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Israel Threatens to Use Force Against Settlers
Israeli authorities could soon use special commando units, unmanned spy planes and cellphone-jamming equipment to enforce a moratorium on new settlement construction in the West Bank, military officials said Sunday, deepening a showdown between the government and Jewish settlers.
In this photo released by Israel's Defense Ministry, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, right, talks with Head of Egyptian Intelligence Omar Suleiman during their meeting in Jerusalem, Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009. (AP Photo/ Defense Ministry, Ariel Hermoni, HO)
Enraged settlers leaders vowed to resist the plan, prompting Defense Minister Ehud Barak to warn that settlers would face the full wrath of the military if they continue to flout the 10-month construction slowdown.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the settlement slowdown last month in an attempt to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. But the Palestinians have rejected the plan because it allows for construction to proceed in 3,000 settlement homes already under construction in the West Bank and does not affect east Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope will be their capital.
Nonetheless, settlers have repeatedly blocked inspectors and security forces trying to enter their communities to enforce the order. The resistance has grown increasingly violent.
The issue of settlements on lands the Palestinians claim for a future state is a key sticking point in Mideast peace efforts, with the Palestinians demanding a halt to all settlement construction as a condition for returning to peace talks. U.S. President Barack Obama made a similar demand shortly after taking office, but has since adopted a softer stance.
The military plan calls for the deployment of unmanned spy drones to photograph illegal construction, and would create closed military zones to keep out protesters and reporters during demolitions of illegal buildings, according to a military memo leaked to Israeli media and confirmed by The Associated Press. The document said various units of the military would be used, including special forces, military police and even communication specialists to jam settler cell phone frequencies.
The enforcement plan was drafted by the military's central command and most likely leaked by settler sympathizers within the army, according to military officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal orders not meant for public consumption.
Those same officials confirmed the plan to The Associated Press, though the army later said the plan was only a "first draft" for potential action.
The leak itself points to a growing concern among Israeli officials relating to insubordination. A number of nationalist soldiers have refused to obey orders to act against settlers. The government has jailed defiant servicemen, issued stern warnings to rebellious rabbis and expelled one pro-settler seminary from a program combining religious study and military service.
It's also possible the authorities wanted the plan to be known, as it might help the government portray itself as willing to confront domestic opposition for the sake of peace.
"All that is required of the settlers and their leaders is to carry out the government's decision regarding freezing new construction in the West Bank for this defined period and that will prevent the use of force and friction with the defense forces," Barak said at a political meeting.
Settler leaders feel betrayed by Netanyahu, a former longtime ally.
"Using special forces, jamming cell phones and banning journalists from the area is what you do when you are fighting an enemy," settler leader Dani Dayan told Israel's Army Radio.
Settlers have frequently scuffled with government inspectors sent to enforce the building moratorium. A week ago, a female Israeli police officer was beaten by settlers opposing the ban.
"We will protect the houses with our bodies if they come to destroy them," Arieh Eldad, a lawmaker from the hardline National Union party, told Israel Radio.
About 300,000 settlers live in the West Bank, in addition to 180,000 Jewish Israelis living in east Jerusalem.
28 Comments so far
Show AllAll talk...and yet they will allow the settlements to grow...Israeli settlers are Israel and US funded terrorists!!
Let's see now. West Bank Settlements violate the Geneva Conventions (big deal). The settlers build homes with interest free gov't backed loans that never need repayment (the loans are supported by gifts from Jews and Christians in the West. The settlements receive special IDF protections. The Israeli courts will not accept any proof of land ownership from Palestinians who owned the land prior to May 14, 1948.
Now the Israeli gov't wants to slow all of this down. That's big of them. What would we do if it had been South Africa in the eighties?
Boycott any product made in Israel. The bar code usually starts with 729. Also, check the packaging for "Made in Israel."
For more information:
http://www.inminds.com
http://www.bdsmovement.net/
Yes, since the Empire is unwavering it its unconditional support for mini-me, Israel...the only solution is BDS.
Theocratic and fanatic settlers are to Israel what Joe Leiberman is to the democratic party. Why bribe them at the expense of a democratic majority???
It's all a phony show anyway.
I will believe it when I see it...
US President Barack Obama this week signed the 2010 foreign aid budget law which includes $2.775 billion in security aid to Israel. This is the second year the budget is transferred to the Jewish state as part of understandings that the American assistance to Israel in the coming decade will total $30 billion.
C'mon, Bibi and Avigdor, why don't you just open up work camps, complete with gas chambers and crematoria and be done with it?!
When people object, explain that you are merely trying to solve the "Palestinian Problem" and that since repatriation is "off the table" (because nobody else wants these people either) something has to be done.
Jewish medical students could get fellowships from the Mengele Institute of Advanced Medical Experimentation and Israeli industrialists could have a wonderful source of inexpensive labor (thereby reducing the cost of the camp's maintenance) providing necessary weaponry for the increasing numbers armed conflicts favored by your government.
Word is out that there is also an "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign missing from Auschwitz and floating around somewhere in Europe. Such a catchy slogan for your new
"resettlement camps"--with some dilligent inquiry and the right price I'll bet you could snag it!
Poet
See, there's no pleasing the antisemites. When Israel makes a move towards reconciliation, what do we hear? Calls for boycotting, disbelief, and accusations of war crimes, apartheid, and terrorism. And that's just in the first five comments!
Face it, you guys don't want peace; you want the destruction if Israel.
They have not made a single move physically ....just a lot of hot air..peace starts with Israel backing off from the West Bank completely. Not by stealing more land
BTW, the true anti-semites are the israelis themselves
Israel was destroyed by Babylon 2,400 years ago
and in the eyes of God Israel does not exist.
So be reasonable Hebrews, especially after killing
God on the cross was done by Hebrews, for in the
earth made new all the harmless will get an equal
share of Israel, not just Hebrews.
For God the Holy Spirit now rules over the earth
and she being the mother of God the Son, is by
gender and by nature a pacifist. And not too happy
is she with the way our F16 fighter-jets have been
used by Hebrews over Gaza, over 1,000 helpless
women, children and babies laid waste in Gaza.
For this day of life is more then any man deserves
so have a grateful heart. Otherwise a taker will you
be feeling you deserve more and with a guilt-free
conscience take all you can take just to even the score.
Oh please. Alabama.
While i protest israel at every turn. The biblical nonsense is a bit much. Really.
The Christian USA has done the same in iraq. Ad infinitim. It isn't about one religion is better than another.
And 'Hebrews'?
What century doth we dwelleth within?
Hiding behind "anti-semitism " to justify racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Jewish White Supremacy is not only disingenous and false, it is morally disgusting to progressive Jews. It is also an abomination and belittles and detracts from those who have experienced genuine anti-Semitism. If right-wing hate-mongers like you cry "Wolf" when you are the real wolf, folks will grow to ignore you, and have already done so.
It is not only a childish diversion and cheap excuse for crimes, it is has grown tiresome and ineffective. You better think up a better one.
Are Arabs sub-human? What is the final solution for the Palestinians?
Except that the antisemitism is real and strong, living happily (in surprisingly similar forms) in the left, the center, and the right. I know, defense of Judaism is disgusting.
But it's not nearly as disgusting as your veiled accusations that the Jews are Nazis. Thanks for that one.
You far lefties are so dogmatic.
No - defense of Judaism is fine - though as someone who sees that religion seems to be a cause of many of our problems I would argue against it. Defense of Zionism also fine - but I will argue against it even more vehemently. What is not fine is to attack those who criticise either as being anti-semitic. You appear not to understand this. Or are you just mouthing the standard response to anyone who criticises Israel.
As to being dogmatic ...
Do you understand the word?
Far-right hate-mongering racist liars like you are not welcome, thank you for confirming. As a secular, progressive Jew, I find your arguments not only childish and intellectually lazy, but morally disgusting.
from uri avnery on znet
...If the conflict is indeed hardening, the US, and Obama personally, must carry much of the blame. His folding up on the settlement issue and his total surrender to the pro-Israel lobby in the US has encouraged our government to believe that it can do anything it likes.
At the beginning, Binyamin Netanyahu was worried about the new president. But the fear has dissipated, and now our government is treating Obama and his people with scorn bordering on contempt. The agreements made with the last administration are being broken quite openly. President George W. Bush recognized the "settlement blocs" in return for an undertaking to freeze all the others permanently and to dismantle the outposts set up since March 2001. Not only has not a single outpost been dismantled, but this week the government accorded the status of "preferred area" to dozens of settlements outside the "blocs", including the worst Kahanist nests. From one of these, the thugs went out this week and set fire to a mosque.
The "freeze" is a joke. In this theater of the absurd, the settlers take part in a performance of violent opposition that is both invited and paid for by the government. The police does not employ against them pepper gas, tear gas, rubber bullets and truncheons - as they do every week against Israeli demonstrators who protest against the occupation. Nor do they conduct nightly incursions in the settlements to arrest activists - as they do now in Bilin and other Palestinian villages.
