West Bank

"The people of Israel have the right to live without constant fear for their security"

After Israel's ongoing attacks on Gaza, the British foreign secretary Mr William Hague released a statement on tuesday 9 July 2014. Mostly condemning the Palestinians.

The bit of his statement that caught my eye was the following:

"The people of Israel have the right to live without constant fear for their security"

No they don't.

Not until they give the same reciprocal right to their neighbours and their ocuppied.

Israelis do not have an automatic right to safety and security as long as the Palestinians are occupied and oppressed by them.

Israelis do not have the right to live without constant fear for their security until they give security to the Palestinians.

Bodies of 3 Israeli teenagers missing from the West Bank found

It looks like the worst has been confirmed - 3 bodies have been found in the West Bank near the city of Hebron. They are suspected to be of the 3 missing Israeli teenagers.

At this moment we do not know who killed them or how they died, but their families must be devastated and the humanity in all of us feels their loss. The people in their kidnap/murder should be treatd as criminals (and I have not come across any evidence that this is definitely by Palestinians - there could be a nutty settler with an axe to grind or who is mentally unhinged...)

However this can also lead to a bigger catastrophe for the Palestinians.

Towards a United Israel?

Israel has a population of 5.9 million (Israeli) Jews.

There are are also 1.6 million Israeli arabs.

The West Bank holds 2.6 million Arabs and Gaza hold 1.6 million Arrabs.

Total all that up and you get 5.8 million Arabs. They also are growing at a faster rate.

So what should be sought is 1 vote for 1 citizen there and if that was achieved, all would be golden.

Israel rushes settlement growth after Unesco accepts Palestinians

Israel is to expedite the construction of about 2,000 homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in response to the Palestinians' successful bid to join Unesco.

Israel also imposed a temporary halt on the transfer of tax revenues which it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA) pending a final decision on whether to impose a long-term freeze. Israel collects about £630m a year in VAT and customs revenues which it passes on to the PA.

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[TV] Louix Theroux: Ultra Zionists

Louis Theroux spends time with a small and very committed subculture of ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers. He discovers a group of people who consider it their religious and political obligation to populate some of the most sensitive and disputed areas of the West Bank, especially those with a spiritual significance dating back to the Bible.

Throughout his journey, Louis gets close to the people most involved with driving the extreme end of the Jewish settler movement - finding them warm, friendly, humorous, and deeply troubling.

Tonight at 9pm on BBC two and probably on .

Netanyahu Admitting to subverting the Oslo peace process?

Apparently there was a recording released recently of Netanyahu talking to some settlers in 2001 telling his side of the story and mentioning how he had subverted the peace process amongst other things.

To me atleast it shows how his policy was deliberate and well, kind of exactly what I and many many others had suspected.

“I know what America is,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, apparently not knowing his words were being recorded. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won't get in their way,” he said in Hebrew.

Palestinian homes bulldozed as Israeli freeze on demolitions appears to end

Authorities said homes were built without planning permission, which Palestinians say is almost impossible to obtain

sraeli bulldozers destroyed at least three Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem yesterday, breaking an unofficial moratorium on such demolitions since the end of 2009.

At least one of the homes was occupied by a family of seven, who removed their belongings shortly before it was razed.

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