Anyone who has visited the West Bank in recent months has been greeted by the din of mountain-moving bulldozers and jackhammers, alongside giant foundation drills sending up clouds of dust that can be seen for miles. Cement mixers are working around the clock, and everything is being done in a grab-what-you-can atmosphere.
settlement freeze
Israeli officials said they discussed the construction with the U.S. administration and cut the number of planned units to temper American displeasure. The Palestinian Authority has insisted that it will not return to peace talks unless Israel ceases construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
A Haaretz investigation reveals that since the building freeze in the West Bank was lifted ten days ago, bulldozers have been working furiously on the construction of 350 new housing units in various settlements.
Obama offered to support the presence of IDF soldiers in the Jordan Valley even after the establishment of a Palestinian state, if Israel would agree to a two month settlement building freeze, in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Other commitments: no more building freeze extensions, veto any anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution in the next year, future fate of the settlements be dealt with only as part of a final status agreement with the Palestinians.
The demand to suspend settlement building is no excuse [to torpedo direct talks] – it’s as legitimate a position as the Palestinians can have. Why should they relinquish a condition that has the support of the entire world, with the sole exception of Israel?
IOA Editor: Eldar is correct in pointing to the reasonableness of the Palestinian position on the settlement freeze. And his focus on Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman is understandable, even if not entirely logical – Netanyahu, at whose pleasure Lieberman serves, is not terribly different. Most importantly, based on past performance, Eldar’s pointing to Livni as a replacement for Lieberman misses the mark entirely: During Israel’s attack on Gaza, Livni was a leading participant in Israel’s crimes, indistinguishable from the rest. It is doubtful that Livni would move Netanyahu towards a viable peace agreement, as Eldar wishes, because there’s nothing to support the suggestion that either Netanyahu or Livni would be willing “to evacuate most [settlements] permanently.”
Abbas: “The negotiations will continue as long as the settlement (construction) remains frozen, but I am not prepared to negotiate an agreement for a single day more.”
Israel reiterated its refusal to to extend curbs on settlement building that expire this month, despite US pressure and Palestinian threats to walk out of peace talks. “The prime minister has not changed his position on this issue, there is no question of extending the moratorium,” a senior government official told AFP.
IOA Editor: The use of the term “US pressure” is worthy of a reality check. The US has just concluded an arms deal in which it gave Israel, $2.75 billion worth of F-35 fighter jets. In view of Israel’s insistence on continued settlement construction, the US could have put that deal, or other military aid, on hold. Not doing so renders such reported “pressure” meaningless. This is part of a continuing Israeli-American game of appearances: a colonization process masquerading as a peace process.
Vague promises to extend the partial freeze on settlement building and to alleviate some of the daily hardships encountered by Palestinians are no more than the blackmail tactics Israel has always employed against those under its control.
Two months after the government decision on November 26 to freeze construction in Jewish settlements for 10 months, you’d have to be blind, an idiot, or a member of the Yesha Council of settlements to use the term “freeze” to describe the real estate situation in Judea and Samaria.
“The message is clear — we are here, and we will stay here,” Netanyahu said in Kfar Etzion. “We plant and build — this is an inseparable part of the State of Israel forever.”
According to data collected by… Yesh Din, and by… Peace Now, construction is being carried out in more than 50 settlements and in two other industrial zones – Mevo Huron and Gush Etzion.
Robert Serry, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process said Thursday that recent activities by both Israel and the Palestinians are not contributing to settling their conflict and confidence remains low as 2009 draws to a close. Serry told the UN Security Council that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to temporarily freeze construction in West Bank settlements… falls considerably short of Israel’s commitments under the road map to freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth.”
Senior U.S. administration officials told Haaretz earlier Thursday that the prime minister’s bureau had provided satisfactory explanations as long as the benefits plan was in keeping with the freeze and that money would not be transferred for new housing in the settlements.
IOA Editor: This further demonstrates how meaningless both the so-called ‘freeze’ and the newly-minted Nobel Laureate’s “two-states, living side by side” peace plan are: He’ll surely manage the intellectual gymnastics necessary to defend the ‘settlement freeze’ concept while approving a status of preferred economic development zones to the very same settlements – just as he proclaimed the virtues of a “just war” while receiving a Nobel Peace Prize. The good-old American tradition of snake-oil salesmanship. Anything (we want) goes.
Over 10,000 right-wing protesters gathered on Wednesday in Paris Square in Jerusalem near the Prime Minister’s residence to demonstrate against the temporary settlement freeze. “When Netanyahu speaks of a settlement freeze he means a disengagement,” National Union MK Aryeh Eldad told the protesters.
IOA Editor: MK Eldad is among Israel’s most extreme right-wing politicians. It would be fair to surmise that he believes ALL Jews have all the rights over Israel/Palestine, and Palestinian Arabs have no rights at all. It is also safe to assume that he’d be entirely in favor of the transfer of all Palestinians out of their homeland – this is an assumption only because such speech is both politically-unwise and illegal in Israel.
The [settlement construction] freeze orders will not change what exists now: an elite state for Jews and a sub-space for Palestinians – truncated, cut up, asphyxiated. The distinction in the mind nowadays between the state of Israel and the settlers is artificial.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the settlers do not mean what they say. They freeze and they wink, for the show must go on. The settlers, as is their wont, scream to the high heavens in order to sow fear and warn of what awaits us in the future.
