 The end of February witnessed aggressive violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in different towns and villages around Nablus. The settlers went on the rampage, setting homes and other properties on fire in the town of Kauara. Shocking testimonies of survivors have come in, stating that in many cases, women and children were inside when the settlers were trying to burn down their homes. Palestinians claim that the settlers had unleashed their violence under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces. We are joined by Rania Khalik of Breakthrough News who talks about this escalation of violence and the agenda of the Israeli government behind this. So recently the situation in Palestine has become increasingly bloody, especially with the new right-wing government under the premiership of Benjamin Netanyahu that includes open fascists who are constantly not only inciting against Palestinians, but have a very ultra-Zionist, messianic agenda. They want to take all of Palestine. They're open proponents of wiping out entire towns and ethnic cleansing and really the idea of greater Israel, and it's the religious right that is taking over the government in Israel. People are extremely dangerous. I mean, it's the same agenda of Zionism, but more vicious and more messianic than before. And so what you see, particularly in the West Bank, is an escalation of violence that is being incited by people like Bezal El Smotrik who is the finance minister of Israel. And I'll get to him in a moment, but in recent weeks you've had raids that have really been ongoing every few weeks, every few days sometimes. There's Israeli raids in Palestinian villages in the West Bank that lead to killings all the time. I mean, in late February you had a raid in Nablus that led to the killing of 11 Palestinians, including a child and three men who were over the age of 60 and dozens of more people were injured and it was by live fire during that raid. And it actually began when Israeli forces disguised as Palestinian civilians open fire in a busy vegetable market. I mean, these are just details, but this is typically how these raids, these increasingly violent raids across the West Bank are taking place. And that's in large part because Palestinians refuse to submit. Palestinians have entered kind of a new era of armed resistance in the West Bank, which hasn't been seen in a very long time for decades, particularly after the second Antifada, Palestinians through the Palestinian Authority, which collaborates with the Israeli government in the West Bank have been largely subdued, have been largely pacified by this apartheid apparatus that controls every aspect of their daily lives. And in that time there of course has been a lot of nonviolent resistance, but for the most part there hasn't been much armed resistance for the West Bank. And in that time period, what you've seen is increasing Israeli encroachment through illegal settlements, taking over more land, building walls, putting Palestinians in tiny and tinier Bantu stands, if you will. And so at some point, you know, you can only do so much to people before they push back. So you have seen Palestinian groups. There's a particular group called the lion's den that has been hitting back, that has been going on, you know, organizing attacks across the West Bank, sometimes even in Jerusalem. And so in response to that Nablus raid, you had an attack on two Israeli settlers in Nablus that led to the killing of two Israeli settlers. I think one of them was also American. And so what you have going on here is a tip for that you have indigenous Palestinians resisting against Israeli apartheid Israeli occupation. And then of course, Israeli occupation forces, as well as settlers who are taking it into their own hands, are going on like revenge rampages. And so after the killing of those two settlers in response to the raid on Nablus, you had this Israeli rampage of settlers. Some people were calling it a pogrom across this Palestinian village called Hawara in the West Bank in Nablus, where these Israeli settlers just they went on like a violent spree. They burned cars. They burned homes. They attacked villagers, including with like live fire. They even shot a Palestinian man dead. And while this was happening and then it's aftermath, you had the finance minister that I mentioned before, who by the way, is an open fascist. He proudly calls himself a fascist. Bezalo Smotrych. He went on TV and advocated for wiping out the village of Hawara. He said, the village of Hawara needs to be wiped out. I'm quoting him. I think that the state of Israel needs to do that. Not God forbid private individuals. So his only opposition to what was taking place in Hawara was that it wasn't the official Israeli state doing it. It was settlers. And of course, you really can't view Israeli settlers as different than the state because they are weapons of the state. The state is a settler colony. It's a settler country. And the settlers are on the front lines of pushing colonial settlers, colonial colonial settlerism against Palestinians and stealing their land. And it's also important to mention that Bezalo Smotrych was basically crowned the governor of the West Bank in recent weeks in a move that legal experts say constitutes basically like an excitation of the occupied territory. And that agreement was signed by Israel's defense minister, which transferred governmental powers in the West Bank to Smotrych, basically extending Israeli sovereignty beyond the green line as far as Israel sees it. So this man who made this genocidal call just days after hordes of Israeli settlers protected by the Israeli army attacked this occupied West Bank village. Again, burning Palestinian homes, burning Palestinian cars, ransacking their business, shooting at least one Palestinian dead. He has been crowned the governor of the West Bank. And he has actual powers there. And so the question becomes, when you have fanatics like this that are in positions of power in the Israeli government, where are Israel's backers? They're either silent or whitewashing it after this genocidal call, after this Israeli pogrom in the West Bank. And one of many, by the way, that have been taking place every couple of weeks, it's something new. And again, I want to emphasize this is not necessarily unique. This is what Zionism is, right? Like these kinds of things are what historically Zionism has done across Palestine. It's just now you have fanatics in the government who want to take it further and really just conquer the entire West Bank officially, as opposed to pretending that there's any sort of two-state solution to move towards. But Israel is armed to the teeth by the United States of America, by the European Union. And so where are these countries? They're either silent or issuing really mediocre statements, you know, just condemning violence on both sides. And in some cases, you have statements from EU officials and American officials that are referring to Palestinians killing settlers as an act of terrorism, but then also condemning Israeli violence. So on the one hand, Israeli state violence, Israeli settler violence is just violence. It's unfortunate, it's tragic. And we don't want it to happen is what you're hearing from these people. But on the other hand, indigenous Palestinians, who actually do, by the way, have a right to defend themselves, have a right to armed resistance, are being called terrorists for attacking illegal Israeli settlers. So when you do get a statement, if you do, from the EU or the US, that's what you're hearing. But other than that, they're just kind of sitting by, sitting on their hands as the Israeli government is taken over by these absolute fanatics who are openly saying they want to wipe out Palestinian towns. It's absolutely disgraceful and shameful and the longer that the people who are arming and backing Israel and allowing them total impunity to do whatever they want, the longer that that goes on, the more bloodshed there's going to be because there are zero consequences to Israeli violence, to Israeli terrorism against the indigenous Palestinian community. The issue of Israeli settler violence has been raised at multiple international forums in recent times. On February 28th, a special closed door meeting of the UN Security Council was held calling for immediate de-escalation of the situation in the occupied West Bank. This was the third such meeting since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ultra-right wing government came to power in Israel in November last year. Just before that, on February 26th, Jordan hosted a meeting between Israeli officials and the Palestinian Authority, in which both parties agreed to find ways to reduce violence in the occupied territories, including a temporary halt on the building of the settlements. Why then do we see no real change on the ground? You know, these summits, these attempts to mediate negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the Israelis, like what the United States tried to do in Jordan recently, it's all symbolic. It doesn't mean anything. You know, the Israelis will say, you know, during that summit in Jordan, the Israelis said that they would pause settlement construction for four months. But then right after that, Netanyahu told the Israeli public, there will be no settlement freezing. It's all just words. Even with the Palestinian Authority, I mean, the Palestinian Authority is an arm of the occupation. It is this client regime that was put together and armed by the United States and trained to act as an arm of Israel's occupation, to do security coordination with Israel so they can police their own people for the Israelis. And they, you know, there was this UN Security Council or this UN resolution to condemn settlements that was then under pressure from the United States that was then withdrawn by the Palestinian Authority. After the US, you know, after the Biden administration pushed for these negotiations, but there were nothing happened. Nothing's changed. Settlements are going to continue. The Israelis are saying so. There's no, like, actual, there's nothing. There's it's all surface level rhetoric. There's no, like, actual mechanism in place to make sure anyone abides by anything. So at the end of the day, the apartheid system continues moving forward. Even the Palestinian Authority every once in a while after, you know, Israeli raids or Israeli settlers go on a rampage will say, we're pausing security coordination with Israel, but they never actually do it. It's all just words to try to pacify people. And Palestinians recognize that. I mean, this this shallow, meaningless rhetoric of two states of negotiations has been going on for what, three decades now or more. At this point, Palestinians recognize it's all farce. And so the Palestinian Authority can go on, you know, pushing the idea, oh, we're going to pass security coordination. The Israelis can say publicly all they want that they're going to pause, you know, settlement, its settlement construction and the Americans can continue to promote the idea, this fake idea that there's anything such as a two state solution that they're moving towards. But at the end of the day, none of this means anything. It's all talk. Everybody knows it. And that's why you see a refusal to sit by, to sit idly by anymore by Palestinians. The international community has demonstrated that it will do absolutely nothing to impose any consequences on Israeli violence. And so at this point, that's why you see Palestinians rising up across the West Bank and saying, absolutely not, no more, we're going to hit back. And that's what they're doing. And as long as this situation, this status quo continues, it's going to become increasingly violent on all sides. And so for all those people who make these silly statements that mean nothing, condemning violence on both sides, if they really cared about preventing the violence, there's a very simple way to do that. And that is to hold Israel accountable and to stop supporting apartheid and occupation. And until that happens, this is what we're going to see. More people are going to die unnecessarily until this ends.