Settlers undermining legitimacy for Israel's existence

It seems to me that Israel's support for the settlements is backfiring on them. Their greed for more land is going sink their ship. Israel you get what you sow. Your time is running out. You can't keep stealing land and expect the world to look the other way.

By Asher Susser

The representatives of the settler organizations have recently declared their intention to establish 11 new settlements in the territories, including some, according to media reports, on privately-owned Palestinian land. The operation is being depicted as having been inspired by the 11 tower and stockade communities in the northern Negev that were established just before Yom Kippur in 1946. This is not the first time the settlers have compared their efforts to the settlement activities that provided the foundation for the establishment of the state. There is no basis for such a comparison, which is nothing more than an act of forgery and fraud.

The basic difference between the two undertakings is that the settlement project that preceded Israel's establishment was intended to create the territorial basis for the future Jewish state. It wasn't intended to deprive the Arabs of everything that was left or, for that matter, their right to a state of their own alongside the Jewish state.

The 11 settlements in the northern Negev, meanwhile, were meant to ensure the inclusion of the Negev in the Jewish state upon the expected partition of the Land of Israel into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

The current settlement campaign, on the other hand, like the unnecessary construction in East Jerusalem, is not designed to ensure the existence of the state of the Jews, but rather to deprive the Arabs of their state in the West Bank and their capital in Arab Jerusalem. That is precisely the difference between the just Zionism of self-defense and aggressive Zionism, which is totally dismissive of the Arabs and their human rights.

According to the settlers, the Jews have the right "to settle everywhere," and the Jews of course also have needs created by "natural growth." In their opinion, do the Arabs also have the right to settle everywhere, or is any construction by Arabs illegal for one reason or another? And don't the Arabs have "natural growth"?

In the eyes of the settlers, the term "illegal" only applies to Arabs, not to the settlers' construction, because the source of their inspiration is divine and beyond the democratic context. According to this approach, the law only exists as a tool of the state, as the settlers' subcontractor, to deprive the Arabs of what little is theirs.

Such an approach of "me and me alone" should outrage every reasonable person, and as a result a large and important part of the Israeli Jewish public believes that this line of thinking is intolerable. And it is not just them. The Obama administration knows that Israel can be attacked over the settlement issue because American Jewry, too, will not come to Israel's defense on the matter. If that is the situation, why should we complain about the goyim who view the settlements as an act of outrageous injustice?

Through their actions, the settlers not only undermine the legitimacy of settlement in the territories, they also undermine international legitimacy for the very existence of the State of Israel. The grave results are in plain view. Zionism's just cause and existential interests are grounded in the equality and mutuality of partition.

David Ben-Gurion understood this even during the Arab Revolt more than 70 years ago, as did the international community in its support of partition in 1947. It also reflects the international consensus today.

It is patently apparent that, beyond the issue of basic justice, dividing the land is also in the clear interest of Zionism and anyone who wants to maintain the State of Israel as the state of the Jews. In the arrogance of their position, which tramples on the rights of others, the settlers are compromising the foundations of the justice of the Zionist enterprise, and acting against the State of Israel's existential interests. By making the Land of Israel the supreme value over and above the State of Israel, they are joining, in a bizarre way, their left-wing post-Zionist "brothers," who also propose a single state that will succeed the state of the Jews.

The writer teaches Middle East history at Tel Aviv University.

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In 2 West Bank outposts, hints of compromise

Ultra-Orthodox Jews resist settler tag, say they aren’t determined to stay

MODIIN ILLIT, West Bank - Seen from afar, this fast-growing settlement embodies everything that the Obama administration wants to address through its demand for a freeze on settlement building: it sits on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and, with 45,000 residents and 60 births a week, it is the largest and fastest-growing Jewish community in the West Bank.

If, as is widely believed abroad, “natural growth” by Israeli settlers is blocking the creation of a viable Palestinian state, this community should show why.

But appearances are deceiving. Modiin Illit and its sister community, Beitar Illit, are entirely ultra-Orthodox, a world apart, one of strict religious observance and study. They offer surprising potential for compromise.

Unlike settlers who believe they are continuing the historic Zionist mission of reclaiming the Jewish homeland, most ultra-Orthodox do not consider themselves settlers or Zionists and express no commitment to being in the West Bank, so their growth in these settlement towns, situated just inside the pre-1967 boundary, could be redirected westward to within Israel.

Their location also means it may be possible, in negotiations about a future Palestinian state, to redraw the boundary so the settlements are inside Israel, with little land lost to the Palestinians. And the two towns alone account for half of all settler growth, so if removed from the equation, the larger settler challenge takes on more manageable proportions.

“If I thought this was a settlement, I would never have come here,” said Yaakov Guterman, 40, the mayor of Modiin Illit and a grandfather of three, his Orthodox fringes hanging from his belt, his side locks curled behind his ears. Asked about the prospect of a Palestinian state rising one day on his town line, he said: “We will go along with what the world wants. We have gone through the Holocaust and know what it means to have the world against us. The Torah says a man needs to know his place.”

Whether or not Mr. Guterman will be as pliant as he says, Middle East peace negotiators on all sides — Israeli, Palestinian and American — have long viewed small border adjustments and land swaps as key to a deal that would include a solution to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who have settled in the West Bank over the past four decades.

This week, three senior American officials will be in Jerusalem for talks that will include settlements: the Middle East envoy, George J. Mitchell; the White House Middle East adviser, Dennis Ross; and the national security adviser, Gen. James Jones. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates will also be in talks in Jerusalem.

Break with settler movement

The ultra-Orthodox inhabitants often express contempt for the settler movement, with its vows never to move. The people here, who shun most aspects of modernity, came for three reasons: they needed affordable housing no longer available in and around Jerusalem or Tel Aviv; they were rejected by other Israeli cities as too cult-like; and officials wanted their presence to broaden Israel’s narrow border.

Yet they are lumped with everyone else. The settler movement and the Israeli government point to ultra-Orthodox settlements, with their large and ever-increasing families, to argue that there is no way to stop “natural growth” without imposing acute human suffering. Those seeking a freeze use the settlements as evidence that growth is so out of control that drastic action must be taken. More broadly, opponents say the settlements violate international law, legitimize force by armed messianic Jews and ruin the chance of establishing a viable Palestinian state.

But even those who strongly favor a complete freeze acknowledge that the annual settler growth rates of 5 and 6 percent owe a great deal to these two towns that have little to do with the broader settler enterprise.

Dror Etkes of Yesh Din, an antisettlement group in Israel, noted that half of all construction in West Bank settlements was taking place in these two ultra-Orthodox communities, adding that given their location next to the boundary, it was highly likely they would be in Israel in a future deal through a redrawn border. “From a purely geographic point of view, construction there is not as destructive as elsewhere,” he said.

But he does not want building to continue in Modiin Illit or Beitar Illit without a deal for a Palestinian state, nor does he mean to imply that these settlements have been a benign force. “Land has been taken from Palestinians, in some cases from private landowners, for the building in these settlements, and there are many other issues like sewage flow into Palestinian villages that must be addressed,” Mr. Etkes said.

Settler leaders reject any distinction. The fact that the ultra-Orthodox came to the West Bank to solve their housing problems is “completely O.K. with me,” said Dani Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council, the settlers’ political umbrella group. “They are an integral part of our endeavor and our achievement.”

CONTINUED : The Palestinian view

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Lebanon army raises alert along border with Israel

The official Lebanese news agency reported on Tuesday that the Lebanese army had declared a state of high alert and deployed forces along the border with Israel.

According to the report, the high alert was declared in response to the advancing of Israeli tanks in the Shaba farms area. Reportedly, four Israeli tanks had advanced toward an area called Hassan Kasar, where there is an entrance gate to Lebanon.

The news agency said that the Lebanese army deployed its forces in order to "be prepared to face the Israeli enemy."

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) also responded to the moves and raised its alert level in the area while monitoring the situation from both sides, the news agency said.

Furthermore, the news agency went on to report, six Israeli aircraft had entered Lebanese airspace and circled the area.

The Hezbollah-linked television network Al Manar reported meanwhile that the commander of the UNIFIL forces, Claudio Graziano, met on Monday with southern Lebanese community leaders and two parliament members affiliated with Hezbollah and the Shi'ite Amal movement.

According to the report, the meeting was convened in order to voice criticism over UNIFIL's conduct following an explosion at an arms cache near the border earlier this month. Israel has argued that the explosion was caused by "an arms cache that consisted of Hezbollah arms, including rockets, mortars, artillery shells, grenades, and additional ammunition which had been brought to the area following the Second Lebanon War." Lebanon, on the other hand, now says that the explosion took place at an uncompleted structure in the village that stored "arms left behind by the Israelis" during the 34-day war.

During the meeting, Al Manar went on to say, Hezbollah representatives warned the UNIFIL commander that southern Lebanon was under the sole authority of the Lebanese army and the Lebanese government, not UNIFIL. The criticism comes after UNIFIL complained that the Lebanese army blocked its troops from the site of the explosion following the incident.

