The Israeli army has ordered the seizure of Palestinian land surrounding four West Bank villages apparently in order to hugely expand settlements around Jerusalem, it emerged yesterday.
It’s a little hard to say we’re fighting to protect Israel and at the same time to spread peace and freedom in the Middle East when Israel keeps sucking up Palestine. But we manage.
The land seized forms a corridor from East Jerusalem to Jericho and is intended to be used for a road that would be for Palestinians only. Analysts said the road would run on one side of the Israeli security barrier, while the existing Jerusalem-Jericho road would be reserved for Israelis.A spokeswoman for the Israeli army said it was necessary to build a road to link Bethlehem and the Judea region with Jericho and the Jordan valley area in order to "improve the quality of life" for Palestinians.
That’s rich. It doesn’t do much to improve the quality of life for the Palestinians whose land has just been confiscated. But of course, the road can’t be built on land that already belongs to Israel.
Adam Keller of the Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, said the confiscation of land belonging to the villages of Abu Dis, Arab al-Sawahra, Nebi Musa and Talhin Alhamar would "rob many villagers of their sole livelihood" but would also "facilitate the big annexation plan known as E-1, which is aimed at linking the settlement of Ma'aleh Adummim with Jerusalem and cutting the West Bank in two."[...]
Jeff Halper, an Israeli geographer who specialises in Israel's development of the West Bank, said it appeared that there was a rush to carry out as much work as possible before the US-sponsored meeting between Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, in Annapolis, Maryland, in November.
"They want to push everything as far as possible before the November meeting because that will be seen as the starting point for everything," he said. "Anything done before that meeting will be set in stone. In general this has to be seen as part of a timeline in which Israel wants to get all its development of the West Bank finished before Bush leaves office."
Just in case.
But really, I don’t think they need to worry. Nobody after Bush is going to change our policy with regards to Israel.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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