Germany: Israel plan for new West Bank homes 'devastating' to peace

Published 19:24 19.12.11 Latest update 19:24 19.12.11

Comment by top aide to Chancellor Merkel comes after Housing Ministry publishes tenders for 1,028 homes to be built in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

By The Associated Press and Haaretz 

Israel must refrain from constructing new settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a top aide of German Chancellor Angela Merkal said on Monday, following Israel's announcement of over 1,000 new housing units beyond the Green Line. 

Merkel spokesperson Georg Streiter said that Israel's recent announcement that it would seek contractors to build apartments in both areas conveys "a devastating message with regard to the current efforts to resume peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians."

He said Germany "urgently calls on the Israeli government to refrain from inviting bids for the apartments." 

	Chancellor Angela Merkel meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his office in January.
	Photo by: Emil Salman

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been frozen for three years, in part because of continued Israeli settlement construction in the territories captured by Israel in 1967 and still claimed by the Palestinians. 

On Sunday, the Housing Ministry published tenders for 1,028 homes to be built in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, part of a plan to build 6,000 housing units throughout Israel. 

According to a statement by the ministry, 500 homes will be built in Har Homa in south Jerusalem, on land occupied during the 1967 Six Day War; 348 in the West Bank settlement of Betar Illit; and 180 in Givat Ze'ev, which lies between Jerusalem and Ramallah. 

This apparently marks another step taken by the Israeli government to punish the Palestinians for their successful effort to join UNESCO in October. 

The ministry estimates that construction will start at most of the sites within a year. 

Previous decisions by Israel to construct homes on land captured during the Six Day War have aroused anger among Palestinians, and been heavily criticized by the international community. 

In September, 1,100 new housing units were approved in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood, prompting condemnation from around the world, including the United States and European Union.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/germany-israel-plan-for-new-west-bank-homes-devastating-to-peace-1.402396

Israel decries Arab democracy

 

by Khalid Amayreh on December 18, 2011

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While Israel keeps urging the Palestinian Authority (PA) to resume largely discredited peace talks, Tel Aviv is continuing unabated the expansion of Jewish colonies throughout the West Bank.



Disingenuous as they are, Israeli calls for resuming peace talks are apparently aimed at giving the impression that the Palestinians, not Israel, is the party impeding efforts to revive the stalled process.

However, for Palestinians at least, facts on the ground speak louder than public relations.

In recent weeks, the Israeli government, arguably the most extremist since the creation of the Israeli state, decided to build thousands of additional settler units in the central West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem, the so-called Planning and Building Committee has been considering a plan to build a "park" in the heart of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Jabal Al-Mukaber in East Jerusalem.

Palestinian officials as well as peace-minded Israelis insist the planned park is nothing but a ruse to set up a new settlement designed to besiege Arab demographic growth in the occupied city.

"The plan is aimed at strangulating Arab presence in Jerusalem," says Khalil Tufakji, a prominent Jerusalemite cartographer. "They hope this will kill any possibility for building a viable Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital."

Israel is also planning to build some 4000 settler units in the Silwan neighbourhood south of the occupied Arab city.

US Vice President Joe Biden protested the plan last year. However, the Israeli government waited a few months until the issue was forgotten before reviving the plan.

Israeli pundits seemed convinced that US officials critical of Israeli settlement activities don't really mean what they say and that in any case they are not capable of acting on statements critical of Israel given Israeli clout and influence on domestic American politics.

Israel also calculates, seeming correctly, that the Obama administration will not undermine its own re-election chances at home by pressuring Israel to rethink its settlement expansion plans.

The intensive expansion of settlements in the West Bank has coincided with a serious escalation of Jewish terrorist activities against Palestinians and their property. The wave of terror and vandalism included, among other things, kidnapping Palestinian villagers and shepherds, torching Palestinian olive groves, and denying access to Palestinian traffic.

This week, Jewish settlers kidnapped a Palestinian shepherd near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Eyewitnesses said the settlers also seized 50 of the man's sheep. Normally, the Israeli occupation army, which controls the area, doesn't take meaningful action against settlers who attack Palestinians and vandalise their property with impunity.

