A Telling Graph

Neve Gordon


In preparation for my talk at the University of Waterloo Canada I re-examined the data about the population in mandatory Palestine and Israel from 1947 to 1952. What we see in the graph below is the changes in the make up of the population over a period of six years. The size of population in 1947 mandatory Palestine was about 1.95 million. At the time, Jews comprised 32% of the population. The size of the population in 1947 in what would become Israel (namely, without the West Bank and Gaza Strip) was slightly above 1.5 million and in 1947 the Jews comprised 41% in that area. Within four and a half years the 750,000 Palestinians who were expelled or fled and became refugees in 1948 were replaced by a similar number of Jews, and the total population in Israel had reached the size it had been before the war. Obviously, the proportions had shifted dramatically from 59% Palestinians in 1947 to 12% in 1951. This is a graph that depicts the settler colonial logic of displacement and replacement, whereby the settler first displaces and then replaces the native.

How Israeli settlers are weaponizing water against Palestinians in the West Bank

via Mondoweiss

by Qassam Muddi. May 6, 2026

Qassam Muaddi is the Palestine Staff Writer for Mondoweiss. He covers social, political, and cultural developments in Palestine, and has written for several outlets in English and French, including the Catholic Terre Sainte Magazine and other outlets. Follow him on Twitter/X at @QassaMMuaddi.

Khaled Miqarqir used to grow bananas and vegetables year-round on his land in al-Auja, a farming village in the Jordan Valley northeast of Jericho. A year ago, Israeli settlers diverted the spring on which his crops depended, and now he and his family are trying to adapt to the new situation. But with summer ahead, “staying here is becoming harder every day,” he told Mondoweiss. “Very soon, if this continues, we will barely be allowed to drink.”

Israeli settlers and the Israeli army have escalated their seizure of water sources and the demolition of water infrastructure across the West Bank since 2023, deepening the water shortages Palestinians already face under Israeli control. Out of over 1,000 attacks against Palestinians settlers carried out across the West Bank in 2025, over 350 of them have targeted water sources and infrastructure, averaging out to nearly one attack per day, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Among the most significant were the repeated raids on the Ein Samiya water source near the town of Kufr Malik, northeast of Ramallah, which supplies running water to some 100,000 Palestinians; attacks on the wells of Yatta, in the South Hebron Hills, which serve around 150,000 Palestinians; and the takeover of the Ain al-Auja source near Jericho, which serves around 20,000 Palestinians.

According to a report by Jerusalem’s Land Research Center, Israeli forces have destroyed 1,986 wells, springs, reservoirs, and water tanks over the past decade.

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We wonder what Mike Huckabee would think about this...(May 6)

CAIR 

Once again, the Israeli apartheid government is showing its true face to the world. Attacking Christian worshippers outside a holy site, desecrating Christian religious symbols, looting homes after forcing their owners to abandon them, all with American taxpayer dollars.

The members of Congress who vote to fund the Israeli military and insist that American Christians have a religious obligation to support Israel should the first ones in line to condemn Israel’s attacks on Christians. It is long past time for Congress to stop funding and enabling the Israeli apartheid government’s crimes.