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US funds Israel’s apartheid roads plan

Settlers benefit from Israeli-only routes

By Jonathan Cook in Jerusalem | 16 May 2010

The construction of sections of a controversial segregated road network in the West Bank planned by Israel for Palestinians – leaving the main roads for exclusive use by Jewish settlers – is being financed by a US government aid agency, a map prepared by Palestinian researchers has revealed.

USAid, which funds development projects in Palestinian areas, is reported to have helped to build 114 killometres of Israeli-proposed roads, despite a pledge from Washington six years ago that it would not assist in implementing what has been widely described as Israel’s “apartheid road” plan.

To date the agency has paid for the construction of nearly a quarter of the segregated road network put forward by Israel in 2004, said the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ).

The roads are designed to provide alternative routes to connect Palestinian communities, often by upgrading circuitous dirt tracks or by building tunnels under existing routes.

Meanwhile, according to human rights groups, Israel has reserved an increasing number of main roads in the West Bank for Israelis so that Jewish settlers can drive more easily and quickly into Israel, making their illegal communities more attractive places to live.

The US agency’s involvement in building a segregated West Bank road infrastructure would run counter to Washington’s oft-stated goal, including as it launched “proximity talks” last week, to establish a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity.

“The displacement of Palestinians from the West Bank’s main roads improves the appeal of the settlements by better integrating them into Israel,” said Suheil Khalilieh, the head of settlement monitoring at ARIJ. “Conversely, creating an inferior, alternative network of local roads makes travel between the main regions of the West Bank difficult and time-consuming for Palestinians.”

Israel proposed the creation of two separate road systems in 2004, after many of the West Bank’s main roads had been sealed off to Palestinians following the outbreak of the second intifada.

Ariel Sharon, the then-prime minister, argued that segregated infrastructure would create “contiguity of transportation” for Palestinians and help to alleviate economic hardship resulting from hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints that restrict Palestinian movement.

The international community was asked to finance 500 km of roads for the Palestinians, later termed “fabric of life” roads, including upgrading agricultural tracks and constructing many underpasses and bridges, at a cost of 200 million US dollars.

The Palestinian Authority, however, objected, saying the plan would further entrench the illegal settlements in the West Bank and justify confiscating yet more Palestinian land for the new roads.

That position was backed by international donors, including the US, which declared it would not finance any road projects against the PA’s will.

Despite the US promise, however, a map of the West Bank recently published by ARIJ shows that 23 per cent of the “alternative” road network Israel proposed has been built with USAid money.

Many of these roads are located in so-called Areas B and C, more than 80 per cent of the West Bank that was assigned to Israeli security control by the Oslo accords. Israel oversees all road projects in these areas.

Mr Khalilieh said the PA was being effectively bullied into conceding the road infrastructure wanted by Israel.

“What happens is that USAid presents a package deal of donations for infrastructure projects in the West Bank and the Palestinians are faced with a choice of take it or leave it. That way the PA is cornered into accepting roads it does not want.”

He said some roads were also being approved because of a lack of oversight by the PA. An inter-ministerial committee to vet proposed roads to ensure they did not contribute to the Israeli plan had been inactive since 2006, he said, following the split between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian elections.

After PA officials were presented with ARIJ’s map, Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, issued a statement last weekend denying that the PA had contributed to the Israeli-proposed road network.

However, in a sign that such reassurances were unlikely to dampen concerns, he reconvened the inter-ministerial committee to conduct field visits to check on road projects that had been carried out or were in progress.

Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian government spokesman and a former planning minister, said the PA was taking the issue “very seriously” and was doing everything possible to resist the emergence of an “apartheid system” in the West Bank.

He added that, if roads were being built that served the settlers’ interests, “that is not supposed to happen”.

According to USAid’s figures, it has financed 235 km of roads in the West Bank in the past decade, and is preparing to add another 120km by the end of this year.

Critics add that in some cases the upgrading by USAid of minor roads, even those not included in the Israeli plan, has worked to the same end of keeping Palestinians off the West Bank’s main highways.

USAid officials were unavailable for comment.

Among roads for Palestinians funded by USAid are several projects south of Bethlehem that appear to be providing an “alternative” to Road 60, a busy highway that has traditionally linked Jerusalem with the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Hebron in the southern West Bank.

