Expansion Of Settlements Continues
Reageer (0)18-8-2010
Despite an annouced settlement freeze, despite an imminent Quartet announcement, despite international pressure since the Gaza Flotilla, Israel declared it will build more in the West Bank.
Twenty-three mobile school units will be placed in 12 settler communities, including Ofra, Elon Moreh, Itamar, Emmanuel, and Talmon, according to the Hebrew-language Ma’ariv newspaper.
President Benyamin Netanyahu was behind the plan to build the housing for students of the Ariel University near Nablus. Netanyahu called an “urgent meeting” to discuss the settler’s deprived education system. Attended by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Minister of Education Gideon Star and Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman, Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser, the meeting members sought to “prevent a political and diplomatic crisis of lack of classrooms in the West Bank.”
The Palestinian National Initiative and Negotiation Affairs Department (NAD) condemned the proposal, and the Israeli Justice Department won’t authorize it.
"Educational need does not cancel the need to obtain a building permit," said Israeli Deputy Attorney General Mikail Blass before Knesset. "Following the freeze, enforcement has changed and things that passed in the past did not go now.”
The announcement questions the Netanyahu coalition’s intentions for direct talks with the Palestinian Authority. The timing, hours or days before a UN, Russian, US and EU joint-declaration on Israeli-PA direct talks, is terrible and illustrative.
Even after Netanyahu’s announcement of a partial and temporary ‘moratorium’ (or ‘freeze’) on 26 November 2009, settlement activity continued throughout the West Bank, especially in and around East Jerusalem. At least 30 settlement communities have violated Netanyahu’s moratorium and 2,300 illegal homes were completed in 2009. The Israeli Regional Councils in the occupied West Bank is preparing to build at least 2,700 housing units as soon as the current partial settlement freeze reaches its scheduled end this September.
On Sunday, settlers from Svhut Rachel near Nablus uprooted 200 trees from a neighboring Palestinian farmer’s olive grove, reported the Ma’an news agency.
The Netanyahu coalition government could disintegrate under the settlement issue, reported Haaretz. Built with right-wing parties dedicated to expanding Israeli beyond the Green Line into the West Bank, the coalition plans to survive when the settlement-freeze expires on 26 September. This could mean Israeli approval of construction within certain “major settlement blocks” or a short three-month freeze extension palatable to coalition members.
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