Hopes for a US-backed deal over West Bank settlements receded yesterday after Israeli cabinet ministers backed a new round of building…Ministers showed no sign of backing down over the building of at least 400 new housing units despite criticism of the plan by the White House.
—The Telegraph, September 6, 2009
Israel also said it would finish some 2,500 other housing units currently under construction.
—Voice of America, September 4, 2009
Manifest Destiny a 19th Century American phenomenon that encouraged murder, dispossession of people (ethnic cleansing), and land theft? Yes, indeed, and also a viable 21st Century Israeli phenomenon. Amazing how those God-driven, ethical folks B.C.E. who cobbled together the Bible were able to provide a solid justification some 2500 years or so later for the Settlement Movement. “International law be damned – we answer to a higher cause.”
Maybe if the Palestinians had honored hs written agreement to stop incitement to terror as a pre-requisite to Israel meeting it’s obligations, Bibi would take different position.
But we are faced with a typical Middle East shop. I promise to do x – abc after that will you do y? I don`t do x, but still expect you to do y.
hmm…
And you don’t believe Israel had any obligation to honor its share of the bargain by ending settlement building which was its obligation under the Road Map? Or do only Palestinians have obligations and Israelis have “suggestions” which they may honor or not as they see fit?
The so-called settlements are the covert foundation blocks for LIKUD’s ‘Greater Israel’ that is intended to extend from Lebanon all the way down to Eilat. This is LIKUD policy. This is Netanyahu’s not so secret agenda that he has never repudiated because he cannot change his LIKUD manifesto.
There will NEVER BE A PALESTINIAN STATE under a LIKUD administration, ever.
WAKE-UP everyone! Netanyahu is just continuing to play with us all just as his mentor, the infamous Ariel Sharon, did for so many years.
SOLUTION: Cut all aid and stop all bi-lateral trade until Israel shows a genuine desire to collaborate with the world’s demand for an autonomous Palestinian state.
The League Of Nations recognized the Land Of Israel as the Jewish National Home. The UN subsequently affirmed it. Its not a few hundred thousand Jews that are the obstacle to peace. Its Arab rejection of Israel’s right to exist and a refusal to negotiate in good faith with Israel over all outstanding issues. After 61 years the issue isn’t territory or settlements. Its the right of the Jewish people to have their own country that is under fire. And when the extreme Left calls Tel Aviv “contested territory”, we know what they seek is not peace but Israel’s destruction.
The very first passage in yr comment is specious. I’ve never heard of the League of Nations playing any role in the question of Palestine. The rest of yr comment is equally specious. You’ve made up yr mind & know all the facts & you’re just shouting fr. the rooftops. But it’s a useless exercise as we know the history & facts quite a bit better than you. Rant on…
Settlement activity is down 99% so Israel IS abiding by the freeze.
So all that building going on in Maaleh Adumim & many other places is just a mirage? The 2,500 housing units being built as we speak isn’t happening? Those 400 new units announced this wk won’t be built? Who are you kidding? A freeze is a freeze. It means “stop” a “cessation.” Or do you define “freeze” as merely a “thaw?”
I was being sarcastic. I thought that the online community that thinks that Hamas met it’s ceasefire obligations even though 28 Kassam and Mortar attacks were fired against Israel during the Tahadiya would understand the irony of my statement.
If that was irony it was FAR too subtle for the likes of me.
IMHO too many people on too many websites write with the primary intention to score points over one another instead of addressing the issue at hand.
The issue here is the establishment of illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land and the encouragement of the Israeli government with tax incentives etc to those 300,000 who now are squatting in the West Bank.
There is here not only a moral issue, or a political issue, or an economic issue. The issue here is that this conflict fed by LIKUD policy is on a course that will bring war, disaster and bloodshed on a scale never before seen in the Middle East.
There is a duty, particularly of the Israeli electorate to recognize that they are playing with a fire that will consume them and many others around the world.
LIKUD, KADIMA et al. must come to their senses and stop the widespread and continuous violation of human and civil rights. Failure will bring a darkness in which there will be no light, for a very long time.
This is from Shaul Arieli’s website RE what is actually happening ON THE GROUND in the “contested” E1 area (Maaleh adumim). Unfortunately the text of the PPSs is in Hebrew. It can nonetheless be safely argued that the Obama team is more morronic than its predecessors. Everything proceeds as usual in the settlements. Obama’s brain is the only thing frozen.
http://www.shaularieli.com/image/users/77951/ftp/my_files/Power-Point%20Show/mevaseret_adumimNEW.pps
What a stupid & gratuitous comment. Because Israel is conducting an insane policy building the infrastructure for settlements that don’t even yet exist (documented in Arieli’s slide presentation) you blame Obama for attempting to stop this? What are you on about? Thanks by the way for moving the discussion forward in a constructive direction. With “friends” like you the peace camp needs no enemies (though it has plenty of those too).
u entirely missed my point of course – u generally seem to have a problem with ironies as well as with understanding non-native speakers of english. oh well.
i wrote “contested” because it is the Obama administration itself that unfortunately does not yet “contests” anything at all via-s-vis israel’s colonization of the OPT. Obama is the one who allows everything to proceed as usual in the colonization process because he does not dare confront the zionists. that is his sin and that is why his brain is the only thing frozen. read eldar in today’s haaretz.
Oh, I understood you completely regardless of whether English is yr first, 2nd or 3rd language. And your comment is still odd & misplaced. The blame must be placed squarely on Israel. Calling Obama a “moron” for not ending settlements in his first yr in office is just plain weird.
The League Of Nations ratified the Mandate which incorporated the terms of the Balfour Declaration in 1922. Britain had a responsibility, that it betrayed, to develop the Palestine Mandate as the Jewish National Home. That is a recorded historical fact. Israel has a legitimate international birth certificate. Incidentally, had the Palestinians accepted Partition in 1947, there would be no dispute about occupation today. The issue isn’t about territory; its about the existence of the Jewish State. To this day, the Arabs still refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise.
Britain had no such mandate real or imagined (except by you) & it never interpreted its Mandate in this way. Even the Balfour Declaration is contradicted by other statements by the British. At best, Britain fudged on the issue but certainly never adopted it as fixed policy as you claim. It is not a recorded historical fact. But for the sake of yr wingnut argument even if it were the League of Nations went out of business & I can’t recall anyone even among pro Israel rightists attempting to argue that the League of Nations is a precedent that is valid in a contemporary setting.
We’re done with the ancient, dreadful, musty historical arguments. If you want to argue about the League of Nations you’ll have to go elsewhere. We don’t conduct such arid debates here.
Indeed, NormanF, Britain, in quite typical imperialistic manner, was offering the shirt off someone else’s back, much as a conscience-stricken West in granting to the emerging State of Israel the partitioning of Palestine was doing after the Holocaust, a product of and by that West. And all this was occurring just at a time when people throughout the world were taking seriously such declarations as FDR’s Four Freedoms and were repudiating colonialism in all its many manifestations. Tragedy and arrogance heaped upon tragedy and arrogance.