Israeli ministers announce new settlement plans in Gaza
West Bank expansion funding emerges alongside ceasefire-era strikes, bulldozers and funerals share the same timetable
Images
Israeli settlers building a new outpost near the Palestinian village of Azmut in the occupied West Bank on Friday. Photograph: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images
theguardian.com
Israeli bulldozers prepare land for the construction of the new settlement of Dotan Valley near the West Bank city of Jenin. Photograph: Alaa Badarneh/EPA
theguardian.com
Israeli settlers work on Friday to build a new outpost at the Palestinian village of Azmut in the occupied West Bank. Photograph: Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP/Getty Images
theguardian.com
An Israeli strike on a funeral in Gaza kills 7 people and wounds 22, a local hospital says
independent.co.uk
Israeli ministers are publicly laying groundwork for new settlements in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, even as airstrikes in the enclave continue to kill civilians. The Guardian reports that defence minister Israel Katz has announced plans for three “Nahal” outposts in northern Gaza, while the Independent reports an Israeli strike hit a funeral in central Gaza, with Awda Hospital saying at least seven were killed and 22 wounded.
The settlement announcements arrive in an election season that rewards irreversible facts. According to the Guardian, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said the government is allocating funding for dozens of new West Bank settlements, a decision the cabinet allegedly took last month but kept quiet because it expected US opposition. Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog, told the paper it has seen bulldozers working on multiple sites it expects to be populated before Israel’s 27 October election.
“Nahal” outposts have a long history in Israel as military footholds that later become civilian communities; Kerem Navot’s Dror Etkes described them to the Guardian as a template for converting temporary deployments into permanent land claims. In the West Bank, the Guardian describes a parallel ecosystem of “outposts” that are illegal even under Israeli law but still shape enforcement on the ground. It quotes Maj Gen Avi Bluth, the Israeli commander in the West Bank, praising such groups as security “partners” at a meeting of a body representing these outposts.
In Gaza, the Independent’s account of the funeral strike illustrates how the ceasefire has shifted from large offensives to frequent, smaller attacks that still produce steady casualties. Israel said it targeted a Palestinian Islamic Jihad “terrorist cell” and acknowledged civilians may have been harmed. Gaza’s Health Ministry has reported more than one thousand deaths since the ceasefire took effect, the Independent notes, while Israel says its strikes respond to militant attacks and other violations.
The two tracks—settlement preparation and intermittent strikes—interlock: one changes the map, the other maintains the security rationale. The Guardian reports that Israeli political and military figures, including former prime ministers and ex-heads of security services, have threatened legal action over state support for settler violence, while the UN human rights office for Palestine has described systematic impunity that allows violence to grow.
On the day the funeral was hit, the Independent reports it was being held for a man killed in an earlier strike. Bulldozers were also preparing land near Jenin for a new settlement, according to the Guardian.