Gush Etzion is a cluster of Jewish communities that lay to the south west of Jerusalem. Maaleh Adumin is a major Jewish settlement of 40,000 Jews laying to the east of Jerusalem and separated only by E1 which is incorporated in the enclave as shown on the map.
The Jewish settlements in Gush Etzion were destroyed by the Arabs in the ’48 War and they murdered 240 of the Jewish residents there. After the land was recaptured in the ’67 War, Jews returned to Gush Etzion area. This is the area in which the 3 Jewish teenagers were kidnapped and killed. Israel expects to keep both blocks in any future settlement.
When the US admin says that building in Gush Etzion will harm peace negotiations what they mean is that the only way there will be peace is if Israel returns to the ’67 lines. The US position is that the Arabs are entitled to all land east of the ’67 lines but offer no legal justification to substantiate it. Or perhaps it is immaterial to the US what the Arabs are entitled to and the only thing that she considers is that the Arabs want it or demand it. Israel is not seeking peace at any cost. Israel claims all the land based on historical, legal and conquest rights. Israel now is in control of all the land. Israel will offer some of the land for peace but not all of it or even nearly all of it. Somethings are not worth giving up for peace. The only thing that is harmful to the peace process is that both the Arabs and the US demand all the land. Ted Belman
By TOVAH LAZAROFF, HERB KEINON, KHALED ABU TOAMEH, JPOST
State Department official says Israel’s announcement will harm peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
The United States responded on Monday to news that Israel was planning to expand its state land and launch a new building project in the West Bank.
The IDF on Sunday conferred the status of state land on 4,000 dunams in the Gush Etzion region, thus ending the civil administration’s investigation into the possibility that parcels were private Palestinian property.
The new designation for an area known as Gevaot opens the door for settlers to advance plans to build a fifth city in the West Bank on those dunams.
“We have long made clear our opposition to continued settlement activity,” a State Department official said. “This announcement, like every other settlement announcement Israel makes, planning step they approve and construction tender they issue, is counterproductive to Israel’s stated goal of a negotiated two-state solution with the Palestinians.”
“We urge the government of Israel to reverse this decision,” the US official said in Washington.
The land had previously been listed as survey land, a designation that prevented settlers and the army from moving building plans through the planning system. The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said that it had acted under guidelines from the upper political echelon issued after the end of the IDF’s mission to return the bodies of three teenagers which Hamas terrorists kidnapped and killed in June.
The 4,000 dunams are located just outside the Alon Shvut settlement in an area of Gush Etzion, that Israel believes will be included within its final borders in any final status solution.
The Palestinian Authority immediately condemned what it called the seizure of its land in the West Bank and claimed that it belonged to the districts of the two Palestinian cities located nearest to the parcel – Bethlehem and Hebron.
Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said that this status change must be reversed.
“This decision will lead to more instability. This will only inflame the situation after the war in Gaza,” Abu Rudaineh said.
The news of the future plan broke less than one week since a ceasefire was declared between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Abbas has struggled throughout the period of hostilities to prove that a diplomatic path to statehood is more effective than a military one.
Peace Now executive director Yariv Oppenheimer charged that Israel had “stabbed Abu Mazen in the back. The same government that knows how to reach an agreement with Hamas has once again turned its back on moderate Palestinians.”
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now added that four or five Palestinian villages have farm land in that area. She charged that the declaration prevented the villages from developing or using their land.
A local Palestinian mayor said Palestinians owned the tracts and harvested olive trees on them.
“We were surprised in the early hours this morning when the Israeli civil administration and the Israeli military gave warnings and put signs in many areas in Wadi Fukin, on the northern, southern and western paths of the village, declaring the appropriation of thousands of dunams for the benefit of the expansion of three settlements that surround the village,” said Ahmad Sukar, head of Wadi Fukin village council.
The 1,000 hectares are located just outside the Alon Shvut settlement in an area of Gush Etzion that Israel believes will be included within its final borders in any final-status solution.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who has previously supported the building of Gva’ot, objected to the civil administration’s announcement.
Livni, who headed Israel’s negotiating team during the US-brokered nine-month peace process with the PA that ended in April, warned that the move would significantly harm Israel’s public diplomacy efforts.
“Now, when we need to mobilize the world to prevent processes against Israel and work together with moderate forces, anything that could deflect attention on to us and cause criticism of us harms those things we are trying to achieve,” she said.
The Prime Minister’s Office had no response. But one government official dismissed Peace Now and Livni’s criticism, noting that people were “commenting on automatic pilot.” The official rejected the idea that such a move stabbed Abbas in the back or poisoned the atmosphere with the PA.
“We remain serious about negotiating two states for two peoples,” the official said.
“Nothing we have done today inhibits the ability to come to an agreement on a two-state solution.”
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi condemned the Israeli decision, saying it would be added to “Israeli crimes in Gaza.”
Ashrawi accused Israel of practicing a “double aggression on the land of the occupied State of Palestine.”
She claimed that during Operation Protective Edge, Israel “escalated its other assault on the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem and intensified its efforts to practically remove the 1967 borders of the Palestinian state in order to establish the Great Israel.”
