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Tuesday, February 03, 2009

The Israeli Settlements



This January of 2009, Ha'aretz newspaper obtained a copy of a secret Israeli database which revealed the extent of the illegal settlements in the West Bank. According to JewSchool:  
( I am sorry, but I have to edit the article title. Since I have a blog with a holy name in it, I try to get around certain expressions.)

  HOLY S***, Haaretz gets copy of Israeli settlement database by Kung Fu Jew · Friday, January 30th, 2009  
I hope the implications of this event don’t get buried in other news, because this stands to blow the settlement project’s lies out of the water for good: Haaretz reports it has a copy of the Israeli government’s database of settlement construction — including Palestinian land appropriation, building violations, and illegal settlements... ...This is great for ending the occupation. This means that not only has some semblance of transparency been imposed on the political actors, but also the question of settlement legitimacy has been brought back home. While Israeli officials (and their Jewish defense parrots in the US) assert that the settlements are not in direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, they surely must admit now that huge chunks of them are illegal by Israel’s own law and that the government did so knowingly...

The Ha'aretz article: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1060043.html  
Secret Israeli database reveals full extent of illegal settlement By Uri Blau  

Just four years ago, the defense establishment decided to carry out a seemingly elementary task: establish a comprehensive database on the settlements. Brigadier General (res.) Baruch Spiegel, aide to then defense minister Shaul Mofaz, was put in charge of the project. For over two years, Spiegel and his staff, who all signed a special confidentiality agreement, went about systematically collecting data, primarily from the Civil Administration... .... An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements - about 75 percent - construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued. The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents. The data, it should be stressed, do not refer only to the illegal outposts (information about which was included in the well-known report authored by attorney Talia Sasson and published in March 2005), but to the very heart of the settlement enterprise. Among them are veteran ideological settlements like Alon Shvut (established in 1970 and currently home to 3,291 residents, including Rabbi Yoel Bin Nun)...

We shall refer to this later. The settlements are part of our delusions. By showing their illegal nature, we shall bring light upon our lies to ourselves, whether we are Jewish or not Jewish.

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