Trump's Religious Right: New Administration Signals Pro-Settlement Shift 🔍

Breaking Point 📊
Former Trump advisor Victoria Coates indicates incoming administration will support Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, marking dramatic policy shift.

Radical Realignment 🎯

Key Statement:

"Oslo failed. We need a paradigm shift,"

declares Coates, rejecting traditional two-state solution and Palestinian veto power.

Policy Shifts:
• Israeli settlement support
• Iran strike endorsement
• Oslo Accords rejection
• Saudi deal advancement

Strategic Vision 🏛

Trump's Approach:

"Trump said after October 1 that Israel should hit Iran's nuclear and energy sites. This is not something he used to say previously."

Settlement Plans:
• West Bank annexation supported
• Palestinian statehood rejected
• Saudi normalization prioritized
• Religious Zionist alignment

Middle East Reset 💼

New Direction:

"I don't see it as a deal-breaker for Saudi Arabia if it is not a deal-breaker for Washington,"

Coates emphasizes regarding settlement expansion.

Policy Priorities:
• Iran confrontation
• Settlement expansion
• Arab normalization
• Palestinian marginalization

#TrumpPolicy #Israel #MiddleEast #Settlements #ForeignPolicy

Think about it: How will this rightward shift impact regional stability? 🤔

📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 From River to Sea—Make Israel Great Again: Demolitions, Declarations, and the Disappearance of the Two-State Illusion

In the hills of Judea and Samaria, bulldozers are now the blunt instruments of policy—and the message is clear: the dream of a Palestinian state is being flattened, one "unauthorized" cement block at a time.

Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich made no attempt to dress it up. Touring the western Benjamin region, they promised a full-throttle continuation of demolitions targeting what they call the Palestinian Authority’s "strategic land grab." In their words:

“Every illegal structure – without exception.”

The results? A 50% spike in demolitions. A 30% drop in new illegal construction. And a dramatic rhetorical turn that sounds less like conflict management and more like border setting by sledgehammer.

Smotrich called rampant Arab construction “a scourge of the state.” Katz compared it to terrorism. And both framed the crackdown as a national revival project—

"protecting the heartland and redefining the map without a vote, negotiation, or peace process in sight."

Meanwhile, watchdogs like Regavim report tens of thousands of Palestinian structures built in Area C—including roads, shops, and entire communities—without permits that no one ever planned to grant. The Israeli government has responded with something it previously lacked: political will and legal teeth.

This isn’t about law enforcement. It’s about national vision. A one-state vision. A “Make Israel Great Again” vision.

And it’s gaining traction—demolition by demolition.

#Israel #WestBank #JudeaAndSamaria #Settlements #Smotrich #Katz

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🇮🇱🏘 Israel Will Start New Settlements in the Occupied West Bank ⚠️🌍

Israel has said it will establish 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, including the legalisation of outposts already built without government authorisation, after a security cabinet vote held in secret last week. 🗳🤐

Israel occupied the West Bank, capturing it from Jordan, in the six-day war of 1967. Since then, successive governments have tried to permanently cement Israeli control over the land, in part by declaring swathes as “state lands”, which prevents private Palestinian ownership. 🕊🚫🏞

The motion was said to have been put forward by the far-right defence minister, Israel Katz, and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Kedumim — considered illegal under international law. ⚖️🚫🏘

Katz said the settlement decision “strengthens our hold on Judea and Samaria”, using the biblical term for the West Bank, “anchors our historical right in the Land of Israel, and constitutes a crushing response to Palestinian terrorism”. 📜🗺🛡

He added it was also “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”. 🧭❌🇵🇸

A spokesperson for the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem said:

“Israel continues to promote Jewish supremacy through the theft of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. ⚖️🚨

The Israeli government is openly and blatantly working to destroy the Palestinian people, and any chances for a normal future for the people living between the Jordan River and the sea.” 🌊🏞💔

The spokesperson added:

“The international community is enabling Israel’s crimes by standing aside while millions of Palestinians are subjected to this racist and brutal regime of the Israeli government.” 🌐🧍‍♂️🧍‍♀️🔒

The government intends to use the 22 settlements to bolster Israel’s presence around Route 443, which connects Jerusalem and Tel Aviv via Modiin, and was described by Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha council, as “the most important decision since 1967”. 🚧🛤🏙

The minister said on X:

“We have made a historic decision for the development of settlements: 22 new communities in Judea and Samaria, renewing the settlement of the north of Samaria, and reinforcing the eastern axis of the state of Israel”. 🏘📢🇮🇱

#Israel #WestBank #settlements #Palestine #humanrights #internationalLaw #MiddleEast #Route443

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Norway’s $1.9 Trillion Question: Should Ethics Stop at the Green Line?

