Hamas…Israel Conflict Day 264…Israel West Bank settlements…Iran politics

Israel annexation….

Iran domestic political issues….

Israel continues Hamas hunting….

Hoping things do NOT escalate between Israel and Lebanon ….

Again?

No mention of hostages….

Israel’s slow effort to annex more land in the West Bank from Palestine control…

Israeli officials have tentatively agreed to legalize five Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move that could further inflame tensions between Israelis and Palestinians and draw the ire of the international community, but one that advances the expansionist agenda of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has agreed to release funds he has been withholding from the financially strapped Palestinian Authority, which administers some West Bank areas under Israeli military rule, in exchange for strengthening Israeli settlements in the territory, his office said on Thursday.

The tentative agreement would ease some of the financial pressure on the Palestinian Authority but would officially tighten Israel’s hold on the West Bank, further complicating any future effort to reach an agreement on a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis.

Much of the international community views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, and many of the outposts are illegal under Israeli law, too, but are tolerated by the government. Many whose creation violated Israeli law were later legitimized by the Israeli government, granting them formal access to services like running water, electricity, building permits and funding.

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Still, outposts have grown with the tacit agreement of the government for decades…..

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Most of the world considers settlements to be illegal under international law. The United Nations General Assembly, the United Nations Security Council and the International Court of Justice have all said that Israeli settlements on the West Bank violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from moving its people into occupied territory. The statute that established the International Criminal Court in 1998 classifies such transfers as war crimes.

The United Nations in 1947 approved a partition creating a Jewish state and a Palestinian one that would include the West Bank, and put Jerusalem under international control. But after the first Arab-Israeli war, Jordan took control of the West Bank, and Jerusalem became divided between Israel and Jordan.

In the 1967 war, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and occupied the West Bank, which it says is disputed territory whose fate should be determined in negotiations. Soon after, it began to permit settlements there.

Palestinians have long argued that the settlements are a creeping annexation enforced by armed settlers and the Israeli military, carving territory that should become a Palestinian state into an unworkable patchwork, and steadily pushing Arabs out of their homes and farms.

Under Israeli law, legal settlements must be built on land held by the state, must have government building permits and must be established by a government resolution.

Under the Oslo accords, signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, both sides agreed that the status of Israeli settlements would be resolved by negotiation, a prospect that grows dimmer with each new outpost….

More…

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Palestinians In Egypt….(Something Israel wants more to do)

When Israel launched its war against Hamas, Cairo was adamant: It would not accept Palestinian refugees. Yet more than 115,000 Gazans have crossed into Egypt since October, the Palestinian Authority’s embassy here estimates.

Most remain in limbo, with no legal status and nowhere else to go. They are members of a new diaspora of Palestinians, a people already haunted by memories of displacement.