Introduction
In 2015, Israel is enjoying an unprecedented level of economic growth and faces very few threats to its security. Both of these points – especially the latter, are in large part due to the virtually unconditional military largesse Israel receives from the United States of America – which currently stands at over $3 billion per year. There are talks of raising this figure higher for fiscal year 2018, to $4.2 to $4.5 billion per annum.
However, despite the lack of serious threats to its security, Israel continues to exploit conflicts in the Middle East through security rhetoric aimed at shifting its geopolitical facts on the ground through settlement expansion, while continuing its suppression of Palestinians through a legally bankrupt system of occupation, Israeli land appropriation, the wanton destruction caused by episodic military interventions in the Gaza Strip, as well as draconian measures by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) committed against Palestinians. The following is telling of the situation: over 1,500 were killed and 11,000 injured in Gaza during the summer of 2014 and 10,000 remain displaced. Settlement expansion in Area C and East Jerusalem remain unabated. Overall, in the West Bank and Gaza, some 4,000,000 Palestinians still remain under the Israeli occupation.
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Prepared by:
The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem
