❶ Israeli confiscation of land shows 440% increase in 2016

• Background from  Polar: Political & Legal Anthropology Review

. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Israel to construct new housing in Hebron settlement after killing of teenage resident
. . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) Amid denial, plans for a new Israeli settlement neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem looms

• Background from  Middle East

❷ Meretz Head: “Netanyahu’s Theory Of Running The Conflict Has Collapsed”
❸ Opinion/Analysis:   NETANYAHU’S BLOODY INCITEMENT
❹ POETRY by Yousef Al-Mahmoud
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❶  ISRAELI  CONFISCATION  OF  LAND  SHOWS  440%  INCREASE  IN  2016
Palestine News Network – PNN
June 30, 2016
Israeli confiscation policy has notably escalated in occupied Jerusalem and West Bank by 439% since the beginning of 2016 in comparison to last year, a Palestinian report revealed Tuesday.
___Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ) revealed in a report issued Tuesday that Israeli authorities confiscated since the beginning of the year 7,773 acres of Palestinian-owned lands, recording an increase by 439% in comparison with last year where 1,442 acres were seized.    MORE . . .  

From Polar: Political & Legal Anthropology Review
The settlement of Palestine/Israel has always been bound up with immigration, with the Zionist ideal of the ingathering of exiles . . .  inhabiting newly acquired lands of the emerging polity. . . .  Immigrants accordingly feature in public discourse as either the zealous agents or the mobilized victims of political projects.
___ . . . immigration . . .  raises [questions] about the Israel-Palestine conflict. At the most basic level, it forces one to rethink the role of Middle-East politics in the neoliberal era. Discourse on the West Bank has long been expressed exclusively in terms of the conflicting agendas of its main actors and the political powers they wield. But insofar as settlements are key to the future status of the West Bank, politics is clearly assuming a different role . . . No attempt to understand the current situation in the Middle East, let alone to think through possible solutions, can afford to ignore this insight.
___If normalization grounds settlement practices, it is necessary to question its affects on other coordinates of occupation. . . . [to describe] Israel’s occupation as a process of normalization that shifted sometime in 1990s from direct intervention in the lives and practices of Palestinians to indirect governing through control over infrastructure and resources . . .
___ Indeed, just as normalization obviates consent by Palestinians, the state makes scant efforts to seek legitimacy for settlement policies from its own citizens, who begrudgingly accept them as authoritative. . . . the transparent subjugation of Palestinians becomes instrumental in obfuscating settlers’ own lot, making it seem as though their civic rights and duties grant them far more control over their fate in The West Bank than their less fortunate neighbors. This account of immigrant-settlers suggests otherwise.

• Weiss, Hadas. “Immigration And West Bank Settlement Normalization.” Polar: Political & Legal Anthropology Review 34.1 (2011): 112-130.   SOURCE. 

. . . ❶ ― (ᴀ)  ISRAEL  TO  CONSTRUCT  NEW  HOUSING  IN  HEBRON  SETTLEMENT  AFTER  KILLING  OF  TEENAGE  RESIDENT
Ma’an News Agency
July 2, 2016
The Israeli government reportedly approved on Friday the construction of new housing units in the illegal settlement of Kiryat Arba in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron, after a Palestinian boy stabbed an Israeli girl to death in her bedroom in the settlement Thursday.      MORE . . . 
. . ❶ ― (ᴃ) AMID DENIAL, PLANS FOR A NEW ISRAELI SETTLEMENT NEIGHBORHOOD IN OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM LOOMS
POICA – Monitoring Israeli Colonization Activities in the Palestinian Territories
The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem
June 11, 2016
At the time the Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem denies any news related to the advancement of a settlement plan near Qalandyia airport, in occupied East Jerusalem, the Israeli Hebrew news website, WALLA, reports that the Jerusalem Municipality is promoting the construction of a new and huge settlement neighborhood on the old airport area north of the Atarot industrial settlement in Jerusalem, near Qalandyia village.  MORE . . .

From  Middle East
The window of opportunity for a two state solution, to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, is closing rapidly as Israeli settlement expansion and expropriation of Palestinian land and resources in the occupied West Bank accelerates at an unprecedented rate, with Israel setting aside more than 60% of the Territory for the several hundred illegal Israeli settlements and outposts that will be home to more than 500,000 Israeli settlers. [Note: The article continues with descriptions of several examples of settlement expansion.]

• Frykberg, Mel. “Israeli Plan To Snatch 60% Of The West Bank.” Middle East 444 (2013): 28-31.   ARTICLE. 

❷ MERETZ  HEAD:  “NETANYAHU’S  THEORY  OF  RUNNING  THE  CONFLICT  HAS  COLLAPSED”
International Middle East Media Center – IMEMC
July 3, 2016
Meretz Party head, Israeli Member of Knesset (MK) Zehava Gal-On, stated Saturday that the theory of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of running the conflict has failed, and added that the only solution is ending this conflict through a political solution.
___. . . “Israel must understand that the only solution to stopping the attacks and the escalation is reaching a political soliton to the conflict, and ending this occupation.”
___“The conflict is running us; the recent attacks and threats have proven that the calm we’ve seen was temporary,” the Israeli official said, “Netanyahu’s theory of running the conflict has completely collapsed, and now this conflict is running us.”      MORE . . .  

❸  Opinion/Analysis:  NETANYAHU’S  BLOODY  INCITEMENT
Mondoweiss
Yakov Hirsch
July 1, 2016
Let’s agree on the facts.  One Palestinian male got into a West Bank settlement and killed a 13-year-old Israeli girl in her room with a knife. Nothing more, nothing less. Before her body was cold, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed the same day to make a video for the English speaking world.
___What is the purpose of this Netanyahu video? What more does the world need to know about this terrible event? Why is he showing us her gruesome bloodstained room? Why are we hearing about her teddy bear?
[. . . .]
___Netanyahu is “interpreting” one isolated event for the world, talking about one Palestinian killing one girl, and deriving a political lesson.    MORE . . .

“ENEMY,”  BY  YOUSEF  AL-MAHMOUD

They come from all the ends of the earth to sit among us
they come from the ends of the winds
they bring sickness and a hissing like snakes
they come from the ends of the snows
they come smelling of death
they come with blood-dipping knives
they bring panic and terror
they are utterly not-to-be-trusted
they are utterly murderous
they are proud of their murders, they are drinkers of blood
proud of tooth and nail
even more proud of guns and treachery
they come to burn the love in our hearts
and turn it to torture and bitterness
they bring sorrow, terror, sickness. . .
How have they come to sit among us?
—Translated by DM Black

Yousef Al-Mahmoud is a prominent broadcaster and poet, and former head of the Ministry of Culture in his native Jenin.
From  A  BIRD  IS  NOT  A  STONE:  AN  ANTHOLOGY  OF  CONTEMPORARY  PALESTINIAN  POETRY (Glasgow: Freight Books, 2014) –available from Amazon.com.