Top news stories from Israel/Palestine: February 22, 2018

What We’re Reading

Israeli politics

Police closing in on Netanyahu,

“With the former director general of the Ministry of Communications, Shlomo Filber, as a state witness, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to be indicted and even convicted,” writes Ben Caspit.

Occupation/Human rights

A New Neighborhood to Expand the Footprint of the settlement of Gilo,

A plan under consideration by the Jerusalem Municipality envisions 2,992 housing units in a new neighborhood on the southeastern slopes between Gilo and Bethlehem.

Silwan, a Palestinian community torn apart by Israel's dig to find 'lost city',

Israel is creating a ‘City of David’ attraction in East Jerusalem – but the work is destroying homes above the excavation sites.

New Checkpoint Cuts off Al-Walajeh from Lands & Spring,

Israel has started building the new Ein Yael checkpoint between Jerusalem and the settlement of Har Gilo, at the southern exit of Jerusalem. The checkpoint will block Walaje’s residents from accessing their lands, and cut them off from the Ein Haniya spring and related water resources.

Palestinian Dies in Military Custody After Beating by Israeli Soldiers in Jericho,

A Palestinian man died after he was arrested overnight by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Jericho on Thursday. A Palestinian NGO said that the man was beaten to death by the soldiers.

My father was jailed for believing Palestine must be free,

The Israeli occupation thinks that my father, non-violent organizer Munther Amirah, is a threat to its apartheid system because he radiates hope to our community.

Opinion: Israel Is Fast Becoming a Rogue State. And Trump Is Complicit in That Downfall,

“America has always acted as a brake on the Israeli right wing’s more destructive moves to sabotage peace. Trump has ended that,” writes Stephen Robert.

US-Israeli/Palestinian relations

Trump's aid cuts risk radicalizing a new generation of Palestinians, official says,

U.S. President Donald Trump’s cuts to America’s foreign aid budget are putting the lives of more than 1 million refugees at risk and threaten to radicalize a new generation of Palestinians, according to the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

US envoys pushing UN to back Trump’s Mideast peace plan,

US President Donald Trump’s two top envoys on the Middle East have told UN Security Council ambassadors that they hope for their support for the upcoming peace plan, diplomats said.

Estranged from White House, Palestinian envoy looks for way out of ‘box’,

A few miles down the road from Israel’s gated embassy, the Palestinian envoy to Washington sits in his office wrestling with a unique diplomatic dilemma: how to advance his people’s cause when relations with the United States are so distant that he hasn’t even spoken to the White House in months.