Writing The Wrongs: Palestinian Authority: Netanyahu's West Bank settlement construction announcement 'destroys peace process'

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Palestinian Authority: Netanyahu's West Bank settlement construction announcement 'destroys peace process'

By JTA

LAST UPDATED: 10/30/2013

Spokesman for PA Nabil Abu Rudeina says announcement, that came after Israel's release of 26 Palestinian prisoners, also "sends int'l community message that Israel does not respect int'l law."

Mosque in Abdullah Ibrahim behind houses in West Bank Jewish settlement of Efrat, December 2011. Photo: REUTERS/Baz Ratner

The spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas reacted harshly to the announcement made on Wednesday by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for construction of housing units in the West Bank.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, said the announcement “destroys the peace process and sends the international community the message that Israel does not respect international law.”

Construction plans for eastern Jerusalem settlements were announced as 26 Palestinian prisoners were released.

The plans for construction were announced early Wednesday morning at around 1 am as 21 Palestinian prisoners freed from Israeli jails were greeted in Ramallah in the West Bank by thousands of family members and well-wishers. Also, as another five were reunited with their families in Gaza.
The plans reportedly were announced concurrently with the prisoner release in a bid to calm critics from the right.
According to reports, the construction plans include a national park in areas east of the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus between the Palestinian neighborhoods of Isawiyah and a-Tur; the Kedem Center, a tourism and archaeological center in the Palestinian village of Silwan opposite the entrance to the City of David; renewing a plan initially announced in 2010 to build 1,500 housing units in Ramat Shlomo; and issuing permits to construct additional rooms on existing housing in Ramat Shlomo.
Shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday, Abbas greeted the released prisoners in Ramallah in front of Yasser Arafat’s mausoleum, where Abbas vowed that there will be no peace deal as long as there are Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The Palestinian president also denied that there was a deal with Israel with regard to settlement construction.
"There are some living among us who say that we have a deal (to release prisoners) in exchange for settlement building, and I say to them, be silent," AFP quoted him as saying.
The release came hours after Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal against freeing the prisoners, who had caused the deaths of Israelis, saying it had no legal reason to stop the release.
JPost.com Staff contributed to this article.

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U.S. scholars' group votes in favor of academic boycott of Israel

US-Israeli talks focus on Ahmadinejad's possible ouster

Why reconstruct Gaza without making demands

Ted Belman

The US and EU are putting up $2.3 Billion to redevelop Gaza.

Before advancing any money, why don’t they insist

- that Shalit be release without convicted terrorists being released by Israel in exchange,

- that the US be put in charge of the southern border to ensure that Hamas isn’t rearmed?

- that their three preconditions be accepted by Hamas, i.e. agree to all former agreements,recognize Israel and renounce terror

- that Hamas amend their Charter

- That Hamas disconnect from Iran

The answer is that they don’t want to.

IDF: Civilian Deaths in Gaza Less than 25% of Total

A maximum of 25% of the Palestinians killed in Gaza since the beginning of the Israeli operation are innocent civilians, the head of the IDF's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration (CLA), Col. Moshe Levi, said Wednesday. According to Palestinian medical officials, Israel has killed some 1,000 Palestinians and more than half of them are civilians. Levi said the CLA had compiled a list with the names of 900 Palestinians killed during the fighting. He said that 150 names were of women, children and elderly, and that the maximum number of civilians killed so far was 250.
Levi also dismissed claims that 43 Palestinians were killed in an IDF attack on a Hamas terror cell that was firing mortars at Israeli forces from within an UNRWA school in Jabalya. Levi said 21 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including a number of Hamas operatives. (Jerusalem Post)

Iranian reformist daily:Hamas hiding forces in nurseries and hospitals

An Iranian reformist daily newspaper has criticized Hamas "for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals." This is reported in today's Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam. The Palestinian daily adds that in response the Iranian government has closed the newspaper.

The following is the story in today's Al-Ayyam:

Headline: "Iran closes a reformist newspaper, for publishing a report criticizing Hamas"

"The Iranian news agency "Irna" reported yesterday, that the Iranian Culture Ministry has closed the reformist daily newspaper "Karjo Zaran", because it published a report that included criticism of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
On December 30 the paper published a statement of a reformist student organization, that has criticized Hamas for risking lives of civilians, amongst them children, by hiding its forces in nurseries and hospitals. The statement was published whilst the Iranian government expresses a unified stands against Israel, and Tehran is overwhelmed by demonstrations against Israel."

[Al-Ayyam, Jan. 1, 2009]
Thanks PMW

Iran-backed Hamas Rocket, Mortar Attacks and Nuclear Developments

9,400+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2003. [1]
3,200+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza in 2008 alone. [2]
6,500+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. [3]
543+ rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israeli territory during the ceasefire from June 19 to Dec. 19, 2008. [4]
28 deaths caused by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel since 2001. The dead include Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire ended, Iran-backed Palestinian groups in Gaza fired rockets and mortars that killed an Israeli-Arab construction worker and a mother of four who was seeking shelter in a bus station as a rocket warning siren sounded. [5]
1,000+ people in Israel injured from rockets and mortars fired from Gaza since 2001, including Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers. Since the ceasefire, 44 Israelis have been injured and 200 have been treated for shock. [6]
Thanks Israel Project

It began with this...

The British Foreign Office, November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.2

Signed,
Arthur James Balfour
[Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs]

Syria is an Occupier-Are You Listening World?

Syria Occupies Lebanon. Again. - Bret Stephens (Wall Street Journal)

As of this minute, Syria occupies at least 177 square miles of Lebanese soil. That you are now reading about it for the first time is as much a scandal as the occupation itself.

The news comes by way of a fact-finding survey of the Lebanese-Syrian border just produced by the International Lebanese Committee for UN Security Council Resolution 1559, an American NGO that has consultative status with the UN. In meticulous detail - supplemented by photographs and satellite images - the authors describe precisely where and how Lebanon has been infiltrated.

Though the land grabs are small affairs individually, they collectively add up to an area amounting to about 4% of Lebanese soil - in U.S. terms, the proportional equivalent of Arizona. Of particular note is that the area of Syrian conquest dwarves that of the Israeli-occupied Shebaa Farms which amount to an area of about 12 square miles.

It would be nice to see the Arab world protest this case of illegal occupation, given its passions about the subject.