Law, Power, and Justice

 News Summary Notes 1 November 2023

The Gaza-ification of the West Bank by Isaad Chotiner

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-gaza-ification-of-the-west-bank

•  There is increased violence between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank.  Sometimes with support of the Israeli Army.

•  Chotiner’s discussion with El-Ad, as Israeli activist.

Part II

• Question: How much is this rhetoric about Israelis taking more land in the West Bank happening out in the open and how much is it quietly taking advantage of a situation when everyone’s attention is focussed on Gaza?
• “This is not about this government, this is not about Netanyahu or his ministers. This is an Israeli project that has been unfolding under left, right, and center governments. Each and every one of them have been doing exactly this since 1967. Let’s not be ahistorical. That is a key part of understanding what is unfolding here. Because if there’s a sense that somehow this is about, as I said before, “bad settlers” or this is somehow about a specific individual who has been Prime Minister for a long time, then we’re missing the bigger picture.”
• “Then they would pick up the pace again. In that sense, it’s always heading in the same direction. This is how Israel accomplished getting more than two hundred and fifty settlements and more than seven hundred and fifty thousand settlers into the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. One step at a time, always trying to fly below the level of international outrage that might trigger a real response. Think about a memorable moment from this government, the pogrom by Israeli settlers in Huwara. Many dozens of settlers were involved in the pogrom. That caused a lot of outrage because of the statement Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, made about wiping out Huwara and so on. That’s like a large-scale pogrom. I wouldn’t say that this didn’t happen before, but it wasn’t a frequent occurrence. So that was a moment of escalation under this government.