Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement activity this week.
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**The regular FMEP Settlement & Annexation report is on break, and is planned to return around the first week of August. In the meantime, we are pleased to offer you links to the main settlement-related stories of the past week**
May 19, 2022
1. Settlements at the Center of Israeli Policy
2. Welcoming Biden with More Settlements & Land Grab
3. Jerusalem
4. Settler Terrorism Continues, Enabled by IDF Tolerance/Support
5. Israel Goes Forward with Masafer Yatta Ethnic Cleansing
6. Illegal Outpost (Still) at the Center of Israeli Domestic Politics
8. Bonus Read
Settlements at the Center of Israeli Policy
Minister: Vote on renewing civil law for settlers a test for coalition survivability (Times of Israel 5/31/22)
Sa’ar warns coalition’s future depends on renewal of application of Israeli law to settlers (Times of Israel 5/31/22)
Lacking votes, coalition pulls bid to extend application of Israeli law to settlers (Times of Israel 5/30/22) [“Originally enacted in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, the law remains an ‘emergency measure’ that must be renewed every five years. Last passed in 2017, it is set to expire at the end of June.”]
Israeli Commander Says Army, Settlements Are ‘One and the Same’ (Haaretz 5/30/22) [“An Israeli commander said Sunday that ‘the army and the settlements are one and the same,’ while speaking at a yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh… ‘It has often been said that the army and the settlements work together. I disagree with that, I think the army and the settlement enterprise are one and the same,’ Zweig said…”] Also see: IDF commander censured after saying IDF and settlements ‘one and the same’ (Jerusalem Post 6/1/22)
Welcoming Biden with More Settlements & Land Grab
Israel puts E1 settlement project back on agenda, weeks ahead of Biden trip (Times of Israel 5/31/22)
Israel unfreezes West Bank E1 plan, hearings for settler homes resume (Jerusalem Post 6/1/22)
Jerusalem
UPDATE (2): Settlers, backed by Israeli police, attack Palestinian residents’ homes in Silwan (WAFA 5/31/22)
Urgent: Nearly 100 Palestinians are Under Threat of Immediate Displacement from Wadi Qaddum, East Jerusalem (Ir Amim/Bimkom Alert 5/30/22)
Settlers attack Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood (WAFA 5/29/22)
Settler Terrorism Continues, Enabled by IDF Tolerance/Support
Israeli settlers vandalize Palestinian-owned vehicles in the city of al-Bireh (WAFA 6/2/22)
Israeli settlers beat herders, destroy crops south of Hebron (WAFA 6/1/22)
West Bank town becomes flashpoint in settler-Palestinian clashes (YNet 6/1/22)
Israeli army opens fire at Palestinians protesting intrusion of settlers into a mosque in a southern West Bank town (WAFA 5/31/22)
Israeli settlers attack farmers in the north of the West Bank, herders in the south (WAFA 5/31/22)
IDF chief ‘strongly condemns’ settler banners slamming Central Command chief (Times of Israel 5/31/22)
Israeli settlers set fire to large tracts of land south of Nablus (WAFA 5/30/22)
Settlers attack Palestinian homes in Nablus-area village with Molotov cocktails (WAFA 5/29/22)
Settlers assault a Palestinian man near Ya’bad (WAFA 5/29/22)
Settlers attack Palestinians’ homes in Burin (WAFA 5/28/22)
Settlers attack Palestinian children in downtown Hebron (WAFA 5/27/22)
Settlers open gunfire at Palestinian farmers near Tulkarm (WAFA 5/27/22)
Israel Goes Forward with Masafer Yatta Ethnic Cleansing
Palestinians in Masafer Yatta made homeless twice over by Israeli demolitions (+972 Magazine 6/1/22)
Israeli forces tear down dwellings, agricultural structures south of Hebron (WAFA 6/1/22)
Twitter thread (with video) from Basel Adra 6/1/22: “Insane violence. Today, 21 people, my neighbors, were evicted in Masafer Yatta. I saw kids come back from school to find their home gone. They’re destroying us. A shameless occupation with a cruel, announced plan, to turn our towns into a military training zone. The woman crying in the video, her name is Wadha. Soldiers destroyed her home in May shortly after the the occupation ruled to evict thousands of people here. Since then, she slept in a tent with her kids. Today they CAME BACK, specially to destroy her tent. No limits. No heart. Our towns have existed long before 1948 – but the occupation declared our land a ‘firing zone’ in the eighties. Why? Recently it was uncovered, in Israeli documents – they said the reason was to evict our villages in Masafer Yatta. Now they’re doing it. Help us resist. Speak up.”
