1995-07-31
Troops and Police Tear Down Settlement on West Bank Hill Eds: UPDATES with details, quotes, color, background; DELETES
(APW_ENG_19950731.0262)
1) Hundreds of Israeli police and soldiers on Monday tore down Jewish settlers' makeshift tents and huts on a rocky West Bank hilltop after the settlers ignored orders to evacuate.
2) The settlers, protesting government plans to turn over parts of the West Bank to the Palestinians, sat arm-in-arm on the ground, cheering, praying and singing songs about the biblical land of Israel.
3) Some chained themselves to water tanks. One man holding a Torah scroll cuffed himself to a metal pole.
4) ``These orders contradict all moral and ethical principles,'' one of the settlers, Baruch Sterman, called to the soldiers.
5) The settlers, residents of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Jerusalem, pitched tents on Dagan Hill about a week ago, declaring it a new Jewish neighborhood. Palestinians from nearby El-Khader also claim the hilltop.
6) The government said the new Jewish settlement was illegal and issued an evacuation order.
7) Between 500 and 600 settlers faced off against up to 400 police and soldiers on the hill Monday, and reinforcements for both sides streamed into the area.
8) ``This should be a sign to the government,'' said settler Marilyn Adler. ``If they intend to continue dismantling settlements the people will not stand for it. We will be back until we rightfully claim all the land of Israel.''
9) Soldiers dragged settlers out of the huts before knocking down the wood-and-cloth structures and taking down Israeli flags. But they made no immediate attempt to remove the settlers themselves from the area.
10) At one point, hundreds of settlers fought with police and soldiers over a steel tent frame that police had taken down. The settlers succeeded in partially putting it up again.
11) ``We are ready for this evacuation,'' settler Nadia Matar told Israel Radio. ``We will come back again and again ... this is a struggle for the Land of Israel, for the future of our children.''
12) The settlers oppose plans for the expansion of Palestinian autonomy beyond the Gaza Strip and Jericho and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from towns and cities in the West Bank.
13) Talks on the expansion are being held this week in the Red Sea resort Eilat. The talks were suspended after a suicide bus bombing in Tel Aviv last Monday killed six Israelis.
14) The government plans to turn over control of most West Bank towns to the Palestinians under the agreement currently being negotiated. The status of the 130,000 Jewish settlers who live in the West Bank is to be determined in talks that start next year.
15) The settlers worry that without protection from Israeli security forces, they will not be safe.
16) An explosive device was hurled at a police vehicle approaching the hill Sunday, causing slight damage but no injuries, Israel radio said.
17) Also Sunday, Israel lifted a ban on Palestinian workers imposed after last Monday's bombing. More than 50,000 Palestinians crossed over from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to their jobs in Israel.


Troops and Police Tear Down Settlement on West Bank Hill Eds: RECASTS, ADDS quotes, details, background.
(APW_ENG_19950731.0796)
1) Police and soldiers dragged hundreds of Israeli settlers off a disputed West Bank hilltop Monday, temporarily stopping settlers' efforts to block the planned extension of Palestinian self-rule.
2) But even as the army took control of the hill, settlers promised other similar protests elsewhere in the West Bank. Late Monday, settlers on a hill outside the settlement Beit El put up several makeshift shacks, a settler spokesman said.
3) For much of the day at Dagan Hill, evacuated settlers ran right back up the hill, which they declared a neighborhood of the nearby Efrat settlement last week. Dozens of settlers were arrested and at least 25 people, including one policeman, were lightly injured.
4) Dagan Hill lies between Efrat, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Jerusalem, and the neighboring Palestinian village of El-Khader. It is claimed by residents of both areas.
5) Settler leaders said the confrontation Monday, one of the largest ever with Israeli troops, proved their determination to oppose the expansion of Palestinian autonomy and served as a warning against any future attempt to dismantle settlements.
6) ``If it happened here, in a place we just got, it must be understood that if, God forbid, they try to take settlers out of their homes...it will be worse,'' said Efrat's Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who appeared on the verge of tears.
7) Talks with the PLO on a withdrawal of Israeli troops from West Bank towns are being held this week in the Red Sea resort of Eilat. The deal would constitute the second stage of the autonomy framework outlined in the September 1993 Israel-PLO accord.
8) Under the emerging deal, Israel wants to keep control of all Jewish settlements for now. The status of the settlements is to be determined in talks starting in 1996. In those talks, the Palestinians are expected to raise their demand for full statehood.
9) The current deal is more complex than the Gaza-Jericho self-rule established 14 months ago because of the 140,000 settlers in the West Bank _ compared to only 5,000 in Gaza _ as well as the area's strategic value and spiritual significance for many Jews.
10) ``This is a critical point. In Eilat right now, they are signing over the rest of our land,'' said Efrat resident Earl Harrow as soldiers removed his wife from Dagan Hill.
11) Mossi Raz, an Israeli peace activist, argued the area does not belong to Israel. ``It is occupied land and the Palestinian flag, not the Israeli flag, belongs here,'' said Raz.
12) El-Khader residents set up a small counter-protest across the valley last week, but the dozen people remaining at the site Monday obeyed police orders to disperse.
13) About 400 police and army troops began the evacuation of Dagan Hill around midday Monday, surrounding the roughly 600 settlers and carrying them individually off the hill in the scorching sun.
14) Most squirmed and struggled, so three or four troops were needed for every person taken off the hill. As soon as police let go, the settlers would climb back up. After several hours, the weary troops began carrying the settlers down again.
15) On the rocky hilltop, the settlers _ including teen-agers and young children _ sat arm-in-arm on the ground, praying and singing Zionist songs. Some chained themselves to water tanks. Two men, one in a business suit, were handcuffed together and held an Israeli flag, while another sat on a chair clutching a Torah scroll, or bible, as police implored him to leave.



