclave, many American allies—including Canada, the UK, and France—have broken with the US by indicating their intent to recognize the State of Palestine. In total, 147 of the UN's 193 member states—over 75%—now recognize Palestine as a sovereign nation.
Last week, the foreign ministers of 26 states signed onto a statement that the crisis in Gaza has reached "unimaginable levels" and called on Israel to allow unrestricted humanitarian aid into the strip. As of Tuesday, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that 266 people, including 122 children, had been starved to death as a result of the blockade.
In Gaza City, where Israel has begun a devastating campaign of bombing, shelling, and shooting civilians and demolishing their homes, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) reported Friday that malnutrition has reached 21.5%, "meaning nearly one in five young children is now malnourished."
Amnesty International says the rise in malnutrition is the result of a "deliberate campaign of starvation" by Israel aimed at "systematically destroying the health, well-being, and social fabric of Palestinian life." Israeli human rights groups, including B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, have described their nation's military actions as "genocide."
While the administration of US President Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and many Democrats continue to back Israel's actions to the hilt, they are increasingly out of step with the views of the American public.
In a July 29 Gallup poll, just 32% said they approved of Israel's military actions in Gaza, while 60% disapproved. The decline in support among Democrats is especially striking: Where 36% said they supported Israel's actions in October 2023, that number has plummeted to just 8%.
But unlike elsewhere in the world, this has not resulted in a sea change among politicians. Just 13 House Democrats signed onto a letter earlier this month calling on the Trump administration to recognize Palestinian statehood.
Israel has meanwhile moved forward with actions explicitly aimed at making a Palestinian state impossible.
On Wednesday, Israel gave the final approval for a massive new illegal settlement in the West Bank known as E1, which slices the Palestinian territory in two and cuts off Palestinian communities between Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley.
Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has championed the proposal, saying it "buries the idea of a Palestinian state."
Trump and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee have reportedly given approval to the plan, as part of a reversal in the decades-old US policy opposing Israel's settlements in the West Bank, which violate international law.
International business professor Avraham Shama argued in The Hill on Wednesday that Israel's "increasingly brutal" actions will only continue to galvanize the world toward the plight of the Palestinians.
"Soon, the Palestinian people will be recognized as a sovereign nation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by most countries. They now have the political and moral momentum toward achieving this goal," Shama said. "The case for Palestinian independence has been getting clearer and more urgent with every Israeli bombing of mostly innocent Gazans, and with every death from starvation caused by Israel's withholding of food."
Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, told Common Dreams that through its continued support for Israel, the US government is increasingly isolating itself.
"Israel has lost the support of the world, including the American people," Sachs said. "Israel's genocide has made it a pariah state, propped up by the White House over the objections of the American people."
"The only way to peace, and to rescue Israel from its murderous ways," he said, "is to implement the two-state solution immediately, as almost all of the world demands. It's now up to Trump to end US complicity in the genocide and to recognize Palestine."
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