Peace and Justice Post

MEM, May 22, 2026 at 3:44 pm

Prefabricated houses installed by illegal Israeli settlers are seen under the protection of the Israeli army in the village of Umm al-Khair, located in the Masafer Yatta region south of Hebron in West Bank, Palestine on May 20, 2026. [Wisam Hashlamoun – Anadolu Agency]

Israel is clearing Palestinians from the illegally occupied West Bank village by village, using state-backed settler violence to drive communities from their land and prepare the ground for mass expulsion, a veteran Israeli columnist has warned.

Writing in Israeli outlet Yedioth Ahronoth, Nahum Barnea said the violence of the so-called “hilltop youth” is not random lawlessness, but part of a state-backed project to remove Palestinians from their land. He described them as “an armed militia that is working for the government, with its authorisation and funding.”

The aim, wrote Barnea, is to empty outlying Palestinian areas, force the rural population into cities, trigger economic collapse and lawlessness and then present expulsion as the final outcome.

“The current plan aims to achieve a solution in stages: to empty the outlying areas of residents in the first stage and then, in the second stage, to force the entire rural population into the cities, where they will live as displaced persons” Barnea said. “The economy will collapse, followed by the collapse of law and order, and then, when chaos peaks, the solution will arrive: expulsion”.

Barnea’s article, translated and shared online, described what he called a “scorched earth” policy in the occupied Palestinian territories. He said the Netanyahu government is violating Israel’s international commitments across multiple fronts, including the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and the Oslo framework.

“The government isn’t merely running roughshod; it has a vision,” said Barnea. “The pogroms are the cover story that decent-minded folks tell themselves so they can sleep at night.  

Israeli soldiers are divided between those who take part in attacks, Barnea explained and those who watch from the side and those who fear acting against settlers.

READ: UN reports nearly 50 illegal Israeli occupier attacks across West Bank in 1 week

He also accused police of failing to intervene or investigate. “Ben Gvir’s spirit hovers over them,” he wrote, referring to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose ministry oversees the police.

Barnea linked this campaign to a broader political project. He argued that the old plan of dividing the West Bank through settlement blocs has been replaced by a more direct strategy: emptying Palestinian rural areas, concentrating Palestinians in cities, allowing conditions to collapse and then moving towards transfer.

His warning echoes findings by Israeli rights groups. Yesh Din and Physicians for Human Rights Israel said last year that the Israeli government was sponsoring settler violence in order to displace Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The groups said the state was responsible for the war crime of forcible transfer, committed with the support of state agents or citizens.

UN experts and human rights bodies have also warned that settlement expansion and settler attacks are driving mass displacement. In March the UN warned of “ethnic cleansing” in the occupied West Bank after 36,000 Palestinians were displaced, amid a sharp rise in settler violence and Israeli military operations.

The West Bank warning comes as Israel is accused of pursuing the same objective in Gaza through even more extreme means: genocide, mass destruction, starvation and forced displacement. While settlers and state-backed militias drive Palestinians from rural land in the West Bank, Israel has destroyed much of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure, forced Palestinians into shrinking zones and promoted plans for their “voluntary migration” abroad.

That policy was reportedly been given an official channel through Caroline Glick, Netanyahu’s international affairs adviser. Netanyahu tasked Glick with advancing plans to relocate Palestinians from Gaza, including reported contacts with Somaliland and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

“The plan was supposed to bring relief. Instead, Palestinians in Gaza are still hungry, still cannot reach medical care, and civilians are still being killed.”

by Brett Wilkins | May 21, 2026

Six months in, US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” has failed to deliver on its promise of a “secure and prosperous future” for Palestinians in Gaza, who are still being killed, maimed, and deprived of food and other crucial supplies by Israel’s ongoing genocide.

“The humanitarian infrastructure sustaining life in Gaza remains in peril over six months after the ceasefire agreement in October 2025,” Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

“As the Board of Peace prepares to brief the United Nations Security Council on May 21 on its newly-issued six-month progress report, Israeli authorities are undermining humanitarian lifelines,” HRW continued.

“Continuing Israeli attacks have killed at least 856 Palestinians and wounded 2,463 others, according to Gaza Health Ministry,” the group said.

“Aid volumes remain far below required levels and critical humanitarian access routes have been repeatedly obstructed, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),” HRW noted.

HRW continued:

In its May 15 report, the Board of Peace said that aid distributed by UN agencies and partners increased by over 70% during the reporting period compared to pre-ceasefire levels, and that “basic food needs have been stabilized for the first time since 2023.” The Board’s headline figures leave out that aid volumes have fallen since early 2026, have not recovered to where they were before the US and Israel-Iran war began in late February, and have never reached the minimum the UN says is needed. Four UN agencies warned in December 2025 that famine, pushed back only weeks earlier through the ceasefire, could rapidly return without sustained access and supplies.

“The plan was supposed to bring relief. Instead, Palestinians in Gaza are still hungry, still cannot reach medical care, and civilians are still being killed,” HRW Middle East deputy director Adam Coogle said in a statement. “Whatever the Board of Peace tells the Security Council, that is what life looks like six months in.”

HRW said that while “commercial trucks have started entering Gaza again in larger numbers,” total aid deliveries – which were dramatically curtailed following the launch of the illegal US-Israeli war of choice on Iran – are “far short of what Gaza’s population needs.”

Furthermore, “none of Gaza’s 37 hospitals were fully operational, and only 19 were even partially functioning, according to OCHA.”

“Over 43,000 people have suffered life-changing injuries, 1 in 4 of them children, and more than 50,000 need long-term rehabilitation care, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates,” HRW said. “No rehabilitation facility is fully running. Israeli delays in approving specialized surgical equipment are limiting complex care, and at least 46% of essential medicines are out of stock, according to WHO.”

“According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 1,400 patients have died waiting for medical evacuation since the Rafah crossing was seized in May 2024, and over 18,500 patients, including 4,000 children, still await evacuation,“ the publication reported.

“Israeli restrictions on bringing in generators, engine oil, and spare parts are causing breakdowns across healthcare, sanitation, debris removal, and humanitarian work,” HRW said.

“Rodents and insects are spreading across displacement camps, and skin infections and other diseases are on the rise, OCHA reported,” the publication noted. “UN agencies and aid groups working on water and sanitation warn that severe shortages of lubricant oil and spare parts are causing generators to fail.”

Israeli forces are still killing and wounding humanitarian workers in Gaza.

“As of late April, OCHA had recorded the killing of at least 593 aid workers in Gaza since October 2023, including 8 since the ceasefire,” HRW said.

Funding pledges have also fallen far short of what’s needed.

“At the Board of Peace’s inaugural meeting in February, 10 Board member states and observers pledged a total of $17 billion for reconstruction against UN estimates of $70 billion needed,” HRW said. “As of April, the Board had received less than $1 billion of the pledged amount, with only three contributors having delivered funds, according to Reuters.”

“When the Board of Peace briefs the Security Council, members should weigh what they hear against what UN agencies are reporting from the ground,” Coogle said. “No spin can hide the fact that aid is not entering at the needed scale, patients do not have access to adequate medical care, and crossings to Gaza remain limited.”

The HRW report came a day after the UN Human Rights Office urged Israel to prevent further “acts of genocide” in Gaza, while raising concerns about escalating “ethnic cleansing” in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine.

A panel of UN human rights experts found last year that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice that’s now backed by nearly 20 nations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and forced starvation. The ICC is also reportedly seeking to arrest Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich over the illegal settler colonization and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded in Gaza since the Hamas-led attack of October 2023. Nearly all of the coastal strip’s approximately 2.1 million people have also been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened during that period. Through it all, the Biden and Trump administrations have provided Israel with more than $20 billion in armed aid and diplomatic cover, including vetoes of several UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions.

Ben Gvir’s video of bound flotilla activists showed Israel without the mask.

By Yara Hawari

Co-director of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

Published On 21 May 2026

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Israel’s Ben-Gvir publishes video taunting detained flotilla activists

This week, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, posted a video on social media of himself taunting flotilla activists held by Israeli forces.

In one clip, a handcuffed activist shouts “Free Palestine” as Ben-Gvir strolls past. She is immediately seized by the hair and shoved to the ground by security personnel. Ben-Gvir looks on, gleeful. In another, dozens of detainees are shown bound and kneeling with their foreheads to the floor, forced into stress positions as the Israeli regime’s national anthem blares from a loudspeaker. Ben-Gvir waves a large Israeli flag and bellows at them: “Welcome to Israel – we are in charge here.”

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Ben-Gvir knows he can do this and face no serious consequences. Why would he think otherwise? His country has just got away with a genocide livestreamed to a global audience.

There have been condemnations, though, notably, from governments whose citizens happen to be among the detained. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called the footage “unacceptable” and a violation of human dignity. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, declared that he would not tolerate the mistreatment of his country’s citizens and announced that he would push at the European Union level for sanctions against Ben-Gvir specifically, having already banned him from entering Spain. Even the United States ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said Ben-Gvir had “betrayed the dignity of his nation”.

But, however genuine the outrage, sanctioning Ben-Gvir targets just one cog in a far larger genocidal machine. It is the same tactic European states have deployed when confronted with illegal settlement-building in the occupied West Bank: Sanctioning a handful of violent settlers while leaving untouched the state structure that plans, funds and protects the settlement enterprise. The gesture creates the appearance of consequences without threatening the system that produces them.

This is not accountability. It is the international community drawing a line just far enough from its own complicity to feel clean. Ben-Gvir did not build the prisons, order the systematic torture within them, or impose the blockade that the flotilla was trying to break. He is one minister in a government that has carried out a genocide with the material and diplomatic support of many of the very Western states now lining up to denounce him. Removing him from the equation changes nothing. The prisons remain. The blockade remains. And the genocide continues.

The video has also struck a nerve inside Israel. Netanyahu publicly rebuked Ben-Gvir, saying his conduct was “not in line with Israel’s values and norms”. Foreign Minister Gideon Saar addressed him directly on X: “You knowingly caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display – and not for the first time.” Saar added that Ben-Gvir had “undone tremendous, professional, and successful efforts made by so many people”. For Saar and Netanyahu, the problem is not what Ben-Gvir is doing; it is that he is showing it so brazenly. The concern is optics – that a video made visible, to a European audience and with European citizens in it, what has long been standard practice towards Palestinians.

And what the video shows is not aberrant. More than 9,600 Palestinians are currently held in the Israeli regime’s detention facilities. Of these, more than 3,500 are held under administrative detention, imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial. Among the detainees are hundreds of children. Prisoners are subjected to systematic starvation, beatings, denial of medical care, and sexual violence ranging from forced stripping to rape. At least 84 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli custody since October 2023 as a result of torture, starvation and medical neglect. Nearly every Palestinian household has a loved one who has been imprisoned at some point – an experience that reverberates across generations and leaves deep scars on families and communities long after release.

Saar ended his post to Ben-Gvir by insisting that this is “not the face of Israel”. He is wrong. This is the face of Israel. It is violent. It is ugly. And it is cruel.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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• Yara HawariCo-director of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.Yara Hawari is the co-director of Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. She previously served as the Palestine policy fellow and senior analyst. Yara completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, where she taught various undergraduate courses and continues to be an honorary research fellow. In addition to her academic work, which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is a frequent political commentator writing for various media outlets.

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Several nations said they were summoning Israeli ambassadors in response

by Dave DeCamp | May 20, 2026 at 3:59 pm ET | Gaza, Israel

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir on Wednesday sparked global outrage by posting a video showing the mockery and abuse of activists who were abducted by Israeli forces while attempting to bring aid to the besieged Gaza Strip via boat as part of the Global Sumud Flotilla.

The video, posted on X, shows Ben Gvir taunting the activists as they’re detained with their hands tied behind their backs and on their knees facing the floor. At one point in the video, the Israeli national anthem can be heard playing while activists are detained face down on what appears to be an Israeli vessel.

Several nations responded by summoning Israeli ambassadors to their capitals, including Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Canada, Al Jazeera reported.

“The images of the Israeli minister Ben Gvir are unacceptable. It is inadmissible that these demonstrators, including many Italian citizens, are subjected to this treatment that violates human dignity,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a post on X.

“The Italian Government is immediately taking, at the highest institutional levels, all necessary steps to secure the immediate release of the Italian citizens involved,” Meloni wrote, adding that Rome demanded an apology from Israel and would summon the Israeli ambassador to Italy.

Jean-Noel Barrot, the foreign minister of France, said on X that the French government didn’t support the flotilla but that the French activists involved “must be treated with respect and released as quickly as possible” and that Paris was summoning the Israeli ambassador to “express our indignation and obtain explanations.”

Ben Gvir’s video went too far even for some members of the Israeli government, including Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who said that Ben Gvir “knowingly caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display.”

According to the Global Sumud Flotilla, 50 boats have been recently intercepted by Israeli forces, and 428 activists from all over the world have been taken captive in Israel.

Ahead of Wednesday’s incident, the US sanctioned four activists involved in the Global Sumud Flotilla. The US has not taken any action or imposed any consequences on Israel for continuing attacks on Gaza, maintaining restrictions on aid, and taking additional territory in the Strip, all violations of the President Trump-backed ceasefire deal signed in October 2025.