Israel has increasingly restricted Palestinian access to Road 60 because it also serves as a fast direct route for Jewish settlers in the Gush Etzion bloc driving to and from Jerusalem.

As a result, residents of several nearby Palestinian villages, including Batir, Wadi Fuqeen, Al-Walaja and Husan, have been forced off Road 60 and on to USAid-funded side roads and underpasses to connect them to Bethlehem and other neighbouring communities.

Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, said 170 km of roads in the West Bank were either off-limits to Palestinians or highly restricted, creating what the organization has called “forbidden roads”.

B’Tselem noted that, after the 2004 scheme for complete separation was rejected by donors, Israel adapted the plan, using bridges, tunnels and interchanges to create partial separation, with Israelis “traveling on the fast upper levels, and Palestinians on the lower levels”. It concluded: “The plan allows Palestinian vehicles to travel on only 20 per cent of the [West Bank] roads on which Israeli vehicles travel.”

Ms Michaeli added that the growing dependence of Palestinian traffic on underpasses meant that Israel was in a position to control or even sever connections between Palestinian areas with only one military jeep.

Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, the director of Badil, a Bethlehem-based organization that has lobbied against road segregation in the southern West Bank, said there was considerable domestic and international pressure on the PA to agree to roads dictated by Israel, if only because they often eased the existing restrictions on Palestinian movement.

“Sadly, the PA is helping to build its own Bantustans,” she said. “Palestinian towns and villages connected by back roads and tunnels while the settlers control the main highways is what the US appears to mean when it talks about a viable Palestinian state.”

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

May 15, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Hebron: Israeli occupation forces evict man from home

Ma’an – 15/05/2010

Hebron – Israeli forces reportedly evicted a man from his home in Ash-Shuhada Street, central Hebron, on Friday. Anas Zuheir Al-Bayed, 21, said soldiers broke into his home and forced him out “under the pretext that it was owned by the Israeli army.”

He said he had not received any documentation declaring that the home was owned by the army, adding that “they expelled me from the house, threatening to use weapons.”

Al-Bayed added that he had rented the home from Nayef Abu Menshar two months ago. An Israeli military spokesman said he would look into the report.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army detained two residents on Friday after stopping their vehicle at a military checkpoint near Yatta, southern Hebron. The car was searched and the two were detained for allegedly possessing knives. Witnesses said they were beaten and taken to an unknown location.

An Israeli military representative said the detentions were after a security inspection found the men in possession of two 12cm knives, adding that both were taken for security questioning. The spokesman added that Israeli forces detained a driver and two other suspects following a security inspection near Yatta after an axe was discovered in the car they were traveling in. All three suspects were transferred tot he custody of the Israeli police, the spokesman said.

May 15, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel OKs super-settlement in West Bank

Press TV – May 13, 2010

The Islamic Christian Commission for Support of Jerusalem and Holy Places says Israel has approved plans for the construction of a new settlement near al-Quds.

Hasan Khatir, the commission’s secretary general, revealed the Israeli officials’ green light for the new settlement of Givat Yael during a Wednesday news conference in Ramallah, the Saudi English-language daily Arab News said on its website.

The complex planned to be built on 741 acres of land in the West Bank village of Walaja — lying east of the 1967 armistice line and inside the West Bank — will include 12,000 settlement units and will provide accommodation for 40,000 Israeli settlers.

The new project — the largest outside al-Quds municipal boundaries since the construction of Pisgat Ze’ev, Gilo and Har Homa settlements — has raised warnings of Israeli attempts toward the construction of a “Greater Jerusalem.”

The new Israeli plan will “lay the foundation for the appropriation of the land between al-Quds and Gush Etzion settlement,” Khatir warned, describing the plan as “a dangerous development toward settlement construction and judaization of al-Quds, Ma’an news agency reported.

Israeli authorities earlier disqualified building plans submitted by Walaja residents, and decided to demolish 90 of their houses, labeling the buildings as illegal.

The approval of the super-settlement project comes despite US warnings to both Israelis and Palestinians against any provocations undermining the ongoing indirect talks between the foe sides.

Israel’s Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch on Wednesday announced plans to raze a number of Palestinian homes in East al-Quds. He said the demolitions orders were previously delayed in the light of US efforts to renew the so-called peace process.

May 14, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Afghans angry at ‘civilian deaths’

Al-Jazeera | May 14, 2010

One person has been shot dead by police as hundreds of protesters took to the streets in eastern Afghanistan, accusing Nato-led forces of killing civilians during an overnight raid near the city of Jalalabad.

