Israeli senior defense official: “The settlers are very much in tune with the ticking political clock… You can sense it on the ground, with the infrastructure work that is being done, but also in more minor things. They are acting without any legal authorization and are ignoring the state… whoever can, goes ahead and builds… It begins with the official leadership of the Yesha Council [of settlements] and ends with the hilltop youth.” Read more »
The International Women’s Media Foundation honoured Israeli journalist Amira Hass with 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award. Amira Hass is a regular columnist with Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper and the only Israeli journalist to have spent several years living in and reporting from Gaza and the West Bank. Read more »
“The West Bank today is a hothouse for weeds,” the officer said. However, he stressed, most of the Jewish settlers are “normative” individuals.
IOA Editor: As “normative” as an Occupier is.
For an excellent analysis of the settlers role and impact, see Nicolas Pelham’s Israel’s Religious Right and the Peace Process. Read more »
Human rights activists monitoring the West Bank report that… widespread building activity commenced three weeks ago in at least 12 settlements: ground preparation, pouring concrete and drilling construction foundations. This work is not part of the projects that Israel and the United States had reached an understanding on.
IOA Editor: Occupation as usual. Read more »
Israeli authorities are planning to demolish 150 Palestinian houses, home to about 1,000 people in East Jerusalem, according to a new report from the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights… [This figure does] not include another 125 houses and apartments whose owners were given demolition orders. Read more »
Gideon Levy, a courageous Israeli journalist whose work is followed and admired by readers all over the world, tells about the odd, yet moving experience of watching a play that focuses on his own work: “never have I felt such satisfaction from my journalistic work as I did in that hall. Never have I been so proud that another chilling story of mine about abuse committed by IDF soldiers, appears Friday in this paper…” We wish him the very best. Read more »
October 9, 2009 | Posted in
Gideon Levy |
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Israel has 592 obstacles such as checkpoints, trenches and barriers across the occupied West Bank and a report that Israel was removing 100 such curbs can not be verified, a UN agency said on Friday. Read more »
The IDF banned Israelis from olive groves near Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank this week to enable Palestinians to harvest olives unhindered for two or three days. However, olive farmers and human rights groups say the harvest cannot be completed in that time. Read more »
[Bil'in] residents say the IDF conducts nighttime raids up to four times a week, sometimes using percussion grenades and tear gas and sometimes also entering homes, which has led to Israeli activists staying overnight in village homes. Read more »
[The plan] calls for the construction of 14,000 housing units for 40,000 Jewish Israelis on 3,000 dunums… The land in question is owned by Palestinians in the West Bank village of Al-Walaja, sandwiched between the settlement of Gilo and the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Read more »
