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alpinelake's avatar

USraelis are sick, really sick, completely irredeemable. Boot MIriam Adelson out of this country and make her live with her sadist comrades.

Dr. Linda Hackett's avatar

What Netanyahu and Katz are calling a response to “terrorism” appears, on the available reporting, to be thecollective punishment of Palestinian communities after an incident that began with Israeli settlers entering a Palestinian village. Reuters and AP both report that settlers entered or attempted to enter the village of Tell, provoking a confrontation with residents. During the clash, a Palestinian reportedly seized a weapon and opened fire; four Palestinians and two Israeli security personnel were ultimately killed. That is a far more complicated reality than the government’s preferred story of an unprovoked Palestinian attack.

A Palestinian defending his village from settlers does not become a “terrorist” merely because Israel controls the language, the army and the subsequent investigation. When armed outsiders enter a community, residents have a legitimate right to protect themselves; that principle does not disappear because the residents are Palestinian.

The measures announced by Netanyahu and Katz reveal the political purpose of the operation. Revoking work permits punishes families who had nothing to do with the incident. Separating roads and expanding checkpoints further fragments Palestinian life. Reinforcing military units intensifies an already coercive occupation. Most revealingly, accelerating the legalisation of settler farm outposts and creating new ones has no genuine connection to investigating a shooting. It converts violence into an excuse for territorial expansion. Israel is effectively rewarding the settler movement whose incursion helped ignite the confrontation. Israel has already been approving and retroactively legalising new settlements and outposts while expanding Israeli control over Palestinian land.

So this is not simply a security response. It looks like a familiar sequence: settlers enter Palestinian land, Palestinians resist, the state labels the resistance terrorism, the army descends on entire villages, and the settlers receive more land and official protection. That is not impartial law enforcement. It is collective punishment serving a project of annexation and displacement. Amnesty International has described the broader pattern in parts of the West Bank as forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing, while documented settler violence has continued with extraordinary impunity

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