Later this week, Secretary of State John Kerry is going to Israel to follow up on so-called “peace talks.”
“We and the parties remain focused on our goal of achieving a permanent agreement which ends the conflict and all claims, and creates peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” the State Department said last week.
Peace eh? Juan Cole provides a round-up of recent Israeli actions to help illustrate how the government of Benjamin Netanyahu understands “peace” with the Palestinians:
Israel just issued tenders for over 1,700 new homes for Israelis on the Palestinian West Bank. The plan will involve demolishing Palestinian residences…
Israel is planning to dig for oil in the Occupied West Bank, in violation of the Oslo Accords and of the laws governing military occupations. Israel is likewise preventing Palestinians in Gaza from developing their offshore natural gas resources.
The government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is planning to build a ‘security wall’ along the border of Palestine with Jordan. This infrastructure is designed to secure Israel’s security presence along the Jordanian border, where it has no business being, far into the future, yet again detracting from Palestinian sovereignty.
Israel this week destroyed two “residential buildings in Beit Hanina village and 2 rooms in Jabal al-Mukaber neighbourhood” in East Jerusalem, leaving 33 Palestinian civilians homeless” , adding more displaced to the some 400 who have lost their homes in Palestinian Jerusalem in 2013 alone.
Israeli squatters on the Palestinian West Bank in Migdalim just sent bulldozers to the Palestinian village of Qusra, in order to annex more land to the Israeli squatter settlement.
Militant Israeli squatters uprooted and burned 121 olive and almond trees in Nablus and Bethlehem.
That’s a hell of a lot of peace-makin. Everything listed above quite deliberately undermines the prospects for a viable Palestinian state, which is supposedly what negotiations are based upon.
The only thing on the list that has received any media attention at all is the newest plans for settlement construction, which are illegal. Settlement construction rose by 70 percent in 2013. In the process, Israel destroyed more than 500 Palestinian homes in West Bank and East Jerusalem, displacing 862 people.
Netanyahu’s reaction to the complaints? In a Likud party meeting on Sunday, Bibi said “the Palestinians knew we would build in the course of the negotiations” and they are just seeking to create “an artificial crisis.”
All the U.S. has had to say is that they don’t think settlements “create a positive environment for negotiations.” Never mind them being illegal and never mind the fact that continued U.S. support for Israel is what enables these flagrant violations of international law in the first place.
Everything Israel carries out in occupied Palestinian territory demonstrates clearly that they intend to annex the West Bank and rob Palestinians of what fraction of their own land they still have left.
According to the New Republic, Netanyahu’s Deputy Minister of Defense Danny Danon said of the West Bank “We have rights to the land.”
“We won,” he explained. “When you win, you keep what you won.”
While all that goes on, the U.S. and Israel continue to utter the word “peace.”
Israel's official policy: Land without peace is better than peace with less land (and resources especially West Bank oil).
Juan Cole supported U.S. intervention into Libya. Hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece was the cost of the missiles that where launched by the Obama administration. The same Obama administration who is so close to the Netanyahu ran government of Israel. We can do better than quoting Juan Cole. Today many Democrats and Republicans quarrel over the attack on U.S.embassy personal in the perfectly predictable lawless conclusion of the over throw of the Libyan government. Antiwar readers need to have longer memories.
Yes Chas, and the attacks on Libya were supported by France, GB, and Italy. Now that there is no stable government, the shores of Libya are being used to launch boats filled with displaced people from Libya, Syria, Egypt and other countries destabilized through western intervention or interference into Italy, the EU. This will obviously increase and increase with the continued interference in the region by the west, and there´s no way to stop it. The US can´t even control their tiny by comparison little land border, fence and all, with Mexico, how could the EU ever control its borders that are hundreds of times as large? Member states of the EU chose to follow the sick US policy in the ME and North Africa and will now pay heavily, without a shot being fired. What goes around comes around.
The Romans called theirs 'pax romana' and used it as an excuse to introduce the 'divus imperator''s image and Vespasian's horse to the Temple in Jerusalem. Things haven't gotten much better since then.
As always, the criminal U.S.Government turns a blind eye to whatever the criminal Zionist entity does.
Israel and the US do not support "peace talks", they support "piece talks", taking away land from the Palestinians piece by piece.
Instead of burning up taxpayer-funded jet fuel on Air Force Three, or whatever the Secretary of State's plane is called, perhaps El Al Israeli Airlines can give Kerry a frequent-flyer discount with as much time as he spends running over there to supplicate to his zionist masters.
More likely he would be charged extra – for all the 'extra' security needed to protect him from the 'evul ayrabs'
Yeah, you're probably right.
i’ve seen this in some of the bad newspapers, but not
in the good ones. any truth in it?
“Israel to demolish homes of over 15,000 Palestinians”
http://en.alalam.ir/news/1530535
You forgot to mention that during all of this, and since the 2009 Gaza Massacre wherein Israel broke a ceasefire, exploded white phosphorous onto two Gazan hospitals where thousands civilians were taking shelter (see Rain of Fire report by Human Rights Watch), the USA has INCREASED aid to Israel by half a billion dollars. Israel was already the top aid recipient. It now gets approx. 4.5 billion a year, or 13 million dollars per day, from the taxed US citizen.
Israel48:furat to Nile corpz funded by OPEX and it's blind olamaaaaaa(blackwater sisidahlancorpz, bander Aramcorpz,Sabah nawras insurance,qabusRaytheon consultincc , Sudis 24/7 Mallz and Zayed T. itehaz)…which U$king dukan tought kids about Ghazwat NY?waiting
i live it ! , Just because your beach bag is filled with magazines, your iPod, and your towel, doesnt mean you can leave the sunscreen behind.
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my comment held, it was not controversial or an affront. please promote open discussion
After a bloody decade-long occupation of multiple countries in the Middle East, the emergence of new terrorist groups, and the disaster in Benghazi, two lessons from the past ten years should be that we aren’t able to predict the unintended consequences
After a bloody decade-long occupation of multiple countries in the Middle East, the emergence of new terrorist groups, and the disaster in Benghazi, two lessons from the past ten years should be that we arena??t able to predict the unintended consequences