Israel West Bank Settlement Construction Approved By Government

JERUSALEM — Israel responded swiftly Friday to U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state, revealing it will build 3,000 more homes for Jews on Israeli-occupied lands that the world body overwhelmingly said belong to the Palestinians.

The plans also include future construction in a strategic area of the West Bank where critics have long warned that Jewish settlements would kill hopes for a viable Palestinian state.

Israel's moves served as a harsh reminder to Palestinians – euphoric over the U.N. upgrade – that while they now have a state on paper, most of it remains very much under Israeli control.

"This is a doomsday scenario," Daniel Seidemann of Ir Amim, a group that promotes coexistence in Jerusalem, said of the building plans.

Israel's decision was bound to embarrass the United States, which was among just nine countries in the 193-member General Assembly to vote against accepting Palestine as a nonmember observer state.

Accelerated settlement construction could also set a more confrontational tone as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas weighs his next moves.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland criticized the Israeli announcement. "These actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution," she said.

This article seems to be more interested in protecting the interests of the Palestinians than of the Israelis.

The authors seems to forget that the PLO started attacking and killing Israeli settlers in the Sinai in 1964, at the instigation and arming by Egypt (and the USSR).

The aim of the PLO, and now the Palestinian Authority (who wants to emerge into a common front with Hamas, a sworn exterminator of Israel), is to destroy Israel. Their charters make no bones about this, but the authors obviously haven’t read them.

Hamas, PLO/FATAH, Hezbullah, Islamic Jihad, and the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood don’t hide their expressed intent to destroy Israel, both as a Jewish state and a western democratic one.

I’m getting sick and tired of Jewish writers, intellectuals and scholars making excuses for Israel’s enemies (who also happen to be enemies of the US), and not standing up for Israel.

It is no wonder that Netanyahu and political allies are doing what they doing, namely setting up major defensive communities to protect the Israeli capital, Jerusalem, as well as giving Jews homes in their own homeland.

Nobody gives a damn about Israel (Obama didn’t care enough to protect 4 US diplomats and related staff in Benghazi), so why should Israel depend on them for their existence?

It’s beginning to look and sound like the 1930’s all over again (i.e. the UN vote and the Free World’s abstention over it). We all remember how that turned out for the Jews with a possible except of the two writers of this article. A little history reading is badly needed before the appeasement mentality grows any bigger.

An excellent post. I can’t think of anything to add but this...

If the Palestinians wanted to have a viable state, it would have already happened. There have been massive infusions of cash both from the West and the Arab League.

I am forced to believe that they don’t want to be a civilized people. They seem to have only one purpose. Destroy Israel.

Perhaps they are the pawns of the other Arab Nations.

(Disclaimer: with the “Arab Spring” that may add to their numbers.)

“In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland criticized the Israeli announcement. “These actions are counterproductive and make it harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution,” she said.”

Did she make a similarly critical comment about how the PLO’s unilateral action at the UN is counterproductive and makes it harder to resume direct negotiations?

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