Yesterday’s announcement for 1,500 more settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem took a lot of people by surprise. Israel usually staggers such announcements so they can finish diplomatic damage control on the one before announcing another, and the dispute over E1 is still fresh in everyone’s minds. It seems this is just the new normal for Israel heading into the election.
That’s because the Interior Ministry is now reporting that its panel didn’t finish with the 1,500, and in fact is going to keep meeting throughout the week to rubber stamp expansions in two more settlements in East Jerusalem, making this week’s announcements up to 6,000 units.
Since all of the units are within East Jerusalem and its immediate outskirts, the Israeli government insists they aren’t “technically settlements” because they annexed the city. That annexation isn’t recognized by anyone, however.
The sudden eagerness to expand settlements seems to be coming out of the Interior Ministry, whose head Eli Yishai is the top of the ultra-Orthodox Shas list. Recent polls have showed Shas, the traditional party of the religious right, is taking a back seat to the more hawkish Jewish Home bloc, and the moves may be designed to shore up settler support ahead of next month’s election.
Why does the Press not have the guts to give the headlines the proper title: …6000 more homes for land robbers ?
The UN needs to start building palestinian settlements in Tel Aviv
This is the kind of action that led to the first 911. This kind of action is only possible because the US govt. makes it possible for Israel to behave in this way. This continuing depravity on the part of Israel will surely cause us all grief in the long run… if there is any truth to the admonition that 'you shall reap as you sow'.
Uncle Sam needs to stop giving I$rael money.
Criminal actions of a criminal government.
BRIC needs to arm the Palestinians.
Israel is a feral state. They don't adhere to a shared concept of civilization. It only matters what is good for the Jewish state as though no one else existed, there or anywhere
Israel is a nation of psychopaths. They are incapable of compassion or generosity. They love to manipulate, to brutalize, to humiliate.
They have recreated the unpleasantness they were known for centuries ago. The world has no use for them anymore.
GENOCIDE.
Russia and China need to do something