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Settlers Defy Peace Talks With New Construction Across West Bank
Hours before peace talks were set to begin in Washington, Jewish settlers defiantly announced plans on Thursday to launch new construction in their West Bank enclaves in a test of strength with Palestinian Islamists.
An Israeli youth wears an Israeli national flag as he takes part in a building activity in what settlers say is a response to Tuesday night's shooting attack which killed four Israelis near the West Bank Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, at the West Bank Jewish settlement Adam September 1, 2010. (REUTERS/Baz Ratner) Naftali Bennett, director of the settlers' Yesha council, said settlers would begin building homes and public structures in at least 80 settlements, breaking a partial government freeze on building that ends on September 26.
"The idea is that de facto it (the freeze) is over," Bennett said, criticizing the U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian talks as aiming for a "phony peace" and rejecting Palestinian demands for a halt to settlement building on land they want for a state.
"Once they understand Israelis are here to stay and only growing stronger day by day, they will give up," Bennett said.
The settlers, who have threatened to depose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he does not let them resume building after September 26, ended the freeze unilaterally on Wednesday, the day after gunmen killed four settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Pro-settler parties are a majority in Netanyahu's right-wing coalition and a number of cabinet ministers have already backed demands to resume settlement construction.
Earth-moving vehicles and cement mixers went to work in several settlements on Wednesday, breaking ground for homes and community centers.
Bennett said settlers had decided to double the number of building starts after news that two Israelis had been wounded in a separate West Bank shooting on Wednesday evening. The Islamist Palestinian group Hamas claimed both attacks.
"The real test between the Palestinians' radical Islam and Israel is the on-the-ground test of who is stronger and who is here to stay," Bennett said.
"Once they (Palestinians) understand Israel is here to stay and only growing stronger day by day, they will give up ..."
Many settlers oppose the two-state solution backed by the United States and see the West Bank, captured by Israel from Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967, as Israel's biblical birthright.
Settlement building is a key issue in negotiations starting in Washington later in the day between Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, their first direct talks in nearly two years.
Palestinians have demanded a complete halt to expansion of these enclaves, where about 500,000 Israelis live and which the World Court regards as illegal.
Settlers had been lobbying Netanyahu before the Hamas shootings against extending the partial building freeze in the West Bank, imposed by Netanyahu a year ago as part of the drive to resume direct talks with Abbas.
Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party told Reuters this week an extension of the settlement building freeze might make the Israeli government fall apart and lead to new elections.
But some analysts in Israel say Tuesday's West Bank attack by Hamas has put Netanyahu in a stronger position to press the Palestinians to improve security before he yields any ground on settlements.
Bennett said he hoped Netanyahu would approve construction of at least 3,000 new homes for West Bank settlers in the coming year.
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49 Comments so far
Show AllSo, immediately after Hamas's foolish attempt to torpedo the talks, come the illegal settlers to try the same - presumably since the Israeli government, for once, didn't use the provocation to call off the negotiations.
One lesson, painfully learned in Northern Ireland, is that people negotiating for peace must not let acts of violence stop the process - for that would be to hand the men of violence a veto over any hope of progress or compromise.
This is not to say that I have any faith in the current talks. I don't, primarily because I don't believe the Israelis are negotiating in good faith. If they were, then Netanyahu would have to repudiate the words and actions of the settlers as reported in this article. I can't see him doing that, since he would be political toast the moment he did so, and that would probably cause the Israeli government to fall. Mind you, in my view that would constitute progress (of a sort).
Neither side is negotiating in good faith and Hamas which is the legally elected government isn't even involved. Waste of time.
True.
"So, immediately after Hamas's foolish attempt to torpedo the talks, . . ."
I believe that the attacks on the Israeli settlers were not so much an attempt to interfere with the so-called "peace talks" as they were a statement of Hamas' contempt for a phony negotiating scenario.
Nothing that Hamas or any Palestinian group can do will deter the zionists from their campaign of ethnic cleansing.
q
I also show my contempt, not with words, but with shooting a car full of people, including a pregnant woman. Thank you for being so understanding of people like me and Hamas.
