New construction in Judea and Samaria is now proceeding at the highest pace in seven years. If this continues, the Netanyahu-Lapid-Bennett government will put an end to the two-state solution, the Jewish democratic entity, and the Zionist dream.

by Ari Shavit

Few people paid attention to the news that during the first quarter of 2013, there were 865 housing starts in the settlements. That was a 176 percent increase over the parallel quarter last year and a 355 percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2012. Although settlers are only four out of every 100 Israelis, of every 100 housing starts this year, 8.5 were in the settlements. While in sovereign Israel the scope of new construction is slowing, new construction in Judea and Samaria is now proceeding at the highest pace in seven years.

The trend is clear: Within a short time the number of settlers will increase dramatically, as will their ability to block any attempt to divide the land. If it continues this way, the Netanyahu-Lapid-Bennett government will put an end to the two-state solution, the Jewish democratic entity, and the Zionist dream.

Legally controlled land grew from 530,931 to 538,303 dunams over the course of the year, a total increase of 7,372 dunams.

By Chaim Levinson

Israeli settlements in the West Bank legally expanded by nearly 8,000 dunams (1977 acres) in 2012 - land equaling the entire city of Bat Yam and twice as big as Manhattan's Central Park.

A trip through the West Bank with Dror Etkes, who tracks how Israel's settlements are altering the physical, political and human landscape in one of the world's most complicated pieces of land

By Matti Friedman

It has been just over a decade since Dror Etkes began criss-crossing the West Bank in a long war of unstinting dedication and uncertain efficacy against the spread of Israeli settlements...

By: Akiva Eldar

According to unofficial reports, certain progress was made at the talks held earlier this month (May 8) in Rome between Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's representative Isaac Molho and US Secretary of State John Kerry, in which senior officials from Jordan and Qatar also took part. Nonetheless, diplomatic sources caution that the progress regarding negotiation guidelines (a return to the 1967 border and an exchange of territories) is, in fact, a "manipulation" designed to improve Israel's international standing in order to prepare for a possible attack on Iran.

At the same time, there has been a considerable slowdown of construction in the settlements in the past few months. The Palestinians have set June 6 as the deadline for resumption of the diplomatic process...

by Sarah Wildman

In a city where borders mean everything, one stubborn man has made it his mission to record and warn others about changes to the city.

"The quip in Hebrew is 'everyone pisses in the swimming pool. Not everyone does it from the diving board.' What we've been watching in the last year is an unprecedented surge in settlement activities." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "has been pissing from the high board, and what we hear from D.C. is, 'hey, there is a light rain.'"

Daniel Seidemann is not a man who trades in verbal niceties...

Op-ed: Wave of brutal attacks on Arabs indicative of failure to establish basic value system in State of Israel

by Bambi Sheleg

In March of last year a group of Beitar Jerusalem fans attacked Arab janitors in the Malcha Mall. It happened after a soccer game in the nearby Teddy Stadium. Last summer a group of teenagers nearly lynched an Arab youngster in Jerusalem's Zion Square. Since then we have witnessed a series of incidents in which young Jews brutally assaulted Arabs in a manner that is characteristic of societies in the process of dissolution.

When an Arab attacks a Jew, he's a terrorist, he's been taught to hate. When a Jew attacks an Arab, he's just a loner, an oddball, a bad egg. But we've seen so many bad eggs at this point that something here has begun to stink.

by Ilene Prusher

A schoolteacher was attacked on a Jerusalem street last week for no other reason than that she was wearing the headscarf of a religious Muslim woman. The pack of religious teenagers who accosted Wahad Abu-Zamira and her colleague Revital Valkov called the latter "a Jewish bitch who has Arab friends."

By Jeffrey Goldberg

Shortly after the United Nations General Assembly voted in late November to upgrade the status of the Palestinians, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that it would advance plans to establish a settlement in an area of the West Bank known as E-1, and that it would build 3,000 additional housing units in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In the Oscar-nominated The Gatekeepers, Israel's domestic spymasters make the price of occupation clear.

As I watched The Gatekeepers in a small hall in Jerusalem, three thoughts kept repeating in my mind. The first was that if the new Israeli documentary were showing on prime-time television rather than in tiny cinematheque auditoriums, the country's vapid election campaign might morph turn into an urgently needed debate on the occupation. The second was that once the film opens in U.S. theaters on February 1, its interviewees--former heads of Israel's Shin Bet security service--will probably not be invited to speak before certain "pro-Israel" groups in America, the kind that conflate support of Israel with silencing criticism of Israel policies. The film's Oscar nomination for best documentary will not be celebrated in those organizations.

by Dror Moreh -- [The author is the director of the documentary film "The Gatekeepers"] 

Yuval Diskin, former chief of Israel's Shin Bet (Security Service), sat down for a very in-depth interview about his experiences with Israeli leaders and his perspective on the current political leadership. 

Responses from the Prime Minister's Office and Defense Ministry Bureau come at the end.

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