The 60th Year of the Occupation

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wrote in the Israeli news outlet Haaretz that, “the State of Israel is conducting an organized, systematic, state-funded campaign of ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity,” in the West Bank.

Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers are engaged in “daily terrorism that is managed, directed, encouraged and supported by the Israeli government,” against Palestinians in the West Bank.

Haaretz wrote, the Israeli army “displaced more than 40,000 [Palestinians] from Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps in the northern West Bank in early 2025.” At gunpoint, the Israeli army forced tens of thousands of Palestinian to flee their homes. It was “the largest displacement of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank since 1967.”

Human Rights Watch called it “a crime against humanity.” A crime against humanity the U.S. fully supports and bankrolls. Washington has significant influence on Israeli settlement policy.

But Washington doesn’t use its significant influence to end the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Instead, Washington provides the illegal military aid that abets the ethnic cleansing. Without U.S. aid, Israeli settlers, the Israeli army, and the Israeli government couldn’t pursue their shared goal. Israeli reporter Amira Hass wrote that the “ultimate goal is a land ‘cleansed’ of Palestinians.”

This was the goal since 1967. Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan admitted in June 1967 that the aim was to empty the West Bank of its inhabitants.

For sixty years, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory pursued that aim. In the 1970s, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villages in the West Bank with that ultimate goal in mind.

To achieve this ultimate goal, B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization wrote, “Israeli militias raid Palestinian villages in order to provoke confrontation and elicit a response, which they then use as a pretext for lethal gunfire and terror attacks on [Palestinian] residents attempting to defend their homes.”

Israeli terrorism against Palestinians is daily. In 1,186 days, between January 2023 and April 2026, the United Nations (UN) documented “5,336 settler attacks.” Israeli settlers attack Palestinians across the West Bank 4.5 times every single day.

These daily acts of violence are effective in an ethnic cleansing. Between 2023 and 2026, the UN documented the expulsion of 121 Palestinian communities (100s of families) from their homes. This year alone, Israeli settler attacks have forced more than 1,000 Palestinian children out of their homes.

In that same time frame, Haaretz reported, Israelis took control of “250,000 acres [of land] or about 18 percent of the West Bank’s total area.”

Clearly, violence works. Violence will continue to work as long as Washington continues its constant supply of weapon shipments to Israel. Weapon shipments that taxpayers fund.

Taxpayers need to know what they pay for. The United Nations published a report on June 18, 2026. The title is “The essence of childhood has been destroyed”. The UN documented in the West Bank that “Israeli soldiers directly target Palestinian children.”

Washington funds an army that deliberately targets children.

-Anton Porcari