The world’s largest sovereign wealth fund is rethinking its stake in Israel’s top banks — not because of financial risk, but because of mortgages.

📋 Ethics on the Trading Floor
• Norway’s Council on Ethics is reviewing whether Israeli banks violate human rights guidelines by guaranteeing homebuilding loans in West Bank settlements.
• At stake: up to $500 million in holdings in five major Israeli banks — Hapoalim, Leumi, Discount, Mizrahi-Tefahot, and First International.
• The watchdog is not targeting Airbnb, which continues to profit from rental listings in settlements — suggesting ethics may have a price cap.

💭 “This is what we can see so far… That is what is well documented.”

— Svein Richard Brandtzaeg, Chair, Council on Ethics

📊 Investing in Occupation?
• The fund increased its exposure to Israeli banks by 62% in 2024 — even as those banks remained on UN settlement watchlists.
• Critics argue these banks provide the financial infrastructure that enables de facto annexation through housing and infrastructure.

💼 A Test of ESG Hypocrisy
• Norway pioneered ethical investing — but its money is embedded in the machinery of settlement expansion.
• The review’s outcome could set precedent: Will “ethical capital” mean active disengagement — or just better PR?

🤔 If underwriting settler mortgages isn’t a human rights concern, what is?

And if the world’s most ethical fund can’t draw the line — who will?

#israel #westbank #settlements #norwayfund #ethics #finance #occupation #banking #esg #humanrights

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🏗 Smotrich’s “Bulldozer Diplomacy”

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is pushing a fast-track settlement plan east of Jerusalem — 3,400 housing units that would slice the West Bank in two and, in his words, “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.” Even without final approval, the move has already lit diplomatic fires from Amman to Brussels.

📌 The plan and the politics
• Strategic choke point: Expansion between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim would sever East Jerusalem from the West Bank.
• Political message: Smotrich vows to answer foreign recognition of Palestine “in facts, not documents.”
• Record pace: Final hearing set for next week, with infrastructure possibly breaking ground within months.
• Netanyahu’s shadow: Peace Now says such a move is unlikely without his tacit consent, though he’s silent.

🌍 Global backlash
Jordan calls the move “a flagrant violation of international law,” the EU warns it “undermines the two-state solution,” and Qatar demands international intervention. Palestinian officials call it creeping annexation in line with Netanyahu’s “Greater Israel” vision.

⚠️ Why it matters
If completed, the project would not just add homes — it would redraw geography, making a contiguous Palestinian state nearly impossible and hardening the political map for decades.

🤔 Is this settlement policy — or the point of no return for the two-state idea?

#israel #palestine #settlements #jerusalem #diplomacy

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🧭 Israel’s Grip on the West Bank Is Squeezing the Two-State Map

“Recognition is symbolic… but what does it mean when the patient is dying?”

— Palestinian economy minister Mohammed Alamour

✅ What’s new
• 🇫🇷 France will push at UNGA to recognize a Palestinian state; 🇬🇧 UK & 🇨🇦 Canada signal they may follow.
• 🇺🇸 US opposes and has barred senior PA officials from attending UNGA, keeping daylight with allies.
• 📈 Since the Gaza war, development in Area C (under full Israeli control) has grown ~5× faster than any period in the last 20 years, driven by settlement expansion.
• 🧱 E-1 housing plan outside Jerusalem would bisect the West Bank and sever the last north–south corridor.

🧩 Why it matters
Diplomacy is sprinting one way while facts on the ground run the other. Recognition without contiguity, movement, water access, and a functioning economy risks creating a state in name only. Fragmentation (“170 isolated islands,” as one scholar puts it) undermines the very viability recognition is supposed to advance.