1995-08-02
Police Drag Settlers Off Disputed Hill for Third Time Eds: UPDATES with protests, new settler actions.
(APW_ENG_19950802.0854)
1) Israeli troops dragged Jewish settlers off a West Bank hilltop for the third day Wednesday, and a Palestinian minister demanded that Israel take a tougher stand against the demonstrators.
2) Hundreds of settlers, concerned that plans to transfer some of the occupied West Bank to Palestinian control, have been setting up makeshift neighborhoods on barren hillsides to stake their claim to the land.
3) It was the third confrontation this week on Dagan Hill, a rocky bluff between the Jewish settlement of Efrat and the neighboring Palestinian village of El-Khader, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Jerusalem.
4) Both Jewish settlers and Palestinians claim the land.
5) Police spokesman Eric Bar-Chen said the settlers refused orders to evacuate the hill early Wednesday, forcing officers and soldiers to carry them to buses. About 100 settlers were detained, he said.
6) Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin accused the protesters of trying to divide the nation.
7) ``We are at the beginning of a period where an attempt will be made to violate law and order ... and set up fictitious settlements,'' Rabin told legislators from his Labor Party. ``We will enforce the law without hesitation.''
8) But Palestinian Labor Minister Samir Ghousheh said Israel should take stronger action against the settlers, which he accused of trying to obstruct peace.
9) ``The army has done more against our marches,'' he said. ``If Israel is not firm in dealing with the settlers, the West Bank will be in total chaos.''
10) Later Wednesday, some 200 settlers locked arms and marched on the jail in Jerusalem where organizers Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and Nadia Matar were held.
11) North of Jerusalem, settler spokesman Aharon Domb said settlers were prevented from establishing a new encampment near Beit El. He said hundreds more were headed to a site near Kedumim, in the northern West Bank.
12) The escalating settler protests come as Palestinian and Israeli negotiators met in the southern resort of Eilat to craft an agreement on expanding Palestinian autonomy and holding Palestinian elections.
13) Israeli ministers reported some progress in the negotiations, but Palestinians said there was still a long way to go.
14) Foreign Minister Shimon Peres also accused the settlers of trying to divide Israelis.
15) But settler spokeswoman Judith Tayar said the settlers believe the government will hand hills ringing existing settlements over to the Palestinians.
16) ``We believe very firmly that if we are not there, there will be terrorists there,'' she said. ``We will not let them turn Israel into Bosnia.''
17) About 140,000 Jewish settlers live among one million Palestinians in the West Bank.



1995-08-04
Settlers Want Assurances That Settlements Will Remain Eds: UPDATES with special police force being established; SUBS
(APW_ENG_19950804.0385)
1) After a week of confrontations with the army, Jewish settlers met Friday with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to discuss their future in a Palestinian-controlled West Bank.
2) Rabin provided no answers to their concerns, settlers said, but a second meeting was scheduled for next week.
3) This week's protests, in which soldiers and police dragged Jewish settlers off hilltops in the West Bank, were not discussed at the meeting, Israel radio said. However, Police Minister Moshe Shahal has ordered a special unit be trained to deal with demonstrators, Israel radio reported.
4) Uri Ariel, a settler leader, said settlers hoped the demonstrations would force the government into calling a referendum on any agreement on the second stage of Palestinian autonomy, currently under negotiation.
5) The agreement would extend autonomy, now established only in the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho, to other cities in the West Bank and set up Palestinian elections.
6) About 140,000 Jewish settlers live among 1.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
7) Ariel said he discussed with Rabin concerns that the agreement would allow every Palestinian police officer to carry a Soviet-made Kalashnikov rifle.
8) ``We want to know if this is necessary,'' Ariel said, adding that he suggested some Palestinian officers carry only pistols and some only clubs in order to reduce the security risk to Jewish settlers.
9) Army radio said the settlers demanded that Rabin promise not to uproot any settlements as part of an agreement with the Palestinians.
10) Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Thursday that settlements would not necessarily dismantled.
11) ``I have always said that they can stay in the settlements,'' Peres told Israel radio. ``What is needed is to change the relations. There is no reason in the world why Arabs and Jews can't live together.''
12) Polls published Friday showed the Israeli public divided over the actions of the settlers.
13) A survey in the daily newspaper Maariv said that 54 percent of the 500 Israeli adults questioned this week were opposed to the immediate removal of Jewish settlers from temporary hilltop posts they established in the West Bank.
14) Thirty-one percent said the government should evacuate the settlers. The poll had a 4.5 percent margin of error.
15) A second survey in Yediot Ahronot showed that 75 percent of the 501 Israelis polled opposed the settlers' illegal activity.
16) Twenty-three percent were behind all settler protests, and 46 percent were opposed to any settler demonstrations, said the poll by the Dahaf Institute published in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
17) The poll questioned 510 adults on Wednesday and Thursday and had a margin of error of 4 percent.



1995-10-31
Peace Now: Settlers Squatting in Empty West Bank Houses
(APW_ENG_19951031.0640)
1) Hundreds of Jewish settlers have moved illegally into empty houses in West Bank settlements, an Israeli peace group said Tuesday.
2) There are 3,300 empty housing units in the West Bank, according to Israel's Housing Ministry. The ministry refuses to rent or sell them because of the government's freeze on settlement building. Construction of the units began under the previous government, which encouraged settlement in the occupied territories.
3) Mossi Raz, political secretary of the group Peace Now, which supports giving the occupied territories to the Palestinians, said government documents show that about 650 of 3,300 government-built houses in the West Bank are illegally occupied. Some of these houses are in areas that are expected to be turned over to Palestinian control.
4) Raz said many of the settlers are there not for ideological reasons, but with the intention of asking the government for compensation if they lose their homes.
5) ``They are stealing and most are not idealistic,'' he said.
6) ``Most of these people want a comfortable place to live and then hope to get compensation when they move out.''
7) When someone is found living illegally in a government-built house, a complaint is filed with the police, according to the housing ministry. The ministry keeps no records of how many complaints have been filed.
8) dt-hla



