The ‘peace process’ in numbers
From the latest FMEP Settlement Report:
(click to expand)
In related news,
“Israel has been accused of demolishing Palestinian houses in Arab East Jerusalem while international attention was focused on the election of Barack Obama.
Palestinian leaders and Israeli human rights organisations have said Israeli authorities displaced more than 20 people – mostly children – by demolishing three homes in the Silwan district of Jerusalem to make way for an archaeological park. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian chief negotiator, said: “While the international media was transfixed by the results of the US election, Israeli forces were tearing up the homes of Palestinian families to build new settlements, furthering their control of occupied East Jerusalem and pre-empting final status negotiations.”
Also:
“Jewish settlers on Saturday beat up a six-year-old Palestinian boy near the West Bank town of Hebron, and he was taken to hospital suffering from moderate head wounds, medics said.
Bilal Daana was attacked by a group of settlers near the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba near Hebron. They beat him up and threw stones at him, the Palestinian medics said…
The incident was the latest in a surge of settler attacks on Palestinians, peace activists and Israeli soldiers since the authorities dismantled a settlement outpost near Hebron last month.”
(both links via Joel Suarez)
Filed under: Israeli / Palestinian | 5 Comments
Tags: "peace process", Annapolis, East Jerusalem, FMEP, Olmert, settlements, settlers
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The Guardian, Monday November 10 2008:
Palestinian couple evicted from home of 50 years as Jerusalem settlers move in
Britain, US and UN fail to stop supreme court decision
Israeli police have evicted a disabled Palestinian man and his wife from their home of 52 years in a Palestinian district surrounded by settlers.
The eviction, which took place before dawn on Sunday, comes after years of litigation that culminated in an Israeli supreme court ruling in July ordering the couple out of the house.
Several governments, including the United States and Britain, whose consulate is a few hundred yards from the house in east Jerusalem, had tried to intervene on behalf of Mohammad and Fawzieh al-Kurd but without success. Most of the international community has not recognised Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem, which was captured in the 1967 war and annexed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/10/israelandthepalestinians
Haaretz, 09/11/2008, Gideon Levy:
“When we say that someone is a “friend of Israel” we mean a friend of the occupation, a believer in Israel’s self-armament, a fan of its language of strength and a supporter of all its regional delusions. When we say someone is a “friend of Israel” we mean someone who will give Israel a carte blanche for any violent adventure it desires, for rejecting peace and for building in the territories. ”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1035415.html
Hey, I just discovered your blog via WordPress reccomendations. Its good to see another blogger writing about peace and world news!
theodalisque.wordpress.com
FWIW I just had a letter from the British government about Israel’s behaviour in the West Bank and Gaza. It was all very condemnatory. But then, it makes bugger all difference on the ground.
Hi joe – may I ask what the context was in which the government sent you the letter? Was it in response to a specific query, or what? More generally, the British government’s verbal position on most of the legal issues issues is actually pretty good – condemning the siege (in which it has been heavily complicit) as illegal collective punishment; insisting that the West Bank and Gaza are occupied and not disputed territories; denouncing the settlements as illegal and an obstacle to peace (while doing worse than nothing to stop their construction), and so on. Indeed, if you look at the Foreign Affairs Committee or the International Development Committee, quite influential governmental bodies, their analysis has been pretty much the same as mine, even on points as supposedly controversial as the U.S./Israeli/Fatah coup against Hamas. Moreover their policy recommendations are pretty radical as well (at least as compared to government policy), for example arguing for the cancellation of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Instead, as we know, Britain voted to upgrade the Agreement without a single word about human rights.
So yes, the broad picture is as you paint it – the words, nice as they sometimes are, are totally undermined by the actual policies being pursued.
Yeah, I wrote a strong letter to my MP asking why so little has happened since the much-talked-about Annapolis bullshit-process.
I write to my MP a lot (he is a toady Labour MP so I only ever get replies from the Government Minister concerned, which is fine by me).