If President Barack Obama thought he could deliver the promise of a few Israeli concessions during his upcoming Cairo speech to the Muslim world, he was sorely mistaken. Full Story »
Posted by Derek Hawkins
Lively article with peaks and valleys of journalistic merit. On the whole, this piece contains some whopping biases ill-concealed (see 'quotes'). Some "balance" is achieved by representing opposing viewpoints on the issue. To the writers' credit, even this alone is better than most mainstream media reports.
At a Sunday Cabinet meeting, Israeli ministers openly defied the U.S. demands. Israeli Transport Minister Yisrael Katz told Army Radio, “I want to make it clear that the current Israeli government will not accept in any way the freezing of legal settlement activity in Judea and Samaria [the biblical name for the West Bank].”
“Judea” and “Samaria” haven’t been used outside the Bible for eons. The land is in the West Bank, Palestinian Territories, as guaranteed by the United Nations partition, and any number of more recent peace accords. Using ‘biblical names’ is an effort to lend credibility to an illegal land seizure prohibited by United Nations agreements and international law.
Netanyahu had thought it might earn a little breathing space with the Obama Administration by destroying a few illegal settlers’ outposts. But even that has gone badly. No sooner did the army bulldozers plow under a few hilltop outposts — usually nothing more than a few trailers and shacks built on private Palestinian land — than the settlers were back with renewed zeal, along with nails and concrete to rebuild their smashed homes. As one settler, Ariyeh Davis, told the Israeli Internet news agency Ynet, “Our answer is ‘expansion against expulsion.’ " He added, "God willing, we’ll build new places, and from 300,000 residents in Judea and Samaria, we’ll become 600,000.”
These ‘“few trailers and shacks” are indeed “BUILT ON PRIVATE PALESTINIAN LAND” as a violation of international law. And the ’settlers’ are committing criminal acts against innocent civilians. How might the Israeli government differentiate this from a Jihad?
…the key to its success is to promote the image that his Administration is taking a more evenhanded approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict than did his predecessor.
The REAL key to success would lie not in “promot(ing) the image” of a “more evenhanded approach,” but in actually TAKING an evenhanded approach, most notably by suspending all military ‘aid’ to Israel until our demands—and requirements of international law—are met. Israel does not hold the upper hand in this argument: The United States does. Any failure to rein in these illegal ‘settlements’ by “natural expansion” makes a mockery of the values we purport to believe.
At the core of the dispute between the two allies is Washington’s insistence that Israel honor its past accords and halt all construction within the West Bank settlements, whose expansion is seen as an obstacle to peace. The Palestinians say the settlements, with their road networks and military-security cordons, are chopping and dicing the territory into so many pieces that its own state could never be viable.
Though couched in conditional language, this paragraph is correct: The settlements ARE an obstacle to peace, if “peace” means abandoning justice. And the Palestinians are absolutely correct in “saying” that the settlements chop and dice the territory beyond viability.
The Israelis also argue that while sacrifices are being asked of them, little is being demanded of the Palestinians.
Perhaps the most outrageous misrepresentation of all: “little being demanded of the Palestinians.” To understand the fallacy of this, you must examine the map in the attached links. And perhaps review the archive of NewsTrust stories on the most recent Israeli government assault on Gaza’s Palestinian civilians, using US-made and supplied weapons.
Meantime, the Palestinian leader is trying rather blatantly to show Washington that while he may have lost Gaza to the Islamic militants Hamas, his security forces are still capable of policing the West Bank.
And how “blatant” is the Netanyahu government’s position? The quotes by Israeli ministers? The “settlers”?
in the words of Knesset member Ophir Pines, wants Netanyahu to face his “moment of truth.” Says Pines: “The government needs to decide whether it prefers good relations with the American Administration or whether it prefers the illegal settlement in the territories. All of the talk about natural growth in the settlements is a bluff, and the Americans know that.”
Kudos to the writers for including this crucial—and honest—quote.
While it is impossible to do justice to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories in a single, succinct story, this piece may generate some interest to motivate newcomers to a fuller investigation of the facts of the situation. I hope so.