The report also said that upon the conclusion of the meeting, those in attendance met with local residents in effort to restore the good relations between UNIFIL and the locals in southern Lebanon.

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IDF stands aside as settlers build new outpost

And we keep giving money to Israel for this? Stop all monetary funds until all settlements and outposts are removed. It is time to put sanctions on Israel if they cannot follow internationl law. How can they even call themselves a democracy.

Some 200 people, mostly children, arrived near the West Bank town of Tul Karm yesterday to establish a new illegal outpost. The IDF did not stop them or interfere.

The outpost, Tzur Ya, is one of 11 set up yesterday and the day before by the militant Youth for Israel movement.

The movement was formed after the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, due to the youngsters' disappointment in what they viewed as an overly compromising stance taken by the settlers' leadership. The movement's members will inhabit and maintain the new outposts in the territories.

Some 40 teenage girls spent a three-day outing in the illegal West Bank outpost of Ramat Migron last week, as "spiritual preparation" for the "relentless battle on the right to settle the Land of Israel," according to the organizers.

"We've had girls here from Tel Aviv and Haifa, aged 13-18," says Shlomit Amitai, 16, a resident of Ramat Migron and a member of Youth for Israel, which hosted the girls.

"They built the place they slept in themselves and cultivated the land in preparation for living in an outpost. I'm sure every girl who stayed here will come to spend the Sabbath, and then after a few Sabbaths they'll join a group and set up their own outpost," she says.

Ramat Migron was set up so that if the settlers' leadership council agrees to evacuate the nearby illegal Migron outpost, Jewish settlers would remain on the mountain.

Several single youngsters and one couple inhabit the Ramat Migron outpost, which consists of a girls hut, a boys hut and a kitchen in between. The huts, which have been dismantled more than once by security forces, have no electric power or running water.

At the end of their sojourn at Ramat Migron, the girls were hoping to meet Daniella Weiss, the spiritual leader of the West Bank's new outposts. Weiss bailed at the last minute, but the girls, feasting on cake and sweet drinks on the floor, summed up their stay with satisfaction and promised to spend the Sabbath there soon. Some are thinking of joining a group planning to set up another outpost.

"I don't know if I personally would live in an outpost, but it contributes to the entire people of Israel that the land is being settled," says a 16-year-old girl from Tel Aviv. "For me it was fun to be in the open space."

In their final group discussion the girls heard a proverb from The Zohar - a book widely seen as the most important work on Jewish mysticism - likening the Land of Israel to a mother, who weeps when her children leave her and go into exile.

"What we do is like bandaging a mother's wounds," Amitai says, explaining the proverb's meaning. "This empty earth is a wound that must be bandaged with a settlement."

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'Obama is a racist,' settler rabbi tells protestors in Jerusalem

This my dear Americans is what our tax- dollars are being used for. These people don't care about no-one but themselves and feel that they are superior over the rest of us. They will keep on stealing land from the Palestinians and Israel is helping them do it by giving them the money and turning their backs when the settlers burn crops and even shoot the Palestinians without getting any jail time whatsoever.

The Yesha Council of settlements organized a demonstration in which some 1,500 rightists gathered near the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday to protest the Obama administration's demand for a total freeze on Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank.

Among the speakers at the demonstration was Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, the head of the Nir yeshiva in the settlement of Kiryat Arba. "Obama is a racist," Waldman told the assembled crowd. "If he continues with his actions, he will bring about the disintegration of the American superpower."

The speeches were accompanied by jeers from the protesters at every mention of U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who is currently in the region in a bid to reach a deal on settlement construction.

Right-wing demonstrators are planning a large-scale settlement operation next week - hundreds of youngsters will set up 11 new West Bank outposts, to commemorate the 1946 operation when 11 new settlements were set up overnight in the northern Negev, during the British Mandate.

The move coincides with the arrival of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is expected to discuss the evacuation of illegal outposts in the West Bank.

The groups organizing the move include Youth for the Land of Israel and the Land of Israel Faithful, and are associated with settler leaders Rabbi Moshe Levinger, Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf of Hebron, and Daniela Weiss.

They are planning to erect outposts called Havat Haro'im in the southern Hebron hills; Maalot Hebron, between Kiryat Arba and Hebron; Gat Yosef, near Nablus; Mitzpeh Avihai; Sela; Oz Yehonatan; Givat Egoz; Inbalim, next to Michmesh; Tsur-Ya, next to Avnei Hefetz; and Netzer, near Efrat, which was evacuated several times over the past few years.

In addition, a large group is planning to rebuild the Nofei Yarden outpost, which was cleared out last week.

The activists have been planning the operation for three months, and expect hundreds of youngsters help settle the land and thousands of others to show support. Over the weekend, 20,000 pamphlets describing the operation and its ideology were distributed in synagogues.

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Obama envoy: Peace process will bring Arab-Israeli normalization

U.S. Mideast Envoy George Mitchell
Reuters

President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy said Monday that Washington is not asking any Arab country to immediately achieve full normalization with Israel, but that this will come during the peace process.

George Mitchell said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that this normalization will come further down the road in the process.

Mitchell said he plans to meet many Arab leaders to encourage them to take genuine steps toward normalization of ties with Israel. He also asked Palestinians to refrain from words or actions that might make meaningful and productive negotiations impossible.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa said after meeting with Mitchell the Arabs will not take any step of normalization as a sacrifice for Israel.

"There will be no Arab steps before Israel stops its policy of settlement building," he said.

Mitchell arrived in Israel Sunday and met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak as part of an ongoing effort to reach an agreement on construction in the settlements. The two are reportedly close to a deal in which Washington would allow a limited number of projects in advanced stages of construction to be completed, but Israel would freeze all other building for an as-yet undetermined period of time.

At a brief press conference after their meeting, Mitchell insisted that the dispute over settlement construction was a "discussion among friends," not a quarrel. Barak vowed that Israel would do everything in its power to advance a regional peace agreement, but without sacrificing its "vital interests."

Sources well-versed in the talks told Haaretz that no agreement will be signed during this visit, but the gaps have narrowed significantly. They said that Israel, which initially opposed Washington's demands, has softened its stance considerably, while the Americans are also making efforts to bridge the gaps.

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Israel prepares 'defense brief' ahead of UN Gaza reports

"Eviatar Manor met with the Human Rights Commissioner in Geneva and told her the report "had no basis in reality" and that it was written by Arab UN personnel based on Palestinian newspaper reports. "

What The Hell is that supposed to mean? Arabs are not as good as anybody else. What planet does these idiots in Israel come from.

A group of legal experts from the Foreign Ministry is writing a defense brief for the government in advance of two harsh reports on Operation Cast Lead expected to be released soon.

The ministry's defense brief is expected to be finished in a week or two, ahead of two United Nations reports that are expected to be highly critical of the extent of civilian injuries in the Gaza Strip during the operation.

A draft of the two reports is expected to be given to Israel around the end of August, before they are officially presented to the Human Rights Council in mid-September.

Sources in Israel believe that the release of the UN reports could lead to legal action against Israel in one of the two international courts in The Hague.

The first of the two reports, considered the harshest critique since the war, is being compiled by an investigative committee chaired by Judge Richard Goldstone, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The second report is under preparation by the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Legal experts in the Foreign Ministry told the special ministerial committee following suits against Israeli public figures abroad and various reports on Operation Cast Lead that they believe the release of the two UN reports could lead to legal proceedings against Israel or individual Israeli public figures in the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

A government source in Jerusalem said the Foreign Ministry's legal department has been at work on the document, which will contain the "Israeli narrative" of the operation, together with the international department of the Justice Ministry and members of the international law department of the Military Advocate General. The work is proceeding discretely due to the sensitivity of the subject.

The source said the document would be extensive and include the "whole story" from the Israeli perspective: the reasons for the operation, the security situation in the south after disengagement, the phases of the operation, the government's decisions and the orders given to the army. The document will also include legal aspects and legal opinions on the actions taken by the forces and details of the various actions taken.

"The road to international courts is very short from the point we are at right now," the government source said.

The Goldstone report, with which Israel is not cooperating, is expected to be the harsher of the two.

Israel argues that the mandate of the UN probe is one-sided against Israel, and therefore any cooperation by Israel would legitimize its conclusions and recommendations.

The hearings the committee held last month in Geneva became a platform for accusations against Israel of "war crimes" in the Gaza Strip. Most of the witnesses were Palestinians; however, Noam Shalit, the father of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, was among the few Israelis who testified and who were reportedly treated disparagingly.

Israel has cooperated with the second report, that of the Commission on Human Rights. Last week the Foreign Ministry deputy director for international organizations, Eviatar Manor, met with the Human Rights Commissioner in Geneva and told her the report "had no basis in reality" and that it was written by Arab UN personnel based on Palestinian newspaper reports.

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Zvi Bar'el / Painting Obama as an enemy will hurt Israel badly

In light of the public brawling between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, we can expect to start seeing graffiti saying things like "America, get out," "Obama is an Arab" and "Neither a broker nor honest."

