Analysis

Original Analysis by +972 Magazine’s bloggers and op-ed contributors

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Israel cannot hide the occupation by silencing (or killing) Palestinian journalists

The global solidarity campaign following the blinding of a Palestinian photographer by Israeli security forces is a reminder that try it might, Israel won’t be able to stop Palestinian journalists from telling the story of the occupation. By Omri Najad Last Friday, Palestinian photographer Moath Amarnih headed out to document a protest by the residents of Surif…

By Haokets November 18, 2019

Mourners attend the funeral of seven members of the Abu Malhous family killed by an Israeli airstrike, during their funeral, Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, November 14, 2019. (Hassan Jedi/Flash90)

With Gaza behind him, Netanyahu puts Israel’s Palestinians in the crosshairs

With corruption indictments closing in, Netanyahu hopes his scorched earth campaign against Palestinians, whether in Gaza or in Israel, will give Israelis the sense that they live in a state of emergency and cannot afford change. By the time last week’s fighting was over, sparked by Israel’s assassination of Islamic Jihad commander Baha Abu al-Ata in Gaza, over than 30…

November 17, 2019

Why Hamas is staying out of Israel’s fight with Islamic Jihad

Israeli security and political coordination with Hamas has served mutual interests for many years. Now Hamas is hoping to stay out of the current fighting in order to potentially expand its political power in the West Bank.

By Ami Kaufman and Amjad Iraqi November 13, 2019

Latest

Rowaida Abu Eid tries Palestine VR, an app that offers virtual tours of six regions in the West Bank and Gaza. (Screenshot of a a PIPD video)

New VR app circumvents Israel’s travel bans, takes viewers across Palestine

Palestine VR offers virtual tours across six regions in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing viewers to ‘see the reality on the ground’ themselves. By Jaclynn Ashly Israel’s separation wall snakes around Bethlehem’s Aida refugee camp in the West Bank. Solidarity graffiti is spray-painted all over the concrete slabs. Black water tanks, some of which are…

By +972 Magazine November 13, 2019

Two settlers, one of them carrying a gun, stand near a mosque in the West Bank city of Hebron, April 1, 2001. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

What if Israel had decided to expel the settlers of Hebron?

After Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in the Cave of the Patriarchs, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin could have taken action against the settlers of Hebron. Instead he put the Palestinians of the city under closure. The consequences of that decision reverberate until today. By Amiram Goldblum Following the Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre on Feb. 25, 1994,…

By +972 Magazine November 13, 2019

Palestinians evacuate the wounded from Israeli air strikes in Gaza City on November 12, 2019. Earlier in the day an Israeli air strike killed Palestinian Islamic Jihad field commander Baha Abu Al-Atta. (Fadi Fahd/Flash90)

To save himself, Netanyahu is going to war with Gaza

Even as Israel becomes chronically unable to form a government, the ‘Gaza consensus’ — the endless pounding of the strip into oblivion — persists. It could tip the scales in Netanyahu’s favor. There is no military solution in Gaza. But Israel’s leaders, who are too much at loggerheads to sit in a government together, are somehow able to agree…

By Edo Konrad November 12, 2019

Israeli soldiers violently drag Rabbi Arik Ascherman while he and a group of activists attempt to repair an access road for a cluster of Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills on May 3, 2019. (Ahmad al-Bazz/Activestills.org)

In the Hebron Hills, the settlers are the lords and the IDF does their bidding

A new booklet by Breaking the Silence compiles dozens of accounts by former Israeli combat soldiers who served in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank. Text by Rachel Shenhav-Goldberg In 2012, two Israeli residents of Mitzpe Yair, an unauthorized settlement in the Hebron Hills, spontaneously attacked an elderly, unarmed Palestinian man, beating him so…

By +972 Resources November 12, 2019

An Israeli military police officer checks entry permits of Palestinians on a bus crossing the Allenby Bridge into Israel. (Moshe Milner/GPO)

What would Israelis do if Palestinians disappeared overnight?

In Ibtisam Azem’s ‘The Book of Disappearance,’ Israelis wake up one day to a country without any Palestinians. Azem speaks to +972 about how, with this sudden vanishing of ‘the enemy,’ she confronts some of the darkest chapters of Israel’s history. What would Israelis do if every Palestinian between the river and the sea disappeared at…

November 11, 2019

Ishaq Bar-Moshe in Iraq. (Courtesy of Bar Moshe's family)

The Mizrahi author whose book Mahmoud Abbas wants to distribute

Ishaq Bar-Moshe started writing books in Arabic two decades after he emigrated from Iraq to Israel. It was a radical choice, given that the language aroused deep antipathy in Israel — but Bar-Moshe was undeterred. By Naomi Niddam A few weeks ago, a representative from the office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called Idit Shemer, an…

By +972 Magazine and Ami Kaufman November 8, 2019

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) speaks at the 2019 J Street National Conference, October 28, 2019. (Photo courtesy of J Street)

For J Street, holding Israel accountable is still a step too far

J Street’s 2019 conference heralded a new willingness to tie military aid to Israel to its human rights record. But the organization was quick to reaffirm a status quo of unconditional aid — despite ongoing abuses. What at first looked like a sea change on the horizon has turned out to be much less. One week…

By Joshua Leifer and Cafe Gibraltar November 7, 2019

A Palestinian woman seen after after crossing the a fence that had been damaged by demonstrators during the protest near the Gaza-Israel border fence, Gaza Strip, September 28, 2018. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills.org)

Israel killed 222 Gaza protestors since 2018. Only one soldier has been indicted

As Othman Hiles began climbing the Gaza fence, an Israeli soldier opened fire and killed the unarmed 14-year-old. The soldier’s sentence? Community service. By Eyal Sagiv Two women and a teenage boy stand close to the fence separating Gaza from Israel, waving Palestinian flags. Four other teenagers approach. One of them, 14-year-old Othman Hiles, is wearing a…

By +972 Magazine November 6, 2019

A Palestinian family sits in their destroyed home in the At-Tuffah district of Gaza City, which was heavily attacked during last Israeli offensive, September 21, 2014.

The unbearable heaviness of finding freedom outside Gaza

‘I have developed a strange belief that things might go wrong. I am afraid that I will be questioned or stopped. I am seriously unable to believe that I have the right to move.’ By Salsabeel H. Hamdan For a Palestinian, Gaza is a place from which escape is nearly impossible. Israel has, for the past…

By +972 Magazine November 5, 2019

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship at J Street's 2019 National Gala Dinner, October 28, 2019. (Photo courtesy of J Street)

J Street conference confronts America’s ‘blank check’ to Israel

By making U.S. aid to Israel the central theme of its 2019 conference, J Street is challenging bipartisan support for Israel ahead of 2020. Now that the organization is starting to talk the talk, will it walk the walk?

By Mairav Zonszein November 1, 2019