Israel’s international allies are voicing a growing chorus of condemnation for the occupied West Bank’s continued construction of illegal settlements and its war against Gaza.
UN experts, human rights organizations, and academics have all previously reported to Al Jazeera that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza and engaging in violations that might amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity in the West Bank.
Israel approved 22 illegal settlements in the West Bank less than two weeks after receiving stern warnings from its Western allies, making it the largest land grab since Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993.
“Israel is all about educating the public about who is the leader.” They claim that you can condemn us at any time, but you will ultimately bow down to us, not the other way around, according to Diana Buttu, a political analyst and legal expert with an emphasis on Israel and Palestine.
The Oslo Accords allegedly had the intention of establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
According to analysts, Israel has continued to expand illegal settlements in practice, making the two-state solution a reality.
pattern of truncation
Israel has frequently announced the construction of additional illegal settlements in response to UN or its allies’ declarations of support for Palestinian statehood.
After the Palestinian Authority (PA), a body established to govern large portions of the West Bank as a result of the Oslo Accords, received non-member observer status in the UN General Assembly, Israel went so far as to approve 3, 000 new settler homes in the occupied West Bank in 2012.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, warned last year that every nation that recognizes a Palestinian state will construct a new illegal settlement.
Spain, Norway, and Ireland made the symbolic move in May 2024, with the announcement coming soon thereafter.
Omar Rahman, an expert for the Middle East Council for global affairs, said, “I certainly believe there is a pattern where Israel responds to pressure regarding its occupation … or anything else, by announcing settler expansion.”
He told Al Jazeera, “We see that pattern repeating itself over and over.”
Israel has continued to test its allies’ patience as the world’s attention mounts against Israel’s occupation of Gaza.
A group of European, Asian, and Arab diplomats on an official mission to assess the humanitarian crisis at the Jenin refugee camp, which has been the subject of the Israeli army’s ongoing attack and siege for the past few months, were shot on May 21 by Israeli troops.
“I don’t know where the red line is,” she said. There is no red line, Buttu said, “it is obvious.”
demonstrating inaction
Israel has increasingly annexed and occupied the little Palestinian land that is still alive after Zionist militias ethnically cleansed some 750, 000 Palestinians in 1948, a process known as the “Nakba” or catastrophe.
According to Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, the annexation of the occupied West Bank has increased in recent years as a result of the presence of far-right settlers in the Israeli government.
He believes that Israel had no intention of approving the 22 illegal settlements, despite the joint statement from France, the UK, and Canada because it complied with the state’s ultimate plan to expand Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.
No one would have believed that if those nations hadn’t announced that [further] annexation wasn’t going to occur. He assured Al Jazeera that it would happen, of course.
In contrast to Western pressure, Rahman, a member of the Middle East Council, claims that Israel’s strategy of announcing pre-planned settlement expansion is merely a means of dissuading its allies from taking concrete steps.
He believes that any actions taken against Israel will likely result in a backlash against Palestinians, as they have threatened to do. Instead, he believes that Canada, the UK, and France will likely use the argument that any actions taken against them will likely result in targeted sanctions being imposed on Israeli officials.
Rahman told Al Jazeera, “[Canada, UK, and France] may claim to be supporting the two-state solution by failing to do anything to save it.”
Analysts think that Israel’s use of sanctions would be the only way to end Israel’s two-state solution and end its conflict with Gaza, but they also acknowledge that full sanctions against the Israeli state are still unlikely at this point.
Instead of Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, far-right ministers most closely associated with pro-settler policies, such as Canada, France, and the UK, may be the targets of sanctions.
These men are attempting to “jam in everything they can do right now,” Elgindy told Al Jazeera. “These men are trying to keep their positions of power indefinitely,” Elgindy said.
Buttu fears that only the nations of Europe will adopt more symbolic measures, such as “recognizing Palestine,” which will have little impact on the ground.
