In its latest outrage against the Palestinian people, Israel has announced land appropriation of some 988 acres - the biggest appropriation in 30 years - in the occupied West Bank "on the instruction of the political echelon." The land belongs to five Palestinian villages where farmers grow olive trees to earn their livelihoods. Israel has proved once again that it has no interest in pursuing the peace process, something even the US acknowledged in its reaction to the announcement saying, "like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, planning step they approve and construction tender they issue is counterproductive to Israel's stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians."
The official explanation for the provocation is that the step is a response to the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teenaged boys by Hamas militants in June. Reports, however, point out that construction of a major settlement at the location, where already ten families live next to a Jewish seminary, was planned back in 2000. The timing of the decision to go ahead with the plan seems to be linked to the way the latest attack on Gaza has ended. Israel has earned a lot of international criticism for seven weeks of incessant strikes from the air, land and sea on Hamas-controlled Gaza that left more than 2100 Palestinians, over 500 of them children, dead and thousands of others wounded. Indiscriminate bombings on UN-supervised civilian shelters housed in schools, invited condemnation from even the US and the EU. But it also ended badly for the Jewish state. Netanyahu government's chief concern, therefore, is to placate public opinion at home.
Despite a huge loss in lives, Hamas came out standing from the conflict, retaining its ability to fire rockets at Israel and managing to extract important concessions. Notably, in April last Netanyahu had called off peace talks with the Palestinian Authority president Mehmoud Abbas after Abbas agreed to form unity government with Hamas, which Israel and its Western backers have declared a terrorist organisation. Yet it was Hamas with which the Israeli government had to talk, albeit indirectly through Egyptian, Qatari and American intermediaries, to secure a permanent ceasefire agreement. If that was not humiliating enough for the Israeli government, it also had to give in to Hamas demands to end more than seven-year-long blockade of Gaza, and lift fishing restrictions off the coast of the Gaza Strip. It was also agreed to resume discussions in a month's time on two other important items on Hamas's wish list: creation of a seaport and an airport in Gaza. Israel tried to put up a brave front, saying Hamas had accepted the same Egyptian proposals it rejected earlier, in actual fact Hamas' key demand about lifting of the Gaza siege imposed in 2007 did not figure in the two previous Egypt-brokered truce that followed Israeli attacks in 2008-09 and 2012. Forced to lick his wounds Netanyahu has now hastened to do what pleases his domestic constituency: usurping more and more Palestinian lands, and making peace that much more unachievable.