As for the Israeli justice system, it deals quite lightly with settlers as many of the judges in Israeli courts are ideologically affiliated with the religious Zionist camp, or the settler camp.

This week, Israel decided to transfer to the PA the sum of $100 million dollars, which the Israeli government withheld earlier this month in an effort to bully the PA leadership into reconsidering efforts to seek recognition of a Palestinian state by international organisations such as the UN.

According to the Israeli media, Israel released the money after German Chancellor Angela Merkel threatened Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with halting a German plan to deliver a submarine to Israel if the latter refused to resume the transfer of tax revenues to the PA.

According to a report published in the right-wing Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post, Israel yielded to pressure from Berlin and unfroze the Palestinian funds.

Germany reportedly announced it would build and pay up to one-third of the cost of a sixth Dolphin-class submarine to be delivered to the Israeli navy.

The agreement stipulated that Germany would pay the sum of 135 million Euros in partial financing of the deal.

The submarine will cost between 372 million and 520 million Euros. Defense experts believe the submarine will enhance Israel's second-strike capability since it can carry nuclear weapons.

 

Merkel has repeatedly appealed to Netanyahu to unlock the peace process, only to be met with prevarication from the Israeli premier.

Meanwhile, some Israeli officials have been voicing their anxiety over the initial results of the Egyptian elections; with the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak admitting that Israel didn't like the ostensible victory of Islamists in the first round of the parliamentary poll.

Barak said he hoped that Israel's partners and friends in Cairo would retain significant influence that would keep the cold peace between Israel and the largest Arab country "as warm as possible".

Some Israeli commentators are already referring to the Egyptian elections results as a "nightmare coming true," bringing to the fore Israel's worst fears.

David Buki, a pro-settler commentator, lashed out at those Western powers that advocated and pressed for democracy in the Arab world. "When you give a Muslim a free voice in electing his leaders, he will pick an Islamist leadership every time because that is what he knows and appreciates."

"Israel's worst fears regarding its relationship with the Arab world -- and with Egypt in particular -- are coming true before our eyes. The rise of the Islamists in Egypt means the end of the peace treaty with Egypt and the rise of a government committed to the ideological Islamist goal of the destruction of Israel."

The Israeli commentator ignored the fact that Israel is made up of several fascist parties advocating discrimination and apartheid and even genocide against non-Jews.

Earlier this year, the spiritual mentor of Shas, a main coalition partner in the current Israeli government, was quoted as saying during a Sabbath homily in West Jerusalem that all non-Jews were very much like donkeys who were created by the Almighty on two legs so that they will serve the master race, the chosen people -- Jews.

Some http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/tag/rabbis/ have gone so far as permitting a Jew to murder a non-Jew in order to extract his organs if the Jew needs them.

* Khalid Amayreh a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2011/12/18/israel-decries-arab-democracy/

Israel gangs up on Palestinians

Despite knowing that settlements have broken the peace process, Israel is forging ahead with plans to build new Jew-only colonies on Arab land, writes Khaled Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

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Click to view caption

Palestinians use sling-shots to hurl stones at Israeli troops during a protest against the expansion of the Jewish settlement of Halamish near Ramallah

Taking advantage of the ongoing turbulence in the Arab world, the proximity of the US presidential elections, and the international community's manifest powerlessness to check aggressive Israeli unilateralism, the Israeli government has been stepping up hostile measures against the largely unprotected Palestinian community.

The measures, which include the seizure of a large swathe of Palestinian-owned land for settlement expansion, wanton home demolition as well as unrelenting attacks and acts of vandalism against Palestinians and their property, are aimed at rendering unrealistic and impossible the goal of establishing a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state on the West Bank.

The latest colonialist Israeli scheme would confiscate thousands of acres of mostly privately owned Arab land south of Bethlehem. This week, the Israeli occupation army approved the establishment of a new permanent settlement south of the Biblical city. The new settlement would include a large farm as well other infrastructure. It would also cut off the southern West Bank -- the Hebron region -- from the Bethlehem and Ramallah regions, putting an end to Palestinian demographic continuity in the vicinity.

Virtually powerless Palestinian Authority (PA) officials described Israel's plans to build a new settlement as "outrageous". One PA official labelled the new expansion scheme as an "act of rape".

PA spokespersons appealed to Egypt and the European Union to condemn and actively oppose Israeli plans, rightly described as "effective decapitation of the last hopes for a dignified peace in the region".

Israel has already seized numerous square kilometres of land throughout the West Bank, especially in the Jerusalem region and Jordan Valley. According to the Israeli human rights organisation B'tselem, the Israeli government built as many as 2500 settler units in 2011 on land occupied in 1967.
Israel has established as many as 270 settlements of various sizes in the West Bank, which many cartographers, demographers and political experts contend has killed any realistic prospect for the implementation of the two-state solution.

Israel, observers opine, feels safe and nearly immune from American pressure in light of the approaching election season in the United States where criticism of Israel, even if justified, could mean political suicide for the Obama administration as well as other presidential hopefuls.

One Republican presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, has told a Jewish American audience that the Palestinians were an "invented people". The obscene canard was apparently meant to procure votes and especially money from the powerful Jewish community.

Israel seems also convinced that the EU, thoroughly preoccupied with its own financial and economic woes, is not in a position to exert meaningful pressure on Israel. Some EU member states, such as Germany, are considered among the closest allies of Tel Aviv.

In addition to stealing more Palestinian territory in broad daylight for settlement expansion, Israel has also been demolishing more Arab homes in various parts of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
One of the homes demolished in Beit Hanina, a Jerusalem neighbourhood on Sunday, 11 December, belonged to the sister of one of the Palestinian prisoners recently freed as part of the Gilad Shalit swap deal between Israel and Hamas.

The homeowners, the Al-Razem family, accused the Israeli government of punishing the former prisoner by "destroying our home".

"There can be no justice for non-Jews in Israel. I think the Jews have learned the worst thing possible for their former oppressors. Justice for non-Jews doesn't exist in the Jewish lexicon," said Umm Nidal Al-Razem, the sister of the freed prisoner Fouad Al Razem. "They just want to expel us from our land; they want an Arab-free Israel."

According to reliable Jerusalem sources, Israel expelled as many as 800 Palestinian families from East Jerusalem in the past two years. The expulsions, says Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) official Ahmed Qurei are tantamount to silent ethnic cleansing.

Meanwhile, Nazi-like Jewish settlers attacked and vandalised several Palestinian villages and hamlets in the northern West Bank, including Aseera Al-Qibleya near Nablus. Locals and eyewitnesses reported that as many as a hundred heavily armed settlers, dressed in black uniforms, attacked village homes, smashing windows and car windshields. The attackers also fired heavily into the air.

The settlers who had arrived from the nearby Yetzhar settlement went on terrorising Palestinians and vandalising their property for more than 30 minutes before withdrawing to Yetzhar. The Israeli army did very little to restrain the settlers. Palestinians often accused the Israeli army of using the settlers as a paramilitary force to attack and persecute the Palestinian population.

The settlers espouse an extremist doctrine that stipulates that non-Jews livin
g under Jewish religious law, or halacha, ought to be enslaved as water carriers or wood hewers, expelled or physically exterminated.

In another twist of events involving Jewish settlers, scores of settlers, known as hilltop youths, crossed over the River Jordan and seized an old building before returning to the western bank of the river. An Israeli spokesman said the setters were protesting Jordanian pressure on Israel to reconsider plans to destroy a bridge in East Jerusalem, near Al-Aqsa Mosque, known as the Maghariba Bridge, which the Palestinians and Arab states consider a serious alteration of the status quo in the city.

Israel is claiming the wooden ramp leading from the Buraq Wall, known in Jewish phraseology as the Wailing Wall or Western Wall, may collapse and will have to be replaced. However, Muslim officials have condemned Israeli plans as part of Israeli efforts to obliterate the Islamic identity of East Jerusalem, especially Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Al-Aqsa Mosque, along with its large court and esplanade, is considered the third holiest shrine in Islam.

"This is a violent act that amounts to a declaration of religious war on the Muslim holy place," said one Hamas official in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli government has asked the municipality of Jerusalem, which is controlled by Talmudic and right-wing Jewish groups, to postpone work on the wooden bridge, apparently due to Jordanian and Egyptian pressure.

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1076/re1.htm