Angry Afghans set fire to tyres and blocked roads in the Surkh Road district of Nangahar province on Friday, demanding an explanation for the deaths.

Witnesses told Al Jazeera that between nine and 15 civilians had been killed in the Nato attack. Mohammed Arish, a government administrator in Surkh Rod, said a father and his four sons and four members of another family were among the dead.

“They are farmers. They are innocent. They are not insurgents or militants,” Arish told The Associated Press by phone.

Arish said the protesters had tried to march toward the provincial capital of Jalalabad before being turned back by police. The Nangahar governor’s office said at least three people were injured during a clash with police.

‘Taliban firefight’

A Nato spokesman confirmed foreign and Afghan forces had conducted some operations in the area but said he was not aware of any civilian deaths and the alliance was checking the incident.

Colonel Wayne Shanks said eight Taliban fighters were killed in a firefight, adding that fighters fired rocket-propelled grenades at Nato forces. Two other people were captured during the operation, and weapons and communications gear were confiscated at the targeted compound, Shanks said.

Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel Hamid reporting from Kabul said international forces and Afghan troops were flown to the area by helicopters overnight and carried out the raid.

“According to a Nato and Isaf [International Security Assistance Force] statement they were targeting Taliban sub-commanders and some fighters which their intelligence said were hiding in a compound outside a village.

“But the villagers said none of those killed had anything to do with the Taliban, that all of them were innocent civilians and members of two different families.” … Full article

May 14, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israeli settler kills Palestinian youth

There has been a spike in settler violence against Palestinians in recent weeks

Al-Jazeera | May 14, 2010

A Palestinian teenager has been shot dead by an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank, witnesses and activists said.

The settler opened fire after Palestinian youths threw stones at his car travelling along Route 60 in Mazra’a al-Sharqia, east of Ramallah.

The Popular Struggle Co-ordination Committee activist group said that Aysar al-Zaben was not involved in the stone throwing, but was tending his family’s land when he was shot.

“According to his uncle, his lifeless body was found lying face down on the ground with a bullet hole in his back,” the group said in a statement.

Israeli police said that the killing was being investigated, while the Israeli military stressed that it was not involved in the incident during which “shots were fired after stones were thrown at an Israeli car”.

Route 60, which runs from Beersheba to Nazareth and connects a number of Israeli settlements, is closed to Palestinians in areas of the West Bank. It has seen a number of protests against the restrictions imposed on Palestinians by Israel.

Settler violence

About 500,000 settlers and about 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and areas near Jerusalem annexed by Israel after the 1967 Middle East war.

Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros, reporting from the West Bank, said there had recently been a spike in settler violence against Palestinians.

“Many people are saying this is a direct response to what the settlers feel is a threat from the United States that there will be pressure put on the Israeli administration to stop, or at least freeze, its settlement building empire that it’s constructed here in the occupied West Bank,” she said.

“Many people are saying Palestinian blood has been shed as a price tag, if you like, for the setters to give that message to Prime Minister Netanyahu and his administration that he cannot touch these illegal settlements in the West Bank.

“And if he does try and dismantle them in any way or freeze construction, this will be the result.”

In a report published on Thursday, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian territories said that there had been been at least nine violent incidents involving Israeli settlers in the last week.

Israeli settlers injured five Palestinians, including three children, aged five, nine and 12, in two separate incidents of stone-throwing and physical assault, it said.

‘Catastrophe continues’

Thursday’s attack in the West Bank came as Palestinians marked the 62nd anniversary of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, when an estimated 700,000 Arabs were forced to flee the creation of Israel.

Saeb Erekat, the senior Palestinian negotiator, said “the catastrophe continues” for Palestinians.

“In other conflicts, refugee rights have been honoured and respected, including the right of return, restitution and compensation. In stark contrast, however, Israel refuses to even recognise the Palestinian right of return, thus continuing to deny the refugees’ basic rights.

“No state is above the law,” Erekat said, calling on the international community to end Israeli “beligerence and disregard for international law”.

Candle-lit vigils were planned in refugee camps on Friday evening and major demonstrations were scheduled in the Palestinian territories on Saturday, including a march to the grave of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah.

