- 2 april 2011
Israel plans to seize a million sq meters of Negev land
THE NEGEV, (PIC)-- Israel has planned to confiscate a million square meters of Palestinian and Arab land in the Negev desert, occupied in 1948, on the anniversary of Land Day which fell two days ago, the president of the council of regional villages of the Negev, Ibrahim al-Waqili warned.
The plan falls under the recommendations made by the Israeli Goldberg committee which was formed in 2008 headed by retired judge Eliezer Goldberg.
The disclosure of these plans on the anniversary of Land Day will only increase our determination to continue to struggle. There will be no bargains or concessions on the land. We have paid the tax of blood and have given martyrs to preserve our existence, said Waqili.
He added that Israeli occupation authorities have sights set to settle 300,000 Jews in the Negev within the next ten years and wants to accelerate the implementation of the said recommendations.
Israel considers the recommendations a project to settle the conflict and organize housing in 45 unrecognized Arab villages where nearly 120,000 people live. Israel wants to seize a million square meters of land and turn it into state property and demolish nearly 30,000 homes and pay compensation over the land, reserving only 200 thousand square meters for the Arabs.
Waqili told Al-Jazeera.net that his council has rejected the recommendations and has refused to bargain the land.
He said that steadfastness would be the best response to thwart the plan.
Israel has begun implementing a plan targeting individual farms in the Negev and has set up nearly 70 farms across thousands of square meters.
http://fwd4.me/ypR
4 oct 2011, 13:42 , Respect -
Maria 3 apr 2011
'Israel breaks demolition record'
The United Nations has warned that the demolition of the Palestinian residences by Israelis has been braking the record for the past three months.
"The number of Palestinian buildings in the West Bank demolished by the Israeli authorities has hit a record high for the third consecutive month," said Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees on Sunday, AFP reported.
"The number of people forcibly displaced by these demolitions has also hit a record monthly high with 158 people forcibly displaced in March by demolitions, including 64 children," he said.
The official said respectively 29, 70 and 76 homes had been razed to the ground each month since January.
The policy clearly aims at "discrimination against one ethnic group," Gunness noted.
Tel Aviv is accused of implementing an apartheid system, under which it indulges Jews while withholding basic requirements from the Palestinians.
The destructions have been carried out coincidental with Israel's building of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem). Tel Aviv occupied the two Palestinian territories in 1967 and later annexed them, in a move not recognized by the international community.
The UN and the European Union have condemned the settlements as illegal under the international law, which bans construction of units on occupied territories.
Gunness said the simultaneous acts of tearing down the Palestinian houses and erecting the settler units diminish the prospects of creation of a Palestinian state.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/172898.html
Israel plans to turn Issawiyya, Tur land into national park
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israel's Jerusalem municipality and nature authority have devised a plan to turn land in the city's Issawiyya and Tur districts into a national park, a Palestinian lecturer and researcher disclosed.
The move came after claims that the area contains Jewish valueables that belong to the second alleged temple.
It is expected that the district planning and building committee in the Israeli Ministry of Interior will decide next Tuesday to accept the plan initially and take it to the public for objections, said planning and building lecturer and Jerusalem affairs expert Qais Nasser.
Nasser outlined the details of plan based on documents he obtained. He said the project would cover 661,000 sq meters of land in historic Issawiyya and Tur, known as Karm al-Rumi, Ras al-Salm, Zaafarana, Maraj, Rabie, Dya and Khulla al-Jawz. The western end would be adjacent to the Hebrew University, and the eastern end would run along Highway 1, which leads to the Ma'ale Adumim settlement. It would also reach the Tur district to the south and Issawiyya and the Hebrew University to the north.
The Israeli Jerusalem municipality presented the project to transform the region into an Israeli national park claiming that it is maintaining the historic Jewish values in the region belonging to the Second Temple, Nasser said.
According to the project's documents, the Israeli nature authority will sign an agreement to operate the park with the Hebrew University.
http://fwd4.me/yuB
8 oct 2011, 09:41 , Respect -
Maria 4 apr 2011
Barak to settlers: Build Illegally I'll Authorize it Eventually
The Construction reported into today's Israeli media http://fwd4.me/ywB refers to 4 settlements (Rotem, Eshkolot-Sansana, Halamish-Neve Zuf and Kiryat Netafim) in which construction was already taking place and/or completed without any relevant permits or authorization.
Today Defense Minister Barak authorized retroactively these construction sites by publishing development plans for each and every one.
Two of these settlements were ordered by the court to halt construction (Halamish http://fwd4.me/ywC and Kiryat Netafim http://fwd4.me/ywD ), after Peace Now appealed the courts with evidence of absence of development plans.
