The various projects on the docket include advancing through different stages of planning as many as 2,600 homes. Of these, over 400 are expected to receive final approval for construction, including some outside the major settlement blocs.

“For 50 years, Israelis and Palestinians have lived separately-together under one rule. Only one group has been able to reap the fruits of democracy,” writes Hagai El-Ad.

Since 1967, the settlements have grown into Israel’s greatest national project. Nearly a million Israeli citizens live beyond the Green Line, while their Palestinian neighbors live under military rule. +972 Magazine takes a journey to the heart of the West Bank with Dror Etkes, the man who has dedicated the last two decades to monitoring the goings on in Israel’s backyard.

“When Israelis come to view their settlements as permanent, it does more than stand in the way of an agreement. It forecloses on the idea of peace altogether,” writes Dan Ephron.

The Masar Ibrahim is no ordinary walking path. This long-distance trail wends its way through 321km of the occupied West Bank, from the olive groves and fruit orchards of Jenin in the north to the wind-whipped desert of Hebron in the south. But illegal Israeli settlements surround the path on all sides, with guides recounting stories of villagers being terrorised by settlers. They take walkers to meet farmers whose goats and olive trees have been attacked.

A documentary by Combatants for Peace tells stories from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide and finds cause for optimism amid the longstanding anger and despair.

How does a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn end up blowing off the legs of the PLO mayor of Nablus? Ha’aretz publishes a section of Sarah Hirschhorn’s upcoming book, City on a Hilltop.

In her new book ‘City on a Hilltop,’ Sara Yael Hirschhorn explains how 1960s idealism and activism deeply informed the American Jews who began settling in the occupied territories in the ’70s.

The proposal for the day after Palestine is established won support from Israel’s top army brass, but not its political leaders. U.S. general who devised it: Security was not the obstacle for moving forward.

“Like his predecessors, the president signed a waiver delaying the transfer of the American embassy from Tel Aviv, but there are signs he could still go through with the transfer,” writes Rosie Gray.

“The US president’s speech at the Israel Museum adopted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s narrative unconditionally. His family, his heart and his mind cause him to identify one-sidedly with the Israeli political Right. So thinking that Trump will pressure Netanyahu is complete nonsense,” writes Sever Plocker.