Summary

Israeli settlers in the West Bank, emboldened by Trump’s return and a far-right Israeli government, are pushing for formal sovereignty over the territory.

Settlement activity has surged to record levels under Prime Minister Netanyahu, with nearly 6,000 acres designated as state land in 2024 and dozens of new outposts established.

While settlers see this as fulfilling Biblical claims, Palestinians view it as erasing hopes for a future state.

Critics warn annexation could jeopardize regional stability and U.S.-brokered normalization efforts, such as those with Saudi Arabia.

  • mlg@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Yes I’m sure the 4 settlers Biden sanctioned for 3 weeks, definitely threw a wrench into Israel’s plan of overtaking the west bank.

    It’ll totally be because Trump takes office and not because settlers didn’t just get 14 months of free land grabbing with zero repercussions on top of their yearly land stealing antics ever since Israel’s inception.

  • The_Terrible_Humbaba@slrpnk.net
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    2 hours ago

    This is from June 2020.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is planning to effectively annex parts of the occupied West Bank in what would be a major - and highly controversial - act.

    This is from July 2023.

    Israel Is Officially Annexing the West Bank

    A quiet bureaucratic maneuver by Netanyahu’s government has begun transferring control over the occupied territory from military to civilian leadership—violating international law.

    Here’s an entire wiki page about all they’ve been doing in the West Bank since 1967.

    If you think this is new and is only happening because of Trump, you haven’t been paying attention and are falling for propaganda.

  • acargitz
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    7 hours ago

    Cool, so we can finally dispose the myth of Israel being a democracy, get over chasing the chimera of a two state solution, and crystallize the struggle to the simple, unambiguous goal of ending Jewish supremacy and the apartheid and establishing a democratic republic with equality and rights for everyone from the river to the sea. Cool.

    • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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      2 hours ago

      I don’t get why they’re still going at it over this. This lefty infighting is exactly why fascists that hate each other somehow manage to gain ground.

      There’s nothing wrong with using what little power one had in voting blue. It doesn’t mean they’re “pro-genocide”. We’re elbow-deep in a shitty system where we had two awful friggin choices, and the system is designed so that objection is simply removing your voice entirely.

      I can understand that rationale on a moral level, to want to abstain from this nonsense entirely. I get it. But also there’s no way we could’ve convinced the majority of a brainwashed country to say “none of these.” (That’s not even an option on many ballots btw). It’d be awesome! But not realistic.

      But for the people actively bashing those who voted blue in last-ditch desperation, seriously can you not understand it? Believe me, we know the Dems bring nothing to the table besides “Not being those guys.” I doubt there were so many “Kamala fans” compared to how many were “Not this Cheeto-Toddler shit again” fans.

      It’s not about “enabling genocide” or not, to those folks. We figured that a blue win would mean a government that could still be swayed by the people to act against violence, even if the chance was slim!

      This compared to a tyrannical regime that will simply iron-fist any dissent to their single-minded aims, and actively make the world worse every day.

      We had a razor-thin chance to give ourselves just a little more time to change things.

      But here we are:

      • It was a struggle to motivate people to vote at all.
      • Apathetic squabbling over moral nuance didn’t stand a chance against zealoutous fanaticism.
      • What now? Can we finally demolish the Democratic party for failing us while replacing it with those who would speak for us?

      It’s time we learn to get along and focus on what is and claw for every inch of ground if we’re going to fix anything. Because they aren’t going to give us any breathing room while we keep dunking on each other for not being “pure enough for the cause.”

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      8 hours ago

      The “a vote for Kamala is a vote for genocide” people were literally saying before the election that Palestinian genocide cannot get worse because genocide is genocide.

      So I guess this isn’t worse?

      • The_Terrible_Humbaba@slrpnk.net
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        2 hours ago

        This is from June 2020.

        Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is planning to effectively annex parts of the occupied West Bank in what would be a major - and highly controversial - act.

        This is from July 2023.

        Israel Is Officially Annexing the West Bank

        A quiet bureaucratic maneuver by Netanyahu’s government has begun transferring control over the occupied territory from military to civilian leadership—violating international law.

        Here’s an entire wiki page about all they’ve been doing in the West Bank since 1967.

        This is nothing new, it’s just a next step that would have been taken regardless.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          2 hours ago

          Then I guess it would have been a better idea to vote for Harris to avoid all the stuff that will be new. You know, like the new concentration camps in the U.S.