Progressive Lawmakers Demand Stop to Israeli “War Crime” in Masafer Yatta (Jewish Currents 5/31/22) Also see: press release from Rep. Bush (D-MO)
This is how Israel plans to annex the occupied West Bank (Middle East Monitor 5/30/22, by Ramzi Baroud) [“What is happening in Masafer Yatta is not only the largest ethnic cleansing scheme to be carried out by Israel since 1967, but the move should also be considered as the first step in a much larger scheme of illegal land misappropriation, ethnic cleansing and official mass annexation.”]
Two Palestinian-owned homes in Masafer Yatta receive Israeli demolition orders (WAFA 5/30/22)
Supreme Court rules: Israel above the law (B’Tselem 5/29/22)
Illegal Outpost (Still) at the Center of Israeli Domestic Politics
Footage Casts Doubt on Israel’s Claim to Enforce Ban on Evacuated Outpost [“A ban on the West Bank settlement of Homesh forbids outsiders from entering, but many Israelis successfully evade them, as steps to enforce the law are not always taken“] (Haaretz 6/2/22)
Peace Now’s Protest at the Illegal Outpost of Homesh (Peace Now 6/1/22)
There’s no place like Homesh: The West Bank’s most politically charged hilltop (Times of Israel 5/31/22)
Homesh will be evacuated but not now, Gantz says (Jerusalem Post 5/30/22)
Israel tells top court it will demolish Homesh outpost (i24 News 5/29/22)
Government tells court it’ll raze Homesh outpost, but won’t give timeline (Times of Israel 5/29/22)
Hundreds of settlers clash with Palestinians around illegal West Bank outpost (Times of Israel 5/28/22)
Police, left-wing activists clash ahead of planned protest at illegal outpost Homesh (Times of Israel 5/28/22)
International Community
Tweet from Yishai Fleisher (Spokesman for the settlements) 5/31/22: “An honor to host #Arizona Governor @DougDucey – the FIRST sitting US governor to visit #Hebron and the Tomb of the Forefathers and Mothers!! Tour led by Hebron’s awesome Director General Hebron @UriKarzen” [linked to Ducey’s 5/20/22 tweet from the Hebron settlements)
Israel Prize winners call for Belgium to boycott West Bank products (Jerusalem Post 5/31/22)
Israeli police clash with anti-settlement activists, 3 arrested (Middle East Monitor 5/29/22)
Joint EU statement: Israeli settlements are a clear violation of international law (WAFA 5/27/22)
Ambassador David Friedman: Israel must ‘grow up’ and decide its eastern border (Jewish News Syndicate 5/26/22) Also see: Israel shouldn’t let the US dictate its final borders, Friedman says (Jerusalem Post 5/28/22 – excerpt – “Friedman urged Israelis not to abandon their sovereignty plans and to begin to prepare a national consensus for what its final borders should be based on US President Donald Trump’s peace plan.”)
Bonus Read
Will Someone Finally Say Israel Has Lost It? (Haaretz 5/31/22)
“’The Arabs are raising their heads. They’re taking liberties,’ complained Efrat Raz, a resident of the unauthorized, illegal outpost of Kida, to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Because he was killed, we know that her husband Noam Raz was a member of the Yamam police counterterrorism force that raided Jenin on May 13 and bombarded a house while its residents, including 11 children, slept inside. The armed men of the force also took a father and his daughter as human shields.
“How many residents of the illegal settlements and illegal/unauthorized outposts serve enthusiastically, with devotion and high spirits in units that terrorize Palestinian children and induce trauma and fury in them for their entire lives? How many of their wives – and it’s reasonable to assume that they themselves – think “the Arabs are raising their heads?” How many of those wearing the white shirts that we saw in Sunday’s march of horrors in Jerusalem dream about joining the Yamam?
“It would be important if they set the policy under which the role of the army and its policing branches is to protect and deepen the settlement enterprise. But the opposite is true: For over 50 years the messianic-nationalist stream has served as a convenient tool in the hands of secular Israeli governments, which worked diligently on advancing the Zionist project while grabbing the remnants of the Palestinian space, captured in 1967. A tool, let us repeat. A means…”