Amona may have fallen, but it will rise again - by Michael Freund

...Will the supporters of the rule of law be just as vocal about the need to demolish additional illegal Beduin towns as they are regarding Amona? I think we all know the answer to that one.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
02 February '17..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/19634/amona

As the security forces descended on Amona on Wednesday with orders to expel the town's Jewish residents, it was hard to overlook the bitter irony of the move's timing. For it was precisely 11 years ago, on February 1, 2006, that then-prime minister Ehud Olmert carried out the destruction of the Amona community in a whirlwind of violence and bloodshed that shocked the nation.

And now, here we are, over a decade later, and Amona's Jews are once again being dragged out of their homes by the very same government that encouraged them to move there in the first place and even provided them with budgetary support and infrastructure over the years. Hundreds of Jewish men, women and children, driven solely by a love for the Land of Israel and the pioneering spirit to rebuild it, will now find themselves without a roof over their head, left homeless in the heartland of the Jewish people.

It should never have come to this.

Whatever legal problems that might have existed with regard to the status of some of the lands on which Amona was built could have been addressed through a variety of other means short of demolition, such as providing compensation to Palestinian landowners. Indeed, the government had ample time to resolve the issues surrounding Amona, which worked their way through the courts over the course of several years via either legislation or negotiations.

But the bureaucrats dithered, and once the High Court of Justice issued its final ruling ordering the community's obliteration, there was little room left to maneuver.

Supporters of Amona's removal from the map cite the fact that Israel is a country based on the rule of law, and the law must be upheld. Of course, what they fail to mention is that the manner in which the rule of law is upheld is no less crucial, and that when it is selectively used against one sector of the population more than another, it can hardly be considered to be just.

Amona? How many times before we lose our national soul? - by Vic Rosenthal

...Do we care about Judea and Samaria and the Jews that live there? If so, we need to commit, to act as though we truly are the sovereign power; as Annika Hernroth-Rothstein wrote, to make a marriage and not just an extended engagement. Zionism demands it. If not – well, I don’t want to think about the alternative.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
16 December '16..

I have avoided writing about Amona until now. This is because the legal issues surrounding the notion of land ownership in Judea and Samaria are so arcane that one legal scholar (email correspondence) wrote that “the number of people who have a good understanding of West Bank property law can be counted on one hand.” And I don’t want to add to the noise by writing yet another amateur legal brief about it. There are, though, some things that are clear and worth saying.

First of all, let me state my prejudices: I do not believe Jews living in Judea and Samaria are an “obstacle to peace,” nor do I think that Jewish communities there are illegal or even “illegitimate,” whatever that means. Indeed, I think that Jews settling anywhere in the land of Israel are performing a religious and Zionist mitzvah, and I’m all for it. Those who find this position offensive can stop reading now.

The last time I mentioned Amona, someone took me to task for advocating “land theft.” It’s private Palestinian land, he said. What more do you need to know? Well, actually there is a great deal to know. Some of the complexities are discussed here. It’s worthwhile reading if you care about more than slogans.

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Where murder of ‎sleeping children elicits barely any outrage, but building houses does

...By making the PA the second-largest recipient per capita of foreign aid in the world, the U.S. and the EU have made themselves complicit in the murders of Israelis. This remains the truth, no matter how ‎much and how often they seek to distract world attention from it by throwing hissy fits about the perceived outrageousness of building houses for Jews in Judea and Samaria. How ‎morally twisted and depraved the world is when the official sanctioning of the murder of ‎sleeping children elicits barely any outrage, but the building of houses does.‎

Judith Bergman..
Israel Hayom..
08 July '16..

In the wake of the report of the Middle East Quartet, which called on Israel to cease settlement ‎construction and expansion, the U.S. State Department this week issued an unusually harsh statement against ‎Israel. In it, the Obama administration accused Israel of "systematically seizing Palestinian land," with State ‎Department spokesman John Kirby claiming that "settlement expansions and legalization of ‎outposts is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution."

The timing of the United States' condemnation of Israel could not possibly be more bizarre. After two ‎heinous terrorist attacks last week, in which a 13-year-old girl (who, incidentally, held dual Israeli-U.S. ‎citizenship) was stabbed to death in her sleep and a father of 10 was murdered, the U.S. chose to focus its outrage on the building of Jewish houses, not the murder of Jewish children ‎and fathers. ‎

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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About the BBC’s recurring claim that Israeli building endangers the 2 state solution - Hadar Sela

...The editorialising which lies behind the framing of building in Judea & Samaria by the BBC in general and its Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen in particular is glaringly obvious. Obviously it is not the BBC’s job to amplify a particular politicised view of this or any other topic but to provide audiences with the full range of information which will enable them to reach their own informed conclusions. That is clearly not the editorial approach that has been adopted with regard to this particular issue.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
14 June '16..

