Settlements | The American Task Force on Palestine

Keep Israel Jewish, freeze settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
(Editorial) March 2, 2011 - 1:00am

As might have been expected, the government's decision to inform the Supreme Court of its intention to immediately demolish all unauthorized settler outposts on privately-owned Palestinian land (except for the home of the late Maj. Eliraz Peretz ) has aroused the rage of settlers and their patrons in the Knesset. The right wing has learned that in most cases a combination of violent demonstrations and political pressure is enough to turn such decisions into requests that the Supreme Court instead allow the outposts to remain, and to continue to turn a blind eye to their expansion.

Report: Israel to legalize tens of outposts
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
March 1, 2011 - 1:00am

Israel is moving to "immediately dismantle all illegal settlement outposts built on privately-owned Palestinian land," Israeli media reported Tuesday citing army officials. The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the decision would legalize other outposts, which were determined to be on "state lands." The announcement came hours after Israeli troops took down two sheds in an outpost near Havat Gilad, an illegal settlement in the northern West Bank near Nablus.

Israeli police arrest 8 settlers in violent clash over outpost
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Xinhua
February 28, 2011 - 1:00am

Israeli police and Jewish supporters of an unauthorized West Bank outpost clashed early Monday morning, as authorities moved in to demolish several structures in the small village. The Police arrested eight settlers, and Israel Radio and other media reported that 15 protesters were injured when authorities moved in to dismantle temporary structures at Gilad Farm, in northern West Bank.

Netanyahu Warns on Settlements
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The New York Times
February 28, 2011 - 1:00am

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu berated leaders of his conservative-leaning Likud Party on Monday after they pressed him for more settlement construction, telling them that Israel was under international pressure and operating in a complex new reality in the Middle East. “People don’t understand the reality they are living in,” Mr. Netanyahu was quoted as telling an assembly of Likud ministers and legislators, as well as some leaders of Jewish settler councils from the West Bank, who then passed on the remarks to the Israeli news media.

What if Israeli forces treated West Bank settlers like Arabs?
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - February 28, 2011 - 1:00am

Around here, you ignore omens only at your peril. The settlement movement knows how the omens have been running for it today. All black. All unexpected. Imagine a sunny day in winter, on which someone brilliant, compassionate, articulate, truly peace-minded, and actually popular, announces candidacy for the head of - of all things - Israel's Labor Party. Unheard of. Absurd. But true. The name is Shelly Yachimovich.

Settlers accusing Netanyahu gov’t of imposing silent building freeze
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
by Leslie Susser - February 28, 2011 - 1:00am

Although the 10-month moratorium on building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank was lifted last September, settler leaders complain that no construction is being allowed in the large urban areas and warn that a de facto freeze on all Jewish building in the West Bank is looming. The settler leaders maintain that the Netanyahu administration is refusing to publish new tenders and that all current building is based on a limited number of permits issued years ago by previous governments.

PA: Settlers vandalize Nablus villages
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
February 25, 2011 - 1:00am

Settlers on Friday escalated attacks against Palestinians in villages south of the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian officials said. Palestinian Authority settlement official Ghassan Doughlas said residents of the illegal Yitzhar settlement set fire to a bulldozer belonging to Ibrahim Ishteiyah in Burin. Meanwhile in Jit, settlers sprayed racist graffiti and punctured the tires of villagers' cars, Doughlas said. The PA official added added that settlers chopped down 25 trees belonging to Hassan and Mohammad Safadi in Urif.

U.S. veto of settlements resolution shows cowardice
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The San Francisco Chronicle
by Pete McCloskey - (Editorial) February 23, 2011 - 1:00am

One of the great disappointments of the Obama presidency came from the White House instructing our representative to the United Nations to veto the Security Council resolution Friday that would have condemned Israel's West Bank settlements as illegal. Those settlements have been condemned by every U.S. president, Democrat and Republican, since Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 War. The settlements are recognized as illegal under the Geneva Conventions, which the United States took the lead in creating and signing.

Burj al-Barajneh's Palestinians protest U.S. veto of U.N. settlement resolution
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Daily Star
by Van Meguerditchian, Simona Sikimic - February 23, 2011 - 1:00am

Marching through mud roads, still loose underfoot from the heavy rains, several hundred Palestinians gathered at the Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp Tuesday to protest the U.S. veto of a Security Council resolution condemning the construction of Israeli settlements. Led by lines of elderly men and a troop of young children beating on drums and playing bagpipes – an eccentric relic of the British mandate of Palestine – the crowd weaved its way through the camp to listen to speeches made by Palestinian Authority representatives.

Palestinian house inside cage in Jewish settlement
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from The Associated Press
by Ben Hubbard - February 23, 2011 - 1:00am

The al-Ghirayib family lives in one of the stranger manifestations of Israel's 43-year occupation of the West Bank: a Palestinian house inside a metal cage inside an Israeli settlement. The family's 10 members, four of them children, can only reach the house via a 40-yard (meter) passageway connecting them to the Arab village of Beit Ijza farther down a hill. The passageway passes over a road used by Israeli army jeeps and is lined on both sides with a 24-foot-high (8-meter) heavy-duty metal fence.

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