As Israel Pushes to Annex West Bank, Norwegian Refugee Council Condemns Growing Settler Violence #DemocracyNow!

Israel’s Knesset has advanced legislation that would effectively annex the West Bank, prompting rare criticism from the Trump administration, which says it does not support annexation. We get a report on the state of illegal settlement activity in the Palestinian territory from the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Jan Egeland, who has just returned from the occupied West Bank. “I think the settler movement felt they had a free hand to do whatever they wanted on the West Bank, and it happened in the shadows of the war in Gaza,” he says about the growth in settlements and widespread impunity for settlers. “Every single day, Palestinian houses are demolished. Every single day, their communities are attacked. Every single day, people are beaten up, thousands of olive trees are uprooted. I mean, it’s happening as we speak.”

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