Gush Etzion Regional Council head Davidi Perl welcomed the announcement that the near-1,000 acres, which help create territorial contiguity between his communities and the pre-1967 lines, had been declared state land.
“This paves the way for the establishment of a new city in Gush Etzion,” Perl said.
The other four Israeli cities in the West Bank are Modi’in Illit, Betar Illit, Ma’aleh Adumim and Ariel.
The area of Gva’ot was first developed as an IDF Nahal community in 1984, following a 1982 cabinet decision. The military closed it in 1996. For the next decade, the Shvut Yisrael Yeshiva made use of the site with small modular homes.
Since 1998 the Gush Etzion Regional Council has consistently pushed to build a city in that area. Initial plans for 6,000 homes in Gva’ot were abandoned in 2000 because the diplomatic climate was not supportive.
The plans were picked up again in 2008 and moved forward in 2009 after the Annapolis peace process fell apart.
In 2012, the Defense Ministry gave initial authorization to build 523 homes there but then froze the project.
In June of this year, the Gush Etzion Regional Council reissued its call for work to move forward on Gva’ot as a response to the deaths of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah.
The three teens were kidnapped at a bus stop near the Gva’ot site.
“Those who killed the three teens wanted to instill fear, disrupt our lives, undermine our right to all of this land and to Gush Etzion in particular,” Perl said.
“Our response is to strengthen the settlement enterprise, strengthen our sovereignty over Gush Etzion and Judea and Samaria and to build within and without the settlement blocs,” Perl said.
“I trust that the government will continue to advance the construction of a new city that will provide thousands of new homes. In this way it will prove to our enemies who wanted to uproot us that they have only deepened our hold on the land,” he said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:
Lucky you !!!!!!!!!!
@ honeybee:
Say for me hi! TX.
BTW. Today and yesterday it has been Fall weather here. That is early, very early, even a few drops of rain.
like i keep saying:
bernard ross Said:
and this:
bernard ross Said:
Every day we see pressure and problems which have resulted from GOI negligence. Those who believe that diplomacy and lawfare are not important arenas need only look at the fact that everything they complain about is affected by ignoring the battle against the fraudulent claim that “Jewish settlement in YS is illegal” which is apparently demonstrated to be true according to actions of the GOI. the military victories are squandered by this negligence.
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
I told TX your story, his response was OMG.
Palestinian state?
1967 borders?
Did the late King Hussein know about this at the time?
As I recall, he held the heartland [“West Bank”] provinces until that summer.
Surely if there’d been a Pali state there in ’67, he’d have been aware of it.
Mrs Ashrawi appears to have lost her bearings. Perhaps she needs to get tested for early-onset (or maybe not-so-early) of Alzheimers?
@ SHmuel HaLevi 2:
TX has been scooping road kill and bring it back to leave where the hawks frequent. And yes, he has a greatly diminished sense of smell.
We also have a doe and twins in house yard. They still have spots, but are growing fast.
@ honeybee:
Lucky you. We do not have anymore hawks around. There used to be a couple of pairs nesting at the top of the two 8 floor buildings about half a mile away.
David tells me that one pair moved in to the attic at his isolated ranch house down in the valley.
About 30 years ago a guy from London bought a then brand new store at the small shopping area nearby. He called the shop CHOCOBOX. He invited me to visit his new business and we went in only to find a fledgling hawk trapped inside and very upset. Stupidly I offered to catch him or her and release it outside. I was lucky to remain with two eyes and all my fingers. After “explaining” to me not to make advances, it just flew out through the door. BTW, they weight next to nothing.
Good start. Annex ALL of the so-called “disputed territories”. We now know that Israel knows that it cannot and must not withdraw from territory whatsoever. On the contrary, it may be necessary to re-acquire it’s buffer zones in what some people call Syria and Lebanon and what I call “disputed territory”.
The realization of The US President as an enemy must not be white-washed.
Israel can NOT make any further withdrawals from land it controls; on the contrary. It has no choice but to assert it’s right to the land it presently hold which is defined as “disputed territory”, it is no longer disputed, it is part of Israel. Israel’s overtures of peace have failed and it is time to declare the process DEAD.
So the expansion of State Lands is appropriate and LONG overdue.
There is no longer any ambiguity with respect to The United States so called “commitment” to Israel’s security. Only Israel alone can be entrusted with assuring it’s survival. It is nice that Israel has friends support and “good relations” with The US, generally. However, we saw clearly how The US PRO JIHAD Obama Administration sold Israel down the river forcing Ben Gurion International Airport to close. Obama then refused to deliver spare parts at a time of war. For a President who claimed that he was the “best friend Israel ever had in the Oval Office and that he (obama)has Israel’s Back…” he is a liar and a terrorist enabler. Does that make Obama a terrorist himself?
Also, it is time to examine the record on former President Peres and his manipulations with respect to former PM Rabin and his shocking flip flop with regard to his acceptance of the disasterous Oslo. what did Peres do or say to force Rabin to sell out. Drugs, Blackmail, Hypnosis, WHAT. Indict Peres if it is warranted.
SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:
and as we here say, G-d love you for trying. I have a broad wing grey hawk fledgling hanging out near the house. Squawking for food rabbit beware.
@ bernard ross:
To change the paradigm one has to change one or more of the parts. That will never happen if the unJews remain in control of the state. Their goal is “peaceful surrender”. At no time the unJews promoted defeating the enemy to reach peace. In fact they IMPORTED the enemy’s top echelons instead.
Israel is in a state of declared war with the Muslim Arab states. The solution of this one will come only when one of the warring parties or blocks utterly defeats the other. DEFEATS not reaches a “cease fire” arrangement.
Diplomacy… whatever that is, starts at that point.
Aesop frog styled chumps such as Netanyahu cannot possibly do anything different of what he does. He is part of the unJewish camp.
@ mrzee:
Oh well… I tried anyway… 🙂
SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:
What a concept. It’ll never catch on, too radical 🙂
This announcement and its reaction by all sides demonstrates how the GOI has allowed the scenario to morph into a bazaar negotiation of haggling over bits and pieces of Jewish land…what to give away and what not. The methodology which focuses on this misinsicule repetitive drama of little bits of land distracts the Jews from the bigger picture of ALL the land, even ALL of area C. Speaking of rights of Jewish settlement means at the minimum discussing ALL the vacant lands of area C. Avoiding that discussion means the GOI can limit Jewish demands to small bits of pieces near the fence. The rest is a subject only of security which implies that one day it will be given to its “rightful owners” the mythical pals.
the usual reaction…no mention of jewish settlement rights.
1967 borders of the state of Palestine??????????
Israels continued negligence results in one more Goebbelesque absurdity. This is probably now accepted throughout the world as an accurate statement.
Actually Ted, that is a delusion: Israel DOES NOT CLAIM the rights you mention even though it has had the control for 60 years. In fact, I fail to see those rights mentioned anywhere in this article by the GOI or in the discussion elsewhere. This has been the GOI MO ever since it abandoned the settlement enterprise. If Israel has been continuously claiming these rights there would not be a universal agreement that Jewish settlement in the Mandate territory is illegal OR illegitimate. Even Israelis do not believe that Israel OR the Jewish people have these rights. The source of the problem is Israel. Israel has trained and brainwashed its children into believing that the only justification for the Jews being in YS is security. Hence the ludicrous state of affairs where Jews in Israel and the diaspora globally battle each other over the rights of Jews to live in Israel.
All sorts of reasons are offered for this announcement, such as a revenge for the 3 teens which is actually a non constructive argument. The ONLY reason should be the inalienable right of the Jewish people to reside in Israel. Had this right not been forgotten by succeeding GOI’s, and instead met head on, libels of illegal and illegitimate settlement could not hold the credibility which they now enjoy even among Jews.
The obligation of the GOI is simple and is as follows:
1-All govs which participate in these libels and who participated in Balfour, san remo, LON mandate and UN charter as signatories or guarantors should be diplomatically demanded by the Israel foreign ministry, in individual meetings, to cease and desist from their libels of illegal and illegitimate Jewish settlement and instead to honor the legally binding documents in which they participated to “facilitate, and encourage, the immigration and close settlement of the Jewish people in the Mandate territory”.
2- the GOI should create a lawfare unit whose task is to initiate legal proceedings in the courts of those same entities seeking estoppel and mandamus regarding those obligations. Furthermore, there should be the identification and initiation of proceedings in the civil courts of those lands to seek monetary damage for all damages which resulted from the willful negligence, and outright flaunting, of those govs to fulfill their obligations under the various treaties.
In the area of diplomacy the GOI has maintained policies of containment and reaction thus enabling the enemies to determine the conduct of the legal and diplomatic war.
Most of Israels problems are diplomatic and legal as opposed to military. These problems are the direct long term result of GOI failure to address these arenas with any serious endeavor. Israel’s failure to proclaim and pursue the legal rights of the Jewish people is the source of all the pressure and libels. Therefore, the REAL problem begins in the minds of the Israeli people and its political leaders. Foreign statements are made because they were first made in Israel and allowed to sprout wings in Israel without dispute. Israelis are schizophrenic on this issue.
The Israelis do not seem interested in carrying on the global responsibility to world Jewry in protecting and encouraging its settlement rights and benficial interests in YS. In that regard Israel has morphed into a typical self interested state BUT is still pretending to be the agent of the Jewish people and subordinating that trust to its own perceived state self interests. In that respect Israel is no different than the UK in its administration of the Mandate Trust.
SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:
Short, succinct and sweet.
What exactly do you “inflame” about an enemy that is dedicated to your extermination. They need to be inflamed – and burnt to a crisp.
@ Max:
Excellent comment Max. May I join on that?
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
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Nice joke – after that – no point to read anymore
Sorry to hear that…
If the fabricated people wants peace, fine with me. Peace for peace. No land or resources involved.
Violence on their part or on the part of their allies will result in harsh consequences, immediate and harsh.