By Hook and By Crook: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank

This is the title of a report issued earlier this week by B'Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization. The group claims that settlers effectively control 42% of the West Bank. The full text (pdf file) is available here.

From the introduction on the group's Web site:

Some half a million Israelis are now living over the Green Line: more than 300,000 in 121 settlements and about one hundred outposts, which control 42 percent of the land area of the West Bank, and the rest in twelve neighborhoods that Israel established on land it annexed to the Jerusalem Municipality. The report analyzes the means employed by Israel to gain control of land for building the settlements. In preparing the report, B'Tselem relied on official state data and documents, among them Attorney Talia Sasson’s report on the outposts, the database produced by Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, reports of the state comptroller, and maps of the Civil Administration.

Israel Holds Firm in Banning Gaza Residents From Studying in the West Bank. A report in the Chronicle of Higher Education on this brutal Israel policy.

The firing of Octavia Nasr. Glenn Greenwald on the hypocrisy of the so-called "Liberal Media." Funny, the UK's ambassador to Lebanon saw things in a similar way.