Today, it has nearly been forgotten that after the 1948 war and until as late as 1966, more than 100,000 Palestinians in Israeli territory were placed under military administration. The methods of suppression used against the Palestinians formed the basis for the creation of the Israeli occupation apparatus in the Palestinian territories after 1967. Right from the beginning, they focused on reducing the areas where Palestinians could live and, whenever possible, on isolating them from one another.
This strategy was followed by a settling of the occupied areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in violation of international law - which the Israelis began shortly after the Six-Day War. Even at the time, several settlements were not only founded in the so-called Gush Etzion, a relatively densely populated Palestinian area south of Jerusalem; in the Jordan Valley, too, a number of Israeli settlements were established as a type of buffer to make it more difficult for the Palestinians to gain access to the River Jordan. The construction of the first Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, which began as early as 1970, served a similar purpose: to prevent the natural growth of the Palestinian areas there and cohesion between them. [...]
The international community has regularly criticized Israel's settlement policy, but it has left it at that without imposing any painful sanctions. The Israeli government concluded that settlement construction had been accepted, and over time went on the offensive rhetorically with angry outbursts and allegations of anti-Semitism against the United Nations and even against its strongest ally, the United States, which nonetheless continued its massive military support for Israel without restrictions. Under President Barack Obama this support was even increased. It was similar in Germany, too, which, under the Merkel government, supplied Jerusalem with submarines and warships despite all the criticism of Israeli settlement policy.
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