1995-12-14
Peres: No Compensation To Settlers Who Leave On Their Own
(APW_ENG_19951214.0188)
1) Israel will not pay compensation to Jewish settlers who decide on their own to leave their homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Shimon Peres said Thursday.
2) Peres also suggested that Israel would like some of the 141,000 settlers to stay on under a permanent peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
3) Noting that some settlers are now seeking a dialogue with their Palestinian neighbors, he said: ``We don't want to remove them (the settlers) from where they are.''
4) Under the Israel-PLO peace agreements, the 144 Jewish settlements are to remain in place during the five-year period of Palestinian autonomy, which ends in May 1999. The fate of the settlements is to be decided in negotiations on the final status of the West Bank and Gaza, which are to begin in May.
5) Israel has not revealed a detailed position on what should happen to the settlements. Peres' predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin, said this summer he hoped to annex some of the settlements under a permanent peace agreement.
6) Other government officials have raised the possibility that some settlements would be dismantled and that some settlers might stay on under Palestinian rule.
7) Settlers have said they were concerned for their safety as a result of the Israel-PLO autonomy agreement under which Israeli troops are pulling out of most West Bank towns and villages by the end of the year.
8) Peres said Thursday the government would not pay compensation to settlers who move back to Israel on their own, without there having been a Cabinet decision to resettle them.
9) Asked whether it was preferable to reduce friction and have as many settlers as possible leave now, voluntarily, Peres said: ``They are free to decide, to the best of their understanding of the situation. But you cannot ask the state to compensate them.''
10) In another development, the editor of the Jewish settler magazine Nekuda (The Point) said settlers should begin a dialogue with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
11) ``I suggest that we speak to them (the Palestinian Authority) directly,'' Uri Elizar wrote in an editorial in Nekuda. ``We have a thousand things to work out with these new neighbors.''
12) ``The battle is over,'' Elizar added, according to the editorial quoted by the Haaretz daily. ``Not as we wanted, but we are already faced with a new test.'' kl



1996-07-14
Precede JERUSALEM Settlers Want to Triple Jewish Population in West Bank
(APW_ENG_19960714.0617)
1) Encouraged by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's pro-settlement stance, Jewish settlers in the West Bank said Sunday they want to triple their numbers in the next four years, building eight new settlements and expanding existing ones.
2) Opponents reacted angrily to the proposal, saying an expansion of the Jewish population in the disputed territories could spell the death of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
3) Palestinians view the settlements as one of the key impediments to resolving their territorial dispute with Israel, complicating any possibility of an Israeli disengagement from the territories the Jewish state captured from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.
4) Netanyahu appears committed to blocking the Palestinians' goal of turning the limited autonomy they have gained in recent years into full statehood.
5) But since his election victory two months ago, he has been evasive on the settlements, saying he supports expanding the Jewish presence in the disputed areas but not specifying whether that means building new settlements or enlarging existing ones.
6) Netanyahu reacted coolly to the settlers' proposals Sunday.
7) ``We have not yet reached specific decisions,'' he said upon returning from a six-day trip to the United States.
8) ``If some proposal or other is presented to me I will of course consider it, but you must remember that the government's policy is determined by the government and not by any outside group.''
9) Settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein said he would ask Netanyahu to cancel the freeze on building new settlements imposed by the previous Labor Party government.
10) Wallerstein said he wants the settler population to grow by at least 300,000 over the next four years _ a figure in line with that mentioned in recent months by some officials of Netanyahu's Likud Party.
11) A detailed plan is being drawn up by the Amana movement, which represents thousands of settlers.
12) ``I am sure we will get the full support of the prime minister,'' said Wallerstein, adding he did not know when the proposals would be submitted.
13) In addition to the present 140,000 settlers _ who include about 5,000 in Gaza _ 160,000 Israelis live in neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and later annexed. The Palestinians hope to make east Jerusalem the capital of an independent state.
14) Further expanding the number of Israelis living in disputed territory, critics warn, could kill a peace process already unbalanced by Netanyahu's surprise election victory over peacemaker Shimon Peres.
15) ``Settlements and peace are two opposing lines, they do not meet,'' said Palestinian Finance Minister Mohammed Nashashibi, a top aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
16) ``If the plan is carried out it will stop the peace process,'' agreed Labor Party lawmaker Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who as housing minister in the former government was responsible for the settlements.
17) Spurred by U.S. opposition, Labor in 1992 largely froze construction of new settlements, but allowed some expansion of existing communities, particularly around Jerusalem. The settler population has grown by nearly 50 percent since then, in part as a result of high birthrates of religious Jews who predominate in some settlements.
18) Most settlers live in bedroom communities relatively close to the border between the West Bank and Israel proper.
19) Yossi Beilin, a key negotiator under the previous government, has argued that the vast majority of the settlers can be incorporated into Israel through only limited changes to the West Bank border. The rest, he has suggested, could then move or live in a Palestinian state.
20) Such a scenario could be scuttled by a new settlement drive placing thousands more Jews deep inside disputed territory.
21) Dedi Zucker, a lawmaker from the opposition Meretz party, said that carrying out the emerging settlement proposals would ``turn Israel into Yugoslavia and slam the door in Arafat's face.''
22) The new settlement plan appeared to refer to areas close to Israel, however. Israel radio said Amana would propose establishing eight new settlements south of Jerusalem, filling in spaces between settlements near Bethlehem and communities inside Israel.
23) In Cairo, Arafat held talks Sunday on the stalled peace process with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is to meet with Netanyahu later this week. Arafat said only that they ``discussed the recent developments in the region and their impact on the peace process.''