We will now have to study these plans carefully to check whether they include only the already completed/constructing units or also include a widening of each settlement with authorization for further growth and extension of settlement perimeters.
Once again the government is capitulating to settler pressure, ignoring international relations and Palestinian rights.
Barak's message to the settlers is clear - they can continue to construct illegally and sometime down the line, whether it be 5 or 10 years later, eventually their construction will be authorized..
http://fwd4.me/ywA
Palestinian man sustains fractures after attacked by settlers
NABLUS, (PIC)-- A Palestinian man sustained fractures in his shin and arm after Jewish settlers brutally assaulted him Sunday night near the Maale Ephraim settlement east of Nablus city.
The victim Emad Hosni Salahat, 47, was transported to the Rafidya Hospital in Nablus following the attack.
Separately, other settlers have destroyed a water spring in the village of Madama south of Nablus, locals reported.
Some twenty settlers broke the pipes supplying the village with water Sunday afternoon, witnesses from the village said.
The Israeli occupation army arrived after the saboteurs had withdrawn.
The same day, settlers were seen leveling land and digging on private property in the village of Massha, Salfit province, as they paved the way to expand the nearby Eits Ephraim settlement.
The digging took place in an area known as Bat Abu Erzeq west of the town and covered more than 100,000 sq meters, Massha mayor Nidal Amir said.
Settlers have taken 95 per cent of the village's land since the separation wall was erected in 2004, as settlers began building roads linking isolated settlement communities, turning the village into an isolated locality.
http://fwd4.me/yw5
5 apr 2011
Settlers sabotage water spring of Palestinian village
NABLUS, (PIC)-- Jewish settlers attacked the village of Madma on Tuesday and polluted and damaged its water spring, local sources said.
They said that settlers from Yitzhar settlement attacked their almost only water well and deprived citizens from making use of it.
Villages south and east of Nablus are the target of semi daily attacks by those settlers.
http://fwd4.me/z3k
Itamar settlers uproot tree saplings near Nablus
NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Residents of Itamar settlement who recently erected an illegal outpost destroyed dozens of tree saplings in the area, Palestinian farmers said Tuesday.
The outpost was founded in the wake of the murder of five members of the Fogel family in Itamar settlement. It was erected on what villagers said was privately owned agricultural lands, weeks after Israel's Knesset approved a law to demolish all settlement outposts on areas declared to be private Palestinian lands.
At the time, a spokesman for Israel's Civil Administration, which controls planning and zoning in the West Bank's Area C, said the case of the Fogel outpost was unclear.
The saplings had recently been planted through an initiative by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which has in the past supported farmers who cannot afford to seed fields. The initiative is meant to support farmers so they can continue to work their lands despite hardship.
Villagers said this was the fourth time in recent weeks that agricultural products and equipment have been vandalized.
An investigation into the murder of five members of the Fogel family is underway, but a persisting gag order for the Israeli press means little has surfaced as to the details of the case. Israeli leaders pointed the finger at Palestinian militant groups, but none have claimed the attack.
Following the murders, settler attacks against Palestinians increased, in the wake of already frequent attacks carried out under the "price tag" policy, after the dismantling of an outpost in the Nablus region by soldiers in late February.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=375733
6 apr 2011
Report: Settler vineyard bulldozed
HEBRON (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces bulldozed 80 dunams of grapes planted by settlers on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Susiya in the southern West Bank Wednesday morning.
Landowner Jamil Hoshieh told Ma'an a settler from the nearby illegal settlement Suseya, Moyshele Deutsch, took the land four years ago, and planted a vineyard. Hoshieh petitioned Israeli courts to retrieve the land, and a year later the Supreme Court ruled in their favor.
Israeli soldiers were acting on Supreme Court orders, the far-right Israeli news agency Arutz Sheva reported.
The village, east of Yatta, lost 1,500 dunams of land to settlers, Hoshieh said.
The villagers will continue using legal measures to regain all of their land, and will not allow settlers from Suseya to steal more land, Hoshieh added.
http://fwd4.me/z66
UN official: Israel razed record number of Palestinian homes in March
RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness has said that Israel destroyed a record number of Palestinian homes in the West Bank over the past month of March.
Gunness said on Sunday, quoting UNRWA reports, that Israel demolished 76 houses and buildings in March compared to 29 in January and 70 in February.
He noted that the number of people displaced as a result was also a record number, explaining that 158 people were displaced including 64 children while in February 105 were rendered homeless including 43 children and in January 70 were without shelter including 47 children.
The UNRWA official described the demolitions as a kind of "discrimination", pointing to Israel's continued settlement building in the West Bank, which he said hindered the establishment of a Palestinian state.
http://fwd4.me/yvj