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Two representatives of the Peace Now organization and members of an Israeli television crew were attacked last week by a settler who objected to their presence in the West Bank as they documented construction in the settlements.
The footage, originally broadcast on Channel 2 Television and posted online by Peace Now, shows a security guard at the Dolev settlement snatching and destroying the TV crew’s camera equipment and later attacking the activists’ car with rocks.
Israeli settlers on horseback ‘set fire’ to Palestinian owned olive trees
(Haaretz) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed this week that Jerusalem is an “open city” that permits all its inhabitants, Jewish and Palestinian, to purchase homes in both its eastern and western parts.
An examination by Haaretz, however, presented a rather different situation on the ground. According to Israel Lands Administration rules, residents of East Jerusalem cannot take ownership of the vast majority of Jerusalem homes.
When an Israeli citizen purchases an apartment or house, ownership of the land remains with the ILA, which leases it to the purchaser for a period of 49 years, enabling the registration of the home (“tabu”). Article 19 of the ILA lease specifies that a foreign national cannot lease – much less own – ILA land.
A plan drafted by the Israeli security establishment intends to evacuate 23 illegal settler outposts in the West Bank. Israeli newspapers note that this outline was created with the knowledge of Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu. It is also said to be the product of a joint cooperative effort between the state police, the Israeli army, and the border police.
The illegal Jewish outposts are makeshift homes set atop Palestinian hills. According to Reuters, there are about 8,000 settlers who inhabit these settlements, constructed in violation of international law.
Though the outposts are not intentionally recognized by the Israeli state, the human rights organization B’tselem has insisted that the availability of social services implies government complicity.
Though the Israeli government officials deny that the evacuation plan is in response to recent tension between the Obama adminstration and Israel regarding settlement construction, it is largely recognized that this is a step toward meeting U.S. demands.
Originally, the selected 23 outposts are those illegally contructed after March of 2001, and had been promised for deconstruction five years ago to the Bush government.
UPDATE: Haaretz change article headline –
IDF: No plans for lightning evacuation of outposts
Members of Neturei Karta ride aboard a bus
at destroyed school in Gaza (Reuters)
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LONDON (Telegraph/AP) – The Advertising Standards Authority in Britain received more than 300 complaints about the advertisement, a promotion for the Israeli Red Sea resort town of Eilat.
The Syrian Embassy and pro-Palestinian groups complained about it because the featured map appeared to show the territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war – the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights – within the borders of the Jewish state.
An Israel tourism poster, which depicts Israel incorporating the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Gaza strip and Golan Heights. (AP)Eretz Israel HaShlema / Greater Israel
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
JERUSALEM – Israel’s deputy prime minister said the Obama administration’s call to freeze West Bank settlement construction undermines past agreements between the U.S. and Israel and damages American credibility.
The comments by Dan Meridor underscored the growing rift between Israel and the U.S. over construction in the settlements. Meridor, a respected veteran of Israeli politics, is considered a moderate voice in the new Israeli government.
President Barack Obama has urged Israel to halt all settlement construction as a confidence-building move to restart stalled peace negotiations.
Israeli officials and former White House official Eliot Abrams have cited a series of written and oral understandings reached with the Bush administration that appear to permit limited settlement construction.
“I never believed that we would be able to rule the whole Land of Israel without maintaining a completely democratic regime and without granting full equality to all its citizens and residents. Therefore, I believe that demography lies at the heart of Zionism. From my point of view, Zionism was a demographic-democratic movement. It did not believe only in our right to the Land of Israel, it said we would rule here by the force of a majority. It did not claim that the land is ours and therefore we will rule in it like the whites in South Africa; its aim was to create a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.
“In the first 20 years after the [1967] Six-Day War the demographic balance in the country did not change significantly to our detriment. Therefore I believed that there was no contradiction between the Land of Israel and democracy. I did not see a danger of an Arab majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. I believed that the conflict could be resolved by means of the autonomy regime that Begin proposed. However, in the 1990s I discovered that I had misread the demographic map. My worldview and my moral approach did not change, but I understood that the demographic situation was developing in a way that was different from what I had thought. Therefore I reached the conclusion that we would not be able to control the whole land because there are more than three million people here who do not want to live with us.”
Was it difficult for you to part with the Land of Israel?
“Very much so. I feel connected to Bethlehem no less than to [the Israeli Arab village of] Sakhnin. When I visit Ma’aleh Adumim [a West Bank city just outside Jerusalem] I do not cross into another country. Beit El and Shiloh and Jericho are the Land of Israel. But I never imagined that the realization of our right to the land would be effected undemocratically; that a Jew who lives in Jerusalem will have the vote whereas an Arab living in Nablus will not have the vote. The moment I saw that the demographic change was pitting the principle of the integrity of the homeland against the principle of democracy, I had no doubt at all about which I would choose. Democracy and justice and equality are values that I cannot discard.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."seems the israelis are losing the pr battle on settlements. in what appears to be the strongest statement to date from europe and the eu:
Europe raises pressure on Israel to stop settlements
should they decide to pursue the unthinkable and attack iran, “suicide” would be an appropriate name for it.
what, exactly, they hope to achieve from these actions is, to my mind, unexplainable. obviously, it’s an attempt to influence, or extort as the case may be, the u.s. government, but one would hope it won’t work.
bibi keeps this up, his term in the pm’s chair is likely to be extremely short lived.
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As long as Netanyahu and Barak can continue … building in settlements!
(Haaretz) – Senior Israeli officials said Defense Minister Ehud Barak had supplied the Americans with a detailed list of all projects in the West Bank currently under construction and which Israel believes cannot be halted. The list contains 2,500 housing units, the number of units in each project, and the projects’ location and construction stage.
The Americans are willing to allow most of the projects currently under construction to continue.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."