1996-08-12
Interior Minister Grants Dlrs 5 Million In Aid To Settlements Eds: RECASTS, UPDATES with comment from prime minister, Islamic
(APW_ENG_19960812.0794)
1) The government gave 15 million shekels (dlrs 5 million) to Jewish settlements on Monday and agreed to place 300 new trailers in the territory to house community activities, inflaming Palestinian anger at Israel's new hard-line stance.
2) One top leader of the Islamic militant Hamas group called on Palestinians to make the lives of Jewish settlers ``hell'' through constant harassment and peaceful protest.
3) Reflecting Israel's new activist policy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was considering building new roads in the West Bank for use of both Jews and Palestinians, and would continue building bypass roads so Jewish settlers can avoid Arab towns.
4) Netanyahu recently lifted the previous government's restrictions on West Bank settlement construction _ a move that Palestinians say endangers the peace process.
5) The expansion of settlements is meant to link Jewish areas, Infrastructures Minister Ariel Sharon said recently. Such linkage would undermine the Palestinians' goal of eventually establishing a state in most of the territory.
6) About 145,000 settlers and 2 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza.
7) On Monday, Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai approved the installation of about 300 new trailers in Jewish settlements for use as schools, seminaries and public institutions.
8) And Interior Minister Eli Suissa announced during a tour of the West Bank Monday that he would give 15 million shekels (dlrs 5 million) in immediate aid, spokeswoman Tova Eilinson said.
9) The settlers deserve the money as compensation for higher expenses imposed on them as a result of the Israeli-Palestinian autonomy agreements, Suissa said. For example, settlers now must drive around autonomous Arab areas, increasing the cost of services such as garbage pickup.
10) The Israeli group Peace Now, which advocates the dismantling of many of the 144 Jewish settlements, protested Suissa's decision, saying the settlers already received a lot of public money, including millions of dollars (shekels) for security and bypass roads.
11) In Gaza, Palestinian leaders from groups both supporting and opposing the peace process met in a rare joint attempt to combat Israel's settlement plans. They considered plans to rally world pressure against the settlements.
12) Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas leader in Gaza, said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press that the Palestinians should ``make the lives of the settlers hell.
13) ``We must suffocate the settlements by peaceful means,'' said Zahar, calling on Palestinians to hold street protests and sit-ins, use loudspeakers to disturb settlers and place nails on roads leading to settlements.
14) Saeb Erakat, a leading Palestinian Cabinet minister, was quoted by Israel's Army Radio as saying Israel was creating a ``Little Bosnia'' in the West Bank and killing the peace process.



1997-10-28
Peace activists: Netanyahu boosting funds for settlements Eds: CORRECTS budget figure to 55 billion in 2nd and 12th grafs,
(APW_ENG_19971028.0879)
1) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had promised the United States to consider a timeout in Jewish settlement construction, in fact plans to spend dlrs 300 million on the disputed communities in 1998, a peace group said Tuesday.
2) The total proposed state budget for 1998 is dlrs 55 billion, but the spending plan has not yet been approved by parliament.
3) Finance Ministry spokeswoman Esty Appelbaum had no immediate comment on the dlrs 300 million figure cited by Peace Now, which monitors government spending on settlements and advocates the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
4) Appelbaum said investing in settlements was compatible with government policy. ``The Israeli government operates on the economic and political platform that it was elected on,'' she said.
5) In the West Bank, several dozen Israelis and Palestinians protested Tuesday against government plans to expand the largest Jewish settlement, Maaleh Adumim, and link it with Jerusalem.
6) Such construction would complete a ring of settlements around Jerusalem and cut off east Jerusalem _ the sector claimed by the Palestinians as a future capital _ from its West Bank hinterland.
7) Also Tuesday, Israel demolished three Palestinian-owned homes in the West Bank village of Zatar, near the town of Bethlehem, on grounds that they were built without permits.
8) One homeowner, Munther Wahsh, 24, said he had hoped to move his wife and four children into the new home, but would now have to go on living with his extended family. ``By destroying my house, they destroyed my dream of living a stable life,'' Wahsh said.
9) In her visit to the Middle East earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had urged Netanyahu to refrain from unilateral action, such as demolishing Palestinian homes, to improve relations between Israelis and Palestinians.
10) Albright had also hoped to host peace talks this week in Washington between Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's deputy, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy. However, it is unlikely the meeting will take place because Israel's government has not yet decided on its negotiating positions.
11) The Palestinians demand that Israel halt Jewish settlement construction and carry out its promise to hand over large chunks of the West Bank in three stages by mid-1998. However, it appeared unlikely that Israel would agree to either demand when Levy eventually meets with Abbas in Washington.
12) The Peace Now group, which advocates a Palestinian state alongside Israel, said Tuesday that the 195 billion shekel (dlrs 55 billion) state budget submitted to parliament and made available to the public on Monday earmarked over 1 billion shekels, or dlrs 300 million, for investment in Jewish settlements while cutting services in Israel.
13) Several government officials contacted by The Associated Press said they did not know the total figure for settlement spending _ which is scattered among hundreds, if not thousands, of budget items such as roads, construction, education, and tax incentive programs. One official said the Peace Now figure seemed high.
14) The question of how much it spends on settlements is politically delicate for the Netanyahu government, which includes elements that both support expansion of the settlements and believe that they are a hindrance to the peace process.
15) Peace Now spokesman Mossi Raz said that in light of such figures, Netanyahu's promise to Albright to consider a timeout in settlement construction was ``one big swindle.''
16) ``It was supposed to be a time-out on the settlements. But it's like in basketball,'' Raz said. ``It lasted a minute, no longer.''
17) The 1 billion shekel appropriation for the settlements is about 20 percent higher than in the current budget, Raz said.
18) Its biggest item is 300 million shekels (about dlrs 85 million) to cover income tax breaks for settlers, according to Peace Now. These and other benefits for the settlers were canceled by the previous Labor government, but were restored by Netanyahu.
19) Other figures from the Peace Now analysis include:
20) The Housing Ministry is to spend 270 million shekels (about dlrs 76 million) on compensation for owners of land to be expropriated by the government for settlement construction.
21) The Ministry of Agriculture has allocated 200 million shekels (dlrs 56 million) to encourage Israeli farmers to move to settlements.
22) The Housing Ministry is to spend 131 million shekels (dlrs 36 million) on infrastructure and development for housing in the settlements, and another 50 million shekels (dlrs 14 million) in grants to settlers buying homes - another benefit restored by Netanyahu.
23) The Public Works Department is to spend 101 million shekels (dlrs 29 million) on bypass roads to enable settlers to avoid driving through Palestinian towns. pvs/hla-dp



1998-12-16
Peace group: big increase in Jewish settlement construction Eds: UPDATES with new trailer settlement, 9th graf
(APW_ENG_19981216.0964)
1) Israel has allowed the construction of housing in Jewish settlements in the West Bank to more than double, Peace Now said Wednesday, an assessment likely to further anger Palestinians already frustrated with the peace process.
2) There were 1,420 homes started in the settlements in the first half of 1998, the leader of the peace activist group said in a statement, 136 percent more than in the same period last year.
3) In the second half of 1998, construction of 640 homes began in the settlements, 121 percent more than in the same period of 1997, Mossi Raz said.
4) The figures were obtained from a report of the Israeli government's Central Bureau of Statistics, Raz said.
5) Only a minority of the houses were being built by the government itself, but private construction requires government approval.
6) Settlers have placed mobile homes on eight new sites in the vicinity of the settlements since U.S.-brokered negotiations at Wye River, Maryland, revived the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians in October.
7) Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon has called on the settlers to seize the hilltops to ensure that they do not come under Palestinian control.
8) Peace Now said that its officials spotted 43 trailers on hilltops outside eight different settlements, during a helicopter flight. A ninth trailer park was reported by Israel Radio, near the settlement of Eli. The Palestinians, 9th graf, pvs



