Israel begins construction of settlement on West Bank
The move violates U.S. policy. Palestinians say Israel wants to push its future borders deeper.
By Laurie Copans /Associated PressMASKIOT, West Bank - Israel has begun laying the foundations for a new Jewish settlement deep in the West Bank - breaking a promise to Washington while strengthening its hold on a stretch of desert it wants to keep as it draws its final borders.
The construction of Maskiot comes at a time when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seeks U.S. backing for eventually annexing parts of the West Bank as part of a plan to set Israel's eastern border with or without Palestinian consent.
The Palestinians and the Israeli settlement-watchdog group Peace Now say the Maskiot construction amounts to a new attempt to push Israel's future border deeper into the West Bank.
"It's about grabbing land," said Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now.
Otniel Schneller, an Olmert adviser, confirmed Israel was building in additional West Bank areas to ensure they would not be included in the lands given to the Palestinians. He said Israel needed to keep the Jordan River Valley, where Maskiot is located, as a security buffer against Islamic militants based in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere. The valley forms the eastern border of the West Bank, abutting Jordan.
Olmert has said that if efforts to resume peace talks fail, as expected, he would annex large Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank and draw Israel's final borders by 2008. A separation barrier Israel is building along and near the West Bank's western border with Israel is to serve as the basis for the future border.
In order to ensure a Jewish majority in lands it controls, Israel plans to evacuate as many as 70,000 West Bank settlers, relocating them to the western side of the separation barrier. Israel depicts the move as a major concession, but Palestinians fear Jewish footholds like Maskiot will prevent them from being able to build a contiguous state on the evacuated lands....
I love that... "Israel depicts" the expulsion of 70,000 Jews "as a major concession."
Israel gives ultimatum to Hamas lawmakers living in East Jerusalem
The four must renounce their party or face being evicted from their homes. They plan to fight.
RAMALLAH, West Bank - The enmity between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian government turned deeply personal last week for four Hamas lawmakers suddenly faced with a stark choice: Renounce the political party that Israel considers a terrorist organization or be expelled from their homes in Jerusalem by month's end.That is the ultimatum presented by Israel's Interior Minister Roni Bar-On, who is using a unique provision in the Israeli law governing residency of Palestinians in Jerusalem to force the lawmakers to resign from the Palestinian parliament or be forcibly evicted.
The four - Mohammed Abu Teir, Ahmed Abu Atoun, Mohammed Totach, and Khaled Abu Arafa - all born in Jerusalem or longtime residents, were recently summoned to Jerusalem police headquarters and handed letters from the Interior Minister putting them on notice in Hebrew and Arabic.
"Of course I am worried. The occupation always does what it wants. But I was elected by the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian people are the only ones who can dismiss me," said Totach, 37, an Al-Quds University lecturer in business administration, who was elected in January to the 132-seat seat Palestinian Legislative Council. His home in Wadi Joz, an Arab section of East Jerusalem, is a four-minute walk from the heart of the Old City.
Red-bearded Abu Teir, 55, of Jerusalem's Um Tuba section, said targeting the Hamas lawmakers living in Jerusalem is part of Israel's campaign to make Hamas collapse and "Judaize" the city of 700,000 in which 230,000 residents are Arab. Indigenous Palestinians of Jerusalem, according to Israeli law in effect since 1967, are not citizens. They are simply residents, whose right to stay can be revoked.
"There is a distinction, legally, between someone who is a citizen and someone who is a resident," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. "If you are a resident of the U.S. and you break the law you can be deported. That does not hold true if you are a citizen. These [Palestinians] are people who... belong to a terrorist organization, as defined by Israel, the European Union, and the United States, and who, at the same time, say their loyalties and their sense of political affiliation is to the Palestinian Authority.
"On both of these counts, if that is their choice, if they choose to be a member of a terrorist organization and if they choose to say they are part of the Palestinian government, then we believe we are in our rights to remove their residency. That's the law," Regev said.
Both Abu Teir and Abu Atoun, 38, say the issue could end up before the Israeli Supreme Court. Critics find that surreal, or at least manipulative, given that Hamas refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. If they don't recognize the country, how can they possibly recognize its highest court?
Jews are "evacuated" from "settlements." Arabs are "expelled" from their "homes."
Media bias? What media bias?
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