Untying The Knot Of Israel’s Deception – OpEd
After 12 Western states (Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, UK) moved to restrict goods and services from West Bank settlements, the author (Ray Hanania) says Israel threatened embassy closures and ordered Britain’s East Jerusalem consulate shut. He treats that as proof the line between “legal Israel” and settlement trade is being redrawn.
The column calls settlements a discriminatory land system: 1948 and 1967 as taking most of historic Palestine; Jewish National Fund/Israel Land Authority rules that lock land to Jewish ownership; U.S. aid as indirect subsidy. The writer cites his own family’s home, road, and well. Mixing settlement produce with Israeli goods is called a legitimacy trick. Those are his charges.
He separates support for the Israeli state from support for Netanyahu’s government and says sanctions back a two-state track Netanyahu wants gone. Huckabee is said to play “cat-and-mouse”; Trump is read as quiet because of a midterm backlash. The author’s close: stop transferring Christian and Muslim land to Jewish-only use.
After 12 prominent Western nations last week announced they would ban or restrict trade in goods manufactured or produced by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, Israel began threatening to close their embassies. Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK announced they would introduce their own national sanctions on Israel’s settlements or support existing EU restrictions.
The import restrictions will target the racist settlement system, which is built on a discriminatory structure that strips Christians and Muslims of their legally owned........