1999-04-13
Settlers seize new hilltop with government's blessing Eds: AMs. LEADS throughout with comments by Sharon; EDITS; CHANGES
(APW_ENG_19990413.0788)
1) Israel's foreign minister said Tuesday that Jewish settlers have government approval to seize new hilltops as part of a drive to keep as much of the West Bank as possible in Israeli hands.
2) As settlers took a new hilltop, Ariel Sharon told The Associated Press that such moves were acts of self-defense. Otherwise, settlers ``are going to be permanent targets to Palestinian attacks,'' he said.
3) Sharon rejected sharp U.S. criticism that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's settlement policy hampers efforts to make peace with the Palestinians, who hope to establish a state in the West Bank.
4) ``There are things we have to do even if they don't agree,'' Sharon said.
5) Palestinians and Israeli peace groups accuse Israel of building on the outer boundaries of existing settlements in an effort to keep the maximum amount of land under Israeli control.
6) Peace Now said settlers have created at least 17 new enclaves since Netanyahu signed the U.S.-brokered Wye River land-for-peace agreement with the Palestinians in October. Netanyahu froze the deal six weeks later, charging Palestinians with violating the accord.
7) On Monday, Netanyahu signed a contract for the first structure of an industrial park to be built on empty, barren land between two Jewish West Bank settlements. Israel captured the highly Palestinian-populated West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.
8) The Israeli daily Haaretz said that Netanyahu has approved a request by settlers to establish agricultural and other enclaves in the gaps between existing settlements in order to create contiguous strips of land in Israeli hands.
9) Yair Maayan, a Netanyahu settlement adviser who attended the meeting, refused to say what was decided. Netanyahu aide David Bar-Illan said he was checking the report.
10) On Tuesday, settlers from the Tene Oranim settlement 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Hebron erected mobile homes on a hilltop 400 meters (yards) from the main settlement, said Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military government in the West Bank.
11) Lerner said the settlers first put seven mobile homes on the hill several weeks ago but were ordered off because they didn't have a permit. The settlers removed five of the mobile homes Monday, but put them back Tuesday.
12) ``I don't expect us to be removing them, even though it is illegal in the meantime,'' Lerner said, adding that he expected the government to approve the expansion within the next few days.
13) Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Tuesday condemned settlement expansion.
14) ``This is against all the agreements which have been signed,'' he said, returning from the latest leg of a world tour aimed at gaining support for declaration of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
15) Sharon said Israel was approving new neighborhoods in existing settlements rather than new settlements. He said the government is allowing settlers to move onto what Israel considers state-owned, uncultivated land as part of master plans for the communities.
16) Sharon returned Tuesday from talks in Russia and the United States. In Washington, there was harsh criticism of the settlement moves from U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
17) Unconcerned, he told the AP that relations between Israel and the United States are ``very good.'' Historically, he said, there have always been points of agreement and points of disagreement. pvs-ml-dl



1999-07-12
Barak opens dialogue with settlers but doesn't offer promises Eds: RECASTS to UPDATE with meeting with Barak, threat by minister
(APW_ENG_19990712.1025)
1) Prime Minister Ehud Barak on Monday promised to keep Jewish settlers informed of any plans to uproot their communities as part of peace agreements he hopes to finalize with the Palestinians and Syria.
2) Barak has pledged to cede land in the West Bank as part of accords with the Palestinians and has not ruled out trading the Golan Heights in a peace agreement with Syria. Barak hopes to resume talks with Syria very soon.
3) The premier, who took office last week, has said he will not permit new settlements in the areas Israel captured in 1967 but will allow existing ones to expand as part of ``natural'' growth.
4) Barak said in a statement after a closed meeting of settler leaders that he intends to strengthen the security of Israel through peace agreements that he is sure the settlers will support.
5) ``Each agreement that will be achieved will be brought to a national referendum,'' Barak said, according to his office.
6) The settlers vowed in the meeting not to set up unsanctioned outposts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as Barak's predecessor, hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had allowed them to do, Israel radio reported.
7) In exchange, Barak agreed to inform the settlers about any intentions to dismantle settlements, the radio said.
8) In a sign of a pragmatic approach in dealing with the new government, the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Monday elected a moderate mayor as their new leader, the Council of Jewish Settlements announced.
9) Benny Kashriel, the head of the largest West Bank settlement, Maale Adumim, was chosen chairman of the council during the closed meeting.
10) Pragmatists among the settlers favor working with Barak to minimize damage to the settlements, while militants say they will oppose any further concessions to the Palestinians with noisy demonstrations and political action.
11) The Council of Jewish Settlements represents about 172,000 Israelis living in settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
12) Kashriel replaces Pinhas Wallerstein, a veteran hard-liner who stepped down after Netanyahu, sympathetic to the settlers, was defeated in Israel's May election.
13) The Palestinians say the settlements are obstacles to peace.
14) Industry and Trade Minister Ran Cohen of the dovish Meretz party warned Monday that he will cease preferential government aide to industrial areas in settlements and reroute the funds to areas with unemployed residents.
15) Settlers warned Barak against agreeing to such acts, which they said could exacerbate tensions between the settlers and the government.



