https://arab.news/4d3ha

Some prefer to hear the good news first, others the bad, but does it really matter? The good news about the Israeli government is that it no longer tries to hide its true intentions regarding the Palestinians.

The bad news is that the ruling coalition is ill-intentioned to the core. There is no longer any pretense of a desire for peaceful coexistence through a historic compromise agreement that would divide the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea so that it could accommodate a Jewish state and a Palestinian state.

In an act of sheer defiance of the international community and international law, and demonstrating a complete absence of common sense, Israel’s Security Cabinet has approved a motion, put forward by Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, for the establishment of 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. Not all of these settlements are entirely new; some are while others are existing outposts that were built illegally, even according to Israeli law.

Two of the planned settlements, Homesh and Sa-Nor, were evacuated in 2005 during the Israeli disengagement from Gaza, as part of a wider plan to also disengage from some parts of the West Bank and create space for what should have become a Palestinian state.