Resisting moves to “bury” any Palestinian state

This autumn, a coalition of Israeli-Palestinian and international human rights and anti-occupation organisations will mobilise activists to participate in “protective presence” activity to defend the olive harvest in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian olive farmers often face attack from armed settlers. “Protect The Harvest”, whose participants include Standing Together, Combatants for Peace, and Breaking the Silence, will mobilise from 17 October to 13 November. Participants will help farmers take in the harvest, as well as standing alongside farming communities to resist violence.

Settler violence, aided and abetted by the Israeli military, continues across the West Bank. Rabbi for Human Rights wrote: “Together with Standing Together, our volunteers helped farmers in Beit Furik put up fencing to protect their crops. When we finished, the settlers from the nearby outpost didn’t like it. He called the soldiers. They came. They ordered the farmers to tear the fence down by hand, and when the farmers refused, the soldiers tore it down”.

According to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for aid distribution and some social services in the occupied Palestinian territories, 63 people have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem so far in 2026. There are over 900 “movement obstacles”, ranging from roadblocks to checkpoints, restricting movement across the West Bank.

Protest

On 24 June, Standing Together activists participated in a protest in Silwan, East Jerusalem, against displacement. The movement wrote: “Students from our Hebrew University chapter joined other organisations in Silwan to stand with the Shlodi family against their expulsion from their home in East Jerusalem.

“Silwan is facing an escalating campaign of forced displacement and ethnic cleansing. Palestinian families who have lived there for generations are being pushed from their homes. The Shlodi family’s struggle is one example of the systematic effort to displace Palestinians from East Jerusalem and replace them with Israeli settlers.

“Our student chapters are a vital part of building the movement for justice and equality. We are organising alongside the residents of Silwan because no one should be forced from the home where they built their life, and no family should have to wake up wondering if today is the day they lose everything.”

Standing Together has also been mobilising in solidarity with residents of Khan al-Ahmar and Tel Arad, Bedouin-Palestinian villages in the West Bank and Negev/Naqab desert respectively also facing displacement. Bedouin villages in the Naqab are often “unrecognised” by the Israeli government, meaning they lack basic social provision. Standing Together said: “Tel Arad is one of dozens of Bedouin-Palestinian villages in the Negev/Naqab desert in southern Israel that have been under threat of demolition for decades. Although its residents are citizens, the village remains unrecognized by the Israeli government, meaning it is denied basic planning rights, electricity, roads, and water. Many of the families living there are Palestinians who were displaced during the Nakba of 1948 and later resettled in the area, only to find themselves once again facing attempts to uproot them. This is why residents describe the current threat as a ‘second Nakba.’”

Displacements, expulsions, and building projects have all accelerated recently, as Israel’s current coalition government, the most vigorously pro-settler in Israel’s history, accelerates efforts to “bury” prospects for a Palestinian state. Knowing it faces possible ousting from office in Knesset elections due on 27 October, it wants to create facts on the ground to make it much harder for any subsequent administration to roll back settlement expansion.

A 9 July poll commissioned by Israel Hayom, the country’s most widely distributed daily newspaper, showed coalition parties winning 53 seats, below the 61 required to form a government. The largest single party after Netanyahu’s Likud would be Yashar, a centrist party led by former IDF general Gadi Eisenkot. Whether an “anti-Netanyahu” coalition government can be formed depends in part whether opposition Zionist parties are prepared to work with Palestinian parties, which are projected to win 10-12 seats.

Hadash, the electoral front of the Israeli Communist Party, and A Land for Us All, a new binational left-wing party launched by activists including leaders of Standing Together, will be the most radical options in the election, and the only binational parties to consistently oppose the occupation of the West Bank and advocate equality between Jews and Palestinians.