In the first ever visit by a serving Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in Australia this month as part of an international tour aimed at shoring up Israel’s reputation abroad.
The visit has actually attracted attention — but not the kind Netanyahu would like.
In the wake of a growing corruption scandal around the PM and the recent passage of the so-called regularisation law that retrospectively “legalises” illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, the situation of Palestinian communities across the occupied territories is becoming increasingly desperate.
With increasing rates of demolitions of Palestinian houses, Netanyahu’s whirlwind international tour seems to be about shoring up both his and Israel’s reputations in the face of criticism over the contentious law.
Last year featured a record number of housing demolitions across the West Bank, which led to a record number of displaced people — of which more than half are minors. In what amounts to a policy of “de-Palestinianising” previously Palestinian territories, the numbers of demolitions and displacements last year outstripped 2014 and 2015 combined.
The destruction of Palestinian homes and the displacement of Palestinian families across the West Bank have combined with the ever-growing numbers of illegal Israeli settlements to set the stage to complete the de facto annexation of the whole West Bank.
The West Bank is divided into three areas. Area C, for example, is under direct Israeli administrative control and makes up 60% of the West Bank. The practical consequences of Israeli administration of security and land management includes almost total refusal of any Palestinian application for building permits.
Palestinians are effectively prevented from building on about 70% of Area C.
Palestinians in the area also face outright seizures of property for live firing exercises (declaring a “closed military zone”), encroachment onto their land by the notorious “separation barrier” (as Israel calls the Apartheid Wall), the declaration of areas as “state lands” that can only be used by Israelis, and even “nature reserves” from which Palestinians are forbidden.
Read the full article by Lisa Gleeson at the Green Left Weekly.