2 replies to this topic

[Tony]

"Israel razed on Tuesday an inhabited Palestinian home in East Jerusalem for the first time in eight months, effectively ending an unofficial freeze of such internationally-condemned demolitions. A Reuters photographer witnessed a Palestinian family removing its belongings from the house in East Jerusalem's Beit Hanina neighborhood before an Israeli excavator tore into the dwelling.

"They can build hundreds of settlements but I'm not entitled to live in a shack?" said Linda al-Rajabi outside the demolished dwelling she shared with her husband and their five children.Israel's Jerusalem municipality said the home was built without a city permit.

The demolition seemed certain to draw a new wave of international criticism of Israeli policy towards Palestinians in East Jerusalem, an area captured in a 1967 war and annexed by Israel in a move that has not won world recognition.

The dwelling was razed a week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held White House talks with U.S. President Barack Obama to patch up relations strained by Israeli settlement policy in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.Netanyahu promised Obama "concrete steps" - confidence-building measures - within weeks to try to coax the Palestinians back into direct peace negotiations.

Washington has publicly urged Israel not to demolish Palestinian homes built without permits. Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, say it is impossible to obtain construction approval from Israeli authorities. Israel had refrained from implementing demolition orders since November in the politically sensitive Jerusalem area, after U.S. pressure not to take steps that could jeopardize peace talks with the Palestinians."

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defe...usalem-1.301681

[Hedda]

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Netanyahu is a prisoner of the right wing kooks who made him prime minister and who keep him in power. These folks are the religious zealots who think that they can take back the West Bank as God's promised land so that a modern day King Solomon can come back to hold court at the temple in Jerusalem. They are as illiberal as any of the Muslim religious radicals they are so quick to condemn. They have little in common with most of American Jews, except their status as Jews, and even there, there are right wing extremists in Israel working right now to hand the definition of who is a Jew to the control of these fanatics.

Unfortunately, these are the radicals upon whom Netanyahu must rely to keep his job as prime minister. Any American who thinks that Israel with that kind of government is a valuable US ally in the Middle East is delusional. If anything, Israel under Netanyahu has become an albatross hanging around America's attempts to reach some better relationships with the Muslim world.

One has to wonder after a half-century of backing and bank rolling Israel's attempts to colonize Palestine, how much longer America's vital interests will continue to be sacrificed to the agenda of radical zionists bent on reclaiming Palestine as part of the "promised land." The Jews may surely continue to dream of "next year in Jerusalem;" they just have to stop expecting their rich American Uncle Sam to go broke paying for it.

[Oliver]

Don't blame Netanyahu; the US knows what's he like, after all Hilary's hubby had similar problems.
Blame instead Obama and his pro-Israel advisors (Emmanuel, Denis Ross, Biden and yes, Hilary)
Sadly, it seems as if our great hope has no cojones.