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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1222 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 4, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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With international attention now focused on Biden and the UK election, Israel has announced the seizure of nearly five square miles of land in the West Bank, their largest land grab since the 1993 Oslo accords and their third such seizure this year. Although the decision to seize the land was made last month, it was not publicized until yesterday. Israeli settlers have committed more than 1,000 attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank since October.

Can I ask what is your source for the last sentence more than 1,000 settler attacks against Palestinians? Given the Israeli military responses since October how do they define 'settler attacks', is this lynchings?

My source was the Associated Press, which cited the UN. Looking into it, they appear to be relying on the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which reports that

Between 7 October and 1 July, OCHA recorded 1,050 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, of which 107 led to Palestinian fatalities and injuries, 828 led to damage to Palestinian property and 115 led to both casualties and damage to property. In this period, over 45,600 Palestinian-owned trees and saplings were destroyed by people known or believed to be Israeli settlers.

The UN unofficially considers the dissolution of Israel to be one of its core missions. The above may have actually happened in some form, but there's no reason to consider UN reporting on anything related to Israel any more reliable than the white house's statement's on Biden's mental state.

When you consider that Israel has a huge military superiority, vastly superior resources and a large pool of committed ultranationalists that really doesn’t seem so damning. Pooling fatalities and injuries is also questionable. Generally speaking there is not much evidence that most or indeed any substantial proportion of Israeli Jews have significant violent racial animus towards Arabs/Muslims. If anything, given the death toll and atrocities of October 7th and the fact that Israel controls de facto the West Bank, the reprisal attacks (on the civilian side) were arguably pretty limited.

I might agree, were it not for the Israeli government’s continued refusal to put a stop to the attacks. Until the Israeli settlers are punished for their actions and the Israeli army begins to deal with them as harshly as they do the West Bank Palestinians, I’d consider the attacks a serious black mark against the country. Israel’s recent decision to keep annexing Palestinian territory just makes things worse.

The IDF has used administrative detention on extremist settlers, and settlers who actually murdered Palestinians have gotten life sentences (eg 2 of the 3 settlers convicted for murdering Mohammed Abu Khdeir got life and the third got 21 years). But most WB Palestinian fatalities were killed while attacking Israelis. It’s trivial to depict Israelis as the bad guys by cropping out Palestinian violence.

Last year’s Huwara pogrom, “the worst attack stemming from Israeli settler violence in the northern West Bank in decades” per Wikipedia, killed one Palestinian, hours after Palestinians had killed two settlers nearby. The IDF arrested 16 settlers, two of whom are still in administrative detention.

“Settlers kill Palestinians with impunity” is a forest which turns out to have no trees when you look for them.

Its not Palestinian territory and never has been. The legal rights of Palestinians on Area A and B is dependant on the legal owners regarding land use rights as under the Ottomans and later the British. A bunch of squatters are free to stay on any piece of dirt until someone comes about with the right piece of paper and the guns to enforce the words on the paper. The Palestinians should direct their ire towards Jordan which disclaimed all claim to the West Bank and left the Palestinians truly stateless.

Given the vileness of how Palestinians treat each other, much less Israelis, the burden of proof for innocence lies on the Palestinians. If the PA does not record crimes committed by Palestinians until it comes time to pay the bounties of the martyr fund, then Palestinians are innocent eternally. Given the strong support for Oct 7 in the West Bank

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-palestinians-opinion-poll-wartime-views-a0baade915619cd070b5393844bc4514

I seriously doubt the 'victims' of settler violence are innocent lambs free of sin.

Not to say the settlers are themselves necessarily justified. But the Israelis are actually willing to hold their criminals accountable. The Palestinians throw parades and demand the criminals be free to commit more crimes... like Haniyeh.

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