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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Israel annexing East Jerusalem, says EU
2009-03-07
Actually, Israel annexed East Jerusalem a long while back. They're just now getting around to incorporating it.
A confidential EU report accuses the Israeli government of using settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank barrier as a way of "actively pursuing the illegal annexation" of East Jerusalem.

The document says Israel has accelerated its plans for East Jerusalem, and is undermining the Palestinian Authority's credibility and weakening support for peace talks.
How on earth could anyone undermine the credibility of the PA?
"Israel's actions in and around Jerusalem constitute one of the most acute challenges to Israeli-Palestinian peace-making," says the document, EU Heads of Mission Report on East Jerusalem.

The report, obtained by the Guardian, is dated 15 December 2008. It acknowledges Israel's legitimate security concerns in Jerusalem, but adds: "Many of its current illegal actions in and around the city have limited security justifications."
Other than stopping hard boyz and boom bitches, they mean. Apparently the writers of the report haven't ever faced getting exploded while riding a bus downtown to work ...
"Israeli 'facts on the ground' - including new settlements, construction of the barrier, discriminatory housing policies, house demolitions, restrictive permit regime and continued closure of Palestinian institutions - increase Jewish Israeli presence in East Jerusalem, weaken the Palestinian community in the city, impede Palestinian urban development and separate East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank," the report says.
Sounds like a plan to me. The Paleos could have had East Jerusalem had Yasser Arafat (PTUI) agreed to the peace deal offered to him years ago. Now they can't. As Kissinger once said, the Paleos never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
The document has emerged at a time of mounting concern over Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. Two houses were demolished on Monday just before the arrival of the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and a further 88 are scheduled for demolition, all for lack of permits. Clinton described the demolitions as "unhelpful", noting that they violated Israel's obligations under the US "road map" for peace.

The EU report goes further, saying that the demolitions are "illegal under international law, serve no obvious purpose, have severe humanitarian effects, and fuel bitterness and extremism." The EU raised its concern in a formal diplomatic representation on December 1, it says.
The demolitions keep the stone throwers and boomers away from the women and kiddies ...
It notes that although Palestinians in the east represent 34% of the city's residents, only 5%-10% of the municipal budget is spent in their areas, leaving them with poor services and infrastructure.
Since the authorities recognize what happens to good infrastructure, as witness what happened to the greenhouses in Gaza ...
Israel issues fewer than 200 permits a year more than I would for Palestinian homes and leaves only 12% of East Jerusalem available for Palestinian residential use. As a result many homes are built without Israeli permits. About 400 houses have been demolished since 2004 and a further 1,000 demolition orders have yet to be carried out, it said.
If you don't like houses being knocked down, don't build 'em without a permit. Idiots.
City officials dismissed criticisms of its housing policy as "a disinformation campaign". "Mayor Nir Barkat continues to promote investments in infrastructure, construction and education in East Jerusalem, while at the same time upholding the law throughout West and East Jerusalem equally without bias," the mayor's office said after Clinton's visit.

However, the EU says the fourth Geneva convention prevents an occupying power extending its jurisdiction to occupied territory. Israel occupied the east of the city in the 1967 six day war and later annexed it. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.

The EU says settlement are being built in the east of the city at a "rapid pace". Since the Annapolis peace talks began in late 2007, nearly 5,500 new settlement housing units have been submitted for public review, with 3,000 so far approved, the report says. There are now about 470,000 settlers in the occupied territories, including 190,000 in East Jerusalem.

The EU is particularly concerned about settlements inside the Old City, where there were plans to build a Jewish settlement of 35 housing units in the Muslim quarter, as well as expansion plans for Silwan, just outside the Old City walls. The goal, it says, is to "create territorial contiguity" between East Jerusalem settlements and the Old City and to "sever" East Jerusalem and its settlement blocks from the West Bank.

There are plans for 3,500 housing units, an industrial park, two police stations and other infrastructure in a controversial area known as E1, between East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, home to 31,000 settlers. Israeli measures in E1 were "one of the most significant challenges to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process", the report says.

Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said conditions for Palestinians living in East Jerusalem were better than in the West Bank. "East Jerusalem residents are under Israeli law and they were offered full Israeli citizenship after that law was passed in 1967," he said. "We are committed to the continued development of the city for the benefit of all its population."
Posted by:Steve White

#12  jeebus, PIMF
Posted by: Frank G   2009-03-07 21:19  

#11  Verlaine - I have a project building the $26 Million Ped bridge across Harbor Dr. and the RR tracks )from the convention ctr to Petco) . Let me know if you need the padlock code to the ofice yd ;-)

btw - cheaper to load up in the Gaslamp at Dick's Last Resort
Posted by: Frank G   2009-03-07 21:19  

#10  Hell, Frank G, bet on the Padres in the Series, if'n ya REALLY want to get biblical. (Oh - they DID lower beer prices from something like $8 to $7.50 down at Petco Park for the coming season. Nimble customer sensibilities right there. I only go when tickets are freebies, parking the same, and I don't eat or drink a thing there)
Posted by: Verlaine   2009-03-07 20:42  

#9  bet on the Chargers for Super Bowl!
Posted by: Frank G   2009-03-07 17:27  

#8  We traded it to Muslims for London.

You win my "Snark 'o the Day" award.
Posted by: DarthVader   2009-03-07 16:56  

#7  setting the stage for a series of major Biblical events.

G*d has arranged credit crisis?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2009-03-07 13:12  

#6  According to scripture, when Israel returns from exile to the land of "Zion" and takes control of all Jerusalem, the age of the Gentile has ended setting the stage for a series of major Biblical events.
Posted by: Crolulet Darling    2009-03-07 11:37  

#5  I wish the Israelis hadn't screwed around all these years and just annexed and integrated East Jerusalem, and been done with it. It is just another of the open sores of the region, and had they done so, it would no longer be on the table.

Next up, Israel should make it crystal clear that ALL holy sites are OWNED by Israel, who permits others to use them only as they behave themselves.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2009-03-07 09:06  

#4  I believe the "miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" quote was Abba Eban, no? Just a fading memory (I WAS a kid at the time ... honest).

As to the rest of the piece, very well annotated. I don't believe we mark down for degree-of-difficulty in snarking the Paleos or the EU around here - heck, if we did, there'd hardly be any fun to be had.

Lessee. Bolivia once had a Pacific coastline. Whole lots of Germans lived in parts of eastern Europe. Okinawans could hike across the breadth of their island without hitting barbed-wire fences and US bases.

Wars have consequences. Repeated, aggressive, terroristic, perfidious wars of extermination have, uh, even more serious potential consequences - esp. when ya lose 'em. The Palestinians have gotten off easy, if one considers self-inflicted squalor - moral, physical, and financial - easy.

If I weren't tired, I'da post that Sympathy Meter thinggy, one of my favorites .....

Posted by: Verlaine   2009-03-07 03:15  

#3  We traded it to Muslims for London.
Posted by: g(r)omgoru   2009-03-07 01:20  

#2  so?
Posted by: 3dc   2009-03-07 00:18  

#1  "undermining the Palestinian Authority's credibility"

"PA" and "credibility" don't belong in the same sentence - unless "complete lack of" is also involved.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2009-03-07 00:12  

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