The Israeli army has destroyed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian olive and citrus trees throughout the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent years. Yet in a startling admission, a staffer at the Jewish National Fund for Israel (JNF) has written that, “it is against Jewish halachic law to uproot fruit bearing trees.” EI’s Ali Abunimah explains how the JNF has been essential to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the destruction of its landscape. Read more about If it's against Jewish law, then why is Israel doing it? 

When does the banishment of an entire people become morally justified? That such a question can even be posed in today’s Israel is dismal testament to the transformation of Zionism into what it claims to abhor. EI’s Ali Abunimah comments on two recent, extraordinary documents — an article in The Guardian and an interview with Ha’aretz — in which Israeli historian Benny Morris approves of Israeli “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians in 1948, calls it “necessary” and prepares the ground for Israel to justify any future atrocity including renewed expulsion of all the Palestinians from their homeland. Read more about Moral decay and Benny Morris 

Many leading media sources were quick to declare that an Israeli assassination in Gaza, followed by a Palestinian bombing in Tel Aviv on 25 December marked the end of a period of “relative calm” or “lull” in Israeli-Palestinian violence, that had supposedly lasted since the last Palestinian suicide attack in Haifa on 4 October. In fact, the period since 4 October has been one of intense Israeli violence, in which 117 Palestinians were killed, including 23 children. At the same time, Israel destroyed almost five hundred Palestinian homes throughout the Occupied Territories. EI’s Ali Abunimah examines the systematic media misrepresentation of the latest events. Read more about 117 Palestinians killed, hundreds injured during media's "relative calm" 

An Israeli official recently called for controls on the ability of Palestinians to have babies, and said the delivery rooms where Arabs are born are the “factory for a backward population.” This panicked response to what many Israelis see as a “demographic threat” from Palestinians fits the international legal definition of incitement to genocide. Meanwhile, leftist Israelis are debating ways to “withdraw” from Palestinians lands while keeping most of the settlers in place, and preserving a “Jewish democracy.” EI’s Ali Abunimah asks if any of these schemes can save Israel from a binational future. Read more about Can Israel escape a binational future? 

It has been almost two months since the last deadly attack on Israeli civilians by a Palestinian suicide bomber, but in the meantime, the Israeli army has killed more than 70 Palestinians, among them 17 children. Amidst the hopelessness, some people have turned to the so-called “Geneva Accord” as a way out. In his commentary published in The Chicago Tribune, EI’s Ali Abunimah says that the accord offers only false hope, however, he sees prospects for long-term peace between Israelis and Palestinians in their common homeland. Read more about The False Hope of the Geneva Accord 

Israel’s hard-line supporters in the US Congress have fired the latest volley in their sustained campaign against the rights of Palestinian refugees and against the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that provides for their basic needs. They have introduced a resolution accusing the UN agency that looks after refugees, and are trying to rewrite the history of the 1948 expulsion of the Palestinian people from its homeland. EI’s Ali Abunimah looks at the latest moves by pro-Israel organizations and their allies in the US Congress. Read more about Hijacking the Palestinian narrative: Israel's friends in Congress 

Because of the Oslo process, the basis for a viable and minimally fair two-state solution has been completely destroyed. The Israeli “peace camp” and the Palestinian leadership ought to have learned from the calamities they helped bring about and changed their ways. The so-called “Geneva Accord,” an informal agreement prepared by Israelis, led by former Labor Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and other Oslo-era luminaries, and Palestinians close to Yasser Arafat, demonstrates a determination to repeat the tragic errors of the past. EI’s Ali Abunimah explains. Read more about A disastrous dead end: the Geneva Accord