1999-08-10
Peace group: Barak expanding settlements more than Netanyahu Eds: UPDATES with government reaction, army removing illegal
(APW_ENG_19990810.1085)
1) Prime Minister Ehud Barak is expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank at a faster pace than his hard-line predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli group monitoring construction said Tuesday.
2) In the month since Barak took office, Housing Minister Yitzhak Levy has issued tenders for the construction of 1,517 apartments in the settlements, said the Peace Now group.
3) ``This is six times the average monthly rate of house construction in the settlements for the Netanyahu government,'' said Peace Now chairman Mossi Raz.
4) Raz said the latest tenders are for 178 new homes in the settlement of Karnei Shomron and 65 in Ariel, both in the West Bank.
5) Raz called on Barak to dismiss Levy, who leads the National Religious Party, or NRP, a junior partner in the coalition government. The NRP is the main patron of the settlers and is opposed to territorial concessions to the Palestinians.
6) Barak spokeswoman Merav Parsi-Tsadok said in response that a ministerial committee would be established to decide settlement policy.
7) The Palestinians regard the Jewish settlements as an obstacle to establishing an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and demand a halt to settlement expansions. They believe the settlement expansions could prejudice the outcome of negotiations on the boundaries of a future Palestinian state.
8) Housing Ministry spokesman Kobi Bleich said the Peace Now figures are incorrect and that tenders had been issued for only 678 new homes.
9) The Peace Now report drew protests over settlement policy from Meretz, the most dovish of the coalition parties. Meretz leader and Education Minister Yossi Sarid told Israel radio that building on this scale ``is intolerable for us and intolerable for the government.''
10) Levy said all the construction he has approved is in accordance with the coalition agreement and the government's basic guidelines. He denied that that the pace of expansions had quickened, but said it would be a good policy.
11) ``I wish we could go on building as we did under the previous government. I know we won't be able to do that. ... because apparently there will be a smaller budget for building in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank),'' he said.
12) Also Tuesday, the army removed an illegal container placed by settlers in the northern West Bank, a spokesman for the military government in the West Bank said.
13) The spokesman, Peter Lerner, said the settlers have tried several times over the last few months to place tents on the hilltop 3.5 kilometers (2 miles) from the Kedumim settlement, but that the army removed all of them. psv/sb-lk



2001-03-13
Israel Settlement Home Sales Drop
(APW_ENG_20010313.0125)
1) Sales of homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have dropped by half since clashes with the Palestinians broke out in September, a lawmaker said Monday.
2) Figures compiled by lawmaker Mossi Raz of the dovish Meretz Party show that only 106 homes were sold in the last three months of 2000, a drop of about 50 percent compared to the average for the first nine months of the year.
3) The Ministry of Housing and Construction confirmed the figure.
4) Only 766 housing units were sold in the settlements last year, although 1,943 were built, according to Raz's figures.
5) Benny Kashriel, chairman of the Settlers Council and mayor of the Jewish hilltop settlement of Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, blamed the government for the drop in sales.
6) He said not enough has been done to protect those traveling to and from the settlements. Though special bypass roads were built to allow settlers to travel safely, cars on the roads have become frequent targets of Palestinian gunfire.
7) After meeting with Kashriel and other settler leaders in Maale Adumim, the largest West Bank settlement with more than 25,000 residents, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said that he would act to ensure their safety.
8) In more than five months of hostilities, 425 people have been killed, including 349 Palestinians, 57 Israeli Jews and 19 others. Several of the Jewish dead were settlers gunned down in ambushes and drive-by shootings by Palestinians.



2001-05-26
Israeli Settlements Plan Growth
(APW_ENG_20010526.0540)
1) International pressure is growing for Israel to freeze the expansion of Jewish settlements as a way to calm tensions with Palestinians, but thousands of new homes have been approved or are under construction.
2) This is so even though thousands of existing homes stand empty in West Bank and Gaza Strip territory sought by the Palestinians for a future state.
3) Settlers say new construction is needed to accommodate natural population growth among their members, now numbering about 200,000. Critics contend the existing houses and apartments should meet demand for several years to come.
4) The settlements have become a crucial issue in efforts to halt the eight months of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians have made a settlement freeze a conditio(AP) _ n for any cease-fire.
5) An international commission, headed by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, recommended Israel halt all settlement construction as a way to build better relations after a truce.
6) The Palestinians have long said the 144 settlements, which dot the overwhelmingly Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, are one of the biggest obstacles to a peace agreement with Israel.
7) After a meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat last week, U.N. Middle East envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said a settlement freeze would be ``one of the most important confidence-building measures'' and would ``make it easier for him (Arafat) to cool down the situation.''
8) The settlers have come under repeated attack by Palestinian militants, with 20 of the 85 Israelis killed in the uprising being settlers who died in roadside ambushes or drive-by shootings.
9) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a staunch supporter of the settlers for decades, has said Jewish settlements will expand to accommodate natural population growth.
10) More than 6,000 houses have government approval or are already under construction in the West Bank and Gaza, according the Central Bureau of Statistics. The figure includes homes sanctioned by both the current and previous governments. The government also recently announced plans for 3,000 more apartments in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in the disputed part of Jerusalem.
11) In addition, since Sharon came to office in March, 15 informal outposts have sprung up near established settlements, says Peace Now, an Israeli group that favors dismantling many settlements as part of a peace deal.
12) The trailer outposts are not sanctioned by the government _ but neither have they been removed. ``It indicates that the settlers do whatever they want and the government does not stop them,'' said Mossi Raz, a parliament member from the dovish Meretz party.
13) The Yesha settlers council argues they must plan for additional growth.
14) ``Every community has to have plans to expand and develop,'' said council spokeswoman Judith Tayar. ``We have children that wish to move into communities with their parents. That demands new houses.''
15) However, Israelis seem ambivalent about the idea that a growing settler family should have the innate right to purchase another or a larger house somewhere in the West Bank and Gaza. A Gallup poll this month said a bit over half of Israelis surveyed favored a settlement freeze in exchange for a truce with the Palestinians, while about 40 percent were opposed.
16) Most settlers _ and therefore most of the ``natural growth'' _ are concentrated in a relatively small number of larger settlements near the Israel-West Bank border. The Palestinians had shown flexibility over those areas during earlier peace talks, but they now say all the settlements must go.
17) Peace Now says there are 3,700 empty housing units in the territories, enough to accommodate natural growth for several years.
18) Government officials acknowledge there are empty houses, but say they are in outlying settlements isolated deep inside Palestinian areas where demand has fallen.
19) In Givat Zeev, a 15-minute drive from Jerusalem, only 18 of 380 housing units under construction over the last year have been sold, Peace Now says.
20) On a recent afternoon bulldozers belched black smoke and churned up dust while carving out housing plots about a mile from the existing red-roofed houses of Givat Zeev. Paved roads snake through the rocky hillsides, infrastructure in place for a planned community of nearly 600 new housing units.
21) Roadside billboards advertise houses for sale with color illustrations of a community nestled along palm tree-lined streets. There are few buyers.
22) ``Natural growth is a very nice slogan,'' said Gilat Benoun, a Peace Now researcher. ``I don't think it's a myth or a lie _ it's just exaggerated. There's enough vacant apartments to fill the needs of natural growth for the next four to five years.''



