As the ;freeze starts, so does the building spree in the settlements… Do not tell Obama, please…
New Israeli funds for West Bank settlements: BBC
The Israeli cabinet has decided to include some West Bank settlements in a national scheme that will entitle them to millions of dollars’ worth of funds.
They are being designated as national priority zones, meaning they will qualify for grants, tax benefits, and other forms of aid.
The move comes amid anger by Jewish settlers at a government-imposed curb on new building in settlements.
The Labour Party leader warned some of the new money might go to extremists.
On Friday a mosque in the West Bank was set on fire, and sprayed with Hebrew graffiti.
Labour leader Ehud Barak said: “I don’t think that we need to award them a prize in the form of including them in the national priority map.”
His five ministers in the coalition government voted against the plan. The other three right-wing parties in the coalition – Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas – voted for it.
Arabs to benefit
The national priority zones plan is designed to funnel money into deprived areas. About two million Israelis live in those areas – approximately 110,000 of them in West Bank settlements.
The international community considers all settlements in Israeli-occupied Palestinian land as illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
A senior government official said far more Israeli Arabs than Jewish settlements – eight times as many – would benefit from the programme.
But opposition parties denounced the inclusion of settlements, saying it proved the government was not committed to a peace process with the Palestinians.
The Kadima Party said it “cancelled out any declaration made by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu regarding two states for two peoples”.
The left-wing Meretz faction submitted a motion of no-confidence in response to the plan.
But Mr Netanyahu denied the change had any implications for the peace process.
“We will determine the future of settlements only within the framework of a permanent agreement [with Palestinians],” he said.
And the US reaction: go ahead and build…
U.S. not opposed to Israel pumping more funds into settlements: Ha’aretz
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to seek cabinet approval for a new map of “national priority” zones does not contradict Israel’s declaration of a 10-month construction freeze in West Bank settlements, the prime minister’s bureau assured senior United States administration officials late Thursday.
The new map would enable another 110,000 settlers – most of whom live outside the major settlement blocs – the economic benefits conferred on residents of zones already included on Israel’s list.
Senior U.S. administration officials told Haaretz earlier Thursday that the prime minister’s bureau had provided satisfactory explanations as long as the benefits plan was in keeping with the freeze and that money would not be transferred for new housing in the settlements.
All Labor Party ministers are expected to vote against the proposed revision of the country’s national priority zones at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. The ministers are objecting to the fact that the new map confers national priority status on several isolated settlements. Designation as a national priority zone entitles a town to various economic benefits.
Several Labor ministers said that even party chairman and defense minister Ehud Barak would not be able to vote for the map in its current form.
At a meeting of Labor ministers on Thursday, the inclusion of the isolated settlements – outside the major settlement blocs – was harshly criticized. The ministers said they were particularly furious that when Eyal Gabai, the director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, presented the map to Labor’s Knesset faction on Monday, he did not mention any of the isolated settlements it included.
Gabai, they said, merely told them that the sole criterion for determining which West Bank settlements to include was security. As a result, no questions were asked.
The ministers added that they had been pleased by the map’s heavy focus on communities in the Negev and Galilee, as well as the fact that Arab towns were well represented. The only problem, they said, is the settlements.
Thursday’s meeting ended with a decision to make an all-out effort to get the map changed before Sunday’s vote.
“It’s wrong to include settlements in the heart of the West Bank in the priority zone map,” explained Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog at a conference of southern mayors Thursday. “Such a move contradicts the desire to divide the land under a future peace agreement. But in everything related to advancing the Negev and the Galilee, the map has clear advantages [over the one currently in force].”
Some Labor MKs, such as Ophir Pines-Paz, urged the ministers Thursday to make the settlements’ removal from the map a non-negotiable condition of Labor’s continued presence in the government.
Pines-Paz added that he found it “hard to believe” that Barak “was not a partner in drafting the map.”
Below you can read about the escape of the Israeli war criminal Tzipi Livni from arrest in the UK, through a leak in the London Metropolitan Police. What a pity! Still, soon those rats will be frightened to leave their holes and come to Europe – not a bad start for BDS:
U.K. reportedly issues arrest warrant for Livni: Ha’aretz
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni on Monday canceled her participation in a Jewish function in London, after a warrant for her arrest was issued over part in last winter’s Israel’s Gaza offensive, Arab-language media have reported.
Al-Quds Al-Arabi claimed that Scotland Yard advised the organizers of the Jewish National Fund conference in northwest London that the former foreign minister had canceled her scheduled address to the assembly over threats of a possible lawsuit by pro-Palestinian groups.
The Al-Quds Al-Arabi report also said that a group of about 100 anti-Israel protesters rallied outside the Hendon Hall Hotel on Sunday, just as delegates arrived at the JNF meet.
Israel’s ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, conferred with officials in the British Ministry of Justice who told him that they were unaware of any criminal complaint or arrest warrant against the former foreign minister.
Livni’s office said in a statement following the report that her appearance at the London event was canceled two weeks ago due to a scheduling conflict.
Livni’s office also said that the opposition leader was proud of all the decisions she made as foreign minister during the Gaza war, an operation which she said achieved its goal of bring security to Israel.
