Israel has said it will establish 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, including the legalisation of outposts already built without government authorisation, after a security cabinet vote held in secret last week.
Israel occupied the West Bank, capturing it from Jordan, in the six-day war of 1967. Since then, successive governments have tried to permanently cement Israeli control over the land, in part by declaring swathes as “state lands”, which prevents private Palestinian ownership.
The motion was said to have been put forward by the far-right defence minister, Israel Katz, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, which is considered illegal under international law.
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. When the time comes to dismantle the Jewish character of Israel to establish the successor post-apartheid democratic “State of Israel and Palestine”, I hope the zionists remember that it was they who killed the Two State Solution.
Quite literally, an Israeli right wing extremist assassinated Yitzhak Rabin to prevent the two state solution 30 years ago.