Settlements | The American Task Force on Palestine

Jailed Fatah leader calls to end ties with Israel
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Reuters
by Noah Browning - March 27, 2012 - 12:00am

RAMALLAH (Reuters) -- From his cell in an Israeli prison, one of the most revered figures in Palestinian politics called on Monday for a new wave of civil resistance in the decades-long quest for statehood, and for severing all ties with Israel. Marwan Barghouti is a leading figure in the Fatah movement. His leadership and charisma were seen as a driving force behind the last intifada, or uprising, against Israeli occupation launched in late 2000.

Migron deal makes a joke of Israel's judicial system
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Nehemia Shtrasler - (Opinion) March 27, 2012 - 12:00am

Here's one thing everyone in Israel agrees about: Benny Begin is a very honest guy. His unusual integrity is manifest in the agreement he forged recently with residents of the illegal Migron outpost, allowing them to stay there for three more years and then move to a new outpost to be built on state land. This is an agreement toward which the Supreme Court displayed disdain; the government winked as it signed the document with the settlers, and the agreement even received the blessing of the Knesset's most extreme right-wing member, Minister Daniel Hershkowitz of Habayit Hayehudi.

A settlement boycott can work
In Print by Hussein Ibish - NOW Lebanon (Opinion) - March 27, 2012 - 12:00am

Peter Beinart’s recent call in the New York Times for Jewish Americans to boycott Israeli settlement goods has been met with angry responses from many Jewish Americans. This includes some who are opposed to the settler movement. The most important of these objections hold that a boycott cannot work because Jewish Americans won’t go along with such a program and there isn’t much to boycott anyway. Both arguments hold little water.

Israel’s Top Court vs. Outposts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
(Editorial) March 27, 2012 - 12:00am

Israel’s Supreme Court made an important contribution to justice and kept alive hope for a two-state solution with the Palestinians, when it ruled this week that Migron, an illegal outpost built by Israeli settlers, must be dismantled by Aug. 1. Now it is up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to comply promptly, while making clear to the settlers that violent resistance will not be tolerated.

Migron case only reveals tip of Israel's occupation iceberg
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Eyal Gross - (Opinion) March 26, 2012 - 12:00am

In theory, Migron should have been an open-and-shut case. The state did not deny that Migron had been erected illegally, on private Palestinian land. Nor did it deny that the settlers' claims that they had purchased the land were found to be baseless. In the words of the High Court of Justice, the building of the outpost and its ongoing expansion were a blatant violation of the law that undermined the property rights of the Palestinian owners. It had to be demolished. Thus the court had ruled.

Draw the Line: How Israel Erases Itself
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Beast
by Gershom Gorenberg - (Opinion) March 26, 2012 - 12:00am

One day in the late 1980s, my wife and I visited a staffer at the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem for an off-the-record conversation. The walls of his office were decorated with large maps produced, he mentioned, by the CIA. One showed the West Bank, with the border between it and Israel precisely depicted. Our careful journalistic distance from the interviewee evaporated. We shamelessly begged him for a copy, which he politely gave us.

Israel’s Top Court Orders Settlers to Leave Outpost
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
by Ethan Bronner - March 25, 2012 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM — Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday ordered a West Bank settlers’ outpost built on private Palestinian land to be dismantled by Aug. 1, rejecting a government compromise with the settlers that would have allowed them to stay put for another three years. The decision was much anticipated, because the panel of three judges who decided the case included the court’s conservative new chief justice, Asher Grunis, and because the case involved the politically explosive issue of moving settlers in the face of potentially violent resistance.

Christians Called To Serve Jewish Settlers
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jewish Daily Forward
by Nathan Jeffay - March 25, 2012 - 12:00am

Psagot, West Bank — It is a typical, even stereotypical, West Bank settlement scene: bearded young men pruning vines while enthusing about the Chosen People’s God-given right to this region. But in this case it is Jesus, and not Jewish identity, that animates these tillers. For years, Westerners have flocked to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to help Palestinians with their olive harvest, as part of left-wing activist groups like the International Solidarity Movement. Among other things, the activists seek to resist efforts by settlers to disrupt the Palestinians’ reaping.

Stop the excuses, boycott the settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Lara Friedman - (Opinion) March 25, 2012 - 12:00am

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Peter Beinart’s recent New York Times article advocating a settlement boycott has sparked a spectacular public display of Jewish angst. Apparently for many who view themselves as the judges, advocates and juries of what is “kosher” progressive Jewish activism, his suggestion is beyond the pale. They agree that settlements are a problem, even a shonda, but boycott fellow Jews? Heaven forbid. And even if it weren’t Jewishly distasteful, it wouldn’t work anyway, so don’t go there.

Israeli PM Terms UNHRC Settlement Fact-Finding Mission as “Hypocritical”
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
March 23, 2012 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed at United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Thursday after it approved a fact-finding mission to Israel to probe into the effects of settlements on Palestinians. UNHRC on Thursday voted in favor of sending a dispatch to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in order to evaluate Jewish settlements repercussions on Palestinian human rights.

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