Israel’s repeated promises both public and private to slow settlement expansion to facilitate the peace process have never amounted to much, and Israeli NGO Peace Now is revealing another 3,000 settlement construction approvals by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon earlier this year.
These expansions were above and beyond previously announced expansions in metro Jerusalem, as the Israeli Defense Ministry only covers areas outside of the metro area, which Israel considers annexed and no longer “occupied.”
The biggest concern, however, is how many of these 3,000 homes are outside of the established settlement blocs, and on the wrong side of the “barrier of separation,” meaning Israel is continuing to expand in even the areas they themselves claim are to be part of a future Palestinian state.
Peace Now offered a harsh criticism of Ya’alon with their report, saying he has “become a rubber stamp of the Yesha Council of Settlements,” and has been trying to cover up many of the most controversial expansions.
Israel is like the old fable of the "dog in the manger", i.e. occupying that which it can't use. RT TV ran a story yesterday, about how young, talented Jews are leaving Israel, going to Western nations looking for higher salaries than are available in Israel. There are no teeming masses of Israelis needing "elbow room", unless you count the Arabs under occupation. So where are they coming up with the Jewish population to occupy this stolen land? I guess they are going to empty out Tel Aviv to take over the West Bank. Or maybe, they are going to import Christian Evangelicals, like John Hagee. This is a totally insane nation that needs an intelligent intervention.
Churchill said of the Palestinians, regarding why Britain could simply cleanse them from the land to make room for the Jewish state, "the dogs have no claim to the manger."
This new round of expansions is, as always, on the USA. The USA could put a stop to all of it, but it doesn't care, as long as Israel remains a nuclear ally in the Middle East.