Papers Please, Palestinians

There's no reasonable way you can say Israel is committed to peace after reading this.

A new military order aimed at preventing infiltration will come into force this week, enabling the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, or their indictment on charges carrying prison terms of up to seven years.

When the order comes into effect, tens of thousands of Palestinians will automatically become criminal offenders liable to be severely punished.

Given the security authorities' actions over the past decade, the first Palestinians likely to be targeted under the new rules will be those whose ID cards bear home addresses in the Gaza Strip - people born in Gaza and their West Bank-born children - or those born in the West Bank or abroad who for various reasons lost their residency status. Also likely to be targeted are foreign-born spouses of Palestinians. 

Don't have a permit to be in Gaza?  IDF commanders can now deport or imprison you.  And this doesn't just apply to Palestinians in Gaza either.

Until now, Israeli civil courts have occasionally prevented the expulsion of these three groups from the West Bank. The new order, however, puts them under the sole jurisdiction of Israeli military courts.

The new order defines anyone who enters the West Bank illegally as an infiltrator, as well as "a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit." The order takes the original 1969 definition of infiltrator to the extreme, as the term originally applied only to those illegally staying in Israel after having passed through countries then classified as enemy states - Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

The order's language is both general and ambiguous, stipulating that the term infiltrator will also be applied to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, citizens of countries with which Israel has friendly ties (such as the United States) and Israeli citizens, whether Arab or Jewish. All this depends on the judgment of Israel Defense Forces commanders in the field. 

Now, who would be in the Gaza Strip who wasn't a Palestinian and didn't have a permit? Oh yes...reporters. At this point there's really nothing stopping the Israeli military from coming in and literally cleaning out thousands of people from Gaza.  Anyone they don't want around, and anyone they don't want around to witness it.  Pretty good plan if you have no intent of making peace.  And these guys are our allies.  How did Congress react this week to our ally's plan to enable mass deportations and arrests?

More than “three quarters of the U.S. Senate, including 38 Democrats, have signed on to a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton implicitly rebuking the Obama Administration for its confrontational stance toward Israel,” Ben Smith reports.

More than three-quarters of the Senate stepped in to warn the President that he's not allowed to have a disagreement with Israel.  Lord knows we would ever have anything to disagree with Israel about...

Like maybe, deportation policies in the occupied territories. 

For more on how our relationship with Israel is just utterly broken and has been for decades, check this article from BooMan.