(Here's your 'one state solution')
from Middle East Eye
The 50km journey from Ramallah north to Nablus in the occupied West Bank used to take an hour. Israeli checkpoints now mean it can take half a day or more.
It’s Friday morning and I’m on a bus full of students and young families going to stay with relatives for the weekend.
We swing left to join Highway 60, which runs along the ancient route from Hebron in the south to Jenin and Nazareth to the north.
In Ottoman times it was known as the “route of the thieves”, with robbers lying in wait for unwary travellers. Today the thieves are Israeli settlers.
Were Palestine to become its own state, Highway 60 would become a key piece of national infrastructure. But now every hundred metres or less is an Israeli flag.
On the bus there’s a discussion about who planted the flags. All agree they weren’t there a year ago.
Beside the flags are occasional posters depicting a rabbi in a black coat, with a protruding beard under his black homburg hat.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson died 30 years ago, but to many settlers he is a living presence. His followers believe that all the land of historical Israel belongs to the Jews.
Settlers paste his emblem - a blue crown against a yellow background above a Hebrew word meaning messiah - in Palestinian villages and at crossroads.
The rabbi’s followers believe the arrival of the messiah is imminent.
Groups of settlers congregate along the road. Some carry machine guns. The women wear long woven dresses.
Many settlers, especially those in remote outposts, view Palestinians with hatred and contempt.
We pass Turmus Ayya, which is under regular attack. Rampaging settlers, many armed, destroy crops, burn cars and houses, wreck agricultural machinery.
We pass close to Shilo, a religious settlement named after the ancient biblical city of Shiloh.
A young mother sitting near me on the bus shivers: “It’s the one that’s killing everybody. The head of the snake.”
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law, according to a ruling by the International Court of Justice in 2024.
Many Shilo settlers are American Israelis, while many American Palestinians live in Turmus Ayya.
Back in the United States they might be neighbours and friends. In the West Bank, the Shilo settlers are intent on driving out or killing the Palestinians and seizing their land.
We pass along the road to Beita, a village that has come under repeated murderous assault since a settlement outpost called Evyatar was launched with the support of the radical settler movement Nachala which has received funding from organisations in the US.
I have visited Beita several times. Every Friday the youth of Beita march to protect their land. They mostly throw stones and set light to tyres. But they don’t pose any realistic danger to settlers or well-armed Israeli soldiers.
Sixteen of them had been shot dead when I last visited in September 2024, with many others injured. An American-Turkish dual national, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, was one of the martyrs, targeted by an israeli soldier with a shot to the head.
The direct route to Nablus should pass through Huwwara, the scene of a notorious settler pogrom three years ago.
Today Huwwara is cut off by one of the ubiquitous barrier gates installed across the West Bank to enable the occupying Israeli authorities to block off towns and villages.
The bus driver swings left and up the hill. We are now close to Yitzhar, an especially violent settlement known for its motto “expel or kill”, which has been graffitied on homes and walls in Palestinian villages.
A settler website includes a photograph of a flag with Rabbi Schneerson's emblem waving above a military outpost in Yitzhar.
Under the flag the text states that it is there to remind “the residents of the Arab villages of their true destiny - to be slaves to the children of Israel”...
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