“This move to promote settlement units in E1 should be understood in the context of government actions to promote settlement construction in Givat Hamatos and Har Homa to sever the Bethlehem-Jerusalem continuum, and the early promotion of a plan to turn the decommissioned Atarot Airport into a new Jerusalem settlement that would work toward severing the Ramallah-Jerusalem continuum. With E1 added to the mix, the pattern of severing the East Jerusalem and the West Bank is a clear policy direction of this government. While this announcement may be connected to the upcoming election, Netanyahu should be taken at his word and his comments should not be written off as campaign bluster. Indeed just this week he fulfilled a promise he made the week prior to publish tenders in Givat HaMatos, another area that was seen as a red line by the international community. It is likely that if moving on E1 is not met with deterring action domestically or abroad then it will further encourage settlement activity, seeing as E1 is the most recognized red line on settlement construction. The US, which has traditionally played a large role in deterring activity in E1, will likely not do so now with its current administration. Indeed, the Trump Plan envisions E1 as part of Israel, and allows for Israeli annexation pending coordination with the US and not negotiations with the Palestinians.”

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that he had ordered the promotion of a plan for some 3,500 homes in a contentious West Bank area that has long been frozen due to objections from governments around the world supportive of a two-state solution. The project in the so-called E1 area between East Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim city-settlement would bisect the western West Bank, substantially curbing the possibility for development in the center of a future Palestinian state if one were to be created.” See Also: “Netanyahu revives settlement plan opponents say cuts off East Jerusalem” (Reuters); 

“The scenarios the body is preparing for include major terror attacks in the West Bank and inside Israel; Palestinians breaking into West Bank settlements; large numbers of West Bank and Gazan Palestinians or Lebanese breaching Israel’s southeastern and northern borders, respectively, and entering the country; rocket fire from Gaza, Syria and Lebanon; mass marches near settlements; attempted infiltrations by sea and the blocking of major roads. According to intelligence assessments, Israeli Arabs would likely also demonstrate at major intersections. In addition, Jerusalem would become a main theater of escalation, with the possibility of terror attacks by East Jerusalem residents and attempts by Palestinians to barricade themselves on the Temple Mount. However, these assessments hold that the violence probably wouldn’t last for more than a few weeks. The likelihood of a third intifada breaking out is considered low. This new body, which will be overseen by an appointed cabinet minister, will be responsible for coordinating the division of labor among the various organizations in the event of unrest. It will address defense, intelligence and legal issues.”

“Hamas and other Palestinian factions have been trying to spark armed resistance in the West Bank to the recently revealed US Mideast peace plan, but they face several challenges. Recent incidents there have been limited to sporadic individual attacks against Israeli targets. Palestinians have roundly rejected the US peace plan, dubbed the ‘deal of the century’ by the administration of US President Donald Trump. Since the United States released details of the plan Jan. 28, Hamas has been making intense efforts to ignite the West Bank. But it’s been stifled in part by the continued security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA has imposed absolute control over the West Bank, which keeps Hamas from finding a foothold there, be it financially, militarily or politically.”

“The plan for construction in Givat Hamatos was first brought forward in 2012, earning widespread condemnation in the international community over its cutting off of the Palestinian neighborhoods of Beit Safafa and Sharafat from the West Bank, in a manner that critics said placed a nail in the coffin of a two-state solution based roughly on the pre-1967 lines. However, Army Radio reported Tuesday, a senior unnamed US official told Israeli officials 1.5 years ago that the Trump administration would not object to the construction.

The plan to build in an area known as E1 ‘is so dangerous, more dangerous than any other settlement plans in the West Bank,’ al-Maliki told reporters on the sidelines of the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Al-Malki said the plan ‘intends to destroy the two-state solution’ and would ‘kill any possibility’ for a peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump and accepted by Netanyahu last month.”

“We read all 181 pages of Trump’s Middle East Peace Plan to find out how the ‘deal of the century’ compares with the last 100 years of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.”

“Tatarsky links the increased police presence to new Jerusalem Police Chief Maj. Gen. Doron Yadid, who replaced Yoram Halevi in February 2019. According to Tatarsky, the intensified raids began just a few months after Yadid took over. ‘He made a few changes in policing East Jerusalem, more aggressive,’ he explains. For example, Yadid re-introduced the use of border police in Palestinian neighborhoods instead of the regular community police patrols which had been used by his predecessor. But Yadid’s hardline tactics to disrupt daily life including through collective punishment to ‘break’ Issawiya residents is a ‘big mistake,’ warns Tatarsky. ‘He achieved the opposite: resistance and opposition. Opposition against military presence in the neighborhood is… worse than it used to be with his predecessor. Border police are not welcome in Issawiya.’ Moreover, according to Tatarsky, out of some 700 arrests made by the police, only 20 indictments have been issued, and even then for acts that were committed only because the police entered the neighborhood. ‘You terrorize youth who now have all kinds of psychological damage and anger. This has caused more damage and (the police chief) is not able to show anything he actually achieved,’ says Tatarsky. ‘What is happening in Issawiya is unprecedented,’ he adds. ‘We never had such an intensive violent disruptive campaign with really no reason and for so long.’”

“Tires of Palestinian vehicles were slashed on Wednesday in an apparent ‘price tag’ attack in the Palestinian town of Yasuf, located near Ariel, according to Palestinian media. Photos of the scene showed slashed tires and a graffiti Star of David, alongside the words ‘On Judea and Samaria, there will be a war.'”

“Israel’s use of ‘necroviolence’ on bodies of Palestinians has been condemned as part of its policy to exert further control over the people living in the occupied territories. According to JLAC and Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights, an NGO, Israel is the only country in the world that has a policy of confiscation of human remains, where it relies on regulations dating back to 1945 (during the British Mandate) as grounds for its policy. In September 2019, the Israeli High Court approved the practice after several legal cases were brought against the state. According to Adalah, the ruling stated that emergency regulations allowed the Israeli military to order temporary burial of Palestinians classified as enemies ‘based on considerations that take into account state security, civil order, and the need to negotiate for the return of the bodies of Israeli soldiers’. However, international law considers the practice a violation of human rights. According to the Geneva Conventions, the parties of an armed conflict must bury the deceased in an honourable way, ‘if possible according to the rites of the religion to which they belonged and that their graves are respected, properly maintained, and marked in such a way that they can always be recognised’.”

“Israel will continue implementing economic relief measures reached in cease-fire talks with Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip over the past couple of weeks despite a recent escalation earlier this week, senior Hamas officials said Tuesday. ‘We’re treating this as an isolated incident, despite the difficult sights from Khan Yunis, where a body was dragged by a bulldozer,’ one Hamas political official said, referring to an incident Sunday morning where an Israeli army bulldozer dragged a slain Palestinian militant into Israeli territory. ‘This incident forced Islamic Jihad to respond and that drew a counter-response, but as far as the Palestinian factions are concerned, this incident didn’t break the rules,’ the official added.”

“As for Haniyeh, Hamas sources confirmed in a Feb. 2 press statement that he would continue to run the movement’s political bureau, but would do so from Doha, so he can freely conduct his foreign trips, which are expected to continue until the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. The announcement of Haniyeh settling in Qatar followed reports in the past month that the Egyptian authorities prevented his return from the foreign tour — which so far has included Qatar, Turkey, Iran and Malaysia — to Egypt, which is the only passage to Gaza via the Rafah border crossing. Numerous statements from Hamas denied the reports. However, a Palestinian journalist close to Hamas leaders told Al-Monitor they were fully aware that Egypt had asked Haniyeh not to travel to Tehran to participate in the funeral of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani. But Haniyeh deliberately violated this condition, making it difficult for Cairo to allow his return at present, he added.”

“Fighting for his political survival in Israel’s third election in less than a year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged, if he wins Monday’s vote, to apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements, built on land captured in a war in 1967. His frequent campaign stops in settlements and promises of de-facto annexation – which Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said would create a fragmented and unviable ‘Swiss cheese’ of a Palestinian state – could draw votes from the far-right. But Netanyahu’s annexation promises do not go far enough for some settlers. They believe God promised the land to their forefathers and want all the West Bank, for which they use the Biblical name Judea and Samaria, not just the settlements.”

