Thursday 17 October 2024

Britain Sanctions Israeli Settlers


Britain has finally imposed new sanctions on Israel as the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, condemns inaction over West Bank settlers as a UN report found violence against Palestinians has increased in the West Bank and the UN noted that it did not start after the Hamas attack.
Settlers are Israeli citizens who live on Palestinian land and in most cases that is due to Palestinians being prevented from accessing their land and are physically attacked and property damaged by the settlers.
Many Palestinians are driven from their land by the threats, violence and murder and flee in panic, leaving everything behind but the Israeli government routinely acknowledges these colonies as part of the Israeli state despite the fact that they are illegal under international law which states that article 49 of the fourth Geneva convention prohibits the 'individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory'.
The United States has publicly condemned settlements while continuing to provide billions of dollars to Israel and when Donald Trump was President he even went as far as to say his administration didn’t consider settlements to be a violation of international law “per se” and the Biden administration had been relatively quiet on this point until tensions with Israel rose in February and the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, stated: 'New settlements are counterproductive to reaching an enduring peace'.
Currently 40% of the West Bank is  under the control of settlements and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), notes that 'cases of harassment, trespass, and intimidation are not included in these statistics when they do not result in damage or casualties' which shows that the Settler violence situation is far worse than reported.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted for a wide range of other Genocidal War Crimes,  leads a coalition government that includes several religious Zionist parties that support further annexation of the West Bank and even the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, has found that the Israeli military prefer to remove Palestinians from their own land rather than confront settlers, 'often with firearms and shootings'.
The thousands of Palestinians who have been forced from their homes have no recourse to justice, in four out of every five cases, Israeli police failed in the investigation of Israelis who harmed Palestinians and their property, another Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, found that just 3% of ideologically motivated cases resulted in a conviction.
Demolition is also a key part of settlement. Israeli authorities regularly destroy and confiscate Palestinian-owned property. They also prohibit construction by Palestinians while issuing permits to Israelis. About 24,300 housing units for Israeli settlements in the West Bank were advanced last year and there are plans to build a further 3,476 settler homes.
Over the last 60 years, the Israeli plan all along has been to remove Palestinians and steal their land and after the Hamas attack, it seems to have gone up a notch and now occupy 78% of the land which was handed to the Palestinians in 1947 and after the dust settles on the latest Israeli land grab, it is almost certain to be more.

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