Why do Israeli settlements expand during peace talks? is an impressive 10 page series of info-graphics published by The Christian Science Monitor. While they never actually answer the question why Israel settlements expand more during peace talks, the series walks the viewer, step by step, through Israel’s settlement expansion during Oslo, Camp David, Sharm el Sheikh, Annapolis, right up to present day…and then some. We’ve compiled just a few from the series here and recommend checking out the rest. Impressive and disturbing.
See the entire series here.
(Hat tip Karen Platt)
Update: Original post featured CSM graphics that the newspaper regards as proprietary. Please go to the link to see them.
Because the US allows them to expand and de facto funds them, all the while declaring an official policy they are a major impediment to peace negotiations, if not illegal, which they actually are under international law, and under former US official policy.
22 years ago Yitzhak Shamir wanted barren negotiations to continue for 10 years, to the frustration of James Baker, nothing has changed, the Israeli Government are taking the Palestinians for a ride, their philosophy is [and it never seems to fail with Abbas and Erekat] never give a sucker an even break, the latest news according to Maariv newspaper is that the two sides fundamentally disagree over borders. The Israelis are offering to lease the Jordan Valley to the Palestinian Authority over a period of decades, and the Palestinians are rejecting the indeterminate proposal. I always thought only the owners of property had the option to lease it out, but there you have it the Israelis are offering to lease the land back to its true owners, unbelievable.
Nice to see that they got around to asking the question.
Gideon Levy goes one better in a column today in response to the screed of Minister of Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Yuval Steinitz, published in the NYT:
“Paper can suffer anything, even that used for printing the New York Times. For all that, you must agree that this marks another record in Israeli chutzpah: A representative of the “culture of peace” excoriating Palestinian incitement. That has always served as the last refuge of Israeli refusal.
Well, Israeli incitement is far worse than that of the Palestinians. It’s not only the late rabbi or other rabbis who incite; not only Beitar Jerusalem supporters, price tag perpetrators and daubers of “Death to the Arabs” graffiti on every signpost. The real Israeli incitement is that which slips off the tongue easily, camouflaged, covert and brainwashed.
When Steinitz compares the Geneva talks of 2013 with the Munich talks of 1938, he is effectively comparing Rohani with Hitler. That’s not incitement? When he talks about sanctifying terrorists, is he talking about Palestine or Israel? Which one sanctifies its past and present terrorists more? Where are there more memorials to the fallen? Which one educates more toward hatred, arrogance and racism?
You want an example of camouflaged incitement, the type that slips off the tongue every evening? Television presenter Danny Kushmaro went to the Jordan Valley to follow the murder of Seraiah Ofer on the “Friday Studio” newscast, and what did we get? In the Jordan Valley there are only “inhabitants” whose lives the Palestinian thieves make a misery, those wretched victims. One of them said that “90 percent of the hatred in the world is by the Muslims.”
That is not incitement by any means. In Kushmaro’s Jordan Valley there are not lots of Palestinians, whose land was confiscated and freedom trampled. He simply did not see them, therefore they do not exist. That’s not incitement?
The real incitement is denial of the Nakba; the real incitement is demonization and dehumanization of the Palestinians; the real incitement is the militarism, victimization and arrogance of the “Chosen People,” including Holocaust studies for six-year-olds that is designed to give the impression that the whole world is against us.
The real incitement is that which will never acknowledge the context and motive behind Palestinian hatred. They don’t need lessons in school in order to hate Israelis – it’s enough for them to wake up terrified in the middle of the night to see soldiers brutally intrude their homes, bully their parents and degrade them in front of their eyes. Those are their real inciters. ”
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.553332
Why do Israeli settlements expand during peace talks?’
Why does a dog lick its bollocks? Because it feels “chosen by God”™ ? Or because it can?
Bravo, Christian Science Monitor. To what extent do Aipac stooges in the US Congress encourage Israel to grow the illegal colonies in the West Bank, at times of “peace talks”?