In the new Israeli debate, America is slowly beginning to be perceived as an enemy - and the dispute is going personal: Our prime minister versus their president. Yesterday, he simply demanded that Israel adopt the two-state solution, then called for a freeze on construction in the settlements (without agreeing to settle for "only" the completion of projects already underway), and now he wants to divide Jerusalem. Not Netanyahu - Obama.

The tension already prodded U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into making a hasty declaration that the United States is placing similar pressure on the Arabs. Washington, too, it would seem, has been infected by the terror of the Israeli right, which seeks to portray it as a pro-Arab, Muslim-loving, aggressive intruder jeopardizing the Zionist enterprise in the territories. And how can we continue to believe the American promise to guarantee Israel's security when every day new headlines trumpet yet another dispute between the White House and Jerusalem?

To back up its claims, the right points to a long list of U.S. foreign-policy failures: the desire to open a channel of dialogue with Iran; the lifting of the boycott on Syria; the willingness to permit Hamas to take part in the peace process, albeit with restrictions; and, of course, the pressure on Israel regarding the settlements and Jerusalem. The right is using this distorted balance sheet, in which Israel is purportedly being asked to give "everything" and the Arabs "nothing," to present the Israeli public with a paradigm in which being "for Obama" means being anti-Zionist, and being against the settlements means being for Obama. A vicious circle in which images replace facts and slogans stand in for policy.

The equation should be familiar to Israelis. Before January it was the sole province of the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular. They were the ones who viewed America as the enemy, and former president George W. Bush as a representative of right-wing Zionism. They were the ones who claimed the United States demanded "everything" from them and "nothing" from Israel. As such, being a Palestinian nationalist meant being first of all anti-American.

Since the roles are now reversed and the Palestinians see Obama as their savior, the Israeli right is rushing in to adopt the Palestinian equation. The right doesn't have to persuade the public to support the settlements or the eternal unity of Jerusalem; in fact it no longer has to sell any ideology at all. It's enough to paint Obama as an enemy, or at least as a suspicious object, to create the holy hostile unity. The task is a relatively easy one, especially vis-a-vis the U.S. administration, which is no longer willing to use vague expressions to achieve foreign policy goals.

But the implications of this anti-Americanism are much more dire than the dismantling of a settlement, or even than serious damage to the peace process. It could put Israel in the same pit as the tiny number of states that have sought to oppose the United States.

The remedy lies in reviewing the facts. Obama did not invent a new American policy. The United States has long held that the settlements are illegal; the same is true for the status of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The Americans are sticking to the same road map drawn up seven years ago, it's just that Israel apparently didn't notice that the Palestinians have fulfilled the first article in the document almost completely. Military action against Israel has stopped, even from the Gaza Strip, and an increasingly effective Palestinian force in the West Bank is taking action against terror organizations. Israel, in contrast, has not met its road map obligations and continues to argue over the terms of the agreement - as if it never adopted it. Nor can Israel rely on its demand that the Arab states normalize relations with Jerusalem: The obligation of normalization is conditioned on Israel's withdrawal from all occupied territory.

There is one thing, however, that the United States has changed: its diplomatic behavior, and its tone. But it is truly difficult to complain about someone no longer willing to stand for the verbal contortions and the lies that Israel has been feeding Washington.

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Paralysed girl's story reflects Gaza's plight

Samar has lost the use of her legs but has shown remarkable spirit

Four-year-old Samar Abed Rabbu lost her two sisters during Israel's offensive in Gaza last December and January.

The BBC's Christian Fraser has been following the plight of Samar and her family - now divided across two continents, as Samar receives treatment in Belgium with her mother.


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Throughout these months of gruelling therapy Belgian doctors say Samar Abed Rabbu has demonstrated remarkable courage.

She is desperate to walk again - she even simulates it on the bed with her fingers - but there is nothing the Belgian doctors can do to repair Samar's broken back.

"She has had two operations so far," said physiotherapist Pierre Van Lierde. "One in Gaza and one here in Brussels. But the bullets are lodged too deeply. It's too dangerous to remove them and at least one of them is embedded in her spinal cord."

I first met Samar in January in a hospital in Egypt. She had been evacuated from Gaza for emergency surgery, just one of scores of children who were injured as the Israelis searched out their Hamas targets.

Shocking

But there was something particularly shocking about this story.

The family alleged that Israeli soldiers had opened fire at close range - as they lined up outside the house and while Samar's grandmother waved a white flag.

When the war ended we travelled to Jabaliya, northern Gaza, to find Samar's father. He told us that Samar's two sisters - Soad, 7, and Amel, 2 - had been killed in the assault. We brought him news that his only surviving daughter was now paralysed.

Today, after months of treatment - paid for by the Belgian government - Samar is at least upright and learning to balance.

She must wear a plastic brace to correct the position of her spine.

Every day she undergoes intensive physiotherapy to move her legs and to build the strength in her upper body. On the day we visited her custom-built wheelchair had just been delivered.

Home in ruins

But these are all things that will all need to be replaced as she grows - and the question is how this family will cope when Samar is eventually sent back to Gaza.

The neighbourhood of Jabaliya looks exactly as it did when I was last there just over six months ago.

With the Israeli blockade still in place there is no concrete or steel to rebuild it. At the moment there is precious little to come back to.

In Gaza there is still no sign of the aid that was promised by the outside world.

In Jabaliya people are so desperate to salvage some respectability that they spend their days scavenging for broken bricks and metal, which they drag away on donkey-drawn carts.

In place of his home, Samar's father Khaled has been given a prefabricated hut - which feels like a sauna in Gaza's summer heat. It is without any running water or electricity.

"I miss my daughter terribly," he said. "I am desperate to see her again. But I don't want her to come back here - not to this. What can I offer her? She is much better where she is."

Khaled spends what little money he has on phone calls to Brussels.

Samar sings to him down the line.

So imagine the emotion as he had the chance to see her face in the pictures we had brought from Brussels.

The entire family gathered around as we showed Khaled the film - including Samar's young brother.

"It's been tough for all of us," said Khaled. "The family has been split for almost seven months - and we are still coping with the trauma and the grief. This little boy needs his mum."

Israeli denial

The Israeli Defence Force has told the BBC that their inquiry into the family's allegations had found no evidence of such an incident. They stressed they have never targeted innocent civilians.

But the morals and behaviour of the army have been called into question by a number of serving soldiers who took part in the Gaza offensive - although the military has dismissed their testimonies as based on hearsay.

Back in Belgium, Samar's mother Kawtar says she wants to stay in Europe, even though the family has been split.

"I want Samar to get better," she says. "I am just hoping that she won't stay like this.

"The doctors say she is very smart and she performs well. I don't want to take her to Gaza because I don't want her to lose her mind like she lost her legs."

In the orderly surroundings of a Belgian hospital Samar has all the attention she needs. But it is tough enough dealing with a disability like this, never mind coping with it, amid the chaos and destruction of Gaza.

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Israel giving key Jerusalem site to settlers

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel has handed control over much of a key Palestinian area in annexed East Jerusalem to hardline settler groups in a creeping takeover kept away from public scrutiny, a report by an activist group said on Thursday.

Government bodies have transferred both private Palestinian property and national parks in the Silwan neighbourhood outside the walls of the Old City to the settler organisation Elad, said Ir Amim, a non-profit group specialising in Jerusalem issues.

"It was done in the dark, in flagrant violation of the rules of good government and in some cases in violation of the law, without open and official decisions by the government or Knesset and without public discussion, inquiry or scrutiny," said the report entitled "Shady Dealings in Silwan". Elad is dedicated to expanding Jewish ownership in Arab areas of East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognised by the international community.

In Silwan, Elad has acted as an arm of the government for the past 20 years to gain control over a quarter of the land along its main thoroughfare, Wadi Hilweh or City of David.

"Silwan is a keystone to a sweeping and systematic process whose aim is to gain control of the Palestinian territories that surround the Old City, to cut the Old City off from the urban fabric of East Jerusalem and to connect it to Jewish settlement blocs" in the northeast, it said.

Elad's impact in Silwan is hard to miss - dominating the city's poorest neighbourhood is a gleaming new visitors' centre and the Walls of Jerusalem national park, an archaeological exhibition.

In theory, the park is owned by the government, but the operator is Elad.

"The site is technically run by the Nature and Parks Authority but all the tour guides are actually Elad people," says Ir Amim activist Orly Noy.

"People arrive here thinking they are at a regular government-run tourist site. What they are actually hearing is the settlers' agenda." The Parks Authority entrusted the running of the site to Elad in 1997 in what the report said was an opaque transaction instead of an open tender as required by law.

When the National Antiquities Authority discovered that important archaeological remains had been transferred to settlers, it objected and in 1999 the move was overturned in the high court.

But despite this verdict, the Parks Authority in 2002 handed control of the area back to Elad.

Elad wants to turn the Arab neighbourhood, where it says the palace of the biblical King David once stood, a claim disputed by most archaeologists, into a new Jewish heartland.