2002-01-17
Israeli minister says settlement growth will continue despite U.S.
(APW_ENG_20020117.1331)
1) Israel will not slow the expansion of Jewish settlements since the day of a building freeze _ as part of a U.S.-backed agreement _ is still very far off, Housing Minister Natan Sharansky said Thursday.
2) Israel has said that the agreement brokered by U.S. Sen. George Mitchell _ which calls for an end to settlement building _ will not be implemented until seven days after there is an end to hostilities in the area.
3) ``We are very, very far from the Mitchell agreement,'' Sharansky told The Associated Press. ``We don't have to fulfill this agreement until there is first a cessation of terror activity. ... Right now we don't have any restrictions.''
4) The United States has called on Israel to stop all settlement construction, which angers Palestinians, who insist it is a violation of peace accords. Palestinians want to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
5) The Israeli government is pushing ahead with construction in the occupied territories, which now accounts for one-quarter of all government construction. Israel has been expanding existing settlements but says it does not allow settlements to grow beyond their existing borders and no new settlements are being built.
6) Israel has insisted that it needs to expand settlements to accommodate for the natural population growth within settlements, a policy that Washington also opposes.
7) But critics claim that new settlements are being built and in recent meetings U.S. officials have presented satellite pictures that show new building activity, U.S. and Israeli officials say. The Israelis at first denied any new settlements had been built, but later admitted that some of the U.S. information was correct, an official said on condition of anonymity.
8) Although Sharansky has increased financial incentives for Israelis moving to settlements, the number of those who have chosen to relocate has fallen since the September 2000 start of the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Settlers have been a key target of Palestinian militants. This week, two settlers were killed.
9) Settler critics point to Sharansky, a nationalist opposed to the dismantling of settlements in any future peace plan, as the engine behind the settlement construction.
10) ``He's the darling of the settlers,'' said lawmaker Mossi Raz of the dovish Meretz party. ``He's doing more for the settlers than anyone else.''
11) Ads headlined ``Sharansky Sale'' have been published in Israeli newspapers in recent months, describing large financial incentives from the government for Israelis willing to move to settlements.
12) According to the deal offered since Sharansky took his post early last year, Israelis moving to five select settlements can receive dlrs 40,000 in low-rate mortgages and dlrs 25,000 in grants, said Raz.
13) Another new policy offers settlers renting in some outlying settlements a dlrs 12,000 subsidy if they move to permanent housing.
14) Those moving to other settlements can receive some dlrs 32,000 in grants and loans under an existing policy.
15) Sharansky says that the ``Sharansky sale'' lasted only from August to December and the dlrs 32,000 discount has been in place for years. The incentives for those moving into permanent housing is only to ensure that they live in structures that protect them from Palestinian fire, Sharansky said.
16) ``We are not encouraging people to move to the territories,'' Sharansky said, adding; ``I don't think that today, with this situation, the special priorities should be changed.''
17) Despite the incentives and increased construction, population growth in the settlements increased by only five percent last year, as opposed to an average growth rate of eight percent per year in the 1990s, according to government figures.
18) lc-lm



