As Israel devours the West Bank, Abbas clings on to a sinking PA
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in November 2024
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye on 27 October 2025:
Nothing reveals the true nature of Zionism more clearly than the annual attacks of Israeli settlers during the olive harvest in the West Bank.
This year, they are particularly frenzied. After two years of a genocidal war in Gaza, the brakes have truly come off their attempt to purge the countryside of its native population.
Almost as much as the Palestinian flag, the olive tree represents the symbol of ownership that one Palestinian generation hands down to another, and Israelis of all tribes are determined to erase it. Afaf Abu Alia, a 53-year-old Palestinian mother who was beaten on the head in turns by Israeli settlers, said: “When they cut our olive trees, it felt like they were gouging out our eyes. The olive tree is so precious to us – like our own children.”
The pogroms against the Palestinians are pure ethnic aggression, designed solely to force them off their land. No “friend of Israel” can pretend otherwise.
There is nothing remotely “defensive” about this operation. Lynch mobs of settlers are on a manhunt for Palestinian prey. This is the myth Israel perpetrates when it claims to offer Jewish victims of antisemitism a safe haven. Nor can they claim that this naked aggression against unarmed Palestinians is the work of a fringe group of settlers and that the rest of Israel wants to live in peace with its Arabs.
The burning of cars, the beatings and the killings are a collective effort, and key to the concurrent legislative push for annexation.
No opposition to annexation
Apart from the settlers, and citizens who turn up with metal bars, there are soldiers who fire teargas and shoot at their victims; the border police who arrest the victims of the settlers and stop ambulances from recovering the bodies; the Shin Bet, as well as the Israeli prisons service, settlement security coordinators, the Israeli military liaison office, the courts, and of course, last week, the Knesset itself.
The parliament passed a preliminary reading of two bills. The first applied Israeli sovereignty to all the settlements in the occupied West Bank. This was opposed by the ruling Likud party, although one member, Yuli Edelstein, broke ranks to cast the decisive vote.
Edelstein said that he supported the measure because “Israeli sovereignty in all parts of our homeland is the order of the day” and called on “all Zionist factions to vote in favour”.
The other was a more limited bill proposed by the secular nationalist Avigdor Lieberman to annex the large settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, arguing the surest form of devouring the occupied West Bank was in salami slices.
“Ma’ale Adumim constitutes the broadest consensus in Israeli society. In terms of applying sovereignty, it is better to go for the broadest national consensus [such as] Ma’ale Adumim, Ariel, Gush Etzion and the Jordan Valley.”
This bill, everyone in Europe and the US please note, got the support of the so-called opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz. There is in fact no opposition to annexation. It enjoys bipartisan support.