Such a move could spark violence, as Silwan's location makes it a potential tinderbox in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It lies outside the walls of Al Haram Al Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is Judaism's holiest and Islam's third-holiest site and where a change in the status quo could provoke conflict.

"It's like giving matches to pyromaniacs," says Noy.

Elad's hold on Silwan extends far beyond the walls of the park, with white and blue Israeli flags fluttering over several homes once owned by Palestinians.

Some properties were simply sold to Jewish groups. But the report said others were often acquired by dubious means, including using forged documents.

Elad was founded and run by David Be'eri, a former deputy commander of an elite special forces unit in the Israeli army.

With Elad, he runs a ring of agents, including local Palestinians and at least one police officer, to scout opportunities to buy Arab houses, probing for weak points such as disputes between neighbours or debts.

Since the late 1980s Be'eri has worked with the Jewish National Fund (JNF) - a quasi-governmental body that buys and develops land for Jewish settlement - to evict Palestinians in Silwan, the report said.

Under an unwritten pact, Elad would agree to cover compensation for Silwan families which the JNF would then evict and then allow Elad to lease the homes to settlers at token cost, it said.

Elad has not moved settlers into all the houses it has bought for fear of sparking violence, the report said.

"If they moved in you would see blue and white all across Silwan," Noy said.

Elad representatives declined to comment on the report.

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Israeli soldiers reveal Gaza war crimes

By Dee Knight
Published Jul 23, 2009 8:16 PM

A new publication by the group Breaking the Silence was announced on July 15. The group is composed of veteran Israeli soldiers who “demand accountability regarding Israel’s military actions in the Occupied territories perpetrated by us and in our name.”

Interviews and testimony by 30 Israeli soldiers regarding their experiences in “Operation Cast Lead” confirm that war crimes were specific policy in last winter’s Gaza massacre. The testimony, gathered in soldier-to-soldier interviews, began to surface in Israel shortly after the end of the December-January war.

Israel’s leading newspaper Haaretz reported on March 20, “The soldiers describe the killing of innocent civilians, pointless destruction, expulsions of families from homes seized as temporary outposts, disregard for human life and a tendency toward brutalization.”

London’s Guardian reported March 22 that the testimony “suggests widespread abuses stemming from orders originating with the Israeli military chain of command.” It adds that soldiers said they were “specifically warned by officers not to discuss what they had seen and done in Gaza.”

Soldier describes killings, destruction

The following are excerpts from that testimony: “What shocked me was a talk we had with ... a colonel. Usually in such talks the commanders mention the lives of civilians and showing consideration to civilians. He didn’t even mention this. Just ‘go in there brutally.’ He said, ‘In case of any doubt, take down houses. You don’t need confirmation for anything.’

“The instruction was explicit–if you’re not sure, kill. The minute we got to our starting line, we simply began to fire at suspect places. ... You see a house, a window, shoot at the window. You don’t see a terrorist there? Fire at the window. It was real urban warfare. ... In urban warfare, anyone is your enemy. No innocents.

“From the onset, the brigade commander and other officers made it very clear to us that ... if you see any signs of movement at all, you shoot. No consideration of civilians was to be taken.”

“The Battalion Commander said, ‘Don’t let morality become an issue. That will come up later. ... It’s not that you’re out to carry out a massacre, but ...’ this was the restraint to everything he had said before, and in between his own jokes. Like, ‘We have an Arabic-speaking grenade launcher and a heavy machine-gun that speaks Arabic.’

“Our objective was to demolish houses. ... Houses were demolished everywhere. You see clearly that these houses had been fired at with tremendous power. We didn’t see a single house that remained intact. ... The entire infrastructure, tracks, fields, roads–was in total ruin. ... Nothing much was left in our designated area. ... A totally destroyed city.

“This was fire-power such as I had never known. There were blasts all the time. The earth was constantly shaking. Explosions were heard all day long, the night was filled with flashes, an intensity we had never experienced before. ... The air force bombed all the time. ...”

White phosphorous ‘fun’?

“Most of the mosques were demolished. That brigade commander I mentioned explicitly told us we should not hesitate to target mosques. Nothing is immune, nothing and no area. He explicitly mentioned mosques.

“Our battalion mortars were also using phosphorus. I know of an officer’s tank that fired phosphorus, too. The company commander gives the mortar platoon commander a target and orders him to fire. ... They define targets . ... Sometimes you’d hear on radio ‘Permitted, phosphorus in the air.’ That’s it.”

An interviewer asked the soldier: “Why fire phosphorus?”

“Because it’s fun. Cool. ... I don’t know what it’s used for. I was just talking about this yesterday. I don’t understand what it’s even doing in our supplies if we’re not supposed to use such ammo. It’s ridiculous. In training you learn that white phosphorus is not used, and you’re taught that it’s not humane. You watch films and see what it does to people who are hit, and you say, ‘There, we’re doing it too.’ That’s not what I expected to see.”

The full testimony is available at BreakingtheSilence.org.il.


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Israeli Arabs struggle for land

An Israeli government commission found many Israeli-Arab towns are effectively blocked from expanding

After Israel's housing minister called on Jews to move to the north of the country to stop what he described as "the spread of Arabs" there, the BBC's Katya Adler reports on the struggle for land in the area.

Sami Salameh has taken me to what used to be his home before the Israeli authorities flattened it.

Metal rods and slices of skirting board are all that's left, among an expanse of sun-scorched wild grass.

He has brought along some photographs and kicks the earth as he shows them to me. The wiry 65-year-old man is angry and emotional.

"When the house collapsed so did my dreams," he says.

He insists this plot of earth belonged to his family dating back to Ottoman times. But Israel has claimed it as state land. He is not allowed to build here now.

Mr Salameh's new home is in the Arab town of Majdal Krum, in northern Israel. It's illegally built, as is the whole neighbourhood.

His family of 14 lives in three rooms. The sewage system is poor.

Mr Salameh's wife, Ashi, tells me the atmosphere in the house is listless and depressed.

He blames their birthright - living as Arabs in the Jewish state of Israel, he says.

"I lost everything when they demolished my house. If I had equal rights, I wouldn't be in this mess. Jewish communities get building permits easily. They have electricity, water, sewage, street lights and parks. How come they live like that and we don't?"

Just outside Mr Salameh's home, a group of boys plays football in the street. Their identity, like his, is complex.

They are Israeli but also Arab. Their families stayed put in Israel after its war of independence 60 years ago.

Israel's Basic Law says all its citizens are equal, but Israeli Arabs say some Israelis are more equal than others.

Neighbouring the town is the leafy, affluent, self-proclaimed Zionist village of Manof.

It is one of the growing predominantly Jewish communities encouraged in the north by Israeli governments since the late 1970s.

'No discrimination'

Northern Israel is home to the highest concentration of Israeli Arabs.

They complain they are being squeezed. Intentionally.

But Ron Shani, the head of the Regional Council, insists there is no discrimination here.

"Zionism is not racism. Not for me. Not for most people who live in Israel. Northern Israel is Arab, it's Jewish, it's Druze. We have to value and admire each other.

"We have a few Bedouin villages in my council. And it's not true that Israeli Arabs are barred from our Zionist Jewish villages - as long as they understand and accept this is a village under the Jewish Israeli ethos.

"Of course I came to live in the north with Zionist ideals in mind but Misgav villages were formed on government-owned land. No confiscation was done from Arab-owned land."

But a lot of Arab land was turned into Israeli state property in the years following Israel's independence.

The majority of Arab land expropriated was labelled "deserted property" by Israel's authorities before its acquisition by the state.

Towns 'restricted'

Hanan Swaid is an Israeli-Arab member of Israel's parliament, the Knesset.

He takes me to a vantage point overlooking the Israeli-Arab town of Sakhnin.

He points out the problems Israeli Arabs face - overcrowding, poverty and the ways, he says, Israel's authorities strangle Arab towns, restricting construction, progress and growth.

"You can see surrounding Sakhnin this military base - which of course prevents Sakhnin and the people from using these lands which they used to own," he says.

"You can see there are only tens of metres between the houses of Sakhnin and the industrial zone.

"Of course all the benefits of this industrial zone go to Misgav - which is the Jewish regional council."

An Israeli government commission came to the same conclusions.

The Orr Commission published a report on the status of Israeli Arabs in 2003.

It says Israel has effectively blocked the expansion of its Israeli Arab towns by surrounding them with highways, nature reserves, Jewish councils, military zones or other entities.

'Cultural, not political'

The Israeli-Arab population has roughly increased sevenfold since Israel's independence.

Bearing in mind loss of land and building restrictions, human rights groups say the land available to Israeli Arabs has actually shrunk over the years.

The Orr Commission concluded that "[the Israeli] government's handling of the Arab sector has been primarily neglectful and discriminatory".

Hanan Swaid says it is not that the rights of Israeli Arabs are ignored, but they are given low priority.

"Israel is Jewish and democratic in theory but on the ground the two things don't mix.

"The definition of Israel as a Jewish state leads to giving the best to Jewish citizens. We Arabs are therefore discriminated against."

