Settlement & Annexation Report: April 21, 2022

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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**

April 21, 2022

  1. Israeli Apartheid/Supremeacy in Action: Outposts Edition
  2. Israeli Supremacy/Apartheid in Action: Elsewhere in the West Bank
  3. Oops! Biden Admin Normalizes & Publicizes Settlement Wine
  4. Deeper Dives

Israeli Apartheid/Supremacy in Action: Outposts Edition

Tweet from +972 Magazine’s Haggai Matar 4/19/22:

“One of the essential problems of media coverage about Israel-Palestine is that a march of thousands of settlers on private Palestinian land, backed by armed soldiers, are not considered “violent”, whereas a Palestinian standing on their land to defend it with a stone – is”

Start of Twitter thread from Haaretz’s Hagar Shezaf 4/19/22, translated from Hebrew:

“In preparation for the settlers’ march to Homs, the military blocked all exits of the nearby Palestinian village of Burqa to Route 60, which is the main road. At the moment, palestinian vehicles on the road are also not allowed to cross at all. Photo: Saddam Salah….” )

Twitter thread from the Good Shepherd Collective 4/19/22:

“Racism and colonization in action. At least 3 Israeli MKs were photographed today in Homesh, an Israeli outpost near Burqa, north of Nablus. MK Silman was seen alongside Bezalel Smotrich, co-founder of Regavim and Itamar Ben Gvir, linked to the Israel Land Fund. The settlers marched in response to the state’s resistance to the re-colonization of this land after the evacuation of Homesh in 2005. This demonstrates the role these settler activists-turned-politicians have in accelerating the agenda of land theft. #DefundRacism…”

Media reports:

Israelis march to West Bank’s Homesh, amid tensions with Palestinians (Jerusalem Post 4/20/22)

Eight Palestinian protesters injured by Israeli soldiers as settlers march in West Bank (PBS NewsHour 4/19/22)

Israeli settlers march in West Bank amid wave of unrest (ABC News 4/19/22)

Palestinians injured after Israeli settlers march to outpost (Al Jazeera 4/19/22)

Palestinians clash with troops in West Bank as settlers march to former settlement (Times of Israel 4/19/22)

Palestinians, Israeli Forces Clash as Thousands March to Evacuated West Bank Outpost

(Haaretz 4/19/22)

Thousands plan march to dismantled West Bank settlement over IDF’s initial objection (Times of Israel 4/18/22)

 

Israeli Apartheid/Supremacy in Action: Elsewhere in the West Bank

Twitter thread from South Hebron Hills activist Basil Adra 4/20/22:

“120,000 Palestinians live in the southern city of Yatta. These people have a single municipal park and this morning ten cars of Israeli occupation forces closed it off to residents in order to allow about 40 Israeli settlers to go in the park. [with photos] In this video, the soldier expels the school students and prevents them from going to their homes, until the settlers finish talking and leave. This provocation occurred by the occupation forces and settlers in area A  [with video].”

Twitter thread from the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, 4/20/22:

“Right now, on the road to Jinba in #MasaferYatta, the Israeli army has stopped five Palestinian teachers on their way to school in so-called Firing Zone 918. School has started and the soldiers refuse to answer any questions. There are eight Israeli soldiers here with assault rifles blocking the passage of Palestinian teachers carrying only books and pens. One of the soldiers with long hair and religious garb sneered at a teacher, ‘Once I’m out of my uniform, you’ll see what I can really do to you.’ He is clearly a settler doing his reserve service. The soldiers have now confiscated the car, claiming that it is unregistered (mushtuba). This regime of car registration in the occupied West Bank is yet another bureaucratic tool of Israeli state oppression, as discussed here…Some settlers drove up and started asking us solidarity activists why we were filming, and we explained the the teachers’ situation. One of settlers mocked us, saying that we were making propaganda, and then called one of us a ‘Nazi.’” [with photos & video]

Tweet from B’tselem’s Sarit Michaeli 4/20/22:

“Thousands of Jewish settlers picnic in a closed military zone (i.e. where it’s literally illegal for them to be), protected by the Israeli army. Five Palestinian villages put under lockdown and teargassed for protesting. Israeli apartheid in a nutshell.”

Tweet from B’Selem’s Sarit Michael 4/18/22

“Super important: settlers are enjoying a government cash bonanza to spy on Palestinian rural communities and harass them. Story based on @KNavot work details the state funded “unarmed settler militias” set up in area c. Worth running through google translate.”