          • The_Terrible_Humbaba@slrpnk.net
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            2 hours ago

            Ok? I don’t disagree, but that’s not what this conversation is about. We are talking about Palestinian genocide and specifically the occupation of the West Bank. And either way, I haven’t heard anyone on Lemmy say Trump isn’t worse for the US.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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              2 hours ago

              Then you haven’t talked to too many people here. And no, this conversation was about those people since I was talking about those people and you replied to me. If you didn’t want to talk about what I was talking about, you shouldn’t have replied to me.

              • The_Terrible_Humbaba@slrpnk.net
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                1 hour ago

                The topic is about the genocide happening in Palestine. You said:

                The “a vote for Kamala is a vote for genocide” people were literally saying before the election that Palestinian genocide cannot get worse because genocide is genocide.

                So I guess this isn’t worse?

                Also about Palestine.

                I simply pointed out to you that this is nothing new and was happening under the Dems, and has been happening for decades, and then you decided to bring up “concentration camps in the U.S.”.

                The conversation was not about that.

                Why are you shifting goal posts so much and being so antagonizing? Are you just embarrassed that you fell for propaganda and don’t want to admit it? Or are you consciously trying to help spread propaganda and make people forget the Dems supported Genocide?

                Either way you are certainly not helping the image that internet forum mods are insufferable people. I’m moving on from this conversation.

      • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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        6 hours ago

        i don’t understand that crowd at all. how do you look at kamala’s promise to stay the course, and donald trumps promise to send even more aid, and not understand it is possible to send more. there is not a ceiling to more. our military industrial complexeis very capable of delivering more.

          • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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            6 hours ago

            absolutely. i even ran into someone who thought that in meatspace and it’s like… how do you fall for this obvious bullshit so easy?

    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I have a modest proposal. It is a way, at very little cost, to solve global warming and save countless human lives from violent deaths. It is the logical option, on purely utilitarian grounds.

      I propose that we gather up a list of every ethnic group on Earth. And I’m talking pretty specific here. I’m not talking “European,” or even “German.” No I mean like “Bavarian.” That level of specificity. We’ll have a list thousands of ethnicities long.

      I will then cut the list apart. Each ethnicity will be on a paper slip. I will put these slips in a hat, give a few good shakes, and select one ethnicity at random. And I mean truly random. It will be a fair drawing. We select an ethnicity from the hat. Individuals of that ethnicity are left alone.

      Everyone else goes to the camps.

      In this process, we will, depending on the size of the ethnicity randomly selected, wipe out between 90-99.9% of the entire human population. So, on the downside, we will have to lose…approximately 8 billion lives. That is the downside cost.

      But think of the upside! We have randomly selected a single ethnic group and wiped everyone else out. That single ethnic group, while still having numbers large enough for viability, now inhabit an empty world. Global warming is now solved. They’ll have no problem with CO2 emissions, as there’s a planet’s worth of solar panels and batteries waiting for them. Over time, their numbers will doubtlessly grow, and they will eventually repopulate the planet.

      But think of what will now happen. At the, admittedly steep cost of 8 billion lives, we’ve now eliminated racism forever! In the long run, they might need to engage in some minor genetic engineering to prevent genetic drift, but that should be quite doable. There will now be only a single ethnicity that all humans will share. Think of how many racial pogroms, expulsions, moral panics, race riots, and outright genocides and race wars have happened through history. We’ve been doing that since the dawn of time. Does anyone today think that we’ll ever be immune from that kind of hatred and violence?

      So yes, we lose 8 billion lives today, but in turn, we avoid racial prejudice and violence from now UNTIL THE END OF TIME. And we have no idea the scale of conflicts in the future. In a far space faring future, human population might be in the quintillions. In that kind of society, trillions of deaths by racial violence a year would be the equivalent of the hate crime rate experienced in the US today. And we can prevent all of that by simply ethnically downsizing the human population today!

      We pay the cost of 8 billion lives now. But in return, we are going to save trillions, perhaps quadrillions. Project forward billions of years, maybe even quintillions.

      From a purely utilitarian point of view, the choice is obvious. We must take the path that will save the most lives. We must commence the omnicide.

      /Obviously this is not a serious policy proposal, but an illustration of the flaws of utilitarian ethics. Yes, Kamala getting elected would have been objectively better for the Palestinians. It would have likely net saved lives. But the omnicide would also, on net, save lives. And utilitarian value cannot be the only way we make decisions. Justice and the respect for human life are not some trivial thing to be ignored. Let’s not mince words. Biden abetted a genocide; there can be no excuse for this. If there is a Hell beyond this place, then he has assuredly secured himself a fine residence there. What he did was, in fact, a profoundly wicked act. Evil in any meaning of the word. And Kamala promised to continue that evil. Trump would have objectively done even more evil. But again, utilitarian ethics is not the totality of things.

      For millions of voters, their moral compasses simply wouldn’t let them have any part of it. The reason we don’t do the omnicide is that we do not have the right to sacrifice countless innocent people based on our best guesses of how the future will turn out. And it’s completely incompatible with any moral system that places innate value on human life. The moral calculus of the pro-Palestine voters that stayed home works on similar logic.

      Yes, per our best estimate on election day, Trump would likely be worse for the Palestinians than Kamala would have been. But that is still in the unknown future. We don’t know what tomorrow will hold. But we do know that Kamala was the VP of a president that abetted a genocide. And we know that Kamala herself says she will continue these policies. She was part of that administration. She has culpability in this. Should she not be held accountable? Does she not objectively deserve punishment? Denying her a victory would be an act of justice for those she helped kill. But in turn, it would cause the election of someone likely to be much worse. But there are people who have already died. There are people today in unbearable suffering because of this. By electing her, you are denying them justice. In exchange for what may come to be in the future.

      Or think of it another way. Imagine you had a terrorist leader on trial, someone on the order of Osama Bin Laden. He’s convicted and sentenced to hang. As he’s taken to the gallows, he says, “I have a dozen sleeper cells planted through the US. If I die, expect dozens of suicide bombings across the country within the next few days.” Do you stay his sentence, or put it on hold? Or do you just carry forward, and let these future terrorists be responsible for their own actions?

      This is the core problem the Palestine abstainers faced. Are elections more about future policy, or are they about accountability? In truth, they’re both. And different people have different ratios of accountability to future policy that they vote on. I personally voted for Kamala, but I can absolutely get the ethical case for not participating at all in this race. If you care far more for future policy than accountability, you vote for Kamala. If you care far more for accountability than future policy, you stay home. A lot of people picked accountability, and as a consequence, Kamala lost.

      But perhaps I, and others who did vote for Kamala, have the worst outcome of any voter. I sold my soul and voted for Kamala. I gave up my one chance to apply the only bit of power I have as a voter to hold her accountable. I did it all because I hoped for a better future. But in the end, it didn’t matter. I lost my chance to hold her accountable, and the greater evil still won.

      • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        You put so much work into this post but it is hopelessly naive. Most people are just downvoting but I’ll break it down.

        Let’s say the “Bavarians” from your example win the lottery. Who is a Bavarian? How many generations of Bavarians back of both parents being Bavarians do we go? It’s ridiculous.

        If you include immigrants to Bavaria, we go right back to skin color racism, so you need “pure bloods”. What about the family that moved to Bavaria in 1879 from Congo?

        We are a global society whether we like it or not, and “simple” things like electricity and home water access will definitely stop if 90%+ of the population of earth is eliminated.

        You seem to be speaking under the assumption that we will become a spacefaring species, colonizing planets. This is highly dubious with current and predicted technology. If you eliminate most people, do you think this could possibly happen? I personally don’t think it will ever happen.

        Oh you’re religious. Nevermind. No point in discussion of the future when you believe there is a dimension we magically travel to when we die.

        Thank you for voting. Please continue to vote if we have the option of true elections in the future.

        • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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          2 hours ago

          Oh you’re religious. Nevermind.

          Man, you were on a good logical counterpoint streak until you seemed to feel the burning desire to jab an ad-hominem in there.

          Otherwise all good points.

          Please remember the human being behind the post. <3

          • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            I shouldn’t have said that. You’re right. It just boiled me when I got to the point where they’re thinking these evil people are going to hell. Believing in afterlife punishment or reward causes people to ignore the reality of life. I feel the same about the ridiculous concept of karma.

            I didn’t downvote you, that was someone else.

        • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          8 hours ago

          The naivety is in assuming you’ll get support from a group you’re literally murdering or from people who recognize the damage that supporting such behavior does within a group of people whom a significant percentage identify as a minority population.

          If you watch someone curb stomp another person for no fucking reason you dont walk over and high five them. You actively disassociate from that person because they’re fucking nuts and dangerous.

          All you assholes did was tell a significant portion of people that you’d happily curb stomp them at the earliest convenience. At the same time you tried to gaslight them with disingenuous arguments about protecting them and other minority groups.

          If you’re unwilling to protect one minority group from a fucking genocide who the fuck is going to think you’ll protect them from harassment? Access to mental / healthcare? Economic opportunities? Safety within their communities?

          You fucking wouldnt even bother to stop fucking arm sales and you think you can gaslight people by holding up other minority groups as possible victims as reasons to support your candidate? Fuck off with that noise.

          Yet here you are already tossing another minority group under the bus

          Oops! And you wonder why we dont support you or buy your morally bankrupt philosophy to enable your behavior.

          You’re literally the rapist whispering in their victims ear just let it happen or steve is going to get his chance to do this to you. Its disgusting.

          I cant stress thus enough: Kindly fuck off.

          • MutilationWave@lemmy.world
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            58 minutes ago

            You’re assuming I’m a Democrat or a liberal. I am neither. I am a leftist. Currently democratic socialist, but could go over to full socialist if that works well. Then I could move on to anarchist if socialism works well.

      • pyre@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        in order to illustrate flaws of utilitarian ethics, you used the exact opposite of utilitarian ethics? this ain’t even strawmanning, it’s just bad.

  • BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    “Revive” suggests that this goal was ever dead. Israel has been progressively seizing Palestinian land in the West Bank for half a century.

  • Hobbes_Dent@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    The “I did this” sticker is getting pretty wide what with Putin, Netanyahu, Trump, Xi, and the American voter all on it.

    • entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org
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      16 hours ago

      Seems like the point, no? Diffuse the responsibility such that the worst atrocities are “everyone’s fault”.

      Kinda reminds me of climate change inaction

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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        2 hours ago

        such that the worst atrocities are “everyone’s fault”.

        Ah yes what’s that catchy quote about their modus operandi…

        “Privatize the gains, socialize the losses”?

  • njm1314@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Revive? When was it dead exactly? They seemed to be going Full Tilt for the last couple years. Nothing was stopping them.

  • kreskin@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    They were calling for annexation or the west bank a month ago, gaza violence never stopped, and they are doing the same now in Lebanon. Are we now pretending that Biden was holding them back? He clearly wasnt.

    • b161@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      14 hours ago

      He even came out to stop Bernie’s proposal to stop arms shipments to Israel, and called the ICC arrest warrant of Netanyahu and Gallant “outrageous” just to drive home the point.

    • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      People have called for it but it slowed during the war etc. There’s a reason Smotrich waited until after the American election to announce that he was tasking government officials to draw up plans etc.

      Gaza violence is not the same as annexing the West Bank.

      • Saleh@feddit.org
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        12 hours ago

        Things didnt slow down past the immediate issue of having to redeploy some settler terrorists from the Westbank to Gaza.

        Overall they accelerated a lot already in 2024.

        • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          It’s worth reading the article. You might be conflating a report released in 2024 with the numbers from 2023.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        8 hours ago

        I am starting to wonder if all the people who decided that voting for Harris was voting for genocide even know that the West Bank and Gaza are totally different places.

  • Deestan@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Supporting the least bad option makes the bad option less visble. It is a real and constructive action one can take to make things better and reduce human suffering.

    Not supporting the least bad option because it is still bad, makes one feel better and morally cleaner. It does not make things better. It leaves no dent in evil or human suffering.

    Actively dissuading other people from choosing the least bad option makes one feel better than others. It is a real and destructive action that increases human suffering.

    People who choose moral masturbation over real and beneficial action are not actually driven by empathy for the suffering children of the world. Do not accept for a second that they genuinely want anything else than to feel good.

  • jaxxed@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    If only they could figure out a solution to the problem of those feisty inhabitants.

  • BruceAlrighty@lemmy.nz
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    16 hours ago

    Settlement activity has surged to record levels under Prime Minister Netanyahu, with nearly 6,000 acres designated as state land in 2024 and dozens of new outposts established.

    Okay, but this was all done under Biden not Trump?

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        8 hours ago

        Good luck. This is the sort of person who, after Roe got struck down, insisted that Hillary would have installed the same SCOTUS justices to do the same thing. I really encountered more than one person who made that claim after that happened.

  • Ioughttamow@fedia.io
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    15 hours ago

    It’s the WEST Bank after all. The settlers can commit their atrocities as they wish, but America hungers