{"id":288529,"date":"2026-02-13T01:49:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/288529\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T01:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T01:49:09","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-israel-and-the-west-bank-the-other-relentless-assault-upon-palestinians-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/288529\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on Israel and the West Bank: the other relentless assault upon Palestinians | Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Protecting archaeological sites. Preventing water theft. The streamlining of land purchases. If anyone doubted the real purpose of the motley collection of new administrative and enforcement measures for the illegally occupied West Bank<\/a>, Israel\u2019s defence minister spelt it out: \u201cWe will continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state,\u201d Israel Katz said in a joint statement with the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.<\/p>\n

While the world\u2019s attention was fixed upon the annihilation in Gaza, settlers in the West Bank intensified their campaign of ethnic cleansing. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed there<\/a> since October 2023; a fifth of them were children. Many more have been driven from their homes by relentless harassment and the destruction of infrastructure, with entire Palestinian communities erased<\/a> across vast swathes of land.<\/p>\n

The Israeli state is not merely complicit in these acts. In addition to the economic suffocation<\/a> and increased military raids in the West Bank, the Guardian reported last month that settler-only units of the army are acting as \u201cvigilante militias\u201d<\/a>. Haaretz newspaper reports that the military has ordered soldiers to prevent Palestinians from ploughing<\/a> their land at the behest of\u00a0settlers \u2013 not only threatening them with destitution, but paving the way for land seizure.<\/p>\n

With Israel heading to elections in months, Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s far-right coalition partners are in a hurry. While they and their allies have changed the facts on the ground dramatically, and have steadily expanded Israel\u2019s control<\/a>, the bureaucratic measures adopted by the security cabinet last Sunday are \u201ctectonic\u201d, as\u00a0one scholar notes<\/a>. They ease land theft, stripping away the very limited constraints on purchase, and destroy the nominal authority of Palestinians in areas A and B.<\/p>\n

The White House has reiterated Donald\u00a0Trump\u2019s opposition to annexation, but talks with Mr\u00a0Netanyahu in Washington on Wednesday focused on Iran. To the extent that the US president thinks about Palestinians at all, he thinks about Gaza. Yet this cannot be treated separately from the West Bank<\/a>. Arab and Islamic states central to his peace plan have warned that the new measures will \u201cinflame violence, deepen the conflict and endanger regional stability and security\u201d.<\/p>\n

The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza \u2013 which has not stopped the Israeli military killing Palestinians there either \u2013 has reduced the political pressure on other governments to act. There are no signs that the outrage at last Sunday\u2019s decision will translate into action. The UK \u201cstrongly condemns\u201d the measures. The EU said that sanctions were \u201cstill on the table\u201d but is clearly in no hurry to act. Within Israel<\/a>, only a handful dissent.<\/p>\n

Hunger and desperation endure in Gaza while the Trump administration promotes fantastical visions of a glittering skyline. Israel has demolished the East Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa)<\/a>, the UN body which supports millions of Palestinian refugees, and is booting out NGOs, including M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res, from across occupied Palestine.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the UN\u2019s international court of justice ruled that Israel should end its illegal occupation<\/a> as quickly as possible. Last year international outrage over Gaza forced multiple governments, including the UK, to recognise a Palestinian state<\/a>, dragged by their publics. Those symbolic announcements look increasingly hollow. Real action cannot wait, for Israel\u2019s government will not.<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Protecting archaeological sites. Preventing water theft. The streamlining of land purchases. If anyone doubted the real purpose of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288530,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-288529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288529\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}