From the article:

"Netanyahu has asserted that his government does not have the legal authority to stop building in cases in which tenders for new structures have already been awarded or when homes under construction have already been purchased."

Yet his gov't has the power to prevent Palestinians from rebuilding homes that it has bombed and bulldozed.

At what point will this be recognized for the ethnic cleansing that it is?

Note to Hillary: nothing says "no" so eloquently as turning off the money spigot.

"Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday that Israel could not accept the Obama administration's demand to "completely" halt activity in West Bank settlements."

Then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should tell Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that the U.S cannot accept the Israeli government's request for aid.

Quid pro quo - that's the way foreign relations work.

Oh yeah, I forgot, the Israel Lobby. Well, tell them to shove it!

Jethro Tullamore:

At what point will this be recognized for the ethnic cleansing that it is?

Call it what is actually is religious cleansing. Ethic cleansing is simply a euphemism people use so no one will have to admit religion is the root of all the problems again! They don't like facing the real issues. It was religious cleansing in Bosnia, Rwanda and Ireland. That is only mentioning three of the recent ones. There are numerous other ones around the world.

"Everywhere people are born, people die, and we cannot accept a vision of stopping completely the settlements. We have to keep the natural growth."

Unless those people can live and work together in peace, there's nothing "natural" about this growth and can be better described as exploitation.

The funny part is how the Clintons helped Lieberman get elected.

AIPAC pulls strings of all their puppets.

The only way to stop settlement expansion is to withdraw aid. Leiberman and Netanyahu have no intention of alowing a two state solution otherwise.

The only way to stop settlement expansion is to withdraw aid. Leiberman and Netanyahu have no intention of alowing a two state solution otherwise.

odoco
There was an article last week that cited Lieberman's 'reaching out' to Russia - I would content that even if the US were to cut funding, the state of Israel would go to anyone who they thought would support their programs of genocide and territorial acquisition. The old slogan of 'special relationship' with the US is meaningless; the present Israeli leadership couldn't care less where the largesse comes from - as long as it gets what it wants.

CQ from Maine

At least Obama is in early and with some of the best and most experienced people America has to offer. And he is talking sense. All Americans need to support him and his efforts. If anything will bring a halt to international terrorism it is a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Leaked documents show that Israel knows its settlements are illegal:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1060043.html

if there's a sicker country on this planet then amerika its israel! then again their twins
right?

While the Washington Post reported extensively on the Clinton-Lieberman press conference, the New York Times appears to have totally ignored it.

WHY??

Would americans like it if Canada or Mexico sanctioned Mexican or Canadian settlements in the US? Of course not. Why should Israel think that it may build settlements in what is not their counmtry?

"natural growth"

Pay foreigners to settle in your "nation." Build a wall to keep out the original inhabitants, and settle most of them into reservations. Bomb all your neighbors every few years. And then, call it... "natural."

If mother nature worked this way, there wouldn't be any creatures left on earth.

Couldn't we use the expression "ideological growth" to underscore the fakeness of it all?

So Israeli populations should grow, but Palestinian populations can't grow -- but need to be killed off?
OK -- so for a while let Palestine have some natural growth and have seige warfare and attacks on Israel to kill the Israelis to even things out -- fair is fair -- right? That's just as 'natural'.
Isn't cancer and mold 'natural growth' too?

Billions of $dollars in foreign aid every year, weapons systems approval, UN support: I don't think Lieberman is in any position to disagree.

Let them stand alone, then ,without US support.

See how that works out.
They will be blockaded and surrounded by UN troops within 3 months.

Apartheid and Democracy are incompatible.

"Clinton also said that Israeli leaders have in the past shifted their stance on the issue, and expected the current government to evolve in the same fashion."

Israel and its supporters are as unevolved as you can get. These are people who use a book of myths authored over 2,000 years ago by Jews to make their argument for a chunk of real estate. Do they even have comprehesion of the word "biased"? Anybody whose sole basis of argument is a book in which a burning shrubbery speaks Hebrew or a man lives in the belly of a big fish subsisting on sushi for 3 days has forfeited the argument. They are religious fanatics (cultists) using myths as justification to steal, kill and violate the very tenants of the book they use to substantiate their so-called legal legacy. Anyone who engages in such a defense is the antithesis of evolved.

Israel has violated international law for decades with impunity. The world community must isolate this rogue country and make Israel account for their numerous war crimes and decades long violations of international law.

Perhaps after Obama has been bitch slapped enough by Israel, he will grow some balls and stand up for the poor and downtrodden both there and here at home. He has both houses of congress, a clear majority of voters elected him, and he has much of the world behind him hoping against hope that he will change the way business is done worldwide. But, the good will won't last forever. Bush squandered world support after 9-11. The Republicans are dogging hell out of the Democrats in congress and they aren't doing anything progressive, they just aren't fixing Bush's mess the way they want it done. If the Democrats are going to get shit from the Republicans and right wing crazies, they might as well have done something to bring it on; How about Single payer healthcare; or bring the troops home; close Gitmo; pass environmental legislation; create some jobs in govt. infrastructure rebuilding programs; start backing the Palestinians using some of the money that has been given Israel for decades. Then if it all falls apart, then the Republicans have something to bitch about. Right now they're pretty much just toe tapping, tea bagging, adulterous corporate whores, and the way it's going the Dems aren't too far behind.

USA Muslims can not even fulfill their religous duties by giving 2.5% of there savings to Muslim charities, because if a charity is "infiltrated" by terrorists in the future the innocent donor can be retroactively charged with supporting terrorism.

God bless this great nation.

Netanyahu has asserted that his government does not have the legal authority to stop building in cases in which tenders for new structures have already been awarded or when homes under construction have already been purchased.

hmmmmm.... i see. but it had 'legal authority' to be building on appropriated palestinian land all along? 'legal authority' to bulldoze homes and kill people for daring to stand up to the israelis?????.... i guess with 'natural growth' we're talking the 'natural' inclination for a pirate to continue with piracy, a murderer with murdering, a criminal to carry on with his crime spree? sort of how 'manifest destiny' made genocide okay here in the u.s. when those pesky indigenous savages refused to get out of the way of our 'natural growth' across the continent, eh? obama.... hillary, we're still waiting for some of that 'change we can believe in'... guess the whole dang world is waiting... and watching.

For every new Israeli "fact on the ground" there are countless Palestinian "facts in the ground". I can hardly follow the events in the Middle East, it fills me with anger and hatred for the genocidal atrocities that are committed with my government's acquiescence. Where are the voices of American Jewry to condemn the state of Israel and their minions here and permit the US to act according to our purported principles and ideals? Is their loyalty to a foreign state so deep that they have lost any moral or ethical sensibility? Although many of my good friends are Jewish, it's becoming increasingly difficult to hold American Jews harmless in this genocide. It's time they spoke up loudly and forcefully against Israel, AI{PAC, Bloomberg, Lieberman, Dershowitz, Schumer, and all the other Zionists who have become the greatest force for evil and instability in the world today.

After Israel gets their fill of money, and weapons supplied from the US, we may be next on their list to eliminate.

Yes, Jethro Tullamore spoke the doubletruth clear as a bell when you stop the settlements not by "Please don't do that any more," but by "We're gonna stop the ethnic cleansing/genocide by shutting off the fuckin' money spigot".

The other side of this same coin is that that USans' hard-earned tax $ can be used in a positive to feed our pressing needs for social programs and infrastructure.

The right wing Israeli administration should be confronted with a term that it might find very distasteful, but which accurately defines its intention for settlement expansion in the West Bank. During the 1930's the governing administration of Germany developed the concept of the recovery of "Lebensraum". In the last three centuries BC, German tribes were pushed west by other tribes which, like themselves, had moved westward from Central Asia. German nationalists of the last century believed they had a right to return to the same areas of eastern Europe they once occupied for purposes of settlement, a right to return to "ihren Lebensraum" in Eastern Europe. Although the German actions in accomplishing that goal of resettlement were different and intensely more brutal, the goal was essentially the same as that of the present day state of Israel, although on a much grander scale. It looked to the subjugation, expulsion, or eradication of the mostly Slavic people of those lands.

The nation of Israel, for reasons of divine or historical right or recompense for the evil perpetrated on its people by Germany, look to replace the population of Palestine with the decedents of the people of ancient Israel in a plan that can accurately be described as "kleinen Lebensraum". The purpose of much of the political endeavors and all of the land development of the state of Israel is to achieve its realization of "Kleinenlebensraum". Oddly, this concept of Zionists at the beginning of the last century probably predated the German one.

"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet Mitchell in Europe next week to try to hammer out an agreement, Israeli officials said."

Netanyahu's in Europe, next week. Any sharp-shooters there? No, not a good idea, Israel has 200 to 400 nuclear missiles, so we need sharp-shooters, en masse, in Israel. That way, if Israel retaliates with nukes, then it'll nuke itself ... to oblivion. Well, it'd work in cartoon animation, anyway.

What the U.S. really needs to do is to simply cut the umbilical cord. NO MORE f*cking funding, no more vetoes in the UNSC against resolutions demanding that Israel stop its extreme criminality, which wouldn't be possible, at all, without the U.S., hang "Uncle Sam", that s.o.b. that never dies, and so on.

The U.S. cannot force Israel to do anything anymore, because the U.S. cannot threaten a nuclear-armed country and the U.S. saw to it that Israel would be very nuclear-armed; and Europe and Canada backed this and still do. That's an example of "shooting yourself in both feet". Arm and enrich your enemy to the point that you no longer can have any real control over them. They don't control you, but you strategically, militarily, need them as a powerful military force, for imposing your imperialist, ... agenda of "full spectrum dominance", aka "global dominance" on the world, too, because you can't achieve this alone.

"Shooting yourself in both feet" and in the head; but you should've done the latter first and thereby saved the rest of us from all of this damn trouble. Next time, shoot yourself in the head, to start off; and that'll be the end of the problems that you create.

Wishful thinking, eh?

We're in a hell of a bloody mess of f*u*cking affairs.

Bunch of f*u*cking ass*holes.

How the hell can we get out of this? I don't think there is really a way. I'd like to hope there is, but yuck, muck, damn, I don't think there is. Is there? Hippy, utopist pacificists need not reply; I already know what such people claim and having been claiming for ages. What I want are [realistic] people. I can be utopist, but a realist one. Disneyland utopia is bs.

So, "how the hell can we get out of this"?

I think it's like the Bible says; "Man's law is not God's", and "all human institutions will fail". Now those are two "awfully" reality-based truths. And Moses didn't separate the waters; the Jews walked over marshes! Duh-ha.

If I was president I would order a complete military/naval blockade of Israel and starve them to peace. I would cut off all US tax payer funding and demand economic sanctions against that shitty little rogue nation. I would fire every dual israeli citizen in the US government, particularly in the state department, department of justice and the SEC. I would order every israeli embassy to shut down and cut off all ties with israel. Since Israel is the size of New Jersey, who would miss it.

ISRAEL HAS STATED IT WILL TAKE WHATEVER IT WANTS AND NO ONE WILL STOP IT------WE CAUSED THIS PROBLEM --NOW WE NEED TO STOP IT----THIS IS WHERE OUR TROOPS NEED TO BE----PROBLEM IS--TOO MUCH POWER IS IN THE HANDS OF THE ZIONISTS-----PLUS OUR OUT OF CONTROL RIGHT WING RELIGOUS LEADERS IN THIS COUNTRY SUPPORT THE TERRORIST STATE OF ISRAEL