Media reports:

IDF to impose closure on Judea and Samaria until Saturday (Jewish News Syndicate 4/21/22)

Israel closes Ibrahimi Mosque to Palestinian worshippers, holds concert for settlers (Middle East Monitor 4/19/22)

Upcoming JNF Vote Could Pave Way for More West Bank Land Purchases (Haaretz 4/18/22)

Israeli Settlers Block Reopening of West Bank Road to Palestinians After Two Decades (Haaretz 4/18/22)

 

Oops! Biden Admin Normalizes/Publicizes Settlement Wine

Media reports:

Madam Vice President: Psagot is a racist settlement (Arab News 4/20/22)

Left-wing Jewish American orgs. blast Biden admin. for serving wine from Israeli settlement (Jerusalem Post 4/18/22)

Vice President Harris Serves Israeli Settlement Wine at Passover Event (Haaretz 4/17/22)

US: Kamala Harris serves wine made in illegal Israeli settlement during Passover seder (Middle East Eye 4/17/22)

 

Deeper Dives

In Masafer Yatta, activism is not a choice but a necessity (+972 Magazine 4/21/22)

Excerpt: “… I decided to become an activist after witnessing the increasing violence of settlers in my village. I remember, for example, returning from school one day when I was in the third grade to find that a settler had chased after my uncle and his herd of goats, stabbing one of the goats 14 times. The threat of violence from the settlers of Havat Ma’on, which is illegal even under Israeli law, also extended to us children. As a result, in 2004 we started having to walk to school under military escort: instead of investigating the settlers’ crimes, Israel decided to send a military jeep twice a day to accompany the children, because that is what was necessary to protect us from the settlers. This absurd situation continues to this day.”

Confiscating Palestinian Land for a Horse Farm (Human Rights Watch 4/21/22)

Excerpt: “If the purpose of this buffer was to keep would-be assailants far from potential targets, it seems not all of Sha’arei Tikvah’s residents got the message. For years, some of them have been passing through the settlement’s original fence to operate horse farms in the buffer zone. The farms sit on land next to the barrier, which in this area consists not of a wall but a high chain-link fence. North of that fence, the Palestinian owners of the land have a clear view of Israelis riding horses among their olive trees.”

The women at the heart of Beita’s resistance (+972 Magazine 4/20/22)

Excerpt: “A general feeling of fatigue has spread under the brunt of escalating state-backed settler violence, punitive measures by the Israeli army, and a Palestinian Authority that is both rife with corruption and shows no interest in sustaining a national movement. But for the three months of round-the-clock resistance, Abu Shamsa is certain that the work of the women’s collective helped sustain the protests.”

When a Military Commander Takes Orders From Settlers (Zahava Galon/Haaretz 4/18/22)

Excerpt: “For decades, the settlers have effectively been the commanders on the ground. Company commanders frequently meet settler leaders in their sectors. Soldiers receive direct commands from settlement security coordinators.”

Professor’s saga highlights nationalists’ reach in Israel (Washington Post 4/17/22)

Excerpt: “Goldreich, 65, and hundreds of other academics signed a petition last year calling on the European Union to halt funding for Ariel University, located in the West Bank, saying it legitimized Israeli settlements. In a research partnership with the EU launched last year, Israel itself agreed not to include the university, along with other West Bank institutions.The outcry prompted the country’s then-education minister to refuse to approve the nomination, saying Goldreich may have violated a 2011 anti-boycott law, and sparked a yearlong legal battle that ended last month when the Supreme Court decided the current education minister, who had also denied Goldreich the prize, must grant it. ‘A person who calls for a boycott on an Israeli academic institution is not worthy of an official prize from the state of Israel, be his achievements what they may,’ Education Minister Yifat Shasha-Biton, from the nationalist New Hope party, tweeted after the ruling.“

Al-Haq Sends Urgent Appeal to UN Special Procedures on Intensified Violence against Palestinians by Colonial Settlers (Al Haq 4/14/22; text of appeal here)

Excerpt: “The appeal highlights alarming forms and levels of colonial settler violence throughout Palestine in 2021, and intensified price tag attacks in particular, after the killing of a colonial settler by allegedly two Palestinians on 16 December 2021, and recent attacks by Palestinians inside the Green Line since 27 March 2022. While increase of colonial settler attacks have been observed as acts of reprisals after the aforementioned attacks, Al-Haq stresses that colonial settler violence is a direct result of the settlement enterprise illegally initiated and expanded by the Israeli occupying authorities, and has been allowed to continue and escalate due to Israel’s systematic failure to conduct effective investigations and prosecutions of the offending colonial settlers, creating a climate of impunity, as well as the international community’s failure to bring to end Israel’s systematic violations of international law.”