“Settler leaders lauded the approvals, thanking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Bennett for advancing their efforts beyond the Green Line. Just two days earlier, Netanyahu announced that he had ordered the promotion of a plan for some 3,500 homes in the contentious E1 area in the West Bank that has long been frozen due to objections from governments around the world supportive of a two-state solution. The project between East Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim city-settlement would effectively 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…On Sunday, the Prime Minister’s Office ordered that 12 illegal outposts in the West Bank be connected to the state’s official power grid. Last week, Netanyahu announced that he had lifted restrictions on the construction of the controversial Givat Hamatos neighborhood in East Jerusalem, saying that 3,000 homes would be built for Jewish residents there, in addition to another 2,200 housing units for Jews in the nearby Har Homa neighborhood.” See Also: “1,737 Settlement Units Promoted: Eli Settlement Housing Legalized, New Industrial Park” (Peace Now)

“European foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on Friday criticized Israel’s plan to build new settlement homes in a contentious area of the West Bank, saying it will cut territorial contiguity between East Jerusalem and the West Bank. ‘The EU reiterates its call on Israel to halt settlement construction, to suspend the publication of tenders and to refrain from any measures aimed at the advancement of such construction plans. Settlements are illegal under international law,’ read Borrell’s statement. ‘We call on both parties to engage in a dialogue and to refrain from any unilateral action that undermines the viability of the two-state solution.’”

“For the residents of the hilltop Jewish settlement of Yitzhar, President Trump’s recently published plan for Middle East peace comes with a blessing and a curse. For many, it fulfills a lifelong dream: American recognition of the biblical promise and legitimacy of the settlements in the occupied West Bank, allowing Israel to annex them while flouting decades of international consensus that they violate international law. ‘The whole narrative has changed,’ said Matanya Gavrieli, 27, a member of Yitzhar’s leadership council. ‘A president of the United States came along and said the people of Israel have the right to be here.’ But what many of the settlers object to is that the plan leaves Yitzhar and 14 other isolated settlements — including some of the most ideologically hard-line ones — as enclaves surrounded by a Palestinian mini state, tethered to Israel by narrow arteries.”

“When he has sought my advice during the past couple of years, I have advised Jared Kushner not to become Israel’s lawyer. The last time I met with Kushner, he asked me what, in my view, would constitute success on his part. I made it clear that there was zero chance of reaching a conflict-ending accord, as neither Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas nor Netanyahu were willing or able to make the decisions required to achieve one. But I also told him that if he wasn’t careful, he could make the situation a great deal worse. The key was to put something out that was credible and would put America in position to be seen as a party that could be trusted by all sides to work on the issue in the future. Whatever Israel and the Palestinians need to succeed in making peace, what they don’t need is precisely what the Kushner law firm delivered: a framework that may well have hung a closed-for-the-season sign both on a viable peace process and America’s credibility as a fair and effective broker.  “

“The Attorney General’s Office has reprimanded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office for routinely intervening in law enforcement’s efforts to demolish illegal Israeli outposts in the West Bank. In an October letter uncovered Thursday by the Haaretz daily, Deputy Attorney General Erez Kaminitz wrote to PMO director Ronen Peretz, chiding the political echelon over the ‘very alarming collection of cases that raises concerns about the development of a very problematic trend of undermining the rule of law.’”

“A Direct Polls survey conducted by right-wing pollster Shlomo Filber found that Netanyahu’s bloc had 59 seats and his Likud would beat Blue and White 35 seats to 33. ‘Two more mandates and we remove Israel from the political quagmire,’ Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.”

“In the recordings, published by Israel’s Channel 12 News on Thursday — less than a week before Israelis head to the polls — the strategist was heard telling an anonymous source that his boss might “endanger the people of Israel,” and that he ‘doesn’t have the guts to strike in Iran.’ The adviser to the former army chief was also heard saying that a Kahol Lavan lawmaker had harshly criticized the leader of her party. ‘She [Knesset member Omer Yankelevich of Kahol Lavan] says that he’s stupid and a total loser and that he shouldn’t be prime minister.'”

