The New Yorker: Politics And More

Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River since 1967, after the third Arab-Israeli war, and ever since Israelis have settled on more and more of this contested land. Violence by armed settlers against their Palestinian neighbors has increased dramatically in recent years, as a far-right government came to dominate Israeli politics. Unless things change, the American journalist Nathan Thrall tells David Remnick, the future for Palestinians is “not unlike that of the Native Americans.” Thrall won a Pulitzer Prize for his book “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” which uses one isolated incident—a road accident in the West Bank—to illustrate the ways in which life under occupation has become nearly unlivable for Palestinians. On July 19th, the United Nations’ International Court of Justice issued an advisory ruling that the occupation violates international law. While the world’s attention is focussed on the devastating war in Gaza, and the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the occupat