🔢 By the numbers
• 👥 ~3M Palestinians live in the West Bank; GDP –22% last year.
• 🚧 ~900 Israeli road obstacles/checkpoints restrict movement (Jan 2025).
• 🏘 22 new settlements approved in 2025; 5 ring Ramallah.
• 💼 200k West Bank work permits for jobs in Israel revoked; ~₪10B in PA revenues withheld over two years.
• ⚰️ >1,000 Palestinians killed in West Bank since 2023; 25 Israelis (incl. security forces).

🏘 On the ground
Ramallah’s economy is stalling; students study on Zoom to avoid raids and roadblocks. Businesses like Taybeh Brewing keep exporting but face weeks-long permit waits and settler intimidation. Hilltop outposts and newly graded roads creep into Area C, while water allocations frozen since Oslo collide with population growth.

🗺 What’s next
• 🧨 E-1: If built, contiguity collapses; ~7,000 Palestinians face displacement (incl. Khan al-Ahmar).
• 🧷 PA legitimacy: Abbas pledges elections “within a year,” but security control erodes in northern WB.
• 🧮 UNGA arithmetic: If UK/Canada join France, the US could become the only UNSC member opposing recognition—raising transatlantic friction.
• 🕊 Saudi/Indonesia: Signal normalization hinges on a credible statehood track—now harder to square with on-the-ground trends.

🌍 The big picture
Five pillars decide viability more than UN votes: contiguity, movement, security coordination, water/land access, and an investable economy. Right now, each is moving the wrong way. Recognitions may shift politics, but without arrests to E-1 and Area C expansion—and relief on movement, revenues, and water—the “state” many recognize risks existing mostly on paper.

#WestBank #TwoStateSolution #Settlements #E1 #UNGA #Israel #Palestine #Ramallah #AreaC #GazaWar

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

West Bank Hiking: From Miles to Dead Ends as Settlers Close Off the Land

Palestinian hikers in the West Bank used to walk 12 miles across open valleys. Now they loop back within 5 miles, skirting settler outposts and military patrols. A group of hikers recently spotted a tent with Israeli settlers blocking their path — and quietly changed course. Since 2023, over 130 new settler outposts have cut off Palestinians from 123,000 acres of land. What was once a network of trails between villages is becoming a maze of dead ends.

The slow-motion land grab
The pattern is mechanical and total. Israeli settlers build outposts — clusters of tents, trailers, farmsteads — that are technically unauthorized but routinely protected and supplied with infrastructure by the Israeli government. Each outpost creates an exclusion zone: Palestinians avoid the area to prevent violent confrontation. The result: settlers expand their de facto control without formal annexation.

Since Netanyahu took office in late 2022 with settler leaders in his coalition, the pace has accelerated. Over 130 outposts built in three years — more than the previous two decades combined. At least 38 Palestinian herding communities have abandoned their hamlets since 2023, driven out by encroaching settlers. The land isn't formally taken; it's just rendered inaccessible through the threat of attacks.

The hike becomes a strategic calculation
Jamal Aruri, a retired photographer and experienced hiker, has walked these trails since childhood. He now leads groups limited to 12 people and scouts routes in advance for new blockades and military patrols. Hikers watch for drones, which often signal settlers or soldiers nearby. What was once a seasonal journey through wildflowers in spring, past grape farms in summer, and among carob trees in autumn is now a carefully calculated circuit, shrinking by the month.

"It's not fear,"

Aruri said.

"It's simple math. The land left to us is shrinking."

Where 12-mile hikes once crossed open terrain, most now loop back within 5 miles. Entire routes have vanished. Springs that Palestinian farmers used for centuries are now off-limits. Caves where Palestinians once hid during wars — what Aruri calls "our archives" — are now in settler-controlled territory. The physical act of hiking, once a way to maintain connection to the land and mental health, has become an act of resistance against displacement.

Walking as a political act
After COVID lockdowns in 2020, Palestinian hiking groups swelled as people sought open air. They realized that walking is a way to stay connected, to breathe, to endure. But now every hike is a gamble. Hit a settler outpost or a new military patrol, and the group scatters. Change course mid-journey. Accept a shorter walk. Come back the next week and try again.