For years a dominant and recurrent theme in BBC coverage of Israel has been construction in Israeli communities in Judea & Samaria and certain districts in Jerusalem which is regularly portrayed as an ‘obstacle to peace’.

Just recently BBC World Service audiences have been told by the corporation’s Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen that:

“….that idea of a two state solution is in great danger […] because of the colonisation of the occupied territories by the Israelis; the fact that settlements have been growing apace.” [source]

And:

“Lots of people these days say that because of the growth of settlements – Israeli settlements on occupied land which is in defiance of international law; it’s illegal – it’s just physically going to be very difficult for the Palestinians to set up an independent state.” [source]

Audiences could therefore be forgiven for assuming that there has been something exceptional about the recent pace of construction in Judea & Samaria and they are obviously being steered towards the view that peace negotiations cannot be conducted if Israelis are building houses in places the BBC thinks they shouldn’t. The trouble with that politically motivated framing is that it conceals a whole host of relevant facts from audience view.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel: The unrepentant builder

...Housing Minister Uri Ariel is determined to continue building in West Bank despite international pressure and says economic incentives will help the Palestinians much more than construction freezes.

Gil Hoffman..
Frontlines/JPost..
02 October '14..

Going into Yom Kippur, if there is anyone in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet that US President Barack Obama’s administration would like to apologize, it’s Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel.

The Obama administration arguably has taken a tougher stance on construction over the pre-1967 borders than any of its predecessors. Its condemnation of the advancement of a building project in Jerusalem’s Givat Hamatos neighborhood was especially fierce.

While some Israeli analysts would say it is Obama’s obsession with settlements and not Israel’s construction in them that has prevented the advancement of a diplomatic process with the Palestinians, there is no doubt that the American president sees Ariel and his policies as a diplomatic obstacle.

It is extremely doubtful that Ariel will be granted entrance to the White House any time soon – just like his namesake, Ariel Sharon, was once boycotted in Washington when he had Ariel’s job.

Washington’s assessment of that Ariel ended up being way off course in retrospect. Could the same be true of this Ariel? The No. 2 man in Bayit Yehudi and the head of the Tekuma party that is expected to merge into it will apparently never make a Sharon-like shift. But he does want to reach out to the Palestinians.

In an interview at his office in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah – which for Obama, is on the wrong side of the Green Line – Ariel explains what socioeconomic incentives can be given to the Palestinians which could help them much more than another construction freeze in Judea and Samaria, or linking building to releasing more Palestinian prisoners.

“We don’t have a partner on the other side,” Ariel says.

“The possibility of getting to a deal in the future does not exist any more than in the past or present. The prime minister knows [Bayit Yehudi’s] opinion, and I hope he won’t be pressured by [Yesh Atid leader] Yair Lapid and [Hatnua head] Tzipi Livni to do things that are wrong and unhelpful.”

Ariel says he hopes Operation Protective Edge persuaded Israelis how important it is for the IDF to control all of Judea and Samaria, so they will not become launching pads for missiles like Gaza and Lebanon.

But he clarifies that the regional diplomatic process Lapid was pushing for at the time of the interview and Netanyahu called for at the UN and in the White House this week would not be a casus belli that would cause Bayit Yehudi to quit the coalition.

“There could be dialogue for the sake of dialogue so there won’t be a disconnect, but it will not bring results,” he says. “Talking is not a reason for dismantling the government. The question is what those talks would bring.

A building freeze would be a reason for a crisis.”

The Deadly and Lethal Israeli House Strikes Again

...Like the monster of a horror movie, the peace process always comes back and no matter how many blows the Israeli house delivers to it, a year later there's a sequel where the Israeli house is being stalked by the peace process monster all over again. The army of lethal Israeli houses, which may not be built for another five years, if ever, seem formidable in the black newsprint of the New York Times and in the fulminations of Guardian columnists, but their actual potency is limited to housing Jewish families and infuriating international diplomats and their media coathangers.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
01 September '14

There are few weapons as deadly as the Israeli house. When its brick and mortar are combined together, the house, whether it is one of those modest one story hilltop affairs or a five floor apartment building complete with hot and cold running water, becomes far more dangerous than anything green and glowing that comes out of the Iranian centrifuges.

Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don't impress anyone in Europe or in Washington. Genocide is a minor matter when in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment.

Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it can't expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and filling it with Jews. Since the Sudanese Jews are as gone as the Jews of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and good old Afghanistan, the chances of Bashir the Butcher pulling off that trick are rather slim.

Due to the Muslim world's shortsightedness in driving out its Jews from Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad to Jerusalem, the ultimate weapon in international affairs is entirely controlled by the Jewish State. The Jewish State's stockpile of Jews should worry the international community far more than its hypothetical stockpiles of nuclear weapons. No one besides Israel, and possibly Saudi Arabia, cares much about the Iranian bomb. But when Israel builds a house, then the international community tears its clothes, wails, threatens to recall its ambassadors and boycott Israeli peaches.

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