Goal of Israeli raids is to ‘seize more land’
Leila Warah, a journalist reporting from the city of Ramallah, says the situation in the occupied West Bank is dire with Israeli raids taking place not just in the north but all over the territory.
“Ultimately, when we’re looking at this and what the goal is, political analysts are saying Israel is trying to seize more land, which is leading to people feeling very fearful,” she told Al Jazeera.
“It is clear that things are escalating. Israeli politicians have been speaking about the West Bank being a second battleground after Gaza and again coming back to the point of them wanting to seize more land,” she said. “And this is a great opportunity for them to do that and to use collective punishment policies to scare Palestinians into submission.”
Israelis see Biden as ‘lame duck’, await Trump’s return to power: Professor
US President Joe Biden’s “toothless” pressure to convince Netanyahu to accept his ceasefire proposal isn’t working partly because the Israeli government is hoping US presidential candidate Donald Trump will soon come to power, according to Hassan Barari.
Biden is seen by “Netanyahu and his cronies as a lame duck”, Barari, a professor at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera.
“One of the objectives of Netanyahu is to see Trump assuming power in the White House because he thinks that with Trump, he can do business.”
Among Netanyahu’s goals for Trump’s term is a strategy to liquidate the Palestinian cause as much as possible, the analyst said. The raids in the West Bank are part of this. “I think [the raids are] massive in terms of the scope … and intensity,” Barari said.
“The Israelis have a broader vision of annexing as much of the West Bank as possible.”