A United Kingdom court two months ago deferred until further notice an appeal by local pro-Palestinian groups to issue an arrest warrant against visiting Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
A similar appeal was issued in 2004 against Israel’s then defense minister, Shaul Mofaz. At the time, Mofaz was granted immunity from international arrest and trial – a precedent set by the British court, which until then had given such protection only to foreign ministers or premiers.
Livni cancels JNF visit to UK: Jewish Chronicle
December 14, 2009
Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni cancelled a visit to Britain this weekend over fears pro-Palestinian lawyers would seek to have her arrested.
Ms Livni had been due to speak at Sunday’s JNF Vision 2010 conference in Hendon, north-west London. She had also been expected to meet Prime Minister Gordon Brown for private talks.
But she pulled out of the trip for fear of lawyers obtaining an arrest warrant.
She is the latest senior Israeli politician to avoid Britain. In October, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon was advised by a special inter-departmental team working with ministers to pull out of a JNF dinner in London.
Experts on international law from the foreign and justice ministries, and the IDF Attorney-General’s department, have advised cabinet ministers with a security background and senior IDF officers not to visit Britain, Spain, Belgium or Norway, while lawyers in these countries are seeking to arrest Israelis on charges of alleged war crimes through “universal jurisdiction” laws.
Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor, speaking at the JNF conference, said Israel was fighting the laws “tooth and nail” and would “not be shut down”.
A group of around 100 anti-Israel protestors demonstrated outside the Hendon Hall Hotel venue as delegates arrived.
Another excellent piece by Gideon Levy, about the Israeli theocracy, which fits so well in the middle east with so many other one around it; why indeed not a Jewish theocracy, with so many muslim one around? : it fits the region well!
Gideon Levy / Let’s face the facts, Israel is a semi-theocracy: Ha’aretz
The storm over remarks made by Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman is in many respects a tempest in a teapot, which has for a long time taken on holier aspects than it seems. Neeman wants Torah law, or in other words, he wants Israel to be a country governed by Jewish religious law, halakha. In any event, Israel is already a semi-theocracy. The Israelis who were frightened by the minister’s remarks and who love viewing their country as liberal, Western and secular are forgetting that our life here is more religious, traditional and halakhic than we are prepared to admit.
Between Stockholm and Tehran, Israel of 2009 is much closer to Tehran. From birth to death, from circumcision to funeral, from the establishment of the state to the establishment of the last of the illegal outposts in the West Bank – we are operating in the shadow of the commandments of religion. We should be honest with ourselves and admit it already: The country is too religious. Neeman just wanted to take this one step further, something one can and must come out against; but the religious-nationalist campaign began a long time ago, and it is still going strong.
It begins, of course, with the fact of our presence here. Among other things, it is based on theological reasoning. Abraham the Patriarch was here, so we are, too. He bought the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, so we, too, are in Palestinian Hebron. People who are entirely secular also cite religious and biblical explanations for the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. We can’t even say whether Judaism is a religion or a nationality – and in any event, there is no other country in the Western world where religion has its holy iron grip on the state as it does in Israel.
We don’t need Neeman. There are no civil marriages or divorces, and there are almost no secular funerals. The Law of Return and the definition of who is a Jew – the most fundamental and significant of Israeli precepts – are based on halakha, even without our religious justice minister.
Only 44 percent of Israelis define themselves as secular, as opposed to 64 percent of Swedes who define themselves as atheists; and this is reflected in all aspects of our daily life. A mezuzah on the doorpost of almost every home, and the pagan custom at almost every one of those houses of kissing it. Eighty-five percent of Israelis hold a Passover seder, fervently recalling the plagues – pestilence, boils, death of the first-born. Sixty-seven percent fast on Yom Kippur, which in Western eyes is the strangest of days. The absence of bus or train service on Shabbat, the observance of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws) in every public institution, and Sabbath elevators in every hotel and hospital – these too are not exactly the vision of a secular state. A bar-mitzvah for almost every boy, matza in nearly every home on Passover, and the kiddush blessings.
Torah sages of various kinds make decisions on fateful political issues – at the homes of miracle workers, magicians and those passing out amulets – and the lines outside their doors are growing, made up mostly of those who argue they are fervently secular. They are lying to themselves and to others. Expressions of racism and arrogance, too, based on the concept of the “chosen people,” are uttered. And between you and me, who doesn’t believe this (a little)? You don’t need the newly religious and the newly secular. A large portion of secular people are “traditional,” which means religious, but just a little.
In the Bible study of our youth, we put on skullcaps. When, God forbid, the Bible fell on the floor, we would kiss it, with great reverence – secular people like us, as it were. And what happened during morning roll call? The quotation of the day from the Bible. None of us had ever heard of the New Testament, and no one would have dared teach it as part of the education we are trying to glorify. We were also afraid to even enter a church.
The Western Wall is holy to everyone – who has not placed a note with a wish in its crevices? Most Israelis’ reasoning for the continued occupation of “holy” East Jerusalem is also based on religious faith. It is not only the “hilltop youth” of the West Bank settlements who revere every stone. Not only Gush Emunim, the bloc of the faithful, believes in the baseless connection between sanctity and sovereignty. Most of us believe it. Admit it.
Let’s admit that we live in a country with many religious and halakhic attributes. Let’s remove the concocted secularist guise with which we have wrapped ourselves. Shocked by Neeman’s remarks? They are not so far removed from the reality of our lives. Israel is not what you thought. It’s definitely not what we try to present to ourselves and the rest of the world.