In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Peter Beinart speaks with Myssana Morany, a lawyer and coordinator of the Land and Planning Rights Unit of Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, and Sarit Michaeli, the International Advocacy Director at the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. They discuss forcible transfer and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and the Naqab/Negev, looking at shared patterns of policy and action that supports Jewish control over land, enacting and entrenching the regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea. They look at specific mechanisms of displacement and dispossession of Palestinian communities, particularly rural herding and farming communities, and the dozens of communities – including tens of thousands of Palestinians – made homeless or vulnerable by this regime. Patterns include: increased home demolitions, segregationist urban planning processes, the refusal of the Supreme Court to protect or defend Palestinian land rights, and the increase in political support for crowding Palestinians into urban areas or removing them from their land altogether. Additionally, the last two-plus years has seen a massive acceleration of settler violence and terror against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, which is backed by every arm of the Israeli state.

From Adalah on the displacement in the Negev/Naqab: 

• 49 Years After Land Day: Mass Expulsion in the Naqab Unfolding
• Israeli Supreme Court Rejects Final Appeal by the Palestinian Bedouin Residents of Ras Jrabah, Ordering Forced Displacement of Around 500 People within 90 days to Make Way for Expansion of Jewish City of Dimona
• Ras Jrabah: The Legal Struggle Against State-Led Displacement in the Naqab

On the West Bank: 

• ‘The settlers brought the violence’: the ethnic cleansing of a West Bank village (The Guardian 1/14/26); 
• B’Tselem: Armed Israeli militias forcibly transferred 26 families from the southern Jordan Valley Palestinian community of Ras ‘Ein al-‘Auja (1/8/26)
• B’Tselem on forced displacement in the WB more broadly (the blog link on that page will take you to more detailed and updated cases)

Speakers: 

Myssana Morany joined Adalah as a lawyer in 2014. In 2019, she was appointed coordinator of the Land and Planning Rights Unit. Myssana’s work in the Naqab includes representing several Bedouin communities facing displacement and challenging state intiatives and master plans that induce displacement.

Sarit Michaeli is International Advocacy Director at B’Tselem. She joined B’Tselem in 2004 as its media spokesperson and director of public outreach. Sarit has an MA (Distinction) in Gender Studies from Birkbeck College, University of London, and a BA in graphic design from Camberwell College of Art, the London Institute.

Peter Beinart is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a Professor of Journalism and Political Science at the City University of New York, a Contributing opinion writer at the New York Times, an Editor-at-Large at Jewish Currents, and an MSNBC Political Commentator. His newest book (published 2025) is Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning.