Israel allocates $338m to entrench West Bank occupation amid global condemnation of illegal annexation
Original framing: “Israel to approve new funds for illegal settlement expansion in West Bank” — Middle East Eye
The Zionist settlement project in Palestine began in the late 19th century under the guise of 'redeeming' the land, echoing earlier European settler-colonial ventures like the American frontier or Australia’s penal colonies. The 1948 Nakba, which displaced 700,000 Palestinians, set the precedent for Israel’s expansionist policies, while the 1967 Six-Day War enabled the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Historical parallels include South Africa’s apartheid regime, where Bantustans were used to fragment Black sovereignty—a model Israel has adapted through its matrix of control in the West Bank.
The allocation of $338 million for West Bank settlement expansion is not an isolated policy but the latest iteration of a century-long settler-colonial project, one that has systematically erased Palestinian land, sovereignty, and memory.
This process is enabled by a global power structure that privileges Israeli security narratives over international law, with Western governments and corporations complicit in normalizing occupation. The Palestinian struggle is an Indigenous one, rooted in the land’s stewardship by communities whose legal and spiritual ties to the territory predate Zionist settlement by millennia. Yet the future is not predetermined: by forging alliances with global Indigenous movements, enforcing legal accountability, and building parallel economic structures, a path to decolonization emerges—one that challenges not just the occupation but the entire framework of settler-colonialism. The trickster’s role, whether in Smotrich’s hypocrisy or the international community’s feigned ignorance, is to expose the absurdity of a system that claims justice while perpetuating theft. The question is whether the world will heed the lesson or continue to play along.