Rogue Israeli settlements in West Bank continue
By Isabel Kershner Published: December 7, 2007
SHVUT AMI OUTPOST, West Bank: For two months, Jewish (but more importantly, Zionist) youths have been renovating an old stone house on this muddy hilltop in the northern West Bank. The house is not theirs, however.
It belongs to a Palestinian family, and the seizure of it, along with the land around it, for a new settlement outpost is a violation of Israeli law. But although the police have evicted the group five times, they keep coming back.
Yedidya Slonim, 16, one of the renovators here, who grew up in another West Bank settlement, Tzofim, said of the police: "We come back straight away, as soon as they've gone. They come every week for half a day. It doesn't bother us so much."
The cat-and-mouse contest here lays bare a core dilemma of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute: Israel has pledged that it will permit no new settlements in the territory it has occupied since the 1967 war, allow no more expropriation of Palestinian land and dismantle unauthorized outposts - like this one - erected since March 2001, but it has never applied the muscle needed to do so.
"Shvut Ami is a chronicle of failure of law enforcement," said Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer who represents the Palestinian owners of the house on behalf of Yesh Din, an Israeli volunteer organization that fights for Palestinian rights. In this respect, he said, the area is "a jungle."
So the settlers continue building a patchwork of communities to try to preclude the drawing of a border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. At the vanguard are the hilltop youth, teenagers like Yedidya, who work to complicate the demographic map ever more.
A settler organization called The Land of Israel Faithful has promised to set up another seven outposts over the eight-day Hanukkah holiday - and to "strengthen" Shvut Ami.
According to Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that tracks settlement activity, most of the hundred or so outposts already in existence are built at least partially on private Palestinian land.
Shvut Ami sits across a valley from Mitzpeh Ishai, a new neighborhood of the Jewish settlement of Kedumim. Kedumim was established in the 1970s between the Palestinian villages of Funduk, Kadum and Imaten, about 11 kilometers, or 7 miles, east of the 1967 lines.
Most of the world considers all Jewish settlement in the West Bank a violation of international law. The Israeli government asserts that the territory is disputed. The hilltop youth believe it was promised to them by God.
Sometimes, a price is paid in blood. On Nov. 19, a local settler, Ido Zoldan, 29, was shot and killed in his car by Palestinian gunmen at the entrance to Funduk. Zoldan, who grew up in Kedumim, had worked in his father's construction company, which builds settlement homes all over the West Bank.
The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militia affiliated with the mainstream Fatah movement headed by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, took credit for the attack. Three suspects have since been detained - all members of Abbas's security forces from the village of Kadum.
(Armed settlers also routinely attack and harass Palestinians in the region.)
Five nights after the killing, hundreds of settlers converged at the entrance of Funduk in protest. They rampaged through the village, smashing the windows of houses and cars.
Villagers said the Israeli soldiers and police officers accompanying the protesters mostly stood aside while the settlers ran wild.
Military officials said the Funduk protest had not been authorized by the army. Soldiers and police officers had dispersed the riot, detaining two settlers and two Palestinian villagers for throwing stones, they said.
But for years, the settlers have exploited the ambivalence displayed toward them by the Israeli authorities.
(Tacit approval of their actions, which Israel cannot legally hold as an official policy.)
The Shvut Ami outpost sits on private Palestinian land inherited by the two wives and children of Abd al-Ghani Salah Amar, of Kadum, according to documentation seen by The New York Times.
Amar built the stone house in 1963, 10 years before he died. The roughly 17 acres, or 7 hectares, of land are planted with hundreds of olive and almond trees, some figs and some vines. The estate is managed by one of Amar's daughters, Badriya Amar, 61, a widow who still lives in Kadum.
Amar filed a complaint with the Israeli police in early October for trespassing on her family land. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the ownership documents were being examined by the authorities for authenticity.
In the meantime, the site has been declared a closed military zone. Behind the settler youths who are building here are the guiding hands of adults. One of the leading ideologues of the outpost movement is Daniella Weiss, a former mayor of Kedumim. Yedidya said that "someone" from Kedumim connected them to the water mains, and local supporters bring over food and raise funds. Nachman Zoldan, Ido's father, helped out a lot in the beginning; Ido also provided equipment and advice before he was killed.
Yedidya said the outpost's synagogue would be named in his memory. Ido was supposed to help put down the floors.
Based on experience, there is no guarantee when Shvut Ami - Hebrew for "my people's return" - will be restored to Amar.
Another illegal outpost, Migron, was established on private Palestinian land in 2002. More than 40 families now live there in trailer homes. Peace Now successfully petitioned Israel's Supreme Court in 2006 to order its removal, but in Migron, nothing has changed. At the latest hearing, on Nov. 1, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, asked for a two-month extension to allow him to formulate a comprehensive plan for the removal of illegal outposts.
Amar last visited her orchards in early November, to try to pick a few olives. She was chased away by the settlers, she said. She was speaking by telephone because the only road to Kadum had been blocked by the army since the killing of Zoldan.
