US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah in the West Bank January 31, …

The Palestinian Authority (PA) prioritizes its payments to terrorists, and has therefore lost more than 6.96 billion shekels (over $1.88 billion) in the last 5 years alone, according to its own data.

The official PA news agency, WAFA, criticized Israel for causing the PA’s financial crises largely by deducting money that the PA uses for terror payments. However, a look at the PA’s numbers shows that the PA itself is responsible for its crises.

  • mwguy@infosec.pubEnglish
    22·
    19 days ago

    Small correction, Israel hasn’t occupied the Gaza strip since 2005. Over the course of 2004 & 2005 the withdrew behind the 1967 borders, and evicted several sizeable Jewish settlements and settlers at gunpoint. And ceased their military occupation of Gaza.

    And at the same time they withdrew from a handful of small settlements in the West Bank to show that they were serious about following a similar path across that significantly large chunk of territory.

    But the point is that this recent war and violence is not caused by an occupation of Gaza.

    • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      19 days ago

      They withdrew the Gaza settlers into the West Bank and used the Oslo Accords to justify the ever expanding settlement of the West Bank

      The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.

      In contrast, many prominent international institutions, organizations and bodies—including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, UN General Assembly (UNGA), European Union (EU), African Union, International Criminal Court (ICC) (both Pre-Trial Chamber I and the Office of the Prosecutor), Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch—as well as international legal experts and other organizations, argue that Israel has occupied Palestinian territories including Gaza since 1967. While they acknowledge that Israel no longer had the traditional marker of effective control after the disengagement—a military presence—they hold that with the help of technology, it has maintained the requisite control in other ways.

      The Israeli imposed closure on Gaza began in 1991, temporarily, becoming permanent in 1993. The barrier began around Gaza around 1972. After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted. This has been a deliberate tactic of De-development.

      Conditions in Gaza before Oct 7th:

      2023 is ‘deadliest year’ for Palestinian children say human rights groups

      HRW Events of 2022

      HRW Events of 2023

      • mwguy@infosec.pubEnglish
        22·
        19 days ago

        They withdrew the Gaza settlers into the West Bank and used the Oslo Accords to justify the ever expanding settlement of the West Bank

        Two different leadership coalitions. The coalition responsible for pulling settlers out of Gaza lost power because of the massive failure that was. And the alternative coalition (still in power today btw) who advocated for increased settlements in Gaza and in the West Bank won power.

        Look at the numbers between 2000-2005 on this chart. The growth (192k, 226k, 249k) over that 5-year span is congruent with the growth you’d expect from a slightly younger-than-average population and a small ingress of settlers. Over half of that growth occurred in the three biggest West Bank settlements established before the Gaza pullout. So certainly some settlers in Gaza likely relocated to established settlements in the West Bank but not a significant chunk. Additionally, look at the settlements they pull out of in Northern Samaria (in the West Bank). They did that to prove that pullout was a viable option. Yes those settlements were small, but there’s like 50 settlements smaller than the largest that they pulled out of.

        And if you look at the biggest 10 settlements on that list, it makes up over half of the total population of Israeli settlers. And they’re all like 15 miles or less from the '67 border. It’s legitimately plausible for Israel to pull 50% of it’s settlers out of the West Bank and fully pull out of 85% of the land area of the West Bank in just a couple of months. And more importantly, there is an active political coalition attempting to do that in Israel. But every rocket, every suicide bomber, every organized rape, every hostage prevents them from being able to be a big force again politically in Israel; because they’re still seen as being responsible for the boondoggle that is Gaza.

        You’re mistake (and the HRW’s mistake) is believing that the group of Israeli’s responsible for pulling out of Gaza is the same group responsible for expanding into the West Bank. They’re opposing groups. And as long as Gaza is non-peaceful; the group advocating for expanding into the West Bank is going to continue to win.

        • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
          31·
          19 days ago

          You’re just straight up defending Settler Colonialism. Do you know what settlements are? Or how the Apartheid Regime works? Not only are you denying Human Rights Watch; you just used rhetoric to justify Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and blame them for it

          State violence – official and otherwise – is part and parcel of Israel’s apartheid regime, which aims to create a Jewish-only space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The regime treats land as a resource designed to serve the Jewish public, and accordingly uses it almost exclusively to develop and expand existing Jewish residential communities and to build new ones. At the same time, the regime fragments Palestinian space, dispossesses Palestinians of their land and relegates them to living in small, over-populated enclaves.

          The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.

          The combination of state violence and nominally unofficial violence allows Israel to have it both ways: maintain plausible deniability and blame the violence on settlers rather than on the military, the courts or the Civil Administration while advancing Palestinian dispossession. The facts, however, blow plausible deniability out of the water: When the violence occurs with permission and assistance from the Israeli authorities and under its auspices, it is state violence. The settlers are not defying the state; they are doing its bidding.

          • mwguy@infosec.pubEnglish
            21·
            18 days ago

            You’re just straight up defending Settler Colonialism.

            I’m doing the opposite. The path to zero settlements and zero settlement violence is peace in Gaza. As long as Hamas keeps breaking cease fires, the political factions who are advocating for the end of West Bank Settlements will never gain power and will never be able to implement a pullout.

            As long as we in the West continue to invest massive dollars into Gaza and just accept that they use it to find their war machine, were perpetuating the settlement situation in the West Bank.

            We can deny patterns in human behavior as long as we want to. But Israel’s body politic will never accept a two state solution while their two state solution experiment has a hundred hostages and openly says they want to bomb, attack and rape them again. Stop being a child.

            • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              18 days ago

              Maybe you don’t recognize it, but that’s exactly what your rhetoric is doing and the point of the misinformation baked into your arguments.

              Israel is the one that was founded on ethnic cleansing, used the peace process to expand it’s settlements, and is currently engaged in genocide. Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution

              Oslo Accord Sources: MEE, NYT, Haaretz, AJ

              Transfer Committee and the JNF led to Forced Displacement of 100,000 Palestinians throughout the mandate. ,

              The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other. By its actions, if not always in its rhetoric, Israel has opted for land-grabbing and as we speak Israel is expanding settlements. So, Israel has been systematically destroying the basis for a viable Palestinian state and this is the declared objective of the Likud and Netanyahu who used to pretend to accept a two-state solution. In the lead up to the last election, he said there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. The expansion of settlements and the wall mean that there cannot be a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. The most that the Palestinians can hope for is Bantustans, a series of enclaves surrounded by Israeli settlements and Israeli military bases.

              • Avi Shlaim

              How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

              ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

              One State Solution, Foreign Affairs

              • mwguy@infosec.pubEnglish
                21·
                18 days ago

                The path to zero settlements and zero settlement violence is peace in Gaza. As long as Hamas keeps breaking cease fires, the political factions who are advocating for the end of West Bank Settlements will never gain power and will never be able to implement a pullout.

                Did you comprehend this section? There’s a faction in Israel that is pro 2 state solution. Unless that faction takes power, Israel will never roll back it’s West Bank Settlements. Since that faction is responsible for the pullout in Gaza, the Israeli body-politic is not going to vote them into power until the Gaza Strip is peaceful.

                The settlements represent land-grabbing, and land-grabbing and peace-making don’t go together, it is one or the other.

                The faction that was against that in Israel implemented the Gaza pullout. You’re right it is one of the other. Advocating for Gazan violence is defacto advocating for settlements.

                • Keeponstalin@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  21·
                  18 days ago

                  Sorry, but your understanding of the history of Palestine is revisionist. I already provided sources that debunk what you’re saying. If you don’t want to engage with those sources, then please read up on the subject by Historians that have a much deeper understanding than either of us.

                  The Concept of Transfer 1882-1948 - Nur Masalha

                  A History of Modern Palestine - Ilan Pappe

                  The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappe

                  The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories - Ilan Pappe

                  The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine - Rashid Khalidi

                  The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences - Avi Shlaim

                  The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development - Sara Roy