Settlements | The American Task Force on Palestine

Settlement outposts at root of Jewish violence in West Bank
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Los Angeles Times
by Edmund Sanders - December 29, 2011 - 1:00am

For months many Israelis shrugged off the mosque burnings, the uprooted Palestinian olive trees and even the death threats against Jewish leftists. But when young settlers this month vandalized army bases and stoned Israeli soldiers, the question of Jewish terrorism turned into a national emergency. The recent flare-up in settler violence has puzzled many because it comes when there are no peace talks that might lead to land concessions, Palestinian attacks in the West Bank have dropped to new lows, and Israel is led by a conservative government that is expanding settlement construction.

How I became a 'terrorist'
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Abdelrahman Al Ahmar - (Opinion) December 23, 2011 - 1:00am

The first time I was attacked by an Israeli settler, I was 14 years old. I was walking to school when an armed man wearing a skullcap, standing near some Israeli soldiers, pulled my pack off my back and threw it in the mud. That wasn't last month, nor was it near a new outpost in Nablus. Rather, this happened 30 years ago, on the main road running through Bethlehem, near Deheisheh refugee camp, where I lived. The settler was not just any alienated, disaffected man. He was, I learned later, the father of the national religious settlement project - Rabbi Moshe Levinger.

No room to compare Binyamin to Bil'in
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) December 23, 2011 - 1:00am

It's true that the settlers are also rising up against what they see as injustice: the evacuation of settlement outposts, but these outposts are patently illegal. Ever since dozens of settlers rioted at the Binyamin Brigade's base in the West Bank last week, several people, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have compared the rioters to those who gather weekly at Bil'in to protest the separation fence. Netanyahu compared the two again this week, during the lighting of the first Hanukkah candle at the brigade's headquarters. This is an unfounded and outrageous comparison.

Diplomacy should conform to international norms
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by Jay Bushinsky - (Opinion) December 23, 2011 - 1:00am

Two major mistakes were by Israeli policy- makers: The Oslo Accords of 1993 and the unilateral and unconditional withdrawal of troops and civilians from the Gaza Strip in 2005. These ill-considered initiatives have caused seemingly insoluble problems. They were radical departures from the Jewish state’s original adherence to traditional diplomacy based on international norms, and deviated from the initially consistent effort to gain recognition as a bona fide member of the international community.

New test for Israel — this one from within
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Miami Herald
by Frida Ghitis - (Opinion) December 23, 2011 - 1:00am

Over the six decades since its founding, Israelis have faced, and continue to face, countless threats to their country’s survival as the democratic state of the Jewish people. That threat comes from abroad and from neighboring countries that would like to see Israel cease to exist. But today Israel also suffers from self-inflicted wounds. And some of those wounds are becoming infected.

Palestinians are heroes, braving Israeli dictatorship
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Amira Hass - (Opinion) December 21, 2011 - 1:00am

The Palestinians are heroes, and that's the only fact that's relevant after the slight shock of the hilltop thugs. The hands are the hands of thugs, and the head? The head is the head of the hostile regime under which the Palestinians live and which harasses them every moment of every day, week after week for decades. To live this way and remain sane - that's heroism. "And who says we're sane?" Palestinians answer me. Well, here's the proof: self-irony.

'Price tag' slogans painted on Hebron mosque
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
December 20, 2011 - 1:00am

HEBRON (Ma'an) -- A Hebron village mosque was spray-painted with racist slogans on Monday, locals said, in the fourth such attack in two weeks. Suspected extremist settlers daubed "price tag" and "Yitzhar" on the walls of the mosque in Bani Naim, which lies opposite the Kiryat Arba settlement. Yitzhar settlement in the northern West Bank is notorious for so-called price tag incidents, in which settlers exact revenge on Palestinians and their property for Israeli government policies towards unauthorized settler outposts.

A Warning Call
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Huffington Post
by Ephraim Sneh - (Opinion) December 19, 2011 - 1:00am

In light of the damning IAEA report released in November, showing no equivocation regarding Iranian intentions for producing nuclear weapons, it is high time that the United States and Israel abandon their current policies and adopt a new joint strategy. Since 1993 I have been calling attention to the potential of a nuclear Iran, perhaps the most dangerous development in our region. Today we all understand that if Iran achieves nuclear military power, it is only a matter of time, a few years, before Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey will reach nuclear capacity as well.

Israel court rules against evicting two East Jerusalem Palestinian families
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Nir Hasson - December 19, 2011 - 1:00am

The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court has rejected two separate lawsuits seeking the eviction of two Palestinian families from homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. In both cases, the plaintiff said the homes had been sold to new owners who wanted the Palestinian families out. Two judges rejected those claims Thursday. The lawsuits were filed by two groups closely linked to Elad, an organization supporting Jewish settlement in the area, and to Elad chairman David Be'eri, who is also the Israel representative of one of the groups seeking the eviction.

Israel’s problem isn’t Thomas Friedman
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Jerusalem Post
by James Adler - (Opinion) December 19, 2011 - 1:00am

There is a common thread linking The Jerusalem Post’s attack on Thomas Friedman last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s refusal to write an opinion column for The New York Times and an attack on my views by Haifa resident Ella Berkovitz on the Post letters page last Thursday. In all three instances, the individuals in question showed they prefer to take the easy road of crowd-pleasingly attacking the New York Times and one of its senior columnists, without addressing the fact that similar views are held by the United States government and most Western democracies.

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