Yedidya suggested that Amar could move to Jordan or Egypt or one of the other Arab states.
"God gave this to us," he said. "Now that we're here, I don't think we're going to move."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/07/africa/outpost.php
Israel snubs settlement criticism
Israel is seeking bids from construction firms to build over 300 homes in East Jerusalem [GALLO/Getty]
An Israeli minister has rebuffed recent US criticism of Israel's plan to build new homes on occupied land in the Jerusalem area, saying nothing should prevent the project.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, criticised on Friday the planned construction, saying it "doesn't help to build confidence".
Responding to the rare public US censure, Zeev Boim, Israel's construction and housing minister, reiterated Israel's position that it can build anywhere in Jerusalem - including the Arab east sector which Israel captured in the 1967 war.
"Secretary of state Rice should be congratulated for her efforts in relaunching the peace process," Boim said in Friday's statement. "But this cannot constantly be linked to the cessation of construction in Jerusalem."
Rice masterminded last week's Annapolis conference to press for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord before the administration of George Bush, the US president, leaves office.
'Road map'
Palestinians consider East Jerusalem part of the occupied West Bank, which they want for a state and where Israel is obliged to freeze Jewish settlement activity under a 2003 peace "road map" championed by the United States.
"There is thus nothing to prevent the construction there, just as there is nothing to prevent construction anywhere else in Israel"
Zeev Boim, Israel's construction and housing minister
Boim said the controversial project, known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Abu Ghneim, "is within Jerusalem's municipal borders, where Israeli law applies.
"There is thus nothing to prevent the construction there, just as there is nothing to prevent construction anywhere else in Israel".
Israel announced earlier this week that it was seeking bids from construction firms to build over 300 homes and other units at the new site - located south of East Jerusalem.
A government spokesman said the tender was part of a seven-year-old plan.
Expanding city
Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem and integrating the surrounding West Bank areas within much expanded Jerusalem city limits is not recognised internationally.
Israel has settled Jews on much of that land, effectively isolating East Jerusalem.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said the Israeli building project was "not helpful", and Nabil Abu Rdainah, a Palestinian presidential aide, said the Americans "must pressure the Israeli government to stop settlement activities".
Negotiators from the two sides will meet in Jerusalem on Wednesday for the first round of talks since Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, met in Annapolis.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E2057AD8-88C0-4CA7-971D-DA351ABC73C8.htm
By Isabel Kershner Published: December 7, 2007
SHVUT AMI OUTPOST, West Bank: For two months, Jewish (but more importantly, Zionist) youths have been renovating an old stone house on this muddy hilltop in the northern West Bank. The house is not theirs, however.
It belongs to a Palestinian family, and the seizure of it, along with the land around it, for a new settlement outpost is a violation of Israeli law. But although the police have evicted the group five times, they keep coming back.
Yedidya Slonim, 16, one of the renovators here, who grew up in another West Bank settlement, Tzofim, said of the police: "We come back straight away, as soon as they've gone. They come every week for half a day. It doesn't bother us so much."
The cat-and-mouse contest here lays bare a core dilemma of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute: Israel has pledged that it will permit no new settlements in the territory it has occupied since the 1967 war, allow no more expropriation of Palestinian land and dismantle unauthorized outposts - like this one - erected since March 2001, but it has never applied the muscle needed to do so.
"Shvut Ami is a chronicle of failure of law enforcement," said Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer who represents the Palestinian owners of the house on behalf of Yesh Din, an Israeli volunteer organization that fights for Palestinian rights. In this respect, he said, the area is "a jungle."
So the settlers continue building a patchwork of communities to try to preclude the drawing of a border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. At the vanguard are the hilltop youth, teenagers like Yedidya, who work to complicate the demographic map ever more.
A settler organization called The Land of Israel Faithful has promised to set up another seven outposts over the eight-day Hanukkah holiday - and to "strengthen" Shvut Ami.
According to Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that tracks settlement activity, most of the hundred or so outposts already in existence are built at least partially on private Palestinian land.
Shvut Ami sits across a valley from Mitzpeh Ishai, a new neighborhood of the Jewish settlement of Kedumim. Kedumim was established in the 1970s between the Palestinian villages of Funduk, Kadum and Imaten, about 11 kilometers, or 7 miles, east of the 1967 lines.
Most of the world considers all Jewish settlement in the West Bank a violation of international law. The Israeli government asserts that the territory is disputed. The hilltop youth believe it was promised to them by God.
Sometimes, a price is paid in blood. On Nov. 19, a local settler, Ido Zoldan, 29, was shot and killed in his car by Palestinian gunmen at the entrance to Funduk. Zoldan, who grew up in Kedumim, had worked in his father's construction company, which builds settlement homes all over the West Bank.
The Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militia affiliated with the mainstream Fatah movement headed by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, took credit for the attack. Three suspects have since been detained - all members of Abbas's security forces from the village of Kadum.