The Palestinians recently resumed indirect peace talks with Israel, mediated by the United States, but both sides have spoken pessimistically about the chances of tangible results.

May 14, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Russia, Turkey call for Hamas inclusion

Press TV – May 13, 2010

Russia and Turkey have called for the inclusion of the democratically elected Palestinian government of Hamas in Middle East peace talks.

“Unfortunately Palestinians have been split into two… In order to reunite them, you have to speak to both sides. Hamas won elections in Gaza and cannot be ignored,” Turkish President Abdullah Gul said during a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Ankara on Wednesday.

“Undoubtedly, all parties to this problem should be included more actively (in the process) in order to reach a solution. The process should not exclude anyone,” he added.

Medvedev agreed with the idea that no group should be excluded from the peace process. The Russian president urged the United States to work actively with other nations in the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East. He also stated that a divided Palestinian administration could not help resolve the conflict.

Medvedev said the division “causes the Palestinians to regress.” He also warned that Gaza was “facing a human tragedy.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Medvedev was in Syria, where he met with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Medvedev’s meeting with Meshaal and his later comments in Turkey received an angry response from the Israeli foreign ministry.

“The foreign ministry vehemently rejects the call from the presidents of Russia and Turkey to include Hamas in the peace process and expresses deep disappointment over the meeting between the president of Russia and Khaled Meshaal in Damascus,” it said in a statement issued on Wednesday. However, that was not the only thing about Medvedev’s visits that upset Tel Aviv. In a phone conversation before Medvedev left for Syria, Israeli President Shimon Peres had asked him to convey a message to Assad. But according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Medvedev did not agree because it contradicted Moscow’s stance.

“We did not have a special need to implement this message because this is our position — to live in peace and solve issues on the basis of the international legal framework adopted by everyone and which should now be implemented by everyone,” Lavrov told AFP.

May 13, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Jewish settlers attack Palestinian villagers in Ramallah

Palestine Information Center – 12/05/2010

RAMALLAH — Hundreds of armed Israeli settlers, without prior warning, raided the villages of East Farm and Sinjil, east of Ramallah city, which caused fierce clashes at noon Tuesday.

Eyewitnesses said that hand-to-hand fighting erupted between the Palestinian villagers and the Israeli assailants who used their guns in the attack.

The settler-related incidents are rarely reported in these two villages and such sudden barbaric attack means that the settlers expanded their area of violence against the Palestinians.

The Israeli Aasor military post, which is the largest base in the West Bank and located near the East Farm village, was the staging point from which the settlers waged their attack.

In another incident in Nablus, other violent Israeli settlers appropriated Palestinians’ agricultural lands in the village of Jalud and forcibly prevented the owners from entering them before bulldozing them.

Local sources in the village said that the settlers bulldozed 30 dunums of plowed fields as a prelude to seizing them.

In another context, Al-Ahrar center for prisoners’ studies and human rights said that the Israeli occupation forces stormed and ransacked the home of prisoner Ayed Dodeen in the village of Dura in Al-Khalil causing panic and terror among the children.

Director of the center Fouad Al-Khafsh explained that in conjunction with the election of Dodeen as the head of Hamas detainees in the Negev prison, a large military force barbarically broke into his house terrorizing his wife and children and destroying everything in its way without giving any reason for the raid.

Khafsh said that Dodeen, 43, is a father of six children and has spent 13 years in administrative detention except for few months he spent with his family.

His wife appealed through a telephone call with Al-Ahrar center to international human rights organizations to swiftly intervene to get her husband released from Israeli jails.

May 12, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Shin Bet deports Spain’s most famous clown upon arrival in Israel

Ben Gurion Airport security officials detain Ivan Prado for six hours, accusing the Spanish entertainer of ties with Palestinian terror groups.

Barak Ravid | Haaretz | 09 May 2010

Ivan Prado, the most famous clown in Spain, did not expect to be put on a return flight back to Madrid soon after arriving at Ben-Gurion International Airport late last month, after spending six hours with officials from the Shin Bet security service and the Interior Ministry. The officials accused Prado of having ties to Palestinian terror organizations.

Foreign Ministry officials, meanwhile, say the incident caused grave damage to Israel’s image in Spain.

Prado, director of the International Clown Festival in Galicia, arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport on April 26 with a Spanish national of Arab origin. They planned to go to Ramallah to help organize a similar festival, but at passport control Prado was taken aside by a Shin Bet officer who asked him about his planned visit to the West Bank and about his connections to various Palestinian organizations. He and his female companion were held for six hours, during which they were questioned repeatedly, and their passports were confiscated.