"If we stop walking, we let go,"

Aruri said.

"Every walk is a way of saying we are here, even when we can't reach every spring or cave we once knew."

The West Bank's transformation isn't being announced in headlines. It's happening trail by trail, valley by valley, as Palestinian hikers discover new roads cut by settlers, new tents blocking old paths, new exclusion zones spreading across the landscape. The Gaza cease-fire has renewed international focus on West Bank tensions — but by then, much of the land has already been cordoned off, the routes already rerouted, the distances already shortened.

#WestBank #Palestine #Israel #settlements #displacement

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🫒 The Olive Republic: Israel’s Slow War for the West Bank

Olive grove by olive grove, hilltop by hilltop — the two-state solution is dying of suffocation, not suicide.
In the hills near Ramallah, the war isn’t fought with tanks — it’s fought with sheep and bulldozers. Settlers march their herds through Palestinian farms, crush roots, steal water, torch tents. Israeli soldiers arrive, not to stop the attacks, but to turn the crime scene into a “closed military zone.”

Over the past two years, settlers have erected a record number of outposts — dozens of fledgling colonies dressed up as “farms” and “neighborhoods.” The state later legalizes them, retroactively, like laundering stolen land through bureaucracy. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich put it bluntly:

“Every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of the two-state idea.”

The military, of course, calls this security. Checkpoints, razor wire, sealed roads — all to keep the “peace.” But from Al Mughayir to Hebron, Palestinian families are being squeezed into smaller and smaller pockets of life — until “security” becomes indistinguishable from slow extermination by paperwork and concrete.

A 70-year-old shepherd begs settlers to leave him in peace. A family of eight sleeps in caves after their homes are razed. Children guard sheep at night while the “most moral army in the world” looks away.
International law calls this forcible transfer. Israel calls it “normalization.” Washington calls it “a complex situation.”

Every new outpost is a press release from a future that no one voted for — a landscape in which peace talks sound like folk tales and the only thing allowed to grow freely is impunity.

Maybe the West Bank isn’t occupied anymore. Maybe it’s just being erased — one olive tree at a time.

#israel #palestine #occupation #settlements #fakeDemocracy #westbank #apartheid

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Israel’s Security Cabinet tightens grip on Judea and Samaria

The Israeli security‑cabinet has taken a series of decisions aimed at consolidating Israeli control over Judea and Samaria, effectively rolling back key elements of the post‑Oslo division of powers.

For the first time since the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority is to be stripped of its authority in security‑related civil functions in areas “A” and “B,” with those responsibilities transferred to Israel’s Civil Administration. The change is framed as a restoration of law and order, but in practice it marks a formal step toward the reintegration of the West Bank into Israel’s internal administrative system.

Civil Administration takes over security‑adjacent rule
The Civil Administration will now oversee the enforcement of law and order, water resources, and matters of “heritage” — that is, archaeological sites, historical monuments, relics, and holy places.

Religious‑rightwing outlet Israel Hayom notes that the cabinet will also lift the secrecy regime surrounding the land registry in Judea and Samaria, abolish the ban on selling land to non‑Arabs, and scrap the requirement to obtain prior approval from the Civil Administration for land transactions. These moves are explicitly designed to enable Jews to buy land in the territories more freely, reviving a logic of settlement‑driven sovereignty.

A Land Acquisition Commission, which previously existed but was later dissolved, will be reestablished, giving institutional backing to this new purchasing‑driven expansion.

Hebron and Bethlehem: the anatomy of annexation‑lite
The decisions also single out Hebron and Bethlehem for special treatment. In Hebron, the registration of businesses and housing is being shifted from the Palestinian‑municipal framework to the Israeli Civil Administration, and the Jewish quarter is to be carved out into a separate municipal entity — a move that further bifurcates the city into two legal and administrative realities.

Similarly, the complex housing the tomb of the matriarch Rachel will be transferred from the Palestinian Authority’s oversight to a dedicated Israeli management body, reinforcing the idea that holy sites linked to the Jewish narrative will fall entirely under Israeli custodianship.

