US Government Says Israeli Settlement Activity Freeze in Palestinian Lands Includes Jerusalem

US: Settlement freeze includes Jerusalem

Date: 23 / 06 / 2009 Time: 09:27
Bethlehem – Ma’an –

The US government's demand that Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank must cease includes occupied East Jerusalem, a State Department spokesperson said on Monday.

In response to a question from Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper, State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly said, “We’re talking about all settlement activity, yeah, in the area across the line,” he said, referring to the 1948 armistice line, or Green Line.

Speaking at a Washington press briefing, Kelly had no immediate response to the proposed Israeli government 2009-2010 budget that allocates 250 million dollars over the next two years for settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Tens of millions of dollars are specifically earmarked for settlements like Har Homa, which, while they are built on occupied Palestinian land, are within Israel’s expanded municipal boundaries for Jerusalem.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem along with the rest of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights in June 1967. In 1980 Israel annexed the eastern half of Jerusalem, declaring the whole of the city it 'eternal capital,' a step rejected by the UN Security Council.

International law makes no distinction between settlements built in Jerusalem and those in the rest of the West Bank. US policy has also historically not drawn a distinction. In a 1991 Letter of Assurances, entered in the official record of the Madrid Peace Conference, the US said, "We do not recognize Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem or the extension of its municipal boundaries."

Israel and the US are currently at odds over President Barack Obama’s demand that all construction in settlements must cease as a precondition for renewed peace talks.

Israel sets more millions for settlements expansion

Monday June 22, 2009 17:27 by Palestine Telegraph - www.paltelegraph.com

Israel plans to allocate 250 million dollars over the next two years for settlements in the occupied West Bank despite US pressure to halt settlement activity, army radio said on Sunday.

The figure is contained in the 2009-2010 budget, which passed its first reading in the Knesset parliament last week, it said.

Some 125 million dollars (90 million euros) is to be used for various security expenses, with most of the rest destined for housing construction, it said. The Peace Now anti-settlement watchdog said that the settlement spending in the two-year budget was likely to be higher and "spread over several sections of the budget."

"The official figures are nothing but the tip of the iceberg and the Israelis will pay not only a political price for the settlements, but also an economic one," the head of the group Yariv Oppenheimer said.

Israel's two-year 159-billion-dollar budget must pass two more readings in the Knesset.

The United States has been pressing Israel to stop all activity in West Bank settlements, which the international community considers illegal and which are among the main obstacles in the stalled Middle East peace process.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to bow to the US demands, vigorously opposed by most of his largely right-wing government, saying that construction for population increases would continue.

More than 280,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War.

Israel hand over 65 demolition orders to Palestinian families in Jerusalem

Monday June 22, 2009 17:23 by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC News & Agencies

The Israeli municipality of Jerusalem handed out on Sunday evening more demolition orders to 65 Palestinian families all over east Jerusalem.

According to local sources some of these families had received the same notices before.

The orders were issued under new legislation, Israeli law 212. Law 212 allows homes to be demolished or evacuated without any formal legal charges being brought forth or any party to be convicted of any alleged violation of the Israeli Planning and Building Law. Hateem Abed al Kader, the Minister of Jerusalem Affairs in the Palestinian Government said the demolition orders were political.

"The high number of demolition orders indicates they are political, their objective is to force Palestinians out and tip the demographic balance towards the settlers. The number of homes that are set for demolition in Jerusalem is now 1,200 homes." Abed al Kader told IMEMC over the phone.

According to the Israeli municipality, the homes were built without required building permits. Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it has rarely given Palestinian residents permission to build homes or to modify existing ones. Meanwhile, Israeli settlements in and around Jerusalem continue to be built, an act that is illegal under international law.

last week At lest a dozen Palestinian families in various parts of East Jerusalem have received demolition orders issued by the Jerusalem Municipality.

IOG hands 65 orders for demolition of apartment buildings and homes in J’lem

[ 23/06/2009 - 11:06 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)--

The Israeli occupation government (IOG) police handed Sunday evening Palestinian families about 65 orders for the demolition of apartment buildings and homes in different areas of occupied Jerusalem during raids on Jerusalemite neighborhoods in Beit Hanina, Sha’fat and Wadi Qadoum.

Palestinian sources in Jerusalem reported Monday that the IOA had already issued similar demolition orders against apartment buildings in the neighborhoods of Nusseibeh and Beit Hanina, adding that the current orders are issued against new apartment buildings in Sha’fat and Beit Hanina and against two homes in Wadi Qadoum in Silwan.

For his part, Lawyer Ahmed Al-Rowaidi warned that the IOA decided to start implementing the scheme it set in 2000 in which the IOG considered itself the sole authority in Jerusalem, and pledged to bring one million Jews to settle in the holy city and to expel 20 percent of its indigenous Palestinian residents gradually until 2020, noting that the Jerusalemites make up 34 percent of east and west Jerusalem.

In another development, the Israeli high court issued Monday a decision allowing settlers from Kerem Maharal settlement outpost to build apartment blocks on the land of a Palestinian cemetery in the village of Igzim whose people were forced out by Israel in 1948.

Al-Aqsa foundation for heritage and endowment managed, according to a temporary precautionary decision issued in 2004, to stop any building works in the cemetery after those settlers had started then to destroy the graves as a prelude to build huge apartment blocks. The same Israeli court decided on Sunday to allow the construction of cattle pens on the graves of Muslims in the village of Barwa, which was evacuated by force in 1948.

In another context, Adalah, the legal center for Arab minority rights in Israel, told a news conference held Monday in occupied Jerusalem that the IOA still puts the 1948 Palestinian refugees’ real estate and property up for sale in blatant violation of international humanitarian law.

Adalah said that this selling process is illegal even in Israeli law, noting that it submitted a complaint to the Israeli lands authority as a prelude to file a lawsuit with the high court.

According to the center, the Israeli lands authority had issued in this year and the past two years 285 tenders for the sale of these Palestinian real estate and property in different occupied Palestinian cities including Nazareth, Haifa and Jaffa. These real estate and property belong to Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from their lands during the Nakba that befell Palestine in 1948.

Fair Use Notice

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.