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israeli settlements
‘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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