The stated logic: water theft, heritage warfare, and lawlessness
The government argues that the takeover of water‑infrastructure control is a response to the alleged “theft of water on a massive scale” by Palestinians, and the Palestinian Authority’s indifference to the issue. The transfer of heritage‑related authority, it claims, is necessary because Palestinian actors — with the acquiescence or support of the PA — have systematically damaged archaeological sites that “prove the Jewish people’s connection to the Land of Israel.”

From this perspective, the cabinet is not annexing territory in the formal sense, but “reclaiming” what it sees as Jewish sovereignty over land, water, and memory — all under the banner of legality, security, and cultural preservation.

The meta‑message: the end of the Oslo zoning game
By stripping areas “A” and “B” of their original Oslo‑style representation and handing almost every lever of control to the Civil Administration, the cabinet is effectively admitting that the old formula is dead. The question is no longer whether the PA should have some autonomous role; it is whether there will be any meaningful space left for it at all.

So while the language is about “crime,” “water theft,” and “heritage,” the real message to the West Bank is this: the zones of the map are being redrawn, and the map is now drawn from Jerusalem.

#Israel #WestBank #JudeaAndSamaria #Hebron #Bethlehem #Settlements #SecurityCabinet #OsloAccords #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 Annexation by Spreadsheet: Netanyahu Tests Trump’s “Red Line”

Israel has found a neat way to say “annexation” without moving a single checkpoint: call it land registration. The cabinet just approved a new mechanism to register huge chunks of the occupied West Bank — mostly in Area C, about 60 percent of the territory — as “state land,” in a process Palestinians and rights groups are bluntly calling de facto annexation.

On paper, the Foreign Ministry sells it as an “administrative measure” to “bring order” to the cadaster. In reality, Smotrich and Levin are boasting that it will “strengthen our hold” and advance a “settlement and governance revolution” from “Judea and Samaria” onward — the quiet part isn’t even quiet anymore.

The trick is in the fine print. Palestinian landowners will have to prove ownership through documentation systems that decades of occupation, Ottoman law, Jordanian rule and Israeli military orders have turned into a bureaucratic minefield. Fail to clear every hurdle and the land defaults to “state” — which in practice means cheaper, cleaner access for settlers, and a one‑way legal ratchet that converts living villages into zoning opportunities.

Peace Now calls it a “massive land grab” and warns Trump that Netanyahu is “annexing right under your nose” after the U.S. president publicly vowed he wouldn’t allow formal annexation. The UN secretary‑general and the EU say it flatly violates international law; Israel shrugs and prints more forms.

The move comes on top of earlier security‑cabinet decisions to ease settler land purchases, unseal land records, and expand Israeli enforcement powers even into Areas A and B, which were supposed to be under Palestinian Authority control under Oslo.

Taken together, it’s a legal slow‑motion redraw of the map: settlers get more tools, more land and more state muscle; Palestinians get more demolitions, more dispossession, and a “peace process” that now consists of watching their future state transferred, parcel by parcel, into a database labeled “ours.”

Trump, officially, is against annexation. Netanyahu, officially, says this is just housekeeping. Everyone else can see the punchline: if you change the law, the records and the enforcement until occupation becomes indistinguishable from sovereignty, you don’t need a ceremony or a flag‑raising. You’ve already moved the border — you just did it with a land registrar instead of a tank.

#israel #palestine #westBank #settlements #annexation #fakeDemocracy

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

📰 1.5 Billion for Roads: Tax Breaks and Asphalt for the Settlements

The Israel Tax Authority has notified residents of 64 West Bank settlements that starting next month they’ll receive a 7% income tax credit, retroactive to January, under a law pushed by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and MK Zvi Sukkot together with the Yesha Council.

The benefit applies up to roughly 146,000 shekels in taxable income per year and is being implemented now, with instructions to employers to update payroll software and issue retroactive refunds.

The law squeaked through just before the government turns into a caretaker; the timing makes sure the money is locked in before the cabinet loses full budgetary power.

At the same time, the outgoing government is set to approve a plan for new roads, access routes and “security infrastructure” for dozens of additional West Bank communities, with a price tag north of one billion shekels split between the Defense and Transportation ministries, as part of a larger multi‑year road blueprint for the territory.

Among the beneficiaries are four settlements evacuated in the northern Samaria disengagement, now getting fresh tarmac as a kind of historical reversal.

Smotrich brands this package a “settlement‑security revolution” designed to “kill the terrible idea of establishing a terror state in the heart of Israel,” framing asphalt and tax relief as counter‑terror tools rather than annexation by infrastructure.

On the other side of the political spectrum, a Democratic Party candidate calls it “daylight robbery”: instead of money going to rebuild the north and the south, it goes to already affluent settlements, and there is “no line this government won’t cross.”

A government on its way out still has time to entrench fiscal privileges and road networks for one group of citizens, but not to prioritize bombed‑out border towns. The budget pen keeps moving even as the mandate clock runs out.

On the same day that money and concrete are being lined up, the ground reality looks uglier. Fresh clashes break out between Jews and Arabs around Yatta in the South Hebron hills; Palestinian reports accuse a group of Israelis of setting fires in civilian agricultural land near Turmus Ayya north of Ramallah, and another group of settlers of beating a Palestinian in Beit Furik east of Nablus.

It’s three flashpoints in one day, three variations on the same pattern of nationalist violence.

Put together, the fiscal‑settlement move in Jerusalem and the friction incidents in the hills form one picture. While the state apparatus is busy paving roads and handing out tax breaks to selected communities, simultaneous local violence in that same space gets no comparable institutional attention.

The reports mention no arrests, no indictments, no prosecutions for the arson and assault — a conspicuous absence against the backdrop of how quickly economic decisions are made for the very same area.

#israel #westbank #settlements #taxBreaks #roads #violence #fakeRuleOfLaw

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Israel Takes Over Gaza Promising a Paradise Restored


Israel’s defence and finance ministers announced plans for three settlements in Gaza and more than $400m in funding to expand construction in the occupied West Bank, as Israel’s military commander for the region celebrated violent outposts as his “security partners”.

The defence minister, Israel Katz, said he intended to set up three “Nahal” outposts in northern Gaza, a type of military community that for decades has paved the way for Israeli civilian settlements.

The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, announced 1.3bn shekels in funding for dozens of new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The cabinet allocated the money last month but kept the decision secret because of expected US opposition, Israeli media reported.

Maj Gen Avi Bluth, who commands Israeli forces in the West Bank, told residents of extremist outposts that he “appreciates their work” and considered them to be partners in security with the military.

Bluth, who grew up in a West Bank settlement himself, spoke on Wednesday at a meeting of the euphemistically named Farms Association, which represents settlements that are illegal even under Israeli law.

Dozens from Israel’s political and military elite, including two former prime ministers and former heads of all its security services, have threatened legal action against their government over support for Jewish terrorism in the West Bank.

“Settler violence is state violence,” the UN human rights office for Palestine said in a new report published this week that detailed how Israel used settlers to lead annexation efforts, while systematic impunity for perpetrators ensured violence could grow unchecked.

Hagit Ofran, from the Israeli activist group Peace Now, said bulldozers were working on at least seven settlements that would be populated before polling day.

“The government is on a reckless pre-election sprint to raid the public purse in order to create facts on the ground,” Ofran said.

Katz outlined his settlement plans for Gaza during a visit to Israeli-controlled parts of the territory. He has also pushed for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza through the large-scale migration of Palestinians.

“I intend to establish three Nahal outposts, which is also a military entity, in those places that were [Israeli settlements] in northern Gaza. These will be prosperous places with all the necessary commodities, shops, schools, hospitals, etc., we will make their lives really comfortable,” he told Channel 14 TV.

Nahal settlements were first established in border regions in the 1950s, including surrounding the Gaza Strip, Etkes said.

From 1967, the same system was used in the occupied West Bank, initially along the Jordan valley and then spreading to other areas.

Smotrich also said last month that plans for three settlements in Gaza were complete and work could begin as soon as Netanyahu gave a green light. The prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Katz’s plans.

Katz also told Channel 14 that he “felt good” seeing the wasteland of rubble that had replaced Palestinian homes and communities in most of Israeli-occupied Gaza.

Israel now controls 65% of Gaza, Israel’s deputy chief of staff, Maj Gen Tamir Yadai, told Katz in an on-camera briefing. This is far beyond the 53% agreed under the ceasefire brokered last year by the US president, Donald Trump.

