Author Archives: Maggs Mackechnie

One month after the Gaza ceasefire, and the prospect of a just and lasting resolution feels as distant as ever. In Gaza, Israel continues to dictate the terms of an increasingly fragile peace – obstructing humanitarian access, committing near-daily ceasefire violations, and showing little sign of any genuine commitment to withdrawal or reconstruction.  

But it is in the West Bank that Israel’s true intentions are most clearly revealed. While global attention has remained fixed on Gaza, Netanyahu’s government has quietly pressed ahead with the steady consolidation of its grip on the occupied territory. 

This year has already seen record levels of settler violence, carried out with the active support of the Israeli government and army. The weeks following the ceasefire have been no exception. In the past month alone, Israeli forces and settlers have carried out more than 2,300 attacks across the occupied West Bank, terrorising inhabitants and forcibly displacing Palestinians from their homes through demolitions, arbitrary arrests, physical assaults and the uprooting of over 1,000 olive trees.

Mere weeks after the ceasefire was announced, the Knesset advanced a bill to annex the West Bank, a move that would constitute a clear breach of international law. And just this week, the government issued tenders for 356 new settlement housing units in the territory. This follows its revival of the controversial E1 settlement plan, a project that would cut the West Bank in two –  a clear attempt to bury any remaining hopes for a two-state solution. 

These are not the actions of a government interested in peace, but of one intent on erasing, piece by piece, the separate identity of the Palestinian people and their culture and the very state that the UK and other western nations have finally recognised. 

It is futile to hope that Israel will change course on its own. Even Yair Lapid, the leader of Israel’s so-called ‘liberal’ opposition party, voted in favour of the recent annexation bill (though this is hardly surprising, given his party’s own record of deepening the settlement project while in power).