“The Arabic-language accounts were uncovered by the nonprofit organization Democratic Bloc and were confirmed removed on Tuesday, Haaretz reported. The pages encouraged the Arab community to boycott the March 2 election or encouraged social polarization. Nearly half the fake accounts posted responses on the Facebook page of Ayman Odeh, head of the Joint List Party, which is comprised mostly of Arabs. Prior to Israel’s national election in September, Facebook removed 82 fake accounts following a study by the Democratic Bloc.”

“Netanyahu, who was slammed during the last national elections in September for employing fiery rhetoric against Arabs, recently granted an interview to Hala TV, the sole privately owned Arabic-language channel in Israel; posted a verse from the Quran on his Facebook page about the hajj pilgrimage; and held a campaign event between Tamra and Ibillin, Arab towns in the Galilee.”

“Israelis are satisfied with the way democracy is functioning, but support in the Jewish state is significantly lower than in most countries for freedom of expression, including an uncensored press, internet freedom and freedom for human rights groups to operate freely, according to a Pew Research Center report published Thursday. Unlike in most nations polled, support for freedom of speech in Israel declined between 2015 and 2019. Only 51 percent say it is very important that people can say what they want without government censorship, compared with 58% of Israelis who said so four years earlier.”

“Israel is a democratic country within its internationally recognized borders, but it maintains a military occupation of land on which millions of people live while denying those people the right to vote. Under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this inherent instability has started to tip toward outright authoritarianism throughout the territory under Israeli control. In a 2019 poll conducted by the nonpartisan Israeli Democracy Institute, a majority of Israelis (54 percent) said their democracy was ‘in grave danger.’ Since Netanyahu took office in 2009, the nationalist right has mounted an assault on liberal institutions and eroded democracy in Israel…Israel is heading down a path already trod by countries like Turkey, Hungary, and Venezuela: former democracies whose elected leaders have, gradually and through mostly legal processes, twisted the state’s institutions to the point where the public no longer has a meaningful choice in who rules them. The signs are subtle, but I found them striking during my trip last fall (sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting).”

“Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, has been in power since Mahmid and his friends – fellow Arab teenagers attending a gap-year leadership course before starting college – were in elementary school. They have come of age in a country where its Arab (or Palestinian, as a growing number identify) citizens have become increasingly integrated into the economy and culture. Surveys suggest that the younger generation of Arab Israelis in particular want to participate in the democratic process and be part of the decision-making.”

“Israel is stuck in a political twilight zone. For the third time in less than a year, voters will head to the polls on Monday in a parliamentary election that’s supposed to decide whether Benjamin Netanyahu gets a fifth term as prime minister or challenger Benny Gantz, Israel’s former military chief, becomes the country’s new leader.”

“If the upcoming elections do not augur well for the center-left camp today, the future looks even grimmer given the younger generation. In general, young people tend to position themselves at the forefront of demands for change, even leading campaigns challenging authoritarian, corrupt regimes. A 2018 Pew Research Center study found young Americans today to be the most liberal ever in the United States, critical and striving for social change. In 2020 Israel, on the other hand, young people prefer the status quo they know and identify with a corrupt regime that challenges the gatekeepers of the state’s democracy…Political scientist Daniel Bar-Tal, who has studied Israeli textbooks among other things, also believes the root of the evil lies in the school system, which lacks openness and critical judgment. Bar-Tal explained to Al-Monitor, ‘Already in kindergarten, the tykes are inculcated with the hegemonic narrative that Netanyahu has been nurturing since he came to power.’ According to that narrative, Bar-Tal said, the Israeli people are under existential threat; there is always someone who wants to eliminate them; and the Holocaust has no time limit. In Netanyahu’s narrative, the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, and there is no occupation; the people of Israel are uniquely moral and righteous; they want peace but are surrounded by a dangerous jungle.”