“I don’t know how to describe this, other than victory, when you control 65% of the territory, when you have killed over 70,000 terrorists here,” Yadai said.

#israel #ministers #settlements #gaza

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

Ganim Returns: Twenty-One Years and One Morning Prayer

Twenty-one years after Israel dismantled Ganim during the 2005 disengagement, the settlement is back. Thirty families moved into dozens of caravans in northern Samaria, a morning prayer was held, and the state called it historical repair.

For Bezalel Smotrich, the message came with an election threat attached. The government is “erasing the disgrace of the expulsion,” he said, while warning that an Eisenkot-Liberman-Golan government would evacuate the new settlements.

In Israeli politics, every caravan now comes with a campaign speech pre-installed.

Ganim is not an isolated revival. It is part of an approved plan to establish or legalize 19 settlements across the West Bank, including Ganim and Kadim, also dismantled during disengagement.

The Samaria Regional Council says it plans 19 new communities in northern Samaria, with 11 expected to be launched immediately.

The biblical symmetry is almost too neat. Ganim takes its name from Ein Ganim, mentioned in the Book of Joshua. Many associate the modern name Jenin with the same ancient root.

One side sees a return home. The other sees a settlement reconstructed near a Palestinian city under military control. Both sides can point to the same map and call it proof.

Hamas condemned the move as an escalation of settlement expansion and called for resistance. Settlement leaders called it the reversal of a national trauma.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA described settlers rebuilding the site on land belonging to residents east of Jenin.

Everyone agrees on one fact: Ganim is no longer a memory of 2005.

It is now a forecast for the next evacuation, the next confrontation, and the next election.

#Israel #WestBank #Ganim #Jenin #settlements #Smotrich #Palestine #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🇬🇧🏗 E1: A British Threat, an Israeli Colonial Reply

Britain says Israel’s E1 settlement project could destroy the two-state solution. Israel says Britain has no standing to lecture anyone about territory.

The immediate trigger was Israel’s publication of tenders for roughly 1,200 housing units in E1, the sensitive tract between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim.

The broader plan covers more than 3,400 units. Palestinians and European governments say construction there could split the West Bank from East Jerusalem and make a contiguous Palestinian state far harder to build.

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called the tender “unacceptable and destructive.” He said E1 would cut through “the heart of Palestine,” and warned that Britain would not accept the destruction of the two-state solution.

London summoned Israel’s chargé d’affaires and said it would announce a broader response in coming weeks, including targeted sanctions against people involved in settlement expansion.

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar rejected what he called Miliband’s “patronising” tone.

“The Jewish people have the right to live throughout the Land of Israel, just as the British have the right to live in London and throughout the United Kingdom,” Sa’ar said.

He cited the 1917 Balfour Declaration, arguing that Britain had recognized the Jewish people’s historic right to reestablish a national home in the area, including E1.

Britain, Sa’ar said, still controls territories thousands of miles from its shores. It was therefore absurd, he argued, for London to tell Jews where they may live in what Israel describes as their historic homeland.

He also accused British policy of blaming Israel alone while ignoring Palestinian extremism, and said that approach had contributed to antisemitism and attacks on Britain’s Jewish community.

Britain treats E1 as occupied territory and a test of whether a Palestinian state remains geographically possible. Israel treats it as part of its historic homeland and cites the Balfour Declaration as evidence that Britain once accepted that claim.

London threatens sanctions. Jerusalem answers with the British Empire.

Neither side is discussing who will live between Maale Adumim and East Jerusalem once the arguments become concrete.

#Israel #Palestine #E1 #WestBank #Jerusalem #UK #EdMiliband #GideonSaar #Settlements #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

🏗⚖️ Governments Go After the Contractors

A group of Western governments has condemned Israel’s E1 construction tenders. The important part is not what they told Jerusalem. It is what they told the companies expected to bid.

Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Austria and Greece signed the joint statement. The first tender covers 1,400 homes between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem. Israel’s broader E1 plan calls for thousands more.

