Does Israel Really Want Peace?
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JERUSALEM - Israel has taken control of a large chunk of land near a prominent West Bank settlement, paving the way for the possible construction of 2,500 settlement homes, officials said Monday, in a new challenge to Mideast peacemaking.
Successive Israeli governments have broken promises to the United States to halt settlement expansion, defined by Washington as an obstacle to peace. Ongoing expansion is likely to create friction not only with the Palestinians, but with President Barack Obama, whose Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, has long pushed for a settlement freeze. Obama has said he'd get involved quickly in Mideast peace efforts.
The composition of Israel's next government is not clear yet following inconclusive elections last week. However, right-wing parties are given a better chance to form a ruling coalition, with hardline leader Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm.
Netanyahu supports settlement expansion and has derided peace talks with the Palestinians as a waste of time, saying he would focus instead of trying to improve the Palestinian economy. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has dismissed Netanyahu's approach as a non-starter, and his aides said recently that peace talks can only resume after a settlement freeze.
At the center of the latest expansion plans is Efrat, a settlement of about 1,600 families south of Jerusalem.
The mayor of Efrat, Oded Revivi, said the Israeli military designated 425 acres (172 hectares) near Efrat as so-called state land two weeks ago at the end of a lengthy appeals process. He said nine appeals were filed by Palestinian landowners, adding that eight were rejected and one was upheld.
Revivi said Efrat plans to build 2,500 homes on that land, but that several steps of government approval would still be needed before construction could begin - a process that could take years. Eventually, Efrat is to grow to a city of 30,000 people, he said.
The settlement is situated in one of the three major settlement blocs that Israel expects to hold on to in any final peace deal. Palestinian reaction to the latest development was not immediately available.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israel's peace partner, warned that continued settlement expansion would cripple peace talks.
"We oppose settlement activity in principle and if the settlement activity doesn't stop, any meetings (with the Israelis) will be worthless," Abbas said.
Nearly 290,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements today, or 95,000 more than in May 2001 when Mitchell first called for a settlement freeze. At the time, he led a fact-finding mission to Israel and the Palestinian territories to find a way to end months of violence and resume peace talks.
Mitchell called on the Palestinians to halt attacks on Israelis and demanded that Israel halt construction in settlements.
In other developments Monday, Palestinian rockets exploded in southern Israel and Israeli jets bombed the Egypt-Gaza border as talks dragged on over a long-term truce that would bring quiet to the coastal territory.
Israel has been battling Gaza's Hamas rulers, while simultaneously pursuing a peace agreement with Abbas' rival government in the West Bank.
In Monday's violence, two rockets fired from Gaza landed in Israel, the Israeli military said, a near-daily occurrence even after the devastating three-week Israeli offensive that was meant to bring a halt to the fire. No one was injured, the military said.
Several hours later, Israeli jets bombed an area of smuggling tunnels in the frontier town of Rafah, according residents and Hamas security officials. Israel's military said the strike targeted a tunnel used to smuggle weapons in from Egypt and was retaliation for the rocket fire.
Israel ended its military offensive in Gaza on Jan. 18, and the territory's Islamic Hamas rulers declared a cease-fire the same day. But sporadic violence has continued as Egypt tries to mediate a long-term truce.
Hamas is demanding that Israel open Gaza's blockaded border crossings, but Israel says it will fully open the crossings only after Hamas releases Sgt. Gilad Schalit, an Israeli tank crewman captured in June 2006. Israel is allowing in only humanitarian aid, and on Monday was to allow some 200 aid trucks and fuel for Gaza's power plant to enter the territory, the military said.
Hamas wants Israel to release hundreds of prisoners in return for Schalit, including high-ranking militants and the masterminds of deadly suicide bombings.
Israel's top leadership is scheduled to meet this week to formulate a response to Hamas' demands.
Cornelius Hamelberg
Apart from settlements, in the religious and right-wing cluster
around Bibi Netanyahu the new kid on the block the ultra nationalist
Yisrael Beiteinu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman sounds German but is
Russian who has himself taken the oath of loyalty to Israel and has
the potential to unhinge or torpedo the land for peace process.
Land for peace has not worked before. So he reasons that separation
(as Malcolm X once used to say) is the only solution.
The president of the United States of America is not a dictator but
ultimately it’s him, and not di people he who decides. The question
persists and just won’t go away : Is Hillary and all her goodwill, up
to it? To making love not war, to making peace in the Middle East -
and – strong personality that she is - it was seventeen years ago
that she was less lately in Indonesia), for headstrong she is - and
like Frank Sinatra might want to sing “ My Way” - as if she was even
the vice-president…
Unanswered question persists : given all her enthusiasm, can brother
Obama keep her on the leash ?