Whatever you do, don't wear white after Labor Day in front of Hamas. They will chop off your arms.
Israel's trolls have entered the building!
You should thank quickstepper for explaining to us the actions of Hamas. Indeed, what a beautiful and noble way to express contempt (as quickstepper explains so eloquently), worthy of the strongest support from any peace-loving being!
Ptips, i responded to you in another piece earlier today.
I am Jewish and had relatives who were in concentration camps, including my favorite uncle with a number on his arm, gratis Auschwitz. How about you? Do you live in Israel? If not, you are a major hypocrite, since you love it so much.
Quite frankly, i think your comments are quite nitwitted. You are no doubt being paid for these pieces of banality. And by the way, please tell your government to stop the stealing of organs from the bodies of dead Palestinian men. It doesn't help your p.r. campaign to make Israel look menschlich. But neither do your vapid posts, quite frankly.
l'Shana Tova.
I find your ramblings refreshing and informative.
The Elders of Zion pay me quite handsomely, yes. Clearly anybody who disagrees with you is part of a huge and well-funded (cuz Jews have money, ya know) Jewish conspiracy. Clearly being Jewish and having ancestors who lived through concentration camps makes you an expert on all mankind. All my sarcasm will cease from here on. I am humbled.
Love live the glorious Democratic Hamas!
No, it doesn't make me an expert on all mankind. But, it does mean you can't play that ridiculous "all Jews have money, ya know", game with me! And beyond that, i am one Jew who doesn't.
Oh, and regarding the Elders of Zion paying you quite handsomely....Take a very easy look at job sites for Israelis. If you aren't earning a little extra income here, well, that's your choice.
Oh, and i appreciate your compassionate response regarding Jews who died in concentration camps.....I can see how deeply moved you are regarding the subject.
Do they pay you from their Elders of Zion pension plan?
and BTW..Hamas is the democratically elected government of Palistine
Israel's government is not democratic, as instead of allowing representation of all inhabitants, it forces the non-jew into death camps at gunpoint.
Death camps! We finally have proof! Show us photos of these death camps. I look forward to faking horror at the suffering of others. Google maps would be good, too. Are there any mass graves?
Yes, Israel is not Democratic, at least not in the Platonic sense. Clearly they are a totalitarian regime, completely unlike Hamas, who has free and open elections on a regular basis. Would you please remind me when the next Palestinian election is. I just can't remember. I believe the last one was the one where Hamas won then justifiably slaughtered their Fatah opponents. Burn, Fatah, burn! Enjoy falling off this building after I riddled your legs with bullets! Allahakbar!
"Once they understand the Nazis are here to stay and only growing stronger day by day, the jews will give up,"
Hey, the jews just want a little "lebensraum"
since they are now acting exactly like Nazis treated them, I feel absolutely no compunction to feel any sympathy towards the dead 6 million.....They Nazis were apperantly just doing first, what the Jews would have done to the Germans if THEY had been in power.
Mujeriego, I look forward to your comments, but I think you are very wrong here. The "dead 6 million" were victims of the same kind of evil that is now turned against the Palestinians, but that doesn't mean that "the Jews would have done (it) to the Germans if THEY had been in power."
It is a cruel irony that now the descendants of the Jewish victims of the Nazis are acting like Nazis. But the Zionists in Israel are not about Judaism, they are about grabbing land and power for themselves, using the suffering of the Jews as a justification. The enormous suffering of the "dead 6 million" should never be trivialized. The lesson we should draw from that history is that we are all capable of horrifying evil, and so must have systems in place to protect people from such cruelty.
(Of course, the system we have in place, international law, has become meaningless, thanks to the U.S. refusal to abide by it, and by the U.S. support of Israel's disregard of international law. All we have left is the willingness of ordinary people to join together in solidarity with the victims of the international outlaws. Thus the international movement to Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel.)
