[ Ed. note – In the view of the guest interviewed in the above video, the answer to the question posed in the title of this post seems to be yes. It’s hard to disagree.
Earlier this month Jason Greenblatt, co-chairman of Trump’s “Israel Advisory Committee,” gave an interview in which he stated, “It is certainly not Mr. Trump’s view that settlement activities should be condemned and that it is an obstacle for peace, because it is not an obstacle for peace.”
One wonders: if the settlements are not an obstacle to peace, what exactly, in Greenblatt’s (or Trump’s) view, is the obstacle? Is it that the Palestinians haven’t given up enough of their land? They haven’t allowed enough of their homes to be demolished, or their olive trees and farmlands destroyed?
Maybe Greenblatt (or Trump) feels the Palestinians should be reasonable: and give the Israelis carte blanche to detain and torture as many of their children as the Israelis see fit. And of course, it goes without saying that the Israelis have the right to blockade Gaza and machine gun Gaza fishermen anytime their boats get beyond three miles from shore. Why can’t the Palestinians understand these things? Maybe they just need Greenblatt (or Trump) to spell it out for them?
Many people, myself included, hoped that Trump’s election signaled a change for the better. Whether that is the case remains to be seen. But things are certainly not looking good at this point for the Palestinians. ]
Image of Trump posted at a souvenir shop in Jerusalem as Israeli border guard passes nearby
Protests in Central Hebron Against Child Arrests
Monday 21 November at Ibn Rushd Square, youth from Hebron gathered together with adults at a protest against the Israeli detention of Palestinian children. The protest was organized by the Prisoners Club and human right defenders who shared their information about over 350 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons with the public.
Since 2015, the Israeli occupation forces detained more than 2,000 Palestinian minors, at unexpected nightly arrest-raids and raids in refugee camps, or just kidnapped them from the streets. The numbers are rising and their treatment gets worser ( see: Addameer , Human Right Watch , Aljazeera , and the recently released statistics by B’tselem )
Israeli investigators are using torture techniques, both physical, emotional and psychological, to extract confessions from arrested children, who then will still be admitted in courts as evidence. Some Palestinian children receive life sentences by Israeli courts. Many others were sentenced to 10 or 20 years in prison.
At the protest meeting, the children showed pictures of their imprisoned age companions.
Uprooted Palestinian 
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