The Israeli Defense Ministry has announced that they are planning to destroy eight Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank, displacing 1,500 residents and forcing them to move to the city of Yatta.
The military claims that the villages are “illegally” placed inside a “live fire zone” and will be demolished for military training. The area was only declared a military zone in 1976, and evidence suggests the villages have been there since 1830.
The villages have been under threat of demolition since 1999, but the Israeli High Court blocked their demolition at the time. Apparently the live fire zone hasn’t effected the villages, but the military is expressing concern that the residents might be “terrorists” spying on them.
The move to expel civilians from the area will put even more tension on the stalled peace process, as evidence that Israel is continuing to expand the portion of the West Bank it considers exclusively theirs at the expense of local populations.
This sort of thing goes into high gear when there are wars to distract attention.
The ethnic cleansing of Palestine continues…..with the complicitiy of the West, from the very beginning.
It is slo-mo genocide.
Jason – there is no stalled peace process. Arabs wan he complete destruction of Israel and all the infidel Jews thrown into the sea. he liberated areas of Yehuda and Shomron should be annexed, as was Golan. Gaza was a disasterous learning lesson. And yerushalayim was liberated after 29 years of illegal occupation and will NEVER be divided again.
Right. There is not stalled peace process. There is just a smokescreen to cover Israeli expansion. There is no intention on the Israeli side to make any sort of offer that could possibly be accepted. The "moderate" Livni made that clear in her comments at the talks. Netanyahu is even worse, as he makes clear in the videotape of his talk saying so.
…and the apartheid state continues its purge of the honorable Palestinians.
As of 2011, the Arab population growth rate of the West Bank was 2.097% and the Arab population growth rate of Gaza was 3.422%.
The population growth rate of Israel, on the other hand, is about 1.8%.
Some "purge." It's like saying "the bank robbery continues" after the guy in the ski mask walks into the bank and puts money ON the counter.
So natural population growth somehow makes Israel's practices of ethnic cleansing OK.
You're beyond pathetic.
Well, someone's pathetic here, but it's not me.
I have pointed out numerous times that if Israel is engaged in "genocide" or "ethnic cleansing," it's doing a piss-poor job of it, seeing as how the Palestinian Arab population keeps growing instead of shrinking, and is now many multiples of what it was in 1948.
It takes a HUGE leap of illogic to get from that irrefutable factual claim to the bizarre notion that I think Israel's policies are "okay." In fact, I think they're piss-poor policies. I just prefer to see them described accurately rather than inaccurately.
To the extent that I "support Israel" (which isn't much — I'm an anarchist and don't like ANY state very much), I believe that it should withdraw to its 1967 borders, dismantle its squats on other people's property ("settlements"), end its blockade practices, give full recognition to such representative institutions (including "states") as Palestinian Arabs choose to engage in, and seek an arbitration agreement with those institutions under which an impartial (probably UN-sponsored, unfortunately — that seems to be the default choice) panel would constituted and empowered to resolve all outstanding property claims from e,g, the 1948 Palestinian Arab diaspora via some reasonable process that might include some suitable combination of restoration of title/occupancy rights, restitution/indemnification, etc.
Unfortunately, to a large extent all involved parties — the Israeli government, the several Arab states, the "Palestinian Authority" et. al — have vested interests in keeping the situation exactly as-is: A constant state of low-intensity warfare with occasional players, the Palestinian Arabs as disenfranchised pawns, and the US and other aid checks flowing.
But don't let the facts, or the reality of what I think is OK, get in the way of whatever fantasies float your boat.
[Part 1]
Before the founding of Israel, the Zionist movement has been engaged in ethnic cleansing.
In late 1947 and early 1948 it expelled by force Palestinians from their own lands, villages and cities.
Zionist militias committed several massacres between January 1948 and May 1948. These massacres had nothing to do with the so-called 1948 war. They were a product of a deliberate plan to remove Palestinians from the land.
But the land and property were not the only victims of this large scale ethnic cleansing project. Palestinian scientists, authors, poets, scholars and historians were expelled or imprisoned under bogus charges in an attempt to decapitate the Palestinian population for without knowledge, science or education, no nation or community can flourish.
Ben-Gurion's Plan Dalet (The Fourth Letter in the Hebrew Alphabet) — Plan D, which was implemented in 1948 — utilized intimidation and massacres to terrorize and drive out 750,000 Palestinians from their native Palestinian towns.
[/End of Part 1]
[part 2]
After 1949, Israel engaged in a large scale land confiscation process where large swaths of thousands of thousands of acres were confiscated and appropriated from Palestinians.
In 1967, another war that Israel started by attacking Egypt and invading Syrian territory, Israel drove out of the West Bank several thousand Palestinians. And since the 1960s and until today, Israel has been engaged in a protracted process of land confiscations, home demolitions and policies aimed at making the lives of the remaining Palestinians miserable; these tactics and policies include, but are not limited to, cutting water off from entire villages, destroying Palestinian farmland with herbicides, building separation walls to prevent Palestinians from reaching their own land and from reaching their own relatives in neighboring towns, burning and uprooting centuries-old olive trees.