“Say not the Struggle Naught availeth”
http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=10381#comments
http://www.israpundit.com/2008/?p=10372#comments
http://israelinsider.ning.com/
toyin adepoju
Why dont you adress the question broached in the post you are responding to of why Israel continues to appropriate more land that belongs to the Palestinians,expanding borders that were not part of the land given to it by the UN in the 1948 resolution that created the state?
Toyin
Cornelius Hamelberg
http://www.dailyalert.org/
Next Tuesday is PURIM.
The fewer questions that you ask about the Middle East, the more time
I will have to devote to my Yoruba studies….
I am no privy to any war plans and neither am I here holding brief for
Israel but it looks like once more dear friends, it’s going to be
Roforofo Fight…. Looka here:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=56EEA73F-4CFE-4F8E-A172-B1A8F87DBF33
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/
Bankole Marke’s poetry collection is entitled “ Teardrops keep
falling”
So do the rockets fired from Gaza on Sderot:
http://www.factsandlogic.org/index.html
With Lieberman & Co in the cockpit. Lieberman wants to be Israel’s
Foreign Minister. That way the Netanyahu government would be short-
lived. That’s my opinion and he Libby could succeed in antagonising
member states of the UN adding fuel to the fire of what’s to be
discussed at Durban 2. Fortunately at this point USA and Canada, and
Israel of course, and a some of the European states are pulling out of
Durban 2.
It was Israel’s first prime minister David Ben Gurion who said the
following:
“…If I were an Arab leader I would never deal with Israel. It is
obvious: we occupied their territory. It is true that GOD had promised
it, but what does it mean to them? Our GOD isn’t theirs, we came from
Israel, it is true, but two thousand years ago, and what does it mean
to them? There was anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but
what was their fault? The Arabs only see one thing: that we came here,
that we stole their land. Why would they have to accept such a thing?”
I believe that Toyin is also more competent than Cornelius when it
comes to addressing that question.
Dore Gold has always given cogent answers to such questions:
http://www.jcpa.org/
At a public lecture over here ( he was invited by a radical Iranian
women’s group) I did ask Aziz al-Azmeh a similar question before and
after he autographed my copy of his “ Islams and Modernities” - this
was over a decade ago, and on that occasion - palaver- he was
eloquent and did not at all mince his words when talking about ( his)
“Arab Land”
You talk about “borders that were not part of the land given to it by
the UN in the 1948 resolution that created the state”.
The religious Jews, Zionists, Israelis, Christians, especially of the
Fundamentalist Right and the more ancient Israelites all have less
faith in the UN and firm faith in the Bible which infallibly records
the Almighty giving the land of Israel to Israel His chosen people and
so before God and man it is not merely a question of the borders of
Borders can only imply DEFENSIBLE BORDERS…..
Israel after liberating Jerusalem in 1967 is unlikely to be handing
over Jerusalem to a non-Jewish entity. It’s as simple as that.
And time and again I’ve heard it said that it’s not like a game of
chess in which game, after you are defeated the chess pieces are put
back exactly where they once were, to begin the next game.
The Palestinian Arabs already had a state for which they are now
fighting but apparently were not content with having just that.
Others say that the Palestinians already have a state and it is called
JORDAN, which has a 70% Palestinian population ( otherwise there are
twenty two Arab states and Israel is the only Jewish state....
George W. did say that “you're either with us or you're with the
terrorists” – and it is still up to the individidual to decide. If -
and when Hamas can absolve themselves of the official terrorist label,
by renouncing terror as ideology and liberation action, and
recognising Israel, then there will be no terrorists to take sides
with.
If we are to follow the kind of eschatology to which Muslims
subscribe, then in the war between the followers of Hashem ( the God
of Israel, the one and only God) and the followers of the false
Messiah and Allah’s Mohammed (salallahu alaihi wa salaam) the Jews
will have to take cover behind stones – which will expose them and
also take cover behind trees which we are still planting…..
Reliance on that kind of veracity, must surely mean that time is
ultimately on their side, even should a Palestinian identity be
sustained until the day of Judgement
It is the United States, that is expected to be an honest broker even
as Europe and the European Union is said to be vacillating and making
heavy concessions to Hamas, Abbas and Islamic Jihad… Lieberman has
already said that Mubarak can go to hell and for Iran and most of
the Arab world this worst nightmare scenario is still their greatest
fear: that even as we read this it is “ Israel that controls USA”:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&newwindow=1&q=Sharon+%3A+we+control+america
Under Obama it could be slightly different ball game, but I doubt it.
People are whining that he has appointed Freeman …..