Israel is committing a kind of slow ethnocide -- building for Israelis, destroying what is Palestinian
Kathleen and Bill Christison: Horror Story: "September 19, 2005 | Travels in Palestine, Part One | Horror Story | By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON | Former CIA political analysts

It all quickly comes together traveling through the West Bank: the separation wall encircling Anata; the verdant natural spring in the Israeli settlement of Anatot -- the spring, along with the mountains and wadis surrounding it and even the settlement's very name, all stolen from Palestinians by Israel and its settlers; the wall encroaching on the small, heroic village of Bil'in; the Israeli trash and garbage heaps that loom over Wadi Fuqin and other Palestinian villages, wherever there is a settlement under construction or expanding; the Israeli construction everywhere, everywhere, cutting through the land, destroying the land, building for Israelis, destroying what is Palestinian; the ecological devastation throughout the West Bank.

You cannot travel around the West Bank for more than a day or two without seeing all of this, without knowing what it means, without knowing how Israel is committing a kind of slow ethnocide -- perhaps, over the longer term, even genocide -- against Palestinians. You cannot see the extent of this without wondering how it can ever be turned around. ...
- posted by Editor @ 7:41 PM

Netanyahu urges Israel to build more settlements [... former Prime Minister -- with the "A Clean Break" policy]
Excite News: "Netanyahu urges Israel to build more settlements | Aug 31, 8:05 AM (ET) | By Allyn Fisher-Ilan

MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank (Reuters) - Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu launched his campaign to oust bitter rival Ariel Sharon as prime minister with a call on Wednesday for massive new settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

Staking out the battleground for the right-wing power struggle triggered by Sharon's removal of settlers from Gaza, Netanyahu urged immediate building -- in defiance of Washington -- on a particularly sensitive area outside East Jerusalem.

'The time has come to build here and I will build here,' Netanyahu told reporters on a tour of the rocky hillside between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim, the biggest West Bank settlement."

Sharon himself says Israel plans construction in the so-called E1 tract despite heavy U.S. criticism and fury from the Palestinians, who are concerned they would be cut off from the holy city they seek as the capital of an eventual state.
...
The World Court has ruled all the settlements illegal. Israel disputes this and the United States has said Israel could expect to keep some West Bank land under a peace settlement that leads to Palestinian statehood.
- posted by Editor @ 6:18 AM