The suffering of the Palestinians is real and ongoing, and so is the suffering of all the victims of the Nazis. The Holocaust of the Jews succeeded because the world looked away from the killing. "Never again!" will mean something only if we can stop looking away, and insist on full and equal human rights for everyone, even Palestinians, on this planet.
"Jewish victims of the Nazis are acting like Nazis"
This absurdity is getting old. What the Nazi's did to people and how they did it is a laughable comparison to anything the Israeli have done. I appreciste your attempt to bring a modicum of sanity too this circumstance.
It would also be appropriate to mention that there were another 5.5 to 6 million people that suffered the same fate that were not Jews.
The US is the only Nation that refuses to abide by "International Law"? Did you miss the Arab and Muslim refusal to abide by "International Law"? Has everyomne missed the refusal of China, North Korea, Asian countries, Europe to refuse to abide by "International Law" at various times?
I am simply trying to point out that these Nazi comparisons are absurd. That there are a few more folks involved in this mess than (one) that has been in ther wrong. Trying to designaqte Israel the bad guy and everyone else involved as victims is not a good idea.
"Trying to designaqte Israel the bad guy and everyone else involved as victims is not a good idea."
Actually, mightymite, Israel IS the "bad guy." Ethnic cleansing, apartheid, murder, torture, occupation, crimes against humanity--all of these ongoing Israeli policies and acts put Israel firmly in the "bad guy" seat. Just as the home invader is firmly in the "bad guy" seat.
The US (and Israel) are not the only countries that refuse to abide by international law. But the U.S. is the world's super-power, so when the U.S. signals to the rest of the world that might makes right, no matter what the law may be, then international law is totally undermined for all the rest of the countries.
How can there be any real peace in the middle east, when the US and the Obama administration are "100% zionists". How can Clinton sit at that table while she has done everything possible to dismantle any attempt at peace. Obama said, "he would negiotiate with our enemies", well Hamas is not an enemy of the US, they are a democratically elected government with elections supervised by an entire team including Pres. Jimmy Carter. Clinton, Ross, Rahm, Axelrod, Biden et al, are zionists? Zionism is the opposite of Judaism. Why are there so many Jews standing with Palestinans. Hamas and the arab government have signed many documents in a search for peace. All they get is bombings that destroyed Gaza, 2000 Palestinans are dead, and only 60 Israelies. Palestinans have nothing but homemade rockets (which rarely make it over the WALL, yet they are considered by the zionists in the US government as terrorists. Prior to Hamas election, they were delivering medical, schools, and other necessities the corrupt PLO refused to deliver. Abbas is not a Prime Minister of Paletine, in fact he hasnt been elected to anything, his term was over 2 years ago. When Israel bombed Gaza, the US said nothing. When they attacked a Flotilla in international waters, Clinton et all were MUM. When the killed 130 US sailors on the USS Liberty, the US government covered it up. Israel has attacked every neighbor, occupied Lebanon for 20 years, and the US stands by this apartheid, zionist state. Askenazi jews never stepped foot in Palestine...they were from Europe. Why did the US and England agree to establish the nation of Israel in the middle of the arab world? Why does the US continue to fund them $3 billion a year. It is unconsitutional for the US to deliver a dime to any nation who is building nuclear weapons. The US and the world knows it is zionist Israel who has strongarmed the middle east with threats of nuclear weapons. None of the arab nations surrounding Israel have nuclear weapons. Iraq was Israels enemy. We attacked Iraq for Israel. Now they want to build a case against Iran, and use the american blood and treasury. You can bet your life that the US and Israel will attack Iran before the 2012 elections....beginning WW3. The US and Israel will lose, China and India will win. The suffering of the Palestinans is well known to the "elites", but they turn their backs on their suffering and stand with the "elitist former communists the zionists". Want to know more....google: Bernard Freedman and see what that Jew has to say about zionism the cult.
"...and insist on full and equal human rights for everyone, even Palestinians, on this planet."
Even Palestinians. Gotta love that! Funny how the truth comes out with just one little word like "even."