[/End of Part 2]
[Part 3]
In addition, Israel has institutionalized economic and financial policies that discriminate against non-Jews in such a way as to keep Palestinian towns inside Israel economically dependent on the Jewish labor market. This has led to the ghettoization of these Palestinian locales. With most of their privately-owned land confiscated, these Palestinian locales have seen their agricultural economic base destroyed and have become dependent on the Jewish-dominated labor market.
The original Mitzpim (Plural of Mitzpeh – Hebrew for Overlook) project has been aimed at geographically isolating the non-Jewish towns from one another. The same strategy has been used in the occupied West Bank were Israeli settlements dot the hilltops and mountaintops with the deliberate goal of cutting off Palestinian towns from each other.
[/End of Part 3]
[Part 4]
Between 1948 and today, several hundred Jewish locales have been established. During the same period, Israel has established ZERO locales for the Palestinian citizens of the state.
Between 1947 and 1949, Israel destroyed — razed with bulldozers — more than 460 Palestinian villages. Today, the destroyed remains of some of these villages can still be seen. One has to look for them, however, as the Israeli government has used tree-planting projects to hide and conceal these remnants.
So as any sane and mentally healthy person can see, these facts can only be described as a slow process of ethnic cleansing.
Anyone who chooses to dispute these facts must be taking a Ziocaine-induced knapp.
[/End of Part 4]
"So as any sane and mentally healthy person can see, these facts can only be described as a slow process of ethnic cleansing. "
Yes — so slow that it's moving in reverse.
The intent of the policies is debatable, but I don't have a real problem with the classification of those policies as "ethnic cleansing," nor do I support those policies.
The effect of those policies, however, is indisputable: If their intent is "ethnic cleansing," they're doing a piss-poor job of it.
You seem to be so ignorant so as to not comprehend the meaning of the term Ethnic Cleansing.
Unlike genocide, you twit, Ethnic Cleansing removes entire populations from certain areas. And that is a crime under international law, whether you like it or not.
Avi,
I'll give you one last chance to knock off the juvenile name-calling before I assist you in becoming acquainted with the number "86."
hardy har har….
what else is new…in occupied Palestine today
MSM in the USA never heard of Palestine….
only of the "Chosen"
Why can't Israel conduct its live fire exercise elsewhere? How can these villages be illegal when they were present before the Israeli invasion?
Nazies destroeyd completaly 2 villages in former Czechoslovakia – Lidice and Lezaky. Todays Opressers have far more messianic vision of the World and mankind will deaply regret UN decision 1946 about state of Israel. Etnic cleansing and rasism World has been watching in Palestine is only begining….horrors of wars and mass destruction this "colonist, fanatical regime" may inflict upon people of 4 corners could be truly apocalyptic….Internacional Zionism is truly "Satanic Visible organization on planet Earth"…..
said on antiwar.com
Israel has the whole Negev desert in which to play their war games so naturally steal more Palestinian land instead. Oh and of course, the terrorists, the terrorists, the terrorists. They're everywhere and Israel's actions will continue to provide a lasting supply.
Of course the same could be said of the South Koreans and the all to recent "incident" where they were having War Games on the very border of the nation they know full well as having itchy trigger fingers. They had the entire coastline of South Korea to do their "games" and yet feel compelled to carry them out right on the doorstep of the North. Coincidence? Naaaahhhh.
Not even close MoT. Taking your Korea example, if a soldier from the South starts marching north, eventually he will be stopped (probably killed) at THE BORDER. The same would go the other way. It is also the same for an Palestinian in the West Bank walking west. Eventually he will be stopped by an Israeli and told to go no further having reached THE BORDER.
The situation here is that Israelis have already crossed the border and are in West Bank territory. Their only purpose is a land grab, pure and simple.
Everyone in the world would be much happier if Israel would demolish 8 of its illegal gated communities built on occupation lands of the Palestinians and relocate those people to Tel Aviv. As Israel's defiance of UN Security Council resolutions continues, you can be sure that the Arab majority in the surrounding countries will one day have the means to demolish the over 100 illegal Israeli "villages" built on Palestinian lands but in a more viollent manner. I, for one, will cheer as such justice is doled out. Please Israel, learn to live within your 1967 borders.
"the live fire zone hasn't Affected the villages."
I'll bet Obama won't stand for that, will he?
Karen – what kind of drivel is that? Israel is an illegally established country and ever since 1948.
It was established through acts of terrorism, expulsion of Palestinians and appropriation of their
lands. It is a racist, and apartheid (wall built by U.S. tax dollars) state existing by the gun (and
will perish by the gun) taking a "village" for and eye, and holding the rest of the world hostage
by its pompous posturing.
Get a grip, Karen! Enough of that Jewish self- righteousness. "Peace" process, yeah -Israel
wants peace – what a lie.
Whoever's doing all this demolition work should grow a conscience. These are innocent people they're displacing – and all so the Israeli army can have another area to do some target practice.