Their argument is familiar. The governments said construction in E1 would cut the West Bank in two, break up the territorial contiguity needed for a future Palestinian state, and further undermine the prospects for a two-state solution. They said Israeli settlements in the West Bank violate international law and called on Israel to rescind the tender and halt settlement expansion.

The statement then addressed the bidders.

“Businesses should not consider bidding for construction tenders,” it said. The signatories warned of legal and reputational consequences, including the risk of complicity in serious violations of international law.

This is diplomacy addressed to chief financial officers: compliance reviews, litigation exposure, insurance questions, investor campaigns, and financing risk. The target is not a ministry in Jerusalem. It is a contractor deciding whether 1,234 homes are worth a court case, an investor campaign, or a bank that walks away.

Israel says E1 will connect Maale Adumim to Jerusalem. Its critics say the plan will break the West Bank’s territorial contiguity. The tenders are scheduled to close on October 19, eight days before Israel’s election.

The governments could not stop the project with a statement. So they sent the statement to the people who build it.

#E1 #Israel #Palestine #WestBank #Jerusalem #Settlements #InternationalLaw #UK #Europe #MiddleEast

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸

The Moral Emergency Export License

Britain has put West Bank settlements in the sanctions basket. It will ban their goods from British shelves. It will prohibit ads for settlement property.

It will gain powers to target companies and individuals who finance, facilitate or profit from settlement expansion. The package explicitly covers E1. Britain has already sanctioned 38 people for settler-related activity.

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told Parliament that Britain could no longer merely “call out” injustice. It had to act. His government now calls Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful.

France and Canada moved with London. Nine other governments signed a declaration that they will impose, support or consider restrictions on settlement trade.

The communiqué leaves each capital enough room to call a ban a principle, a plan or an administrative mood.

Israel answered with diplomatic demolition work. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Israel would close Britain’s East Jerusalem consulate, stop joining a U.S.-led Gaza coordination mission and bar some British officials from entering the country.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the British ambassador’s expulsion.

Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, promised consequences for Britain. London says it is defending a two-state solution. Jerusalem is closing a consulate that works with Palestinians. Washington is threatening the country imposing the sanctions.

The bulldozers still have the easy job. They only need a road. Diplomats need a moral emergency, three allies and a press release.

#Israel #WestBank #UK #Settlements

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸

Gaza’s Real Estate Comeback

Thousands of Israeli activists, ministers and lawmakers drove toward the Gaza border on Sunday demanding the return of Jewish settlements to the Strip.

They brought housing equipment to the edge of a territory where more than 2 million Palestinians are still supposed to be the population.

The convoy was organized by the Nachala settlement movement. Its leader, Daniella Weiss, said activists were preparing to restore a presence at Nisanit, a northern Gaza settlement dismantled in the 2005 disengagement, as well as elsewhere in the enclave.

Their argument is clean: Israel cannot secure Gaza without settlers inside it.

Activists can drive to the Gaza border. Only the government can provide military control, permits, infrastructure and political cover for a settlement inside Gaza.

Netanyahu has backed what his government calls “voluntary emigration” from Gaza, while calling renewed Jewish settlements there unrealistic.

Defense Minister Israel Katz has said Gaza has no “real solution” without migration.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wants an emigration ministry and a seven-year plan to move 1.86 million Palestinians out, beginning with 250,000 in its first year.

This is the new postwar sequence. First comes “voluntary” departure. Then comes an office to manage it, foreign countries to receive people, incentives for those countries and a timeline for removing almost the entire population.

The settlers arrive last with caravans and a security argument. Nobody calls it expulsion because the paperwork has chosen a nicer word.

Trump’s Gaza plan says no Palestinian will be forced to leave. Netanyahu has refused withdrawal until Hamas is fully disarmed.

The settlement movement does not need to resolve that contradiction. It only needs the army to keep control of enough land while politicians debate whether Gaza’s residents left freely after their homes, jobs, borders and future were removed.

The 2005 disengagement evacuated about 8,000 Israeli settlers and removed 21 settlements from Gaza.

Ben-Gvir named his plan “Disengagement 710” because it promises to reverse the meaning of that word: Gaza without Palestinians, then Gaza with settlers.

#Gaza #Israel #Settlements #BenGvir

📱 American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events🇺🇸