In Jerusalem I put the complaints and concerns of Israeli Arabs to Israel's Housing Minister Ariel Atias.

He dismissed them. He has caused quite a storm here, suggesting what he called the "spread of the Arabs" in northern Israel should be curbed and urging Jews and Arabs in Israel to live separately.

"We believe that the land of Israel was given to us Jews by the Lord. Eighty percent of Israelis are Jewish," he says.

"Having said that, there are citizens of Israel who are Arab. We want them to identify with the goals of the state of Israel. We don't intend to put them in ghettos, or limit their growth, they receive all the rights.

"They work for us, with us in factories, in all the restaurants. But each one wants to live with his own culture. It's not that, God forbid, we have anything against Muslims. We want to prevent friction. You may not like what I'm saying, but it's cultural. Not political."

One in five Israelis is Arab.

But academic studies, such as those completed by Oren Yiftachel, a professor at Israel's Ben Gurion University, suggest this 20% of Israel's population lives on around 3% of Israel's lands.

Living separately is one thing, but Israeli Arabs say no new Arab town has been built for them since 1948, when the state of Israel was created.

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Israel to use Hitler shot for PR

(Israel seems to have a selective memory. Avraham ("Yair") Stern tried all he could to make contact with Hitler in order to fight with the Nazis against England. It seems to me that they had better clean up their act first before trying to convince the world that only Palestinians was fighting or wanting to fight on the Nazis side. This propaganda that they are putting out dosen't fly with me or I am sure with many others in the world. You can also click here for a post that I had earlier about this subject.)

Israeli embassies are being instructed to use for public relations purposes an infamous photograph of Adolf Hitler meeting a top Palestinian cleric.

Far-right Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has personally requested that the photo be sent to missions around the world, a senior official said.

The 1941 shot shows the Nazi leader meeting the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

The US is pressuring Israel to end a Jewish building project at a hotel once owned by the cleric, Amin al-Husseini.

AFP news agency quoted an Israeli official as saying the move by Mr Lieberman was linked to the row over the Shepherd Hotel.

"It is important that the world know the facts," a spokesperson for Mr Lieberman told the BBC, without giving further detail.

Haj Amin al-Husseini was a Palestinian nationalist leader who led violent campaigns against Jewish immigrants and the British authorities in what was then British-ruled Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s.

He fled the territory in 1937, but continued his campaign to oppose British plans to set up a Jewish State in Palestine, allying himself with the Nazis during World War II. He died in Lebanon in 1974.

The meeting with Hitler took place in November 1941 in Berlin, during which Husseini asked Hitler unsuccessfully to back Arab independence and publicly oppose the future creation of Israel.

Last week US officials reportedly summoned Israel's ambassador to Washington and requested a stop to the project to build 20 apartments at the Shepherd Hotel site in Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood.

It was bought in 1985 by American Jewish millionaire Irving Moskowitz.

The site is in East Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

It has annexed the occupied territory and declared all Jerusalem Israel's eternal capital in a move that has not been recognised by the international community.

Palestinians hope to establish their capital in East Jerusalem, as part of a two-state peace deal with the Israelis.

They say Israel uses settlement and demolition orders to try to force them from the area.

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Israel on 'collision course' with Washington

Palestinians walk past the controversial Israeli barrier in the West Bank town of Bethlehem on Wednesday (Reuters photo by Ammar Awad)

Israel must come up with a clear strategy for negotiations with the Palestinians and Syria in order to avoid a collision course with main ally Washington, a report said on Wednesday.

Recent conditional acceptance by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the creation of a Palestinian state and understandings with the US on Iran "will not suffice to steer the two countries off a collision course", said a report by the Institute for the National Security Studies (INSS).

This will not happen "unless Israel substantiates its desire to settle its conflicts with the Arab world with practical measures", it said.

"Israel must first and foremost formulate a strategy for negotiations with the Palestinians and with Syria and build a means of constructive exchange with the United States on the Iranian issue." "Israel should develop its own inititatives and forestall a situation whereby it merely responds to initiatives of others" insofar as the stalled Middle East peace process goes, it said.

One of the report's authors, Shlomo Brom, told AFP that "the possibility of a collision with Washington is very worrying. State department officials have already raised the possibility of economic sanctions". A State Department spokesman on Tuesday said it was "premature" to talk about the possibility of US financial sanctions on Israel to force it to freeze settlement activity.

While the tensions with Washington were unlikely to affect the US commitment to "assure Israel's security", Brom said that "the strategic dialogue between the two countries is at a dead end".

UN

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged Israel to freeze its settlement activity in occupied East Jerusalem, adding his voice to mounting international pressure on Israel.

"I urge the government of Israel to commit fully to its obligations, including to freeze settlement activity and natural growth," said Ban in a message to a United Nations meeting in Geneva on the Middle East.

"If Israel continues settlement activity, it will not only be acting contrary to international law but also to a strong international consensus", he said.

By contrast, if Israel freezes settlement activity, it would "facilitate a new environment of cooperation and common purpose from the countries in the region" he added.

Israel has come under intense diplomatic heat this week over its settlement activity, with the European Union and Russia warning it not to violate a Middle East peace plan.

The warnings come after it emerged that planning authorities gave the green light to a project to build 20 new apartments on the site of a former hotel in the Arab half of the holy city.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.

It sees all of Jerusalem as its "eternal, undivided" capital and does not consider construction in East Jerusalem to be settlement activity.

The Palestinians want to make the east of the city - home to some 200,000 Jewish Israelis in 121 settlements and 268,000 Palestinians - the capital of their future state.

‘Barrier there to stay’

Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel's controversial separation barrier in the occupied West Bank would not be pulled down.

"I hear today people who say that because the situation is calm in the West Bank we can dismantle the security barrier, but it is in fact because of this barrier that there is calm," he told a session of parliament.

"It is because of this barrier and because of a certain improvement on the part of the Palestinian security services that the situation is calm," Netanyahu said. "The barrier will stay." Israel began erecting the barrier in the wake of the second Intifada or uprising, calling it a "security barrier" needed to prevent potential suicide bombers from entering the Jewish state.

Palestinians call the barrier an "apartheid wall" and say its purpose is to grab land and make their promised state unviable by thrusting deep into the West Bank and isolating Jerusalem from the occupied territory.

The controversial barrier consists of more than 400 kilometres of walls, fences and barbed wire, with about 300 kilometres more either being built or planned, according to UN figures which show 87 per cent of it to be inside the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem.

On July 9, 2004 the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding ruling declaring parts of the barrier illegal because they were built inside the occupied West Bank, but Israel pressed on with its construction.

Netanyahu spoke on the same day that the Maariv daily ran a report that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has recently sent a message to US President Barack Obama's administration, asking that the barrier be dismantled because of the improved security situation in the territory.

There was no comment on the report from the PA.

Bombing at Gaza wedding

A bomb exploded at the wedding of a relative of a former senior Fateh security official in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, wounding more than 50 people, a hospital official said on Wednesday.

The explosion occurred late on Tuesday in the town of Khan Younis during the wedding of a cousin of Mohammad Dahlan, national security adviser for President Mahmoud Abbas until the Gaza Strip was seized by rival Hamas Islamists in 2007.

Dahlan, reviled by Hamas supporters over crackdowns he led against the group when he was head of Fateh-dominated Preventive Security service in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s, moved to the West Bank after Fateh lost control of the territory.

He did not attend the wedding.

Muawya Hasanein, a hospital official, said 52 people were wounded in the blast.

Ihab Al Ghussein, a spokesman for the Hamas-run interior ministry in the Gaza Strip, said some 30 people were hurt, including the bridegroom, Mahmoud Dahlan.

In the West Bank, Mohammad Dahlan accused Hamas members of planting a bomb near the wedding stage. He said that after the explosion, they threw other explosives into the crowd and fired shots. Hamas denied any involvement.

A police spokesman said three people were arrested. He did not identify them.

A relative who took part in the celebration and asked not to be identified said the family believed that "hatred for Mohammad Dahlan" was the motive for the attack.

Jund Ansar Allah

Hamas police in the southern Gaza Strip surrounded a building where Muslim extremists were holed up on Wednesday, trying to quell a rare challenge to the territory's Islamic rulers.

The standoff began Wednesday morning when four Jund Ansar Allah fighters inside the building refused to surrender to police in the southern town of Khan Younis for an interrogation, Hamas security officials said, calling them "outlaws". They spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident had not been resolved.

Jund Ansar Allah claims inspiration from Al Qaeda, but no ties have been confirmed. Residents said five Hamas jeeps surrounded the area, and Hamas police set up a checkpoint leading to the building.

It was not clear why the men were wanted.

At nightfall Wednesday, the Jund Ansar Allah fighters remained holed up inside the apartment in Khan Younis, while prominent Muslim scholars were trying to negotiate their surrender. Hamas police kept reporters away.

Jund Ansar Allah warned on its website that the men in the building would blow themselves up if Hamas tries to move in. The statement said the men would not surrender until Hamas officials returned weapons confiscated from the group.

Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, came to public attention in June after it claimed responsibility for a failed attempt to attack Israel from Gaza on horseback. It is unclear how many members it and similar extremist groups in Gaza have.

The groups have criticised Hamas for not imposing Muslim law in Gaza and are upset that the Hamas regime has honoured a cease-fire with Israel for the past six months.

Hamas has said it seeks to set an example and does not impose its views on others. It also says its violent struggle is against Israel, not the Western world.

The hard-line groups are perhaps the most serious opposition to Hamas, which has crushed the influence of its main rival, Fateh, since taking power in a five-day civil war in June 2007.

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The Bombing Of The King David Hotel

July 22, 1946

The King David Hotel explosion of July 22, 1946 (Palestine), which resulted in the deaths of 92 Britons, Arabs and Jews, and in the wounding of 58, was not just an act of “Jewish extremists,” but a premeditated massacre conducted by the Irgun in agreement with the highest Jewish political authorities in Palestine-- the Jewish Agency and its head David-Ben-Gurion. According to Yitshaq Ben-Ami, a Palestinian Jew who spent 30 years in exile after the establishment of Israel investigating the crimes of the “ruthless clique heading the internal Zionist movement,” The Irgun had conceived a plan for the King David attack early in 1946, but the green light was given only on July first. According to Dr. Sneh, the operation was personally approved by Ben-Gurion, from his self-exile in Europe. Sadeh, the operations officer of the Haganah, and Giddy Paglin, the head of the Irgun operation under Menachem Begin agreed that thirty-five minutes advance notice would give the British time enough to evacuate the wing, without enabling them to disarm the explosion. The Jewish Agency’s motive was to destroy all evidence the British had gathered proving that the terrorist crime waves in Palestine were not merely the actions of “fringe” groups such as the Irgun and Stern Gang, but were committed in collusion with the Haganah and Palmach groups and under the direction of the highest political body of the Zionist establishment itself, namely the Jewish Agency. That so many innocent civilian lives were lost in the King David massacre is a normal part of the pattern of the history of Zionist outrages: A criminal act is committed, allegedly by an isolated group, but actually under the direct authorization of the highest Zionist authorities, whether of the Jewish Agency during the Palestine Mandate or of the Government of Israel thereafter.

The following is a statement made in the House of Commons by then British Prime Minister Clement Attlee: On July 22, 1946, one of the most dastardly and cowardly crimes in recorded history took place. We refer to the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Ninety-two persons lost their lives in that stealthy attack, 45 were injured, among whom there were many high officials, junior officers and office personnel, both men and women. The King David Hotel was used as an office housing the Secretariat of the Palestine Government and British Army Headquarters. The attack was made on 22 July at about 12 o’clock noon when offices are usually in full swing. The attackers, disguised as milkmen, carried the explosives in milk containers, placed them in the basement of the Hotel and ran away.

The Chief Secretary for the Government of Palestine, Sir John Shaw, declared in a broadcast: “As head of the Secretariat, the majority of the dead and wounded were my own staff, many of whom I have known personally for eleven years. They are more than official colleagues. British, Arabs, Jews, Greeks, Armenians; senior officers, police, my orderly, my chauffeur, messengers, guards, men and women-- young and old-- they were my friends.

“No man could wish to be served by a more industrious, loyal and honest group of ordinary decent people. Their only crime was their devoted, unselfish and impartial service to Palestine and its people. For this they have been rewarded by cold-blooded mass murder.”

Although members of the Irgun Z’vai Leumi took responsibility for this crime, yet they also made it public later that they obtained the consent and approval of the Haganah Command, and it follows, that of the Jewish Agency.

The King David Hotel massacre shocked the conscience of the civilized world. On July 23, Anthony Eden, leader of the British opposition Conservative Party, posed a question in the House of Commons to Prime Minister Atlee of the Labor Party, asking “the Prime Minister whether he has any statement to make on the bomb outrage at the British Headquarters in Jerusalem.” The Prime Minister responded: “…It appears that, after exploding a small bomb in the street, presumably as a diversionary measure-- this did virtually no damage-- a lorry drove up to the tradesmen’s entrance of the King David Hotel and the occupants, after holding up the staff at pistol point, entered the kitchen premises carrying a number of milk cans. At some stage of the proceedings, they shot and seriously wounded a British soldier who attempted to interfere with them. All available information so far is to the effect that they were Jews. Somewhere in the basement of the hotel they planted bombs which went off shortly afterwards. They appear to have made good their escape. “Every effort is being made to identify and arrest the perpetrators of this outrage. The work of rescue in the debris, which was immediately organized, still continues. The next-of-kin of casualties are being notified by telegram as soon as accurate information is available. The House will wish to express their profound sympathy with the relatives of the killed and with those injured in this dastardly outrage.”

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Israel bans mention of Palestinian 'nakba' from textbooks

This is sounding like Hitler's Germany. Israel is flushing itself down the CRAPPER. Next I suppose everyone in Israel will be saying Heil Netanyahu when he makes an appearance in public.

Israel will remove from school textbooks an Arabic term that describes its creation in 1948 as a "catastrophe", the Education Ministry said on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said when he was opposition leader two years ago the word "nakba" in Israeli Arab schools was tantamount to spreading propaganda against Israel.

The term, which is not part of the curriculum in schools in Jewish communities, was introduced into a book for use in Arab schools in 2007 when the Education Ministry was run by Yuli Tamir of the center-left Labor party.

The book was aimed at children, aged 8 and 9.

Arab citizens make up about a fifth of Israel's population of seven million. The term nakba is used by Palestinians to describe the founding of Israel in a war when some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes.

"After studying the matter with education experts it was decided that the term nakba should be removed. It is inconceivable that in Israel we would talk about the establishment of the state as a catastrophe," said Yisrael Twito, a spokesman for Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar.

A passage in the textbook, describing the 1948 Middle East war at the time of Israel's creation, said: "The Arabs call the war the nakba - a war of catastrophe, loss and humiliation - and the Jews call it the Independence War."

Jafar Farrah, director of Mossawa, an Israeli-Arab advocacy group, said the decision to remove the term only "complicated the conflict". He called it an attempt to distort the truth and seek confrontation with the country's Arab population.

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Heat turned on Israel over settlements

Israel came under intense diplomatic heat Tuesday over its settlement activity in occupied East Jerusalem, with the European Union and Russia warning it not to violate a Middle East peace plan.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy also repeated "the need for a complete freeze" of settlement activity after talks with Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, while Israel's ambassador to Paris was summoned by the foreign ministry.

The warnings come after it emerged that planning authorities had given the green light to a project to build 20 new apartments on the site of a former hotel in the Arab half of the Holy City.

"The settlement should be stopped immediately in line with the roadmap," Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said, referring to an international peace plan endorsed by the Israelis and Palestinians in 2003.

The apartments are due to be built on a site in Sheikh Jarrah, one of the most sensitive and upmarket neighbourhoods closest to the so-called Green Line which separates East and West Jerusalem.

Israel's ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, was summoned to the State Department earlier this month to be told the project should be halted.

France echoed that summons Tuesday, with Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner telling reporters that the Israeli Ambassador Daniel Shek "will be received this afternoon or tomorrow" and given an identical message.

His comments came as Sarkozy had a working lunch in Paris with his veteran Egyptian counterpart Mubarak, whose country is one of only two Arab countries to have full diplomatic relations with Israel.

The European Union's current Swedish presidency also weighed in, warning Israel against any "provocative" action in East Jerusalem.

"The presidency of the European Union urges Israel to refrain from provocative actions in East Jerusalem, including home demolitions and evictions, as stated also by the Quartet June 26, 2009," said a statement.

"Such actions are illegal under international law," it added.

The EU was concerned at the latest in a series of eviction orders issued to families in East Jerusalem, the statement continued.

"We have raised our concerns with the Israeli government and call on Israel to suspend these eviction notices immediately," it added.

Despite the criticism, Israel insisted that its "right" to all of Jerusalem was not up for discussion.

"Israel is working and will continue to work in accordance with its vital national interests, especially with respect to Jerusalem," said Danny Ayalon, deputy foreign minister.

"Our right to Jerusalem includes its development and that is not subject to debate." Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.

It sees all of Jerusalem as its "eternal, undivided" capital and does not consider construction in East Jerusalem to be settlement activity.

The Palestinians want to make the east of the city - home to some 200,000 Jewish Israelis in 121 settlements and 268,000 Palestinians - the capital of their future state.

‘Israel funds settlements’

Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank get a significantly bigger slice of Israeli government financial help than Israeli municipalities overall, according to a study published on Tuesday.

Their population is also growing three times faster than that of Israeli municipalities, says the report, which traces the development of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories since the 1967 Middle East war.

"While Israeli municipalities as a whole receive 34.7 per cent of their income from [the government] and obtain another 64.3 per cent from their own income, settlement municipalities obtain 57 per cent from the [government], and only 42.8 percent from their own income," the study found.