“At a Feb. 17 press conference in Khartoum, Sudan, deputy secretary-general of the Sudanese People’s Congress Party Bashir Adam Rahma accused Dahlan of coordinating with Israel to achieve the secession of Darfur and seize the Red Sea, supposedly in support of UAE interests. After Sudan’s then-President Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by the Sudanese military in April 2019, Dahlan had visited Sudan, supposedly contacting Sudanese forces to persuade them to bring about a rapprochement with the UAE and promising them financial support.  Also, Turkey’s Minister of Interior Suleyman Soylu announced Feb. 16 to Al-Jazeera that Ankara has added Dahlan to its list of most-wanted terrorists. He reminded the audience of a spy cell Dahlan allegedly had established that was dismantled in April 2019 and said Turkey has many such examples that condemn Fatah’s former leader. He did not rule out allegations from 2018 that Dahlan was connected to the assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in October of that year. In another recent move against Dahlan, the London-based law firm Stoke & White called in a Feb. 15 press conference to grant the United States, Britain and Turkey jurisdiction to arrest him and UAE officials for alleged war crimes in Yemen.”

“Mohammed al-Braim, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, told Al-Monitor, ‘The observation units play a pivotal role in setting the scene for the resistance operations and defining targets in preparation for any military confrontation with Israel. They help the resistance by giving an accurate field position assessment based on its information on land, air and sea, and by identifying the Israeli plans in Gaza. Israel thus targets these observation units along the Gaza borders in every confrontation, which pushes the resistance to search for alternative means to collect the required information about Israel’s movements on the ground.’ Perhaps Israel’s awareness of the seriousness of these Hamas observation units and security points along the Gaza border pushes it to try and deceive Hamas’ monitoring members by showing fictitious field moves intended to convey inaccurate information to al-Qassam Brigades’ operations room, causing interference with its operational decisions. This represents a serious challenge to the Hamas monitoring system in terms of differentiating between correct and misleading information.”

Peter Beinart writes, “But until Sanders did so this weekend, few prominent Democrats had acknowledged the elephant in the room: that Israeli policy in the West Bank is, in and of itself, an expression of bigotry. The bigotry isn’t subtle. In the West Bank, Israeli Jews live under Israeli civil law, which guarantees them citizenship, the right to vote for the government that controls their lives, due process, and free movement; their Palestinian neighbors, who live under military law, lack all of these rights. When Americans—especially Americans whose families have endured state-sponsored discrimination—see this reality firsthand, they often compare it to the dual system of law that operated in the US during Jim Crow. After visiting Hebron, Donna Edwards, an African American former representative from Maryland, remarked: ‘it looked like the stories that my mother and my grandmother told me about living in the [segregated] South.’ More than any other organization in Washington, AIPAC ensures that this institutionalized bigotry goes unchallenged. It forms alliances with US and world leaders who condone bigotry against Palestinians. And such people often excuse other forms of bigotry, too. Which explains why this year’s policy conference will offer a platform to a minister who accused Obama of being a Muslim, an apologist for Serbia’s genocide against Bosnians, and Rep. Steve Scalise, one of the members of Congress most hostile to LGBT rights.”

“Jewish pro-peace groups based in the US like IPF, APN, and NIF continue to insist, as they have for years, that a negotiated two-state solution is the only viable or desirable final outcome. When Netanyahu signaled that he would move to annex West Bank settlements before the first Israeli election cycle in April 2019, these organizations set annexation as a clear red line, warning that it would mean the end of a two-state solution, the end of a democratic Israel, and the loss of American Jewish support for Israel. Now that line is being crossed. And while some of the organizations say that if Israel proceeds with formal annexation, they will be forced to recalibrate, on the whole, these groups do not appear to have a clear game plan, beyond hoping that impending annexation will wake American Jews up to the reality of what is happening on the ground in Israel/Palestine.”