For more than 20 years, an obscure U.S. law concealed satellite imagery of Israel’s activities in the occupied territories. Because of an abrupt reversal, satellite technology can now be used to defend Palestinians’ human rights.

As of July 29, more than 16.5 million cases of COVID-19 have been recorded worldwide, along with approximately 655,000 deaths. After many months of lockdown, countries are being forced to open up despite fears that a second wave is on the horizon and in many places is already underway. In the Palestinian West Bank, a brutal second…

Despite the delay in Israel’s planned annexation of as much as 30 per cent of the West Bank, the prospect of the further erosion of their rights and territories often feels to Palestinians like a side-note when compared to the horrors and hardships they face every day.

​Although the Palestinian authorities followed a set of global standards and procedures to tackle the pandemic, they had to manoeuvre within severe constraints: weak health infrastructure, a fragile financial situation for the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the political ramifications of the Israeli military occupation – particularly the imminent threat of annexation of major parts of the West Bank. The COVID-19 response yielded a strengthening in the perceived legitimacy and popularity of the Palestinian government, but this is very likely to be short-lived.

One hundred years ago, on July 1, 1920, the British army established a civil administration in Palestine. Over the course of the next 25 years, the British Mandate for Palestine would set the stage for a process of colonization that has continued until today.

Last February, a joint US-Israeli committee began working to implement President Donald Trump's "Vision for Peace." The committee included the US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and his Israeli counterpart, Ron Dermer. Among its tasks was to delineate lands in the occupied West Bank for annexation by Israel. The committee's work and membership demonstrated the deep partnership…

There is nothing that an annexation bill can tell us that decades of Israeli laws and policies haven’t already.