Israel may extend genocide from Gaza to West Bank, warns Jewish historian
Ilan Pappé
Middle East Monitor reports on 23 October 2024:
Jewish historian, Ilan Pappe, has warned that Israel may extend its genocidal actions from Gaza to the West Bank unless Western powers reconsider their pro-Zionist policies, Anadolu Agency reports. “What Israel commits in the Gaza Strip is genocide by all legal definitions,” said Pappe, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, in an interview with Anadolu in Brussels.
Pappe explained that Israel had already implemented “incremental tools” of oppression through restrictions on food, medicine and infrastructure access well before 2023.
He expressed concern about the potential expansion of these policies to the West Bank, urging immediate international intervention to prevent such a scenario.
The whole idea that you deal with antisemitism in Europe by dispossessing the Palestinians is problematic, immoral, and as we can see now, 76 years later, it is not working too well he stated.
Shifting power dynamics in West Bank
Pappe highlighted a significant transformation in Israeli politics, pointing to the increasing influence of an “extreme” form of Zionism originating from illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
These are the people who are now holding power in the government, in the police, and they’re beginning to influence other sections of the society
he noted. According to Pappe, this emerging leadership envisions an Israel extending across all of historic Palestine, with minimal Palestinian presence and little concern for the broader regional consequences.