Finance Minister Smotrich stated, 'On this exciting day, we celebrate a historic correction to the criminal expulsion,' during the reopening ceremony of Sa-Nur, emphasizing the government's stance against the idea of a Palestinian state.
This says a lot about the ways in which international law is being deployed in this moment as a way of restraining and regulating Iranian behavior, while effectively allowing the United States and Israel a free hand to do what they want.
Taybeh, a small hilltop town in the heart of the West Bank, is one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, now feeling under siege and fighting for its existence.
With the sounding of a siren at 8pm on Monday, Israel begins the commemoration of Memorial Day, remembering soldiers killed since the establishment of the first Jewish settlements in Palestine in 1860, through Israel's many wars with its neighbours and attacks on Palestinians, up to those who died enacting its genocide in Gaza.
Hezbollah lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah stated that negotiating with Israel is wrong and warned of internal division, reflecting the sentiments of many Lebanese citizens who oppose such talks.
While the world's attention is on the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, the Israeli military has placed the West Bank under a functional lockdown. Checkpoints in and out of most major cities are closed, and Palestinians have been left to look for other travel arrangements. Some residents who spoke with Truthout said they traveled for hours through village back roads in an attempt to reach their destinations.
The new measures, which aim to expand Israel's power across the occupied West Bank, will make it easier to seize Palestinian land illegally. We are anchoring settlement as an inseparable part of Israel's government policy, said Katz. Experts say it will fundamentally alter the civil and legal reality of the territory, removing what the Israeli ministers termed legal obstacles that have existed for decades against the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied territories.
Through a new land registration drive, Israel is trying to secure through paperwork what warfare alone has failed to deliver. Israel always had a plan to annex more land in the occupied West Bank, and its actions prove it. This week, the Israeli cabinet approved a plan to claim Palestinian lands in the West Bank as state land. The proposal, pushed by far-right Israeli leaders, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defence Minister Israel Katz, emphasises Israeli supremacy over Palestinians.
The Israeli government has approved a plan to begin land registration in the occupied West Bank, meaning it will be able to seize land from Palestinians who cannot prove ownership. For the first time since Israel's occupation of the West Bank in 1967, it will register such land as property of the state also known as settlement of land title in Area C of the occupied West Bank.
