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Israeli settlers reacted to the news with outrage, despite getting approval for more than eight times as many units as the Palestinians. A joint statement from the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council and Samaria Regional Council accuses the Palestinian Authority of carrying out "massive illegal construction in these areas with the clear goal of establishing a terrorist state in the heart of the country."

According to Israeli media reports, the unusual move could be the result of US pressure, as President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner is due to visit Israel in the coming days as part of a Middle East trip to discuss his 'deal of the century' peace plan.

"If it's true that this is an American demand, then we expect our government to say loud and clear - enough!" Gush Etzion Regional Council boss Shlomo Neeman said. He called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "stop the delusional demands of our great friend [Trump] who, if he is a friend, would understand."

Israel controls security and land management in Area C of the West Bank, which is home to up to 300,000 Palestinians and 325,500 Israeli settlers. Palestinian construction is rarely approved by Israel, which blocks development by designating 60 percent of Area C as state land, national parks, or land for settlements, and by restricting Palestinian construction on the remaining land.

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Dutch investigators refused to accept potentially groundbreaking new material in the MH17 case from German private investigator Josef Resch, and did not account for his material in their presentation on the case last month, Resch has said.

According to the investigator, his material was rejected by the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) after he asked to make it public.

Resch said his materials included important new information, including audio recordings about air traffic in the area on the day of the incident, recordings of the communications of Ukrainian servicemen, recordings related to Russian President Vladimir Putin's flight from Brazil to Moscow on the day of the crash, personal recordings of pilots about the incident, and other evidence.

None of this information was used in JIT's June presentation, which reiterated earlier claims about MH17 being 'downed by a Russian-made Buk missile', the investigator said.

"Our highest possible security, if it can be guaranteed at all, can be ensured with a public statement, along with the disclosure of information to the JIT and the prosecutor," Resch insisted, clarifying that he wants to see a public disclosure of his information out of fear for his life after receiving multiple death threats for his research.

The investigator said he was prepared to reveal the name of his source to JIT investigators, and provide them with other important information, including alleged secret documents previously thought destroyed containing the notes of unnamed high-ranking officials and politicians, and intelligence agents, as well as "extra documents" whose contents he said he could not discuss out of concerns for his safety.

The JIT has yet to to respond to Resch, while Dutch prosecutors wrote him a letter saying his offer would be "taken into consideration," but adding that his request to make the information public was "very unusual" and capable of "damaging" the probe. Prosecutors advised him to appeal to German prosecutors instead.

In the letter, seen by Sputnik, Dutch prosecutors told Resch that he could send his material to the JIT via a special online form.

Resch has been investigating the MH17 disaster since 2014 in his capacity as a private investigator.

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Gabbard dominated Google searches for the entire country following the Democratic primary debates on Wednesday, buoyed by her confrontation with California Senator Harris, who has downplayed her "tough-on-crime" record as the state's attorney general in favor of a warmer, fuzzier progressive look.

"When you were in a position to make a difference or an impact in people's lives, you did not," the Hawaii congresswoman said, pointing to Harris' reactionary pursuit of low-level drug offenders and her controversial decision to keep prisoners locked up in order to use them to fight California's deadly wildfires.

CNN gave Harris two chances to respond, but she was unable to deny Gabbard's claims, merely insisting she had "done the work" of reforming the state's criminal justice system and defending her record in vague terms.

Despite topping the Google list, some users on Twitter noticed Gabbard's name wasn't among the top trends for them. "Why did you remove Tulsi from trending @Twitter?" one user asked.

Shortly after, she did briefly appear at the top, though only with her first name, and closely followed by 'Assad,' for Syrian President Bashar Assad - 'Assad apologist' being the establishment's go-to rebuke against Gabbard. In fact, it was used as a desperate attempt at deflection by Harris' press secretary, who spent the debate tweeting about Assad.

Whether Twitter tried to 'shadow-ban' Gabbard or not, her message has been suppressed by Big Tech before: She is suing Google for inexplicably removing her ads for several hours following the first round of debates, when her name was also the most-searched. The ads remained in place this time.

Deepening the mystery, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey donated $5,600 to Gabbard's campaign - the maximum individual donation - the day after the first round of debates, triggering a backlash from his establishment media pals.

Twitter deemed presidential hopeful Kamala Harris utterly "destroyed," after fellow candidate Tulsi Gabbard landed dizzying verbal haymakers on the former California prosecutor. Naturally, 'Russian bots' were swiftly blamed.

Wednesday night's Democratic debate was not an enjoyable one for Harris, who went into the faceoff as a darling of the media and among the frontrunners for her party's nomination. On the stage in Detroit, Hawaiian Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard grilled Harris on her record as California's attorney general.

In under a minute, Gabbard shredded Harris to pieces for jailing more than 1,500 nonviolent marijuana offenders while admitting in a radio interview that she had smoked marijuana in college, and for her "tough-on-crime" stances. "She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row... she kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor... and she fought to keep the cash bail system in place," Gabbard continued, leaving Harris unable to counter.

By Thursday morning, "#KamalaHarrisDestroyed" was trending on Twitter in the US.

Of course, any attack on an establishment Democrat is met with an equal and opposite reaction. Establishment pundits and their supporters responded with a familiar cry: "Russia!" Gabbard, they said, is propped up by Vladimir Putin, and #KamalaHarrisDestroyed is the work of "Putin's bots and paid for shills."

Even Harris' press secretary, Ian Sams, labeled Gabbard's supporters part of "the Russian propaganda machine."

It's worth noting that nobody shouting "Russian bots" did any data analysis to support their claims. Few noted too that, during the debate, 'Tulsi Gabbard' was the most searched for politician in every single US state, according to Google Trends.

But if the nefarious hashtag wasn't the work of the Kremlin, then it must have been the work of the MAGA-hatted deplorables, some #resistance commenters argued.

That opponents would default to Russia to attack Gabbard is unsurprising. Running on an anti-interventionist, foreign-policy-focused platform, Gabbard has been accused of cosying up to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad for her opposition to military action in Syria and for meeting with Assad in Damascus. That stance alone led to accusations that she was more closely aligned with the position of the Kremlin than that of the White House.

At present, Gabbard is a long-shot candidate, and is polling at around one percent.

[...]

Harris had a lively performance during Wednesday night's debate, clashing once again with former Vice President Joe Biden and others on the issues of "Medicare for All," busing and other topics.

The #KamalaHarrisDestroyed hashtag had disappeared from the list of trending U.S. terms by 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

Harris's spokesman, Ian Sams, responded to the hashtag, noting that at least some of the accounts promoting it appeared to be bots.

"The Russian propaganda machine that tried to influence the 2016 election is now promoting the presidential aspirations of a controversial Hawaii Democrat," he said.