THE Israeli cabinet has approved the ‘legalisation’ of five settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, and further sanctions on the Palestinian Authority for supporting cases against the Israeli regime in international courts.
‘The Security Cabinet authorised one outpost for every country that unilaterally recognised Palestine as a state in the last month,’ Israel’s extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Thursday night.
Last month, Spain, Ireland and Norway formally recognised the Palestinian state, joining over 140 UN member states that have recognised its statehood over the past four decades.
Slovenia and Malta have also indicated they plan to formally recognise the state of Palestine.
The five settlement outposts are Evyatar, Givat Assaf, Sde Efraim, Heletz, and Adorayim.
The extremist minister said that sanctions against the Palestinian Authority came after ‘weeks of discussion’ and were an ‘appropriate response’ to the Palestinian Authority’s activity against the regime at the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the United Nations.
The sanctions include the cancellation of exit visas for PA officials.
The Netherlands has meanwhile summoned the Israeli regime’s ambassador to the country to explain allegations over Tel Aviv’s spying on the International Criminal Court.
Further restrictions were also declared regarding Palestinian construction in Area B of the West Bank, which is under the Palestinian Authority’s administration, in violation of signed agreements.
According to the Smotrich-proposed measures, the so-called Higher Planning Council for the West Bank is also expected to meet to advance the approval of thousands of additional settler units in the occupied territories.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).
The international community views the settlements – hundreds of which have been built across the West Bank since Israel’s occupation of the territory in 1967 – as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on the occupied territories.
Palestinians insist that the West Bank is part of a future independent state of Palestine with East al-Quds as its capital.
Meanwhile, thousands of anti-regime Jewish protesters have marched in al-Quds and gathered outside prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home, reiterating their demand for his ouster and a new prisoner exchange deal with Gaza.
The protest took place on Thursday, with participants yelling through megaphones and banging on snare drums.
Many in the crowd chanted their support for reaching a deal to release Israeli captives being held in Gaza by the Palestinian resistance.
The demonstrators also called for early elections. ‘We’ve been abandoned – Elections now!’ read one sign that rose above the crowd.
Later in the day, protesters blocked traffic and lit large bonfires in the streets.
Unlike the previous demonstrations, the latest protest saw no major clashes with police officers, who were standing at barricades.
The Israeli opposition is now saying that Netanyahu is prolonging the war because he believes his ‘political future’ will be brought to an abrupt end when the war ends, potentially leading to trials regarding past corruption charges against current ministers.
Netanyahu, in fact, faced charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three cases filed in 2019.
With a civil war emerging in Israel, now is the time for the working people of the world to take action to demand that their trade union leaders call general strikes in support of Palestine, general strikes that will stop all arms supplies to the Israeli regime by the US, UK and other capitalist governments, and will create the conditions for a political revolution to take place inside Israel itself.
In Britain, the TUC Congress must be made to get up off its knees and call mass strike actions leading to a general strike to force the next British government to stop arming Israel, and to start arming Palestine, so that the Palestinian people can establish one state of Palestine, in which Arabs, Jews and Christians can live side by side in harmony.
The TUC must be made to stop all arms supplies from the UK to Israel and must recognise, and give support to, the State of Palestine.
