Israel Defies Bush

Israel Defies Bush, To Expand Illegal Settlements, Plan To Build 6,391 New Settler Homes, Mostly in Jerusalem

The Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth daily reported Friday that Israel plans to build 6,391 homes for the illegal settlers in the Israeli settlements in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2005, a sharp increase over 2004, in defiance of US President George W. Bush’s call in Brussels Monday on the Jewish state to “freeze all settlement activity.”

Palestinian chief negotiator Sa'eb Ereqat on Friday urged US President Bush to press Israel “to make sure such a plan is not implemented and that his call for a freeze in all settlement activity is implemented.”

Bush reaffirmed Monday US commitment to the creation of a viable Palestinian state with contiguous territory in the West Bank.

Erekat said the construction would violate a US-backed and UN-adopted “roadmap” for Palestinian – Israeli peace that calls on Israel to cease all “settlement activity” on Palestinian territory it occupied in the 1967.

Statistics on the Web site of the Israel Lands Authority (ILA), whose 2005 construction plan was cited by Yedioth Ahronoth, showed the Israeli government agency marketed 1,783 new housing units in the West Bank in 2004 and 1,225 in 2003.

Yedioth Ahronoth said a third of the new Israeli homes planned this year in the West Bank would be built just outside Jerusalem in the colony of Maaleh Adumim, Israel's largest settlement in the West Bank, which has a population of more than 30, 000.

Most of the rest will be built in several colonies south of Jerusalem.

Confirming the report, Israeli “Defense” Minister Shaul Mofaz's office said in a statement he had approved building permits for “a limited number of housing units” in settlement blocs, but the statement gave no figures.

Another Israeli government official also confirmed the report to Reuters.

“As for the major clusters, don't expect us to stop construction there. In any future agreement, Israel will retain them,” the official told Reuters, citing a need to accommodate the so-called “natural growth” of the illegal settlers.

However the ILA spokesman Adam Avidan said that this was “a draft of a plan that was submitted in 2003,” adding: “It was never approved.”

Avidan said he did not know how many new homes would be built this year in existing Jewish colonies in the West Bank.

The newspaper, Israel's biggest, also said the Israeli government intended to approve retroactively about 200 settlement outposts erected without its authorization in the West Bank, but Mofaz's office denied this.

“The defense minister has made it clear on numerous occasions that all the unauthorized outposts will be removed, and that will be the case,” his office said.

More than 425,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in more than 155 colonies in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank. The international community views these colonies as illegal.

Israel's government last Sunday approved a plan to “disengage” its occupation forces and illegal Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip and endorsed a new route of its Wall of Annexation and Expansion in the West Bank.

The changed route of the Wall of Annexation and Expansion, which the Israeli state is building on occupied Palestinian land, will incorporate seven percent (7%) of the West Bank area and the illegal Israeli settlements of Maale Adumin and Gush Etzion, east and south of Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged after a meeting with President Moshe Katsav Monday there will be no negotiations on Jerusalem, which “will remain united as the eternal capital of the (Israeli) people. It will not be divided.”

This statement contradicts his statement to Al-Ahram Saturday that the Wall Israel is building on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank will not mark the definitive border of an eventual Palestinian state.

Anti-Wall Protesters Tear Gazed

On Friday the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) used tear gas to disperse some 700 people, mostly Palestinian villagers from Rafat northwest of Jerusalem and Deir Balut in the northern West Bank and a few foreign and Israeli peace activists, who were protesting the leveling of land by Israeli bulldozers to prepare the ground for the Wall's imminent erection.

The villagers had organized a mass prayer by the site and clashes later broke out with IOF troops.

A dozen protesters suffered breathing difficulties after inhaling tear gas and were treated on the spot.

Palestinians dub the Wall as an “Apartheid Wall.”

Jewish Rabbi for Dismantling Israeli Illegal Settlements

Separately spokesman of Natouri Karata, which is an anti-Zionist institution, Israel David Wice, demanded Thursday the dismantling of illegal Israeli settlements, which are located on land that belongs to the Palestinian people.

“Zionism is against Judaism,” the Rabbi said in a statement to reporters underlining that Natouri Karata Institution has been opposing Zionism as well as condemning its criminal sins committed against the Palestinian people.

Wise pointed out that the Palestinians are victims of the immoral Zionism, which denied them their existence and rights on their own lands.

“We always demonstrate in the United States and Europe against Zionism but the media doesn't pay us any attention,” the Rabbi said pointing out that Karata institution has been refusing to live under the Zionist system represented by Israel.