Israel wants complete control of all of the West Bank and several important politicians in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition have supported evicting the 2.8 million Palestinians from the West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem. Israel has no intention of retaking Gaza, which means that its savagely destructive assault on Gaza was a cynical device to distract world’s attention from its true aims in the West Bank. As part of its plan to dominate the West Bank and finally occupy it completely, Israel this week announced the biggest seizure of Palestinian land in 30 years as it started the process of stealing four square kilometres south of Bethlehem from its Palestinian owners in the villages of Surif, Al Jaba’a and Wadi Fukin where Israeli colonists will settle and create a new and expanded colony.
Israeli officials are seeking to give this seizure some kind of fake legitimacy by implying that the action is a collective punishment for the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenagers in the area in June. Any such linkage is illegal and a camouflage for Israel’s true intention to claim and hold as much of the West Bank that it can, without giving up land and steadily increasing its grip on Palestinian territory till it can put into place its plan to evict them all. Israel now has more than 500,000 colonists in its illegal colonies on the West Bank and Netanyahu sees them as an important part of Israel’s militaristic and intolerant identity. Netanyahu wants to build a solely Jewish state and remove the Palestinians from Palestine. Any other reasoning serves to hide this dominant aim.