They were sent back to Spain after an Interior Ministry official informed them that they would not be permitted into Israel.

After Prado returned to Madrid he launched a media campaign denouncing Israel and comparing the situation of Palestinians in the West Bank with Jews in Poland.

The incident sparked tension between the Israeli Embassy in Madrid and the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, prompted by questions to the embassy from Spanish journalists and fueled by the diplomats’ anger at the Foreign Ministry’s explanation that Prado was turned away at the airport “for security reasons.”

The Shin Bet issued a statement to Haaretz lacking significant details about the reasons behind the decision. “We recommended to the Interior Ministry to prevent his entry into Israel after the findings of the security check produced suspicions about him,” the statement said. “The man declined to provide complete information to the security people, especially in regard to his links with Palestinian terror organizations.”

May 11, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israeli official says East Jerusalem building to continue

Ma’an – 11/05/2010

Bethlehem – Israel will continue building housing units in occupied East Jerusalem and its outskirts, an Israeli cabinet official said Monday, with no timetable announced to avoid derailing proximity talks, Israeli media reported.

Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio, cabinet secretary Zevi Houser said construction in the occupied part of the city “will start soon” and that “construction in Jerusalem is going on as normal.”

Houser’s comments contradicted recent Israeli government statements that a slow-down in construction, particularly in the East Jerusalem illegal settlement of Ramat Shlomo, would be enforced in a bid to encourage Palestinian officials to remain in US-brokered proximity talks, which were derailed in March when the settlement expansion was announced.

President Mahmoud Abbas called on US to respond to reports that another settlement in occupied Jerusalem was underway, defying alleged US guarantees that all settlement construction would be halted for the duration of indirect talks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesperson, Nir Hefez, told the Army Radio that “a timetable for construction in East Jerusalem will be arranged in order to avoid diplomatic embarrassment,” referring to Israel’s announcement in March during US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the region in a bid to kick start talks.

Meanwhile observers in the Jordan Valley reported dozens of trucks loaded with construction materials entering the illegal Israeli settlement of Nahal Maskyyot, followed by trucks full or workers building homes despite a government freeze on Sunday.

May 11, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel rejects expansion freeze again

Press TV – May 9, 2010

Israel has threatened the ‘peace process’ by again rejecting to enforce a freeze in East al-Quds (Jerusalem) settlement construction on the first day of the so-called proximity talks.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu had made commitments on freezing settlement construction at the Ramat Shlomo project for two years, a Tel Aviv official denied such a commitment was made.

“The prime minister has clarified, over the whole process, that building and planning will continue as usual, exactly as it has for the last 43 years, and no Israeli commitments have been given on this issue,” a senior official close to Netanyahu said.

The Palestinians reacted immediately by accusing Israel of trying to undermine the peace talks once again. “The Israeli statement is an attempt to embarrass or challenge the US administration,” said Nimr Hammad, an aide to acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas.

“If he [Netanyahu] announces a complete halt to settlement building, there will be direct talks,” said Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, quoted by the Voice of Palestine radio.

Indirect peace talks were launched Sunday between the Palestinian Authority and the Tel Aviv regime with US mediation in the form of a shuttle diplomacy.

The US special envoy George Mitchell told the two parties that making progress is important for moving ahead to direct negotiations.

The proximity talks were originally due to start in March but the Palestinians withdrew after Israel publicized plans to build new 1,600 settlement units in annexed East al-Quds.

The Palestinians reportedly agreed to fresh talks only after receiving US assurances that the settlement expansion plan would be frozen.

After the first day of talks concluded, Mitchell left for Washington. He will return next week to coordinate the planned four months of indirect talks.

May 9, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israeli official in LA denounces National Geographic water exhibit

Ma’an -08/05/2010

Bethlehem – Israeli Consul General in Los Angeles Jacob Dayan reportedly sent a letter of complaint to the venue hosting a National Geographic photo exhibition highlighting Israel’s unequal water policy, Israeli media reported on Friday.

The Annenberg Space for Photography exhibit, coinciding with the magazine’s special issue Water: Our Thirsty World, features the works of award-winning photographers looking at water from environmental, social, political and cultural perspectives.