2002-07-03
Despite violence, West Bank settlements drawing people from around the world
(APW_ENG_20020703.0712)
1) Just two months ago, Mariano Perez, a Peruvian Indian, was living a quiet life as a construction worker on the Pacific coast of his homeland. He had never been to Israel, spoke no Hebrew, and until late last year, wasn't considered Jewish.
2) Today, Perez wears a yarmulke, has changed his first name to Mordechai and is on the front lines of the Mideast conflict.
3) Peruvians like Perez, some of them followers of a Christian sect with Jewish traditions, were formally converted to Judaism by Israeli rabbis last November to qualify for residency under the laws of the Jewish state. About 100 arrived this spring and moved directly into West Bank Jewish settlements, which are pushing hard to increase their numbers while Palestinian militants try to drive them out with persistent shooting attacks.
4) Perez lives with his wife, Leah, and their four children on this rocky hilltop settlement. They rarely go beyond the barbed wire surrounding the 100-family outpost as the parents undergo a full-immersion course in Hebrew _ and the violent realities of the Middle East.
5) In a nighttime raid on Karmei Tsur last month, attackers shot dead a pregnant woman, her husband and a soldier only a few hundred meters (yards) from the Perez family's whitewashed trailer.
6) ``It's a little bit scary. Anybody would be a little afraid,'' Perez, 40, said in Spanish. ``But we don't care. We came for one purpose _ to be closer to God.'' An Israeli flag and a list of emergency phone numbers hang on the trailer walls.
7) The Mideast fighting has sharpened the long-running feud over the nearly 150 settlements that house some 210,000 Jews among the more than 3 million Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
8) Palestinian attackers frequently ambush settlers on the roads, and in a more recent campaign, have stormed into isolated settlements in suicidal assaults. Settlers have accounted for 107 of the more than 550 Israeli deaths since fighting broke out in September 2000, according to the Settlers' Council.
9) The Israeli military has responded with tough restrictions, confining some 700,000 Palestinians to their homes during its latest campaign to track down militants.
10) In contrast, settlers travel freely. They have roads built specifically for them, and every day, more move in.
11) The settlers, with the help of Jewish groups and the Israeli government, are seeking out newcomers wherever they can find them. Despite violence that has led some settlers to leave, the overall settlement population increased about 5 percent last year. That's down a couple of percentage points from recent years, but still amounts to an additional 10,000 people.
12) Settlements range from Maale Adumim, effectively a suburb of Jerusalem with 25,000 people and its own Burger King, to barren desert outposts where settlers have parked two or three trailers on an empty hill _ in some cases without Israeli government permission.
13) Peace Now, an Israeli group that opposes settlements, says more than 40 unauthorized outposts sprang up after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon came to power last year. Sharon has been a leading advocate of settlements since Israel began building them on lands captured in the 1967 Mideast War.
14) Sharon says he won't remove any government-approved settlements at present, and with peace talks collapsed, he faces little domestic pressure to do so. However, 11 of the illegal, makeshift settlements were taken down June 30, and Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said more would be removed.
15) The fate of the settlements is an issue that deeply divides Israeli society and is one of the most difficult questions to resolve in any Mideast peace deal.
16) U.S. President George W. Bush, in a policy speech June 24, demanded the Palestinians make many fundamental reforms, but also said settlement-building must stop.
17) Most new settlers still come from Israel proper, but recruiting efforts have been stepped up in the past year to attract Jews worldwide.
18) ``The settlers are looking for 'lost Jewish tribes' in India, Brazil, Peru, you name it,'' said Dror Etkes, who monitors settlements for Peace Now. ``They are looking for people willing to make a religious commitment, and who are seeking to improve their lives _ as long as they are willing to live in the West Bank.''
19) The vast majority of immigrants were born Jewish. Perez, 40, and his wife began practicing Judaism several years ago in their coastal town of Trujillo, but by Israel's standards were not considered Jewish until the rabbis came to Peru and formally converted them on Nov. 23.
20) Overall figures on immigrant settlers are hard to come by. The largest group is from the former Soviet Union, estimated at more than 13,000, and many come from the United States.
21) The World Zionist Organization, part of the larger Jewish Agency, launched a program last year to boost immigration, and it welcomes and assists those seeking to live in the settlements, agency chairman Sallai Meridor said.
22) Rows of recently built houses with their distinctive red-tiled roofs stand empty in some settlements in the most volatile areas. But the conflict has also inspired a number of Jews to immigrate out of solidarity with Israel.
23) ``Some Jews feel this is the time to share their destiny with Israel,'' said Sarah Weinreb, who heads a recently established recruitment program at Gush Etzion, a large settlement bloc south of Jerusalem, which includes Karmei Tsur.
24) Weinreb has helped bring 120 families to Gush Etzion in the past three months, and is expecting 50 more. They come from the United States, Britain, South Africa and Canada.
25) On her recent trip to South Africa, she said, potential immigrants ``asked me 5,000 questions. They asked about job prospects, and whether they could bring their dog, but they weren't asking about security.''
26) ``If they had asked, I would have told them: 'I can't promise anything. We hope for the best,''' she said.
27) Weinreb says many immigrants prefer the settlements over cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem because they are small, close-knit communities with strong support networks.
28) Arriving in Karmei Tsur, the Peruvian families moved immediately into furnished trailers with food-filled refrigerators. For the first six months, the parents receive language lessons, and then get help finding jobs. The children receive extra tutoring at school. The settlement already includes immigrants from Brazil, Argentina, Ethiopia, Britain and Spain.
29) The incentives support a policy many foreign governments consider illegal because the settlements are on war-won land.
30) Palestinians see their placement as a strategic effort to dice up the West Bank and foreclose any chance of it becoming a Palestinian state. It galls them to see newcomers from Russia or Peru moving in, while Palestinians dispossessed in the 1948 war that followed Israeli statehood live in refugee camps.
31) ``No settler is welcome on our land,'' said Ahmed Abdel Rahman, the Palestinian Cabinet secretary. ``We have the full right to resist the settlers' existence in our land, because it is a part of the occupation, and an obstacle in the way of a Palestinian state.''
32) Despite an economic downturn in Israel, settlers have largely been spared government spending cuts. Their subsidies include cheap land and mortgages, low-cost schooling and tax breaks.
33) Some secular settlers say the financial breaks were the main attraction. But most are deeply religious, and believe this is their biblical Promised Land. Some say they would use force to resist eviction, even if it was part of a peace deal.
34) Some see settlements as a way of guaranteeing Israel won't return to its narrow, vulnerable pre-1967 borders. Others say they are a drain on the military because soldiers must be placed in harm's way to defend them.
35) Some maintain that settlements are a sacred tenet of Zionism. Others point out that after Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979, it uprooted its settlements in the Sinai Peninsula.
36) Ironically it was Sharon, then an army general, who oversaw the evacuation, had the houses flattened by bulldozers, and ordered troops with water cannons to flush out settlers who refused to go.
37) Until a few weeks ago, Shlomo Mor, a 55-year-old retired army colonel, and his son, Aviad, 23, were the only residents on a mountain between two settlements at the southern tip of the West Bank, with two Israeli army soldiers to guard them.
38) Now Aviad's girlfriend and an old school friend have moved in, and his father has brought in a ranch hand to help tend his 100 sheep. The settlement doesn't even have a name, but it does have government approval.
39) ``I like being alone in the mountains,'' said Mor. ``I like the quiet. I like the night and the stars.''
40) Many Karmei Tsur settlers commute to nearby Jerusalem by day, traveling a road thick with Israeli military checkpoints that guard against attacks. Palestinian villages, with minarets rising from mosques, dominate the hillsides.
41) But in the enclosed world of the settlement, among the cookie-cutter houses and leafy gardens, the atmosphere is relaxed. On a cloudless summer day, the playground is filled with the sounds of shouting children and barking dogs. It could be most any suburban community, but for the men with pistols tucked in their waistbands, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, or both.
42) ``We knew about the troubles here, and we were told we would be living next to Arabs,'' said Perez. ``We have a synagogue to pray. The people here care for us. We are very grateful for this opportunity.''



2002-07-24
Survey says most Israeli settlers would relocate peacefully if the government asked them
(APW_ENG_20020724.0213)
1) A survey by an Israeli group opposed to settlements says a majority of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would abandon their homes if the government or parliament decided to relocate them to Israel and compensate them.
2) The Peace Now survey of 3,200 households in 127 settlements, which was released Wednesday, said 68 percent of settlers would comply with orders to leave their communities, with only two percent saying they might use violence to resist.
3) Fifty-nine percent said they considered financial compensation the best solution to the issue.
4) The Palestinians bitterly oppose Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, while the United States and the international community say settlements are an obstacle to peace. Peace Now is a fierce opponent of settlements.
5) A peacemaking formula drafted last year by a commission headed by former Senate Democratic leader George Mