Israel Is Stepping Up Its Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank
Even as Israel attacks Iran and Lebanon, it is also intensifying ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. The military and settler militias are using a crisis Israel created as cover for its illegal takeover of the West Bank.
Israel’s plan to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian convicts is part of a wider intensification of repression. Imprisoning people en masse without trial is a means of crushing Palestinian society and clearing the way for further settlements. (Nasser Ishtayeh / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)
While international attention is focused on the US-Israeli war on Iran, violence and displacement in the West Bank continue to intensify, and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza persists. One of the major groups documenting this violence is the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which has denounced an ongoing genocide against Palestinians.
In an interview with Elias Feroz for Jacobin, Sarit Michaeli, who is B’Tselem’s international outreach director, outlines what she describes as systemic abuses in the West Bank. Their discussion points to a reality of mass detention, oppressive prison conditions, and escalating violence on Palestinian communities across the occupied Palestinian territories.
Elias Feroz
We first tried to conduct this interview online at the beginning of March, but you had to take shelter because of Iranian counterattacks. What is the situation on the ground like now?
Sarit Michaeli
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