The Consul General voiced complaint over photo captions which include “Israelis relax by the Sea of Galilee, a lake near the Golan Heights that is fed by the Jordan River and that supplies a third of Israel’s fresh water. Since 1967, Israel has blocked Syria’s access to the shoreline,” the Israeli news site Yedioth Aharonot reported.

According to the news site Dayan’s letter said the venue is being used as a political tool to spread lies about Israel’s part in the global effort to provide clean and fresh drinking water, and the exhibit falsely depicts Israel as a country that steals water while its neighbors suffer from a drought. The opposite is true, wrote the consul general.

The original feature published in April 2010 by the National Geographic writes that since occupying the West Bank in 1967, settlements have been supplied water by Mekorot, Israel’s national water authority, “which has drilled 42 deep wells in the West Bank, mainly to supply Israeli cities.”

The article further said according to a 2009 World Bank report, “Israelis use four times as much water per capita as Palestinians, much of it for agriculture. Israel disputes this, arguing that its citizens use only twice as much water and are better at conserving it.”

In contrast, Don Belt writes, West Bank Palestinians “have been largely prevented from digging deep wells of their own, limiting their water access to shallow wells, natural springs, and rainfall that evaporates quickly in the dry desert air.”

When these sources run dry in the summer, experts told Belt, Auja’s Palestinians “have no choice but to purchase water from Israel for about a dollar a cubic yard—in effect buying back the water that’s been taken out from under them by Mekorot’s pumps, which also lower the water table and affect Palestinian springs and wells.”

The three Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian experts interviewed by Belt were further featured in an a recent IRIN article, in which the environmentalists paint a grim picture of the state of the Jordan River, and urge swift action.

“If immediate action is not taken the River Jordan will run dry by 2011,” Baha Afaneh, Jordanian coordinator for the Jordan River Project of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FOEME), said at a conference in Amman on 3-4 May.

According to a FOEME report, the once mighty river is now barely a trickle, fed by saline water and sewage from Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

“Israel has diverted saline water from springs into the river. Today some 20,000 million cubic metres [of saline water] flow into the river annually,” said Gideon Bromberg, the Israeli director of FOEME.

Some three million cubic meters of untreated sewage per year pours into the river from Beit Shea’an Municipality in Israel, despite the fact that Israel is considered a leading country in the region in terms of sewage treatment, Bromberg said.

In March, four days after an Israeli minister threatened to restrict the West Bank’s water supply, Israeli authorities closed off the main water source used for agriculture in a Jordan Valley village committee members and lawyers said.

May 8, 2010 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Netanyahu To “Legalize” Illegal Outposts

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – May 08, 2010

Responding to a request from the Israeli High Court regarding two illegal settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli government stated that it intends to “legalize” Hersha and Givat Hayovel.

In July of last year, the High Court demanded the Israeli government to provide it with a detailed timeframe regarding orders to demolish the two outposts as such orders were officially made by the court in 2001 and 2003. But Israel kept delaying the implementation of the court order, and Netanyahu’s current government decided to legalize the outposts if they were built on “government land”. But the outposts, as well as all settlements, are build in the occupied territories and lands illegally confiscated by Israel while some outposts were illegally installed by the settlers without any Israeli approval.

Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, recently demanded that the government halt the removal of Givat Hayovel illegal outpost after an Israeli soldier, a resident of the outpost, was killed during an Israeli invasion to Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, more than a month ago. The outpost includes 12 homes installed on privately owned Palestinian lands.

The Israeli paper Haaretz reported that the government filed its response to the court on Friday informing it that it intends to legalize the constructions in the Givat Hayovel outpost unless it finds out that it was built on privately owned Palestinian lands. But even if the outpost is found to be built on private Palestinian lands, there will be no timeframe for removing it.

Settler leaders and Israeli Knesset members Zeev Elkin and Arieh Eldad “saluted” Netanyahu for his intention to legalize the outposts, and said that all Jewish constructions in what they called “Judea and Samaria” as well as every part of the country, must be legalized.

Likud member of Knesset, Danni Ayalon, said that “Netanyahu chose the correct path, the path of the Likud to legalize all outposts”.

The Israeli Peace Now movement slammed the Israeli decision and said that instead of resolving the issue of settlement outposts and removing them, Israel is legalizing existing illegal construction in the heart of the West Bank and is constructing more settlements.

May 8, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

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