Netanyahu Defends New Illegal Settlements In Jerusalem & Golan Heights As Tensions Build
to recognize a nation-state for the Jewish people” even as apartheid
Israel’s forces have continued to kill Palestinians.
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An
Israeli settler sleeps under a banner of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the
Jewish settlement of Beit El after a night
stand off with police, near the West Bank town of
Ramallah, Wednesday,
July 29, 2015. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov) |
JERUSALEM — While also calling for the construction of over
2,000 new Jewish-only homes on occupied Palestinian land, Israel’s prime
minister recently denied that tensions between Israel and Palestine are
mounting as a result of the growth of illegal settlements.
Israel approved about 2,200 new homes in Jewish settlements in the
occupied West Bank at an Oct. 21 planning meeting, according to
documents first obtained by Haaretz, with a goal of completing
construction by 2030. The meeting occurred during Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent trip to Washington, where he met with
President Barack Obama, and International Business Times noted:
“Commentators have highlighted the Israeli government made a similar
move in 2010 when it announced the construction of 1,600 new settlement
units just as US Vice President Joe Biden was arriving in Jerusalem.”
The approval also comes as Israel renews its controversial practice
of demolishing Palestinian homes. The practice, like the settlements
themselves, are widely condemned by governments and human rights
organizations as a form of illegal collective punishment against an
oppressed population.
Further, the decision was made during a month in which Israeli forces killed 76 Palestinians in clashes stemming from Israel’s moves to limit the number of Muslims worshipping at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound — a religious site considered sacred by both Jews and Muslims.
Netanyahu appeared Tuesday at the Center for American Progress, a
left-leaning think tank in Washington, where he defended Israel’s
occupation of Palestine in an hour-long discussion with the center’s
president, Neera Tanden, that was widely criticized by observers on
social media for avoiding serious issues:
not a “core issue” contributing to rising tensions and the
ineffectiveness of peace talks. He also claimed that there haven’t been
any new settlements built for the past two decades. ThinkProgress, an
editorially independent news site that’s funded by the Center for
American Progress, highlighted these statements as two of the biggest falsehoods uttered by the prime minister during the discussion:
“The United Nations, along with most of the world, considers Jewish settlements built on territory that Israel captured in 1967 to be illegal. This summer, the Palestinians presented documents to the International Criminal Court to investigate their continued construction as a war crime. The
United States government — in both Republican and Democrat
administrations — has also repeatedly insisted that settlement expansion
hurts the peace process.
… The [Israeli] government has long given settlers a long leash
by allowing new construction in the vicinity of older settlements to be
defined as ‘neighborhoods’ and ‘outposts’ when they are, in practice,
new settlements, sometimes on Palestinians’ private land. … Last year,
as Secretary of State John Kerry attempted to broker a peace,
Netanyahu’s government endorsed 13,851 new settlement housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — four times the amount of previous years.”
Young
Israeli settlers watch the demolition of a building at the Jewish
settlement of Beit El, near the West Bank
town of Ramallah, Wednesday,
July 29, 2015. Israeli bulldozers began demolishing a contested housing
complex
in a West Bank settlement on Wednesday as the prime minister’s
office announced the “immediate construction”
of some 300 new units at
another location in the same settlement and advanced plans for about 500
new units
in east Jerusalem. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
Meanwhile, Israel is further provoking violence in the region by demolishing Palestinian homes, warned The Economist on Oct. 27, adding,
“Human-rights groups call this collective punishment.
Western governments condemn it. The Fourth Geneva Convention bars an
occupying power from demolishing private homes except where ‘rendered
absolutely necessary by military operations.’”
Yet the practice has continued unabated. On Tuesday, the Israeli Supreme Court approved the demolition of five homes in the West Bank town of Nablus. On Thursday, Israel also planned to demolish an East Jerusalem home belonging to the family of a man who was shot during a deadly attack on an Israeli bus
last month. Although the government accuses the families of being
related to those taking part in anti-Israeli violence, this form of
collective punishment is condemned as a war crime under the Geneva
Conventions.