(Armed settlers also routinely attack and harass Palestinians in the region.)
Five nights after the killing, hundreds of settlers converged at the entrance of Funduk in protest. They rampaged through the village, smashing the windows of houses and cars.
Villagers said the Israeli soldiers and police officers accompanying the protesters mostly stood aside while the settlers ran wild.
Military officials said the Funduk protest had not been authorized by the army. Soldiers and police officers had dispersed the riot, detaining two settlers and two Palestinian villagers for throwing stones, they said.
But for years, the settlers have exploited the ambivalence displayed toward them by the Israeli authorities.
(Tacit approval of their actions, which Israel cannot legally hold as an official policy.)
The Shvut Ami outpost sits on private Palestinian land inherited by the two wives and children of Abd al-Ghani Salah Amar, of Kadum, according to documentation seen by The New York Times.
Amar built the stone house in 1963, 10 years before he died. The roughly 17 acres, or 7 hectares, of land are planted with hundreds of olive and almond trees, some figs and some vines. The estate is managed by one of Amar's daughters, Badriya Amar, 61, a widow who still lives in Kadum.
Amar filed a complaint with the Israeli police in early October for trespassing on her family land. Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the ownership documents were being examined by the authorities for authenticity.
In the meantime, the site has been declared a closed military zone. Behind the settler youths who are building here are the guiding hands of adults. One of the leading ideologues of the outpost movement is Daniella Weiss, a former mayor of Kedumim. Yedidya said that "someone" from Kedumim connected them to the water mains, and local supporters bring over food and raise funds. Nachman Zoldan, Ido's father, helped out a lot in the beginning; Ido also provided equipment and advice before he was killed.
Yedidya said the outpost's synagogue would be named in his memory. Ido was supposed to help put down the floors.
Based on experience, there is no guarantee when Shvut Ami - Hebrew for "my people's return" - will be restored to Amar.
Another illegal outpost, Migron, was established on private Palestinian land in 2002. More than 40 families now live there in trailer homes. Peace Now successfully petitioned Israel's Supreme Court in 2006 to order its removal, but in Migron, nothing has changed. At the latest hearing, on Nov. 1, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, asked for a two-month extension to allow him to formulate a comprehensive plan for the removal of illegal outposts.
Amar last visited her orchards in early November, to try to pick a few olives. She was chased away by the settlers, she said. She was speaking by telephone because the only road to Kadum had been blocked by the army since the killing of Zoldan.
Yedidya suggested that Amar could move to Jordan or Egypt or one of the other Arab states.
"God gave this to us," he said. "Now that we're here, I don't think we're going to move."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/07/africa/outpost.php Israel snubs settlement criticism
Israel is seeking bids from construction firms to build over 300 homes in East Jerusalem [GALLO/Getty]
An Israeli minister has rebuffed recent US criticism of Israel's plan to build new homes on occupied land in the Jerusalem area, saying nothing should prevent the project.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, criticised on Friday the planned construction, saying it "doesn't help to build confidence".
Responding to the rare public US censure, Zeev Boim, Israel's construction and housing minister, reiterated Israel's position that it can build anywhere in Jerusalem - including the Arab east sector which Israel captured in the 1967 war.
"Secretary of state Rice should be congratulated for her efforts in relaunching the peace process," Boim said in Friday's statement. "But this cannot constantly be linked to the cessation of construction in Jerusalem."
Rice masterminded last week's Annapolis conference to press for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord before the administration of George Bush, the US president, leaves office.
'Road map'
Palestinians consider East Jerusalem part of the occupied West Bank, which they want for a state and where Israel is obliged to freeze Jewish settlement activity under a 2003 peace "road map" championed by the United States.
"There is thus nothing to prevent the construction there, just as there is nothing to prevent construction anywhere else in Israel"
Zeev Boim, Israel's construction and housing minister
Boim said the controversial project, known to Israelis as Har Homa and to Palestinians as Abu Ghneim, "is within Jerusalem's municipal borders, where Israeli law applies.
"There is thus nothing to prevent the construction there, just as there is nothing to prevent construction anywhere else in Israel".
Israel announced earlier this week that it was seeking bids from construction firms to build over 300 homes and other units at the new site - located south of East Jerusalem.
A government spokesman said the tender was part of a seven-year-old plan.
Expanding city
Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem and integrating the surrounding West Bank areas within much expanded Jerusalem city limits is not recognised internationally.
Israel has settled Jews on much of that land, effectively isolating East Jerusalem.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said the Israeli building project was "not helpful", and Nabil Abu Rdainah, a Palestinian presidential aide, said the Americans "must pressure the Israeli government to stop settlement activities".
Negotiators from the two sides will meet in Jerusalem on Wednesday for the first round of talks since Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, met in Annapolis.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E2057AD8-88C0-4CA7-971D-DA351ABC73C8.htm 