In Jerusalem, of course, the settlement activity is in full swing. Palestinian families are thrown out of their homes to the jubilant cries of the settlers, and the few Israeli protesters against the injustice are sent to hospitals and prisons. The settler groups engaged in these activities receive donations from the US that are tax-deductible - thus Obama is indirectly paying for the very acts he condemns...
Apartheid South Africa was de-legitimized
So too must Apartheid Israel.
Boycott Divest and Sanctions!
It's probably just a coincidence, but I notice that when supporters of the rogue terrorist state of Israel, aka hasbarists, reference Gaza and Palestinians, they sound an awful lot like Amerikan wingnuts, including Elected Misrepresentative demagogues, attacking ACORN.
In both cases, the object of their wrath is a badly beaten-up David, upon whose neck rests the iron boot of a mighty State. Yet the paranoid mind-set of the reactionary sees ITSELF as the oppressed, put-upon, and desperate victim, and projects its own genocidal, raging-Goliath persona upon its victim.
Let an enfeebled ACORN or Palestine allegedly put a single foot wrong, and bitter, righteous wrath and indignation descends upon them.
Yet the berserker Goliath of a plutocratic government or genocidal rogue state can trample its perceived opponent to extinction, deny the slightest wrongdoing, and take great umbrage at even the suggestion that it has, or even CAN, do wrong.
Once given over to the reactionary mind-set, this is called Being Fair.
And BTW, it'll take a lot more than a little good cop/bad cop with the settlers before there's anything to cheer about in THAT department. The policy of lebensraum, Israel-style, legitimizes ethnic cleansing and the deliberate and defiant expropriation of Palestinian land for the benefit of Eretz Israel.
Israel's government and military may have their own quarrels with the settlers. But that's what happens when one imports pit bulls by the pack, ostensibly to protect one's junk yard-- by gradually taking over the junk yards next door.
A particularly obstreperous beast or two getting smacked on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper is no signal of good intentions or a profound change of heart for the better.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Bibble-babble. Wall-to-wall nonsense.
ISRAEL ---- FORGETS BAD HISTORY
Surely he who forgets bad history is doomed to repeat it,
for since Israel was exiled to Babylon and for 2400 years,
because of greed in business, Israel has been the root
cause of all its problems.
For Abraham the first Hebrew, he being the richest and most intelligent,
if Israel had never used its superior intelligence to enrich
itself upon the misery of others, had instead used its higher
knowledge in business to enrich itself upon the enrichment
of others, Israel would be the moral capital of the world.
In 1948 with war materials furnished by England and Empire USA,
the Zionists decided to invade Palestine, establish a dictatorship over
it and by death and deadly force ethnic cleanse all but Jews and
Christians from the Promised Land. Because of this over a million
innocent Palestinian women and children have been butchered by war.
And according to their Old Testament,
because of greed in business Israel was exiled to Babylon,
because of greed in business Israel was destroyed by the Roman Empire,
because of greed in business Israel will like Abraham,
wonder a sojourner on this earth.
Zionist: one who believes that Israel had a right to take back the Promised Land by deadly force.
You keep telling us that wealth = intelligence.
By your logic, anyone who chooses a lower wage for moral reasons is a fool.
wow! baby nutandyahoo shows just how nuts he really is!
its just not palistinians he wants to kill anymore.
its too bad that the vast majority of israeli and
palistinians have to suffer over the neocons of israel!
I read the story and haven't stopped laughing.
I was just wondering how many other countries use religion in their state identities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_national_symbols
"force"....
(Posted by Jonathan Pollak, AlterNet at 11:40 AM on December 19, 2009.)
..."The Israeli army also recently resumed the use of 22 caliber sniper fire for dispersing demonstrations, though use of the weapon for crowd control purposes was specifically forbidden in 2001 by the Israeli army's legal arm. Following the killing of unarmed demonstrator Aqel Srour in Ni'ilin last June, Brigadier General Avichai Mandelblit, the Israeli army's Judge Advocate General, reiterated the ban on the use of .22 caliber bullets against demonstrators, to no effect. In addition to Srour, since the beginning of 2009, 28 unarmed demonstrators were injured by live ammunition sniper fire in Ni'ilin alone."
"Using special forces, jamming cell phones and banning journalists from the area is what you do when you are fighting an enemy,"
Well, that's what Israel does.
It's interesting if this actually happens. The Settlers get a taste of the hell they cause the Palestinians. Just a taste, mind you. It's not likely that Barak will call down F-16 strikes or Helicopter gunships, Hellfire Missiles or White Phosphorus firebombs on Orthodox Jews.
If this actually happens, if the Settlers are really stopped, then there will have been a real step forward. Don't hold your breath.