“Fear that he might join up with Blue and White’s Benny Gantz is what ultimately caused Netanyahu to give Bennett the Defense Ministry, even though Bennett was battered and bruised politically in two successive election campaigns. As I noted in a previous article, Bennett has been trying ever since to rehabilitate his political career by making decisions that have come under fire from senior members of the defense establishment and by trying to take credit for things that never happened in order to impress his potential voters. In an interview Feb. 15, Bennett said, ‘From the three months before to the three months after I entered [the position of defense minister], the number of rockets dropped by 80%.’ When Haaretz looked into this boastful interview, it found that the number of rockets fired at Israel actually doubled since Bennett took office. Of course, that does not include the dozens of rockets fired by Islamic Jihad over the last two days. To what degree will the current round of violence hurt ‘Mr. Security’ Netanyahu? Right now, it is hard to tell. In the September 2019 election, residents of the south voted for the Likud en masse, despite all their complaints that they had been neglected. It is reasonable to assume that Netanyahu is well aware of how dangerous Bennett is in the Defense Ministry and that all of his arrogant moves and tweets are intended solely to improve his position politically. On the other hand, Netanyahu also has a tendency to appoint ministers and make decisions intended solely to extricate himself from the corruption scandals for which he has been indicted.”

“The run-up to Monday’s parliamentary election feels as if nearly everyone involved — candidates, campaigns, voters, the political media — is staggering through the motions like the undead, doomed to repeat the process without cease. A good portion of the voting-age public seems to have some disturbing thoughts on the brain: Is this election more “Groundhog Day” or an episode of the ‘Twilight Zone’? A Sartre novel, or a Beckett play? It’s understandable.”

“Full disclosure: This is the third time in the past year that we have published this article. With only minor changes.”

“In the political reality of 2020, no one actually needs the lobby in order to ensure Republican support for right-wing Israeli policies. Such support is already being secured by powerful Evangelical Christian organizations and by major donors such as casino tycoon and billionaire Sheldon Adelson. But Israel’s official diplomatic approach is that the country needs bipartisan support in Washington, a city where power changes hands every few years between the two parties. AIPAC, for its part, presents itself to its donors and supporters as the organization most capable of providing “ironclad support” for Israel on both sides of the aisle. Sanders’ attack on the lobby is a direct blow to its bipartisan talking points. If he does secure the Democratic nomination – a very likely scenario, at this point – AIPAC will face an extremely difficult challenge ahead of the November election, and its bipartisan reputation will be put to one of the toughest possible tests.”

“Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he would study the issue of relocating the American Embassy in Israel to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem but wouldn’t commit to commanding the change. The Vermont senator said during Tuesday night’s debate in Charleston, South Carolina, that he is ‘very proud of being Jewish’ but also pressed that ‘you cannot ignore the suffering of the Palestinian people.’ In 2018, the Trump administration reversed decades of U.S. foreign policy by siding more blatantly with Israel, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the American Embassy there. President Donald Trump also closed Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington and cut funding to Palestinian aid programs. The other Jewish candidate onstage, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, said, ‘You can’t move the embassy back.” Instead, he said, “The answer is to obviously split it up.’ Capping off the issue, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said moving the embassy is not a decision for the U.S. to make, adding, ‘We should let the parties determine the capitals themselves.”’

“A leading Israeli venture capital firm said Wednesday it has hired the Trump administration’s former Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt as a business developer for the region…Greenblatt told The Associated Press his focus would be on cultivating investment from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain – all countries that have developed behind-the-scenes relations with Israel in recent years, and who were to be key investors in the economic development side of the Trump administration’s Mideast plan.”

“The 112 companies listed are merely the tip of the iceberg of corporate complicity in the occupation…The first step to stopping illegal behavior is to identify the perpetrators and their corporate accomplices. Yet, the criteria for inclusion in the database were exceedingly narrow, and as a result many of the most egregious corporate offenders are conspicuously missing…Perhaps this restrictive interpretation explains why corporations like Caterpillar, Volvo and CNH Industrial – whose heavy machinery has been regularly documented in home demolitions and settlement construction – were left off the list.”

“The UN Security Council made a rare show of unity Monday when it called on all parties to maintain their support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. ‘Council Members reiterated their support for a negotiated two-state solution … where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognized borders,’ said a statement released by Belgium, which holds the rotating presidency, and supported by all 14 other members, including the United States.”