The U.S. President’s first trip to the occupied territories in West Asia took place as the Israeli regime and its settlers attacked, killed, violated the rights of Palestinians, and expanded their illegal settlements away from the public eye.

Before Joe Biden traveled to the region, rights groups made multiple attempts at highlighting the importance of the U.S. President making his stance clear on Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinians. Unsurprisingly he failed on that front. 

Biden wanted to improve his image as a leader who can influence international policies at a time when the international arena is dramatically changing with the ripple effects being felt back home. Biden tried to gain and improve his popularity by getting results; but, the U.S. President didn’t get that, he only got the coronavirus when he returned home empty-handed. 

Biden signed a pathetic agreement with the Israeli (caretaker) Prime Minister Yair Lapid that assures more military aid to the regime (at the expense of U.S. taxpayers money) and Washington’s complicity in Israeli massacres against Palestinians. 

A tiny portion of the agreement regurgitates the same nonsense about the Palestinians that has been repeated for many decades now and the claims about Iran’s nuclear program was fake content also included and much needed in order to send more weapons to the regime that will be used to kill more Palestinians. 

The plight of the Palestinians, their right of return as enshrined under international law, their right to a state, etc… is no longer a topic of interest for U.S. officials; let alone being placed at the top of the agenda as it should be. 

The regime is being investigated for war crimes in the besieged Gaza Strip and other atrocities. Local rights groups issued multiple warnings urging Biden to speak out but Washington, as usual, chose to ignore them. 

The U.S. is also ignoring International rights groups who are raising their voices more regularly over the regime’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. 

28 June until 18 July is the time frame that covers Biden’s trip to the occupied Palestinian territories, from the moment the White House made the final arrangements to the moment the U.S. President landed in the occupied Palestinian territories and extends to his flight back home after visiting Saudi Arabia.

During that time frame, the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) documented a variety of Israeli atrocities which only the apartheid regime can get away with because experts say it’s partner in crime: the United States of America allows it and emboldens it do so. 

In total, the OCHA says Israeli regime troops injured 273 Palestinians, including 24 children across the occupied West Bank. Palestinian injuries are more than likely to be gunshot wounds from snipers. According to the UN agency, 180 of the injuries were sustained during Palestinian demonstrations against Israeli settlement expansion. 

The apartheid regime’s settlement expansion is illegal under international law. Even the United States in late December 2016, allowed a “landmark” UN Security Council Resolution to pass that strongly condemned Israeli settlement expansion and called on the regime to halt the practice immediately.
The Security Council adopted the resolution after the U.S. took the decision to abstain which led the resolution to pass by a 14-0 vote to loud applause.

It’s illegal under international law, nearly three hounded Palestinians have been shot at and injured in the space of three weeks, the majority of them against Israeli settlement expansion. 

In the same time frame, the OCHA also documented Israeli settlers injuring eleven Palestinians, and people known or believed to be Israeli settlers damaging Palestinian property in 15 cases, which rights groups say takes place with Israeli forces looking on. 

This is while Israeli authorities demolished, confiscated, or forced Palestinians to demolish 51 Palestinian-owned structures in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds and the so-called area C of the occupied West Bank. As a result, 40 Palestinians, including 21 children, were displaced, and the livelihoods of about 500 others were affected.

It’s a process that aims to force all Palestinians out of their home by military force. A practice that is defined as genocide in history and if such practice was carried out in any other part of the world. 

Biden’s silence and the silence of his predecessor has emboldened the regime to expand settlements and ethnically cleanse Palestinians by sending the military to demolish their homes. And this has now become the norm in the eyes of U.S. administrations.

Both the U.S. and the Israeli regime are using fake allegations against Iran to distract the world from the fact that Palestinians are being replaced by Israeli settlers and the regime is Washington’s proxy in West Asia. 

For each day Biden spends in the White House, Israel displaces on average three Palestinians from their homes, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) had warned. 

The NRC says that in the first six months of this year, the regime approved 4,427 settler units; thereby expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. That’s not just a huge increase from the 3,645 settler units approved for all of last year, but it’s also in violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions. 

From 28 June until 18 July, the OCHA says Israeli regime forces also raided the militarily occupied Palestinian city of Jenin. The raid resulted in confrontations with the native residents of the land that Israeli settlers are trying to seize. The Israeli forces shot and killed one Palestinian civilian. 

The OCHA says on 3 July, an 18-year-old male student died of wounds sustained the day before, when Israeli forces shot him with live ammunition when a village in Jenin (the Jaba’ village) was under a military raid that involved heavily armed forces searching and arresting Palestinians.

On 6 July, Israeli forces chased, shot, and killed a 20-year-old civilian male during another “search-and-arrest” operation in the same village. His body is still being withheld by the Israeli regime, the OCHA said.

It’s daily incidents like these that are ignored by the mainstream media. 

If an Israeli settler died in a retaliatory attack by a lone Palestinian; the news would make Western mainstream headlines including Israeli settler’s name. No Palestinian names are remembered in the Western media let alone are their murders by Israeli forces mentioned.

Dozens of Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the year during Israel raids in the occupied West Bank many of them in the flashpoint city of Jenin. The regime has killed at least six children according to the UN agency the OCHA. 

Palestinian mothers would say their children were murdered for throwing pebbles at Israeli armored vehicles and snipers. The throwing of stones is an attempt by Palestinians of all ages and from all walks of society in the occupied villages or towns of the West Bank to get Israeli military forces out of their community because no Palestinian knows which house is about to be raided. 

That doesn’t concern the Biden administration. The UN agency also documented that Israeli forces killed one Palestinian, injured four others, and arrested another 21 Palestinians (during that time frame) who tried to get to their workplace through the maze of military checkpoints in the occupied territories. Basically getting killed for going to work. 

The OCHA says Israeli forces restricted the movement of Palestinians in several other locations across the West Bank. An occupied territory that - for the Palestinians - is shrinking in size for them on a daily basis. 

“OCHA is the part of the United Nations Secretariat responsible for bringing together humanitarian actors to ensure a coherent response to emergencies.”