Clearly the Jews have successfully carried out genocide, slaughtering millions upon millions of Palestinians in death factories. The Jews are far, far worse than the Nazis.
Wait, what?
Where would they even put the factories?
Oh, wait, and they don't wear brown shirts or speak german or adore Marlena Dietrich. There is no correlation. And. Not one shred of irony.
I think you came to the wrong website. This is the one where everyone hates Israel.
They put the factories next to the ones that make Bazooka bubblegum in Hebrew, right next to the mass graves. I hear the gum is actually made with the rendered fat of Palestinian children.
Just because they emulate the Nazi's, does not automatically make them as efficient as the Germans. Give them time.
Yes, the incompetent Jews are guilty of genocide since you think they might someday. This is true. Jews are evil. It is as if the genocide has already occurred. 60 years without genocide means nothing. We know the darkness in Jewish hearts.
Personally, I think any group of people is quite capable of genocide, given the right circumstances and having leadership willing to makes it seem "legal, moral and normal". Per pressure is a bitch.
Look at some of the horrific actions of the "christian USA", millions murdered in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, hundreds of thousand in Iraq and Afganistan....supportting nun raping death squads in Latin america. etc, etc, as nauseum.
Look at Rwanda genocide....The government openly calling for the butchering of women and children.
For anyone so say the Israel is somehow immune from this common human condition is simply racist. Israel is clearly performimng a slow, agonizing genoicide on the Palistinians with the USA's open approval, uber-nationalism under the guise of religion.
Truly it is genocide. The tremendous growth in the number of Palestinians shows just how horrible a genocide it is. Clearly the potential for evil in all of us makes the Jews genocidal. Thank you for clarifying.
The Zionists in control of Israel are not the same group of Jews who were killed by the Nazis. In fact, the Zionists who founded Israel actually prevented the escape of many Jews from the Nazi regime.
http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/resources/onlinebooks/Holocaust%20Victims%20Accuse.pdf
I strongly recommend reading this book for details on this topic.
To compare the Jews murdered by the Nazis to the Zionist regime in Israel is about the same as comparing the Quakers to the Assemblies of God.
Zionism is antithetical to traditional Judaism. Israel is a golden calf.
Look into some of the rabbinical groups who have maintained consistent opposition to the Zionist project
www.nkusa.org is a good place to start
a good quote on the matter:
"Zionism is a suicide attempt on the part of Judaism."
-- Dr. Moritz Güdemann, chief rabbi of Vienna, 1897. (Cited by Jacob A. Rubin, Partners in State Building: American Jewry and Israel; New York, 1969; p.35).
I guess all Jews are the same, whenever and wherever - any time and any place.
And this is a 'progressive' discourse......Sista Sarah , where for art thou?
It progresses towards the death of all Jews, Inshallah.
Israel and the "settlers" continue their theft of Palestinian land, and no matter how many times the Palestinians dial the international 911 number for help, the cops never come to protect them.
How long would most of us tolerate a home invasion while the police ignored our calls for help? How long before we would resort to violence against our tormentors?
Would it help if our corrupt mayor, who had insisted on staying in office even though his term ended 19 months ago and he refused to allow new elections because he would lose, decided to "negotiate" with the home invaders? (Yes, PA "president" Mahmoud Abbas's term of office ended Jan. 9, 2009, and he won't allow elections because he would lose.)
Stuart Littlewood, in the lead article on palestinechronicle.com today, reminds us that Israel's "settlements" on Palestinian land violate international law. The U.N. Security Council has told Israel many times to stop the land grabs, and to abide by the Geneva Conventions. For instance:
"(U.N.) Security Council Resolution 446 (1979) "determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace... Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories."
But the U.S. has empowered Israel to ignore international law, the slow-motion holocaust continues, and the Palestinians have nowhere to turn. Just like the Jews under the Third Reich.
It's one thing for the United States and Israel to be allies, but it's a whole other matter for the US to be supporting Israel unconditionally and giving them a blank check to continue to do whatever the hell they want in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, which were originally designated as land for the Palestinians. The United States should be firmer with Israel and insist that she pull her troops and rightwing Israeli Jewish settlers out of the occupied territories IMMEDIATELY! There's no excuse for things continuing on as they've been.
While it's true that both sides have a long, long history of arrogance, hubris, stupidity and viciousness towards each other, there's no excuse for Israel's occupation of designated Palestinian lands to continue. What the settlers are doing is inexcusably disgusting.
What moral standing does the US really have with Israel when the US is, itself, the worst offender in the world? I get the spirit of your post but the US is not the solution here, they are part - a big part - of the problem.
You're right, Reverend_Boomerang. The United States is the worst of the worst.
Perhaps the true reason Netanyahu won't negotiate with Hamas is that he knows they are tough cookies who won't let him get away with the nonsense that Abbas does
Much like religion has god and the devil, the US has terrorism/Communism/Japanese/Mexicans/blacks/women/Indians, Netanyahoo must have Hamas to blame for everything and get away with genocide and Apartheid. How else would they get away with all the evil that they do without the justification and excuse of Hamas, Hamas, Hamas?
To say that Jews are thieves is inherently anti-semitic. To deny that they are thieves is to ignore reality. Where to proceed? And before the Hasbara trolls attack me, let me say that I am a daily consumer of the wisdom of Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald. They are the exceptions that prove the rule.
I guess Noam doesn't rate? He will be deeply saddened. So will my jewish ISM friends in DC.
But your generous spirit does gush over. You must be a true Christian. They are the really charitable dudes.
Sorry for the snarkiness, but that was insulting to me, personally - As a human being.
If not for the land stealing and the brutal attacks against the Palestinians, and the deliberate attacks against neighboring Arab countries, Hamas would not be there. Bush sent bombs for the Jews to use against Hamas in south Syria, but they bombed the north instead killing innocent women and children. The massacre in Gaza was an attempt to stir up a reaction from Iran, because Israel and Bush threatened to nuke Iran and that didn't work. Now Obama placed the sanctions to please the Jews, and have been nit picking Iran's oil pipe lines to force a war. Gaza is like a concentration camp. The land is Palestine, and the Jews are the invaders.
People will grab land as long as their government allows them to. Where is the Israeli Army? Neither side is totally right; the sooner they face that, the sooner there can be a compromise. But heck, even the Americans have forgotten how to "compromise."
"Neither side is totally right; the sooner they face that, the sooner there can be a compromise."
This is true but only if you ignore that the land was arbitrarily taken from the Palestinians and given to the jews. It's been downhill ever since. As for a compromise, that would only entail one in which the Palestinians relinquish whatever little is left of their land and completely subjugate themselves to Israel.
Revo-
Really. All Jews are thieves?
And I'm sorry- you all can say whatever you want about Israel and it's evil but you can't then condone evil perpetrated against someone else. Either be for justice or shut your mouths as you are guilty for the cycle.
Free Kurdistan!!!
WTF?
Kurdistan? They are being subjugated by Arabs, not Jews. The Kurds belong under Arab thumbs, just like the Jews.
What a joke this whole thing is! If the Palestinians don't do anything, they steal their land and kill them. However, if the Palestinians do something, then, land gets stolen twice as fast and double the amount of Palestinians get killed. And it's always about Israel. It's all about Israel. First Israel, always Israel, only Israel.
One way or another, the Muslim world will do away with Israel. That "country" WILL cease to exist.
there will never be peace, never because israel will never never sign a peace agreement. this is only for show, the illegal building will continue and the palestinians will suffer as they have since their land was stolen. not until america stops coddling israel.
To Hamas, or those who are taking credit...
If I was Hamas, I would not sabotage the talks because the next crackdown even with a divided Israeli government, nobody will stop Israel from killing more Palestinians.
The only thing that will stop them is if they attack Iran.
Can't we all just get along?
Whadda ya.... Nuts?