An Israeli police headquarters nears completion in an area of the West Bank east of Jerusalem that U.S. officials have long warned Israel not to develop.
Posted on 09/24/2006 11:41:43 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
AMONA, West Bank -- The movement to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which only a few months ago appeared to be a divided, waning political force, is experiencing a revival after summer of war that caused Israelis to question the wisdom of abandoning more territory.
Little more than a year ago, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew all Jewish settlers and Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. After Sharon's debilitating stroke in January, his deputy, Ehud Olmert, won national elections in March on a promise to evacuate dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and to uproot the smaller, unauthorized communities known as outposts in a bid to define Israel's final borders.
After month-long war in southern Lebanon and as sporadic fighting continues in Gaza, a highly unpopular Olmert has put his West Bank withdrawal plan on hold. His government has stepped up construction in the large settlement blocs, including areas the Bush administration has warned Israel against developing, and West Bank settlement population of a quarter-million people is growing.
"This state does not operate by a policy," said Yehuda Yifrach, 30, who still lives with his wife, Ayelet, and three children on this windblown hilltop even though in February Israeli military bulldozers demolished the shipping container that was their home. "They only go by the polls at the time."
The settlers' change of fortune stems from Israel's conflicts in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon, regions the country had occupied and abandoned in the recent past. Islamic gunmen staged cross-border raids from those areas this summer, capturing three Israeli soldiers who are still being held.
Some Israelis are drawing lessons from the war that have helped vindicate the settlers, whose large financial claim on the national treasury and strident opposition to an independent state for the Palestinians...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
An Israeli police headquarters nears completion in an area of the West Bank east of Jerusalem that U.S. officials have long warned Israel not to develop.
bttt
And they should mean it.
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
Tell me about it.
Even more ironic is that while so many of these yahoos turn carpetbagger on their own, there are Christians like me and many others in and out of this forum whose attitude is: "its the historical land of the Jews, they should settle wherever they want in it in as many numbers as they want, the mandate dates back to Abraham's time."
The preliminary goal should be to completely encircle Jerusalem with settlements - a few outposts in the Samarian hinterland are nice, but 100K settlers ringing the 250K Moslems in East Jerusalem would go a long way toward eliminating one of the chief talking points of the enemy.
How can a city in which Moslems are a tiny minority be the capital of a Moslem state?
Even if there's only 5% Muslim minority in Jerusalem, they will still claim it to be the capital of a future Muslim state.
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