Israeli Settlers Built a New Illegal Outpost in West Bank

In a move that both violates Israeli law and likely amounts to Israel abrogating its commitment to limit the rate of settlement expansion, a group of settlers has built a new outpost in the occupied West Bank over the past two weeks, according to anti-settlement NGO Peace Now.
The new outpost was built near the existing Geva Binyamin settlement, on state-owned land, but outside of the settlement’s security fence. No permits were issued to authorize the construction, though likewise Israeli forces do not appear to have tried to prevent the construction.
Though most settlement expansion is based on ideology, either religious or nationalist, or both, Peace Now believes that in this case, the outpost is an economics issue, with the people who constructed it apparently drawn to the idea of getting free land to build housing on.
Though legally speaking such outposts are supposed to be demolished, the current far-right government is so deeply beholden to the settler movement that it is next to impossible for courts to compel the government to do anything about them, and retroactive legalization tends to follow int he long run.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Defining the Biden Doctrine

  In his first major foreign-policy speech as U.S. president, Joe Biden declared to the world that America was back. The international sigh of relief was almost audible amid hopes that former President Donald Trump’s disruptive style was a relic. Biden has pursued an ambitious agenda to repair alliances and forge new ones, curb corruption, arrest democratic backsliding, and tackle climate change, all while managing the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, Russian threats to Ukraine, and escalating tensions with China.  It hasn’t all been plain sailing. The decision to withdraw remaining U.S. troops from Afghanistan precipitated the collapse of the country’s government and chaos in Kabul as hundreds of thousands of people fled the Taliban. Plans to share nuclear submarine technology with Australia, at the expense of Canberra’s submarine deal with Paris, soured trans-Atlantic relations.  Ahead of the anniversary of Biden’s inauguration,  Foreign Policy ’s Amy Mackinnon spoke with one of t
Read more

George Soros at the Davos Forum

Dear Friends and Colleagues,   I thought you would be interested in reading George's remarks he delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this evening.   Best regards, Michael Vachon   George Soros Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum Davos, Switzerland January 25, 2018 The current moment in history Good evening. It has become something of an annual Davos tradition for me to give an overview of the current state of the world. I was planning half an hour for my remarks and half an hour for questions, but my speech has turned out to be closer to an hour. I attribute this to the severity of the problems confronting us. After I’ve finished, I’ll open it up for your comments and questions. So prepare yourselves. *** I find the current moment in history rather painful. Open societies are in crisis, and various forms of dictatorships and mafia states, exemplified by Putin’s Russia, are on the rise. In the United States, President Trump would
Read more