Ori Nir and Debra Shushan, April 2018 (updated October 2019)

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Introduction

Since President Donald Trump took office, the Israeli right has launched an unprecedented drive to alter the West Bank’s legal status, piecemeal or in its entirety. In this paper, updating analysis first released in April 2018, we lay out the developments that present a quantum leap in Israeli annexation efforts and analyze them against the backdrop of Israel’s 52-year occupation of the West Bank. Further, we examine the ramifications of the transition from “creeping” to “leaping” annexation and present explanations for why this transformation is happening now.

APN's daily news review from Israel
Thursday October 24, 2019  

Quote of the day #1:

“Even people who can’t imagine a reasonable life without Netanyahu must admit that Benny Gantz looked prime ministerial (or in American terms, presidential) Wednesday night. He paid due respect to every segment of Israeli society – the ultra-Orthodox, whom he promised to treat like brothers, Arabs, Druze, gays and rightists.”
—Haaretz political commentator Yossi Verter comments after speech by Kahol-Lavan leader Benny Gantz upon receiving the mandate to form a government.*

Quote of the day #2:
"Gantz spoke yesterday like a prime minister, he dressed like a prime minister and he acted like a prime minister. Now he needs the nerves of steel and the patience."
--Maariv political commentator Ben Caspit comments after speech by Kahol-Lavan leader Benny Gantz upon receiving the mandate to form a government.

You Must Be Kidding:
An Israeli nature authority inspector fined a Palestinian farmer 750 shekels ($212) for harvesting olives from his own tree on his own property.**

Yossi Alpher is an independent security analyst. He is the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, a former senior official with the Mossad, and a former IDF intelligence officer. Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent APN's views and policy positions.

APN's daily news review from Israel
Wednesday October 23, 2019 

Numbers of the Day:

In 2018, more than 20,000 Palestinians paid almost half a billion shekels ($140 million) to brokers and Israeli companies and employers to receive a permit to work in Israel - between one-third and one-half of their potential earning power in Israel.
--A recent study by the Bank of Israel estimates that around one-third of West Bank workers in Israel must pay much of their earnings in order to work.*

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived

1. Bills, Resolutions, & Letters
2. Hearings
3. On the Record

Produced by the Foundation for Middle East Peace in cooperation with Americans for Peace Now, where the Legislative Round-Up was conceived

1. Bills, Resolutions, & Letters 
2. Hearings
3. On the Record 

This episode features a conversation with Menachem Klein, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Bar Ilan University, who specializes in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is the author of several books on the topic. His new books is Arafat and Abbas: Portraits of Leadership in a State Postponed.

Listen to the full episode