There’s going to be a lot of talk about the two-state solution in weeks to come. Well, the EU is pushing it by trying to stop settlements, and Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s Foreign Minister, is outraged by the EU’s description of Gilo as a settlement. JPost:
Israel’s “red line” is that the country will not negotiate with anyone over Jerusalem, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman told Army Radio on Sunday, after the EU condemned as “settlement building” a plan to build 797 homes in Gilo.
“Jerusalem is not a settlement,” Liberman said in his second attack on the EU since its public censure of the plan. “Gilo is a Jewish neighborhood. Today there are 32-33,000 Jews living there. It’s an integral part of Jerusalem.”
Lieberman by the way is a former European, who became a settler on the West Bank, illegally.
I’ve been to Gilo many times. It is halfway between Jerusalem and Bethlehem on a hill to the south of Jerusalem. It is, as Mazin Qumsiyeh explained to me on my last tour, grabbing as much land as it can with as few Palestinians on it, by stealing the farming lands of Al Walaje to the south and choking that Palestinian village. It is part of a process of expropriation designed to encircle the city of Jerusalem with Jewish colonists so that Jerusalem will be the eternal capital of the Jewish state (in defiance of Herzl’s promises and US policy). This process makes the possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state connected to the Old City of Jerusalem a fantasy.
red lines red lines red lines!
It is part of a process of expropriation designed to encircle the city of Jerusalem with Jewish colonists so that Jerusalem will be the eternal capital of the Jewish state (in defiance of Herzl’s promises and US policy). This process makes the possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state connected to the Old City of Jerusalem a fantasy.
finkelstein even said you can’t have a viable palestinian state without EJ.
Remember when the Taliban blew up the two massive statues of Buddha in Afghanistan?
These guys are nothing short of the Taliban, and we’ll see what happens when they succeed with their plans for Al-Aqsa Mosque. Lieberman is gonna take the land and erect the walls, and the religious fanatics in his coalition will build the temple and institutions for the new Jewish kingdom. These are literally the goals. Some say Israeli’s always act like it’s 1933, but not these cats – they’re on some B.C. type shit.
Oh, Phillip, you keep fergittin!
Israel abolished that ol’ Green Line, and replaced it with its very own Red Lines.
Although they’re just about invisible, they are mostly in the region of the Jordan River.
On same topic over at Col. Langs I saw a comment by jdledell, a Jewish commenter I use to know at TWN. He’s a (very dissappointed in zionism) zionist and he’s very knowledge about Israel. I have always found him to have a good grasp of what’s happening in Israel on all levels. He has a nephew in the IDF and some (as he said –crazy) relatives in settlements. If memory serves I think he once said he traveled in the ME on business for a US company and therefore makes stops in Israel regularly.
As you can see by his last paragraph he’s caught on to the Jews-Zionism -Israel vr the world problem.
jdledell said…
Most Americans need a geography lesson to properly understand what Israel means by an undivided capital in Jerusalem. For centuries until 1967 Jerusalem was basically the Old city plus a small circular portion of land to the East along with about half of what is now considered as West Jerusalem. After 1967 Israel took control of a major portion of the West Bank and combined it with an expanded West Jerusalem to call the entire area Jerusalem. This, in effect, tripled the size of traditional Jerusalem and this was codified into law in 1980.
The new boundries have nothing to do with the concept of a capital city, it was done for one reason only – to prevent the expansion and encroachment of Palestinians areas to the city. Thus, Jerusalem’s borders extend to the historical city limits of Bethlehem to the south and Ramallah to the north. Israel then dotted the area with new Jewish settlements to solidify their hold on the land – Gilo, Har Homa, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramot Allon, French Hill etc. The expansion of Gilo announced in the last few days will be downhill and virtually within a stone’s throw of Bethlehem’s sacred sites.
Furthermore, there is a proposal that has been floating around the Knesset for at least 5 years to further expand Jerusalem to incorporate Ma’ale Adumin, Givat Ze’ev, Betar Illit etc. This will double Jerusalem’s borders over the previous tripling. Theoretically, this will extend Jerusalem’s borders all the way to Jericho.
There is no question Pat is right, this Israeli government has no intention of allowing Palestinians anything more than isolated “autonomous reservations” to live on. I currently sincerely doubt any Israeli government now, or in the future, will ever allow a real Palestinian state. The two state solution is dead. Eventually, the arabs will reclaim the territory of Israel. It may take them 100 years or 1000 years but it will happen. The past is prologue – it has happened before to the Jews and it will happen again. As Zionist Jew and a dual Israeli citizen, this makes me very unhappy but it’s our own damn fault.
We’ve never figured out that assimilation does not mean we have to abandon our culture and religion but with only 15 million of us in the world we’ve got to figure out how to live with the other 6 billion humans in this world. ”
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/10/no-limits-on-building-in-e-jerusalem-reuters.html#comments
Somewhat in line with what I wrote about Rabbi Boteach in that earlier thread, you just stand in awe a bit at the blatancy of it.
For 40+ years Israel solicits and takes U.S. money on the express basis that it needs that money to defend itself while it is looking for someone to talk to as that is the only way there’s going to be any final settlement on who owns what pieces of land.
And now that it feels it can get away with it and still continue to get that money (and it will), it announces that of course it’s not going to negotiate with anyone over the most important piece.
And of course it’s never really going to negotiate with anyone over any of the other important pieces either.
In other words, one extended con game.
“I know what America is,” sneered Netanyahu famously, and along with Lieberman now becoming ever less concerned about people learning what Israel is.
Extraordinary people, is all I can say. Really extraordinary. Although of course that’s obviously how they think of themselves too, just in a different way.
History is a funny thing though, albeit moving slowly, so often it just ineluctably strips the veneer off issues and lays bare the reality. And so much of what Netanyahu and Lieberman and clearly Israel itself is banking on is that in then end all this will just be viewed as a property dispute.
But it won’t, I don’t think. Given that simply occupying that property doesn’t get Israel what it ultimately wants because those pesky unwanted people will still be there, ever more I think it’s becoming more and more clear it’s going to end up being about jewish superiority/supremacy, and the we’ll see how the world views that. No matter how captured and gagged the American congress may be.
Israel thinks it’s isolated now, just wait.