Despite UN and EU condemnation, only resistance on the ground is putting up a fight against the rapid and repeated destruction of Palestinian homes, community buildings and amenities. ICAHD on what you can do to help the resistance, plus reports from Jeff Halper, the Alternative Information Center and Ma’an news

Too commonplace to make the news most of the time, the death and injury of Palestinian people in the occupied territories (oPt), the destruction of their property and seizure of their land accelerated during 2011. The UN office OCHA publishes the aggregate figures for the year. We add their most recent weekly report.

The greatest threat to Israel is inside its bosom — the cherished settlers in the occupied West Bank and the MKs who defend them against the IDF despite their continuing violence. It reminds Richard Silverstein of the slavery-defending South in the USA.

For Palestinians, the growth of violent settler gangs may be just another step in the established line of nationalist expansion and Judaization; for that (pro-settlement religious, military and political) establishment, the settlers have over-stepped a crucial line and something must be done. Three opinion pieces from Ynet.

To collect and store water in the occupied West Bank there is a planning process. Israel has changed the laws to limit representation of local Palestinians in the process. Settler representation is guaranteed by military order. A disturbing document from the Swedish NGO Diakonia, http://www.diakonia.se/about.

West Bank settlers have moved from harrassment, land seizure and house demolition into acts to terrorise Palestinians into leaving. Two news reports from Ma’an News are followed by a blog from One Democracy

Caught between hysteria at the prospect of ‘September’ and inertia as history moves on, Netanyahu’s government – and settlers – prepare for violence after the UN vote Thus they destroy hopes of reform writes Uvi Avnery

Smashing windows, hurling Molov cocktails and torching tyres, settlers attack a mosque near Nablus. It is one of many such attacks, say residents, on Muslim and Christian places of worship. Palestinians fear government-settler plan to terrorise them. Two reports from Ma’an News

This story of an advert for Subaru in which a settler runs over 2 Palestinian children was put out, and translated, by the Chinese news agency Xinhua

“[So] the settlers can do whatever they want: build new settlements and enlarge existing ones, ignore the Supreme Court, give orders to the Knesset and the government, attack their “neighbors” whenever they like, kill Arab children who throw stones, uproot olive groves, burn mosques. And their power is growing by leaps and bounds…”
Avnery promises to show, in a future article, how the settlements can be removed…

Uri Avnery reflects on “two obnoxious racist laws” that the Knesset has finally adopted, both directed against Israels’ Palestinian citizens. But he reserves his most vitriolic for a third bill, that to outlaw the boycott of Israel – which includes “the boycott of Israeli institutions and enterprises in all territories controlled by Israel”. This includes, of course, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Five members of the Fogel family were stabbed to death in their home in the Itamar settlement, on the northern West Bank and home to some of the most fervent settlers, in a suspected terrorist attack. Netanyahu immediately rounded on the Palestinian Authority and blamed it for the attack; the government then approved the building of a further 500 new homes in the settlements – as a direct response. Anshel Pfeffer and Yaniv Kubovich tell what is known so far; and Richard Silverstein looks at the way the Israeli government and the right-wing are exploiting what he condemns as a “heinous, savage crime” to fan the flames of hatred further.
The Magnes Zionist is unequivocal: “The murders at Itamar are just that — murders. All decent people condemn them, or should condemn them. They are not to be condemned because Jews were murdered, or because settlers were murdered, but because human beings were murdered.”

As the Israeli government endorses school trips to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, inclduing Hebron, Israelis protest against the arrest of four hikers who killed a Palestinian during a similar tour. Lia Tarachansky blogs on JNews about the tours organised by David and Ahikam Tours under the motto, “Where the Jewish traveler passes, the Jewish border shall pass”. Meanwhile B’tselem reports on the continued lockdown of Hebron’s city centre, still in place 17 years after Baruch Goldstein’s murder of 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque…

Author Mike Marqusee writes of a recent visit to East Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrar. He says of Jerusalem: “The city is a metaphor, an object of longing, a place from which we are all exiled, a better world to which we all aspire. In some parts of the tradition Jerusalem is an ideal of social justice. The literalism of Zionism, and of many pro-Zionist Christians, is very much a modern, reductive twist. At Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and elsewhere, it is thin cover for a naked land grab.”

Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights, an Israeli NGO that monitors the investigation of offences against Palestinians, finds that very few ever reach the stage of an indictment. Failure to proceed is particularly high in the case of investigations into offenses of violence against Palestinians and damage to their property…

A BBC2 television broadcast, 2nd February 2011: Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. Plus a BBC Magazine account of his experiences…

The Israeli settler far-right, as part of its campaign of vitriol and intimidation is stalking Rabbi Arik Ascherman, founder of Rabbis for Human Rights. Richard Silverstein reports on Tikun Olam and JfJfP sends message of support.

Peter, a member of the international Solidarity Movement reports on settler violence. This time he and an ISM colleague were the victims…

” Therefore, I say that we can look at another option: for Israel to apply its law to Judea and Samaria and grant citizenship to 1.5 million Palestinians.” These remarks, which to many sound subversive, were not voiced by a left-wing advocate of a binational state. The speaker is from the Betar movement, a former top leader in Likud and political patron of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a former defense and foreign affairs minister – Moshe Arens…
Ali Abunimah welcomes this development; Uri Avnery is horrified, and Reuven Kaminer dismissive…

Demonstrative report from Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland on the differences in access to central Jerusalem for two sets of commuters trying to get to work: residents of the illegal settlements and Palestinians from Shuafat and Beit Hanina.