It said Israel's government allocated 4.1 per cent of its total budget for municipalities to settlements, although they constituted just 3.1 per cent of the total Israeli population.

The study was carried out by the Israeli European Policy Network, a project of the Tel Aviv-based Macro Centre for Political Economics set up to explore ties between Israel and the European Union.

The study also assesses the value of all buildings in the settlements, some of them commuter communities with no industry on-site to provide a significant source of revenue, at about $18 billion.

‘Political suicide’

A senior member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party on Tuesday urged Israel not to build more settlements, warning it risked political suicide if it continued to do so.

In unusually strong comments for a German politician, Ruprecht Polenz, the head of parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, was quoted as saying Israel's aim of having secure borders would only be possible with a two-state solution.

If Israel did not stop building settlements it ran the risk "of gradually committing suicide as a democratic state", Polenz told the Rheinische Post daily.

Enjoying safe borders would only be conceivable for Israel if East Jerusalem could operate as the capital of a Palestinian state, said Polenz. But he added Israel was trying to cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank by building more settlements.

"Israel is overlooking the fact that neither Palestinians nor Arab states will agree to a solution without East Jerusalem," Polenz told the paper.

‘Dead Sea shore Israeli land’

The Israeli government has decided to register as state property West Bank land that has emerged as a result of Dead Sea shrinkage, an anti-settlement group said on Tuesday.

"Israeli authorities have announced that they intend to declare as state land some 138,600 dunums that has appeared along the Dead Sea in the occupied West Bank due to the drop in the water level," Hagit Ofran of the Peace Now group told AFP.

The government published its decision in the Arabic-language press on June 28 and the public has 45 days from that date to file any objections. The land is located along the shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank.

The group said that based on public announcements, the amount of land involved may go beyond the shoreline that has been exposed as a result of the drop in the sea's water level, an estimated metre every year.

"It would appear that the primary purpose of registering this area as 'state land' is to prevent Palestinian use of the land or any Palestinian assertion of ownership over it," the group said in a statement.

The move goes against statements by Netanyahu as recently as mid-June that the state did not intend to expropriate any additional land in the occupied Palestinian territory.

In the West Bank, "the designation of 'state land' - land to be held in trust by the occupying power and to be used for the benefit of the indigenous population - has been abused as a form of de facto expropriation," Peace Now said.

Gaza raid

The Israeli army carried out a cross-border raid near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday, demolishing a three-storey house and some farm buildings, Palestinians witnesses said.

Army forces backed up by tanks penetrated 500 metres inside Palestinian territory and used a bulldozer to knock down the house, the witnesses said. They made no mention of any Palestinian injuries.

No army comment was immediately available but Israeli military radio reported that Palestinians had opened fire on soldiers near the security barrier in southern Gaza, prompting an Israeli response. It said there were no Israeli injuries.

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Study: Settlements get more state funding than Israeli cities

Jewish settlements in the West Bank get significantly bigger slice of Israeli government financial help than municipalities in Israel itself, according to a study published on Tuesday.

The study by the Macro Center of the Israeli European Policy Network is entitled "Historical Political and Economic Impact of Jewish Settlements in the Occupied Territories."

The settler population is also growing more than three times faster than the population of Israel proper, says the report, which traces the development of Jewish settlements since the 1967 Six-Day War.

The United States is calling on Israel to freeze all settlement activity so that stalled talks can resume with the Palestinians on a comprehensive peace deal that would determine the fate of settlements in a land-for-peace swap.

"While Israeli municipalities as a whole receive 34.7 percent of their income from [the government] and obtain another 64.3 percent from their own income, settlement municipalities obtain 57 percent from the [government], and only 42.8 percent from their own income," the study found.

Israel's government "allocates 4.1 percent its total budget for municipalities to settlements, although they constitute just 3.1 percent of the total Israeli population", the report adds.

It assesses the value of all buildings in the settlements, some of them commuter communities with no industry on-site to provide a significant source of revenue, at about $18 billion.

"Not only do settlements distort priorities of the Israeli government's decision-making process on economic, political and social issues -- the government of Israel proactively funds more than half of their existence too," said director Roby Nathanson.

The study's analysis shows that the hey-day of settlement construction was between 1977 and 1983, under the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, when more than 56 percent of settlements were built.

"Settlement activity declined dramatically after 1985," it states. In the first decade after 1967 it was limited to areas of sparse Palestinian population but later spread to areas of dense Palestinian settlement.

The bulk of construction is residential, mostly three to four-room dwellings. The total Jewish population reached 276,045 by the end of 2007 and at median age of 20 it is the youngest of any segment of the Israeli population.

"In the past 20 years, despite ongoing peace negotiations, the population of settlers in the West Bank has more than doubled, at a growth rate much higher than that of the general Israeli population," says the report.

"This increase could not have been achieved without the active support of all of the Israeli governments in this period," the study concluded.

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Law ‘will prevent’ extreme-right Israeli land scheme - gov’t

By Hani Hazaimeh

AMMAN - Legislation governing land sales is strict enough to abort a plan by an extreme-right Israeli organisation for European Jews to purchase properties in the Kingdom, the government said on Monday.

The Israel Land Fund, which has bought land and dozens of houses in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, is now eyeing property in the Kingdom, its chairman Arieh King told Agence France-Presse.

“Under Jordanian law, foreigners seeking to purchase lands smaller than 10 dunums in the Kingdom need to obtain the approval of the finance minister, and such purchases must be executed through the director general of Lands and Survey Department and the proper official channels,” Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications Nabil Sharif told The Jordan Times yesterday.

Meanwhile, “purchases by non-Arab investors of land plots exceeding 10 dunums require Cabinet approval” and the transaction must be executed under the supervision of the finance minister through relevant official channels, he said.

Sharif added that the law allows non-Arab investors to purchase only lands located within municipalities’ zoned areas, provided that the buyer’s home country also allows Jordanians to purchase land there.

Asked about the fate of land in the Kingdom acquired by Jews early last century, the minister said there were thousands of Jewish properties in Jordan which were purchased during the Ottoman era and under the British mandate but all these transactions became null and void after Transjordan issued the Lands Law in 1933 cancelling all ownerships registered under Ottoman law. Jordanians were allowed then to register their lands under the new law.

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Settlers cut down 40 olive trees in West Bank fresh rampage

Settlers rampaged in the West Bank for a second straight day on Tuesday, cutting down some 40 olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers in the village of Burin, said Mayor Ali Eid.

The Israel Defense Forces said it received reports of the rampage, but by the time troops arrived, the settlers had fled.

Extremist settlers often vandalize Palestinian property to protest Israel's removal of small, illegal outposts in the West Bank - a tactic they call "the price tag."

Police on Monday evacuated three illegal structures in various West Bank outposts. In response, settlers torched Palestinian olive groves, threw stones at Palestinian cars and blocked roads around the West Bank.

Two Palestinians were lightly hurt, as were a soldier and a settler; five settlers were arrested.

Meanwhile, a settler was lightly wounded on Tuesday in a clash with Israeli police officers near the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin.

The incident occurred after police came to the settlement in order to arrest two people suspected of disorderly conduct. Following the arrest, a number of settlers tried to halt the police officers' departure from the settlement.

An altercation subsequently broke out between security forces at the scene and the settlers, in which one of the settlers was lightly wounded. Another settler was arrested after he threatened a senior Israel Defense Forces officer who was at the site.

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Jordan, Russia renew rejection of Israeli settlement

AMMAN (JT) - Jordan and Russia on Monday called on Israel to stop its settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian lands.

At a meeting between Minister of Foreign Affairs Nasser Judeh and Alexander Saltanov, Russia’s special presidential envoy to the Middle East and deputy minister of foreign affairs, the two sides stressed that Israel needs to stop all forms of settlement activity, end unilateral measures in the Palestinian territories and East Jerusalem and lift the blockade imposed on the Palestinian people, urging the international community and parties involved to promote an appropriate climate for the resumption of negotiations.

They also discussed international efforts to achieve peace in the region.

During the meeting, Judeh briefed Saltanov on His Majesty King Abdullah’s efforts to launch serious and direct peace negotiations, on the basis of the two-state solution, related international resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The two sides stressed the importance of seizing the opportunity at hand to achieve a lasting and comprehensive peace.

The two officials also discussed a proposal on holding an international conference on the Middle East in Moscow and its goals, and the need to pursue consultations in this regard, Petra said.

In addition, Judeh and Saltanov reviewed relations between Jordan and Russia and means to develop them in all spheres. Emphasising the importance of the Russian role, Judeh expressed the King’s keenness to maintain coordination and consultation with the Russian leadership.

The Russian official also briefed Judeh on the outcome of his talks in the region, reiterating Moscow’s support for peace efforts.

Saltanov’s visit to the Kingdom is part of a Middle East tour which has taken him so far to Lebanon and Syria. After his visit to Amman, the Russian official is scheduled to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories.

On Sunday, the envoy held talks in Damascus with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem, during which Saltanov called on Israel to stop building Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, news reports said. The discussions covered prospects for a Moscow Middle East Peace Conference, bilateral relations, the peace process and various regional issues.

While in Damascus, Saltanov met with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal on Saturday to discuss the latest developments in the region, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the process of Palestinian reconciliation. The diplomat urged Mishaal to pursue national interests above all to “overcome the split and restore unity in Palestine as quickly as possible”, according to Xinhua news agency.

According to Russian and Lebanese news reports, Saltanov met on Thursday with Lebanese prime minister-designate Saad Hariri at his home in Beirut to discuss bilateral ties and regional developments. He told Hariri that Russia would stand by Lebanon and is ready to cooperate to help ensure the country’s stability.

While in Lebanon, Saltanov also met with Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri and Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Settler rampage

More than 30 Israeli settlers, some of them on horseback, set fire to fields and olive trees and stoned Palestinian cars during a rampage in the West Bank on Monday, a Palestinian official said. Two Palestinians were lightly injured.

The settlers went on the rampage near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank to protest the Israeli army’s removal of an unauthorised settlement outpost in the area.

Ghassan Daglas, a Nablus municipality official, said the riot began with 10 settlers on horseback and grew to a mob of 30 south of the city, where the settlers attacked Palestinians who passed in cars.

Daglas said smoke from the burning fields blanketed the area, but no houses were damaged. Daglas said Israeli forces tried to stop the rampaging settlers.

Israel’s paramilitary border police force said it arrested one settler.

Israel has pledged to the US to remove more than two dozen tiny, unauthorised settlement outposts in the West Bank, but has taken little action against them. Hardline settlers commonly attack Palestinian property as retaliation for demolished or evacuated settlements - a tactic they call the “price tag”. The Palestinians oppose all settlement activity on land they claim for a future state, and the US, which considers settlements obstacles to peace, is demanding a freeze on all settlement construction in the West Bank.

Israel has rejected the US calls for a settlement freeze, saying existing settlements must be allowed to expand to account for “natural growth” in their populations.

Some 280,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 180,000 Israelis living in Jewish neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians claim both areas, which were occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

‘Election will resolve impasse’

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday that the way to resolve the internal Palestinian impasse was to hold simultaneous parliamentary and presidential elections.

“Organising elections is the solution to the conflict after the failure of the dialogue sessions between the two sides in Cairo over these past months,” he told the WAFA official news agency.

Abbas called on Hamas to “organise parliamentary and presidential elections to end the problems of the internal division”. He spoke a day after it was announced that the seventh round of reconciliation talks in Egypt between Abbas’ secular Fateh and the Islamist Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip would be postponed for a month until August 25.

Tensions between Fateh and Hamas erupted into street warfare in Gaza in June 2007 and ended with the Islamists seizing control of the coastal strip, leaving Western-backed Abbas’ writ confined to the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Egypt has been hosting reconciliation talks during which the two sides hope to reach a deal that would lay down an electoral law, define the make-up of security forces and set up a committee to liaise between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank ahead of an election in January 2010.

Abbas was elected in January 2005 following the death of veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Hamas swept parliamentary polls the following year, winning 74 seats to 45 for long-dominant Fateh in the 132-member parliament.

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Israel may confiscate more Palestinian land

The government is considering confiscating privately-owned Palestinian land near the West Bank settlement of Ofra, contrary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pledge during his Bar-Ilan speech not to take such actions.

This announcement was made by the state prosecutor, in response to a High Court petition filed by a resident of the West Bank town Ein Yabrud and the human rights association Yesh Din.

The parties were seeking the demolition of a sewage treatment plant built illegally on the town's land by the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council.

The announcement, signed by senior assistant state prosecutor Avi Licht, says the state is considering turning the site into a regional sewage treatment plant that would serve both Ofra and the nearby Palestinian communities.

"Assuming the project can be advanced, the legality of confiscating the land will be examined," the document says.

"It would be unthinkable to erect the plant on private Palestinian land without permission or an official confiscation order, and without the legally required plan and building permits. This is why a demolition order has been issued for the existing structure," Licht writes.

Legally, and in keeping with Supreme Court rulings, the Palestinian communities must be connected to the plant. The court has ruled that the state cannot confiscate land unless it will serve the entire public, including those whose lands have been confiscated.

However, connecting Ein Yabrud to the plant requires a pumping facility, which would cost millions of shekels to build.

"After the legal picture was clarified and a demolition order was issued for the facility, an order was given to suspend state funds to the plant, and it has not received a permit to connect it to the power supply. The sewage treatment plant was initiated by the Shomron Union for Ecology and the Environment Ministry, after the settlement's sewage polluted the environment and endangered groundwater sources," the announcement says.

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Settlers attack Palestinians following outpost evacuation

Israeli settlers blocked roads, stoned Palestinian cars, and set fire to Palestinian fields on Monday hours after security forces razed a number of structures built in unauthorized outposts in the West Bank. Two Palestinians were lightly injured.

The violence is part of a "price tag" policy in which settlers retaliate to the outpost removals by harassing local Palestinians.

Police, who were accompanied by Civil Administration officials, set out Monday morning to evacuate illegal structures in three unauthorized outposts in the West Bank.

The forces demolished two makeshift homes in the Adei Ad outpost and then moved on to Nofei Yarden and Mitzpe Danny.

The police set out only to evacuate illegal structures that were erected in the recent past, not to evacuate the outposts themselves.

Following the evacuation, settlers blocked the main Hawara artery leading to the IDF's headquarters in the northern West Bank.

Palestinians near Nablus accused the IDF of showing too much lenience toward the settlers. They said the settlers set fire to dozens of dunams of privately-owned land and caused damage to a number of vehicles.

"The settlers are being encouraged by the Netanyahu government," said Rasan Darles, a Palestinian official.

The settlers, meanwhile, accused the civil administration of "vengeful motives."

"After residents of Adei Ad filed a complaint against a civil administration official for attempted theft?After the official was questioned by police, the civil administration decided to take revenge and destroy the structure," said the Binyamin regional council in the West Bank.

"We are dealing with civil administration officials who display heroism against caravans belonging to Jews yet show cowardice and weakness in the knees when dealing with Arab villas and buildings that are built illegally," the Binyamin council said.

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'No difference to U.S. between outpost, East Jerusalem construction'

The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction, American sources have informed both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

This clarification came in the context of a growing crisis in U.S.-Israel relations over the planned construction of some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting Sunday that "Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem."

"United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people in the State of Israel, and our sovereignty over the city is not subject to appeal," he continued. "Our policy is that Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city. This has been the policy of all Israeli governments. There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city's east. This is the policy of an open city."

Saying that Israel could not accept Jews being forbidden to live in anywhere in Jerusalem, Netanyahu added: "I can imagine what would happen if someone proposed that Jews could not live or buy in certain neighborhoods of London, New York, Paris or Rome. A huge international outcry would surely ensue. It is even more impossible to agree to such an edict in East Jerusalem."

Asked to comment on these remarks, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in New Delhi, said the administration is trying to reach an agreement with Israel on settlements, and "the negotiations are intense," the Associated Press reported.

Later Sunday, Netanyahu met with his advisors to discuss Israel's response to Washington's demand.

"I was surprised by the American demand," a source present at the meeting quoted him as saying. "In my conversation with [U.S. President Barack] Obama in Washington, I told him I could not accept any restrictions on our sovereignty in Jerusalem. I told him Jerusalem is not a settlement, and there is nothing to discuss about a freeze there."

"In my previous term [as premier], I built thousands of apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood of Jerusalem, defying the entire world," Netanyahu added. "Therefore, it is clear that I will not capitulate in this case - especially when we are talking about a mere 20 apartments."

Other ministers also criticized the American stance at the cabinet meeting. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for instance, termed it "puzzling," while Interior Minister and Shas Chairman Eli Yishai declared that "no agency in the world can stop construction in Jerusalem."

And Shin Bet security service chief Yuval Diskin told the ministers that the PA and its security services are engaged in widespread efforts to keep Palestinians from selling land in Jerusalem to Jews. He also said that Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi of Qatar has allocated $21 million to Hamas activists to buy buildings and establish infrastructure in Jerusalem.

Washington's objections to the Shepherd Hotel project were first voiced by senior State Department officials at a meeting with Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren last Thursday, in response to a request by PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The officials complained that the construction would change the neighborhood's demographic balance and harm its Palestinian residents.

Oren responded that the land in question was privately owned, having been purchased in 1985 by American Jewish tycoon Irving Moskowitz, and the project has received all the necessary permits from the Jerusalem municipality.

Also Sunday, Abbas' bureau chief, Rafiq Husseini, said he hoped the U.S. would not back down on its demand for a complete settlement freeze, including in East Jerusalem.

In an interview with the Nazareth-based radio station A-Shams, Husseini said, "from our standpoint, there is no room for a compromise [on this issue], and we expect the American administration to stick to the determined stance that envoy [George] Mitchell expressed as far back as 2001. Any compromise that enables continued construction ... will do nothing whatsoever to advance the diplomatic process."

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