[T]he area known as E1, linking the settlement to East Jerusalem… is the only area that [candidate] Netanyahu explicitly committed to developing… His political rival… Ehud Barak also publicly expressed support for building there… All of these developments share a single common denominator – by taking “a dunam here and a dunam there,” they are tightening Israel’s grip on the land… These steps seriously diminish the already narrow possibility of reaching a final-status agreement with the Palestinians. Over the past decade Palestinian officials have hinted that they could come to terms with Ma’aleh Adumim, but that willingness is unlikely to extend to the giant “bubble” developing around the settlement.
IOA Editor: Both Likud and Labor candidates – now government partners – share the vision, plans, and actions designed to sever the West Bank in order to make a future independent Palestinian state impossible. And, “US protest,” and “Obama’s determined veto,” recently mentioned frequently in connection with Israeli settlement expansion are, so far, entirely theoretical: indeed, mere speculations. Read more »
Successive Israeli governments since 1993 certainly must have known what they were doing, being in no hurry to make peace with the Palestinians. As representatives of Israeli society, these governments understood that peace would involve serious damage to national interests. Read more »
UN Special Coordinator: “Everything Israel does now will be highly contentious,” warning the Israeli authorities “not to take actions that could pour oil on the fire.”
Israel’s Interior Minister: “This is the land of our sovereignty. Jewish settlement there is our right.”
Tel Aviv University Archeologist: “The sanctity of the City of David is newly manufactured and is a crude amalgam of history, nationalism and quasi-religious pilgrimage… the past is used to disenfranchise and displace people in the present.” Read more »
May 10, 2009 | Posted in
Occupation |
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West Bank construction has been accelerating for several months, putting Israel on a collision course with a U.S. administration taking a hard line on settlement expansion…
IOA Editor: The extent of this widely predicted “collision” remains to be seen. Read more »
May 7, 2009 | Posted in
Occupation |
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[The White House] could also inform the Israeli prime minister and his cohorts that they will be welcome to come and discuss continued American support once construction for Israelis in the occupied territories has truly come to an end. Read more »
Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din is taking the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), the Israeli civil administration and a number of Israeli mining companies to court [for] illegally stripping Palestinian West Bank quarries of raw construction material for the benefit of the Israeli construction industry and the building of illegal Israeli settlements. Read more »
Twenty evacuated settlements are worth more than a thousand peace formulas, and 2,000 released prisoners will move the sides forward more than 10,000 words. If only Israel agrees to implement what it has agreed to, from the release of prisoners to a freeze on settlements. Read more »
The media was of course the main agent in removing the issue from our agenda. A rare, wall-to-wall coalition of the defense establishment, editors, writers, broadcasters, viewers, readers – especially viewers and readers – who do not want to write or read, hear or be heard, report or know, came together for the mission of removing the occupation from our world. Read more »
April 16, 2009 | Posted in
Gideon Levy,
Occupation |
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Jawad Siam pulled out a brochure issued by the Jerusalem municipality heralding development plans for his place of residence, the village of Silwan in East Jerusalem. He pointed to the map in the brochure, where the neighborhood’s streets were marked. “You see this, Hashiloah Road?” he asked. “All these years, it was called Ein Silwan Street. ‘Ma’alot Ir David’ Street? That was Wadi Helwa Street. The street next to it, ‘Malkitzedek,’ used to be Al-Mistar Street.” Read more »
A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of “actively pursuing the illegal annexation” of East Jerusalem. Read more »
