Illegal settlements ‘a central part of Israel’s state policy’
The expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank and the expulsion of the Palestinian population has become “a central part of Israel’s state policy”, an analyst says.
“The idea is to render the idea of a Palestinian state completely impossible,” Mohamad Elmasry, a lecturer at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera.
More than 200 existing illegal settlements and outposts housing about 800,000 settlers are “all part of the plan”.
“There is no Palestinian in the West Bank that is truly safe,” Elmasry said. The detention of Hamdan Ballal, a Palestinian filmmaker who directed the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, shows not even notoriety can provide safety.
“In fact, that sort of notoriety may draw the ire of some of the settlers who have become emboldened over the past 18 months,” Elmasry added.
West Bank a ‘tinderbox’ requiring diplomatic solution
The situation in the occupied West Bank is a “tinder box that will lead to nothing good until an agreement of some sort is devised”, says Dan Perry, an author and former Associated Press regional editor.
Perry said Israel faces “a significant danger” from fighters in the West Bank and in Jenin in particular, which made raids necessary to minimise the risk of attacks.
“On the other hand, it’s also true the situation in the West Bank is completely inadmissible. Half a million Israeli settlers have full rights and two and a half million Palestinians are largely without rights.”
A diplomatic solution is needed to “create either true coexistence or a plausible separation between two groups”, Perry added.
Israel’s incarceration rate of Palestinian men is highest in the world, lawyer says
We’ve been reporting on the beating and arrest by Israel’s army of Oscar-winning film director Hamdan Ballal, whose whereabouts remain unknown.
About 40 percent of Palestinian males have been imprisoned by Israel at some point in their lives, a human rights lawyer said.
“It’s the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and it’s because Israel creates this system whereby the means of controlling Palestinians is through their imprisonment,” Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer, told Al Jazeera.
She said the only way to get innocent people out of Israel’s prisons is to make some sort of “agreement”.
“We should be focused instead on ending Israel’s system of mass incarceration rather than ways of trying to accommodate it.”
Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal released from Israeli detention
We’re getting reports that Hamdan Ballal, the Palestinian co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land who was detained by the Israeli army after being attacked by settlers, has now been released.
AP said its journalists had seen Ballal and two other Palestinians leaving the police station in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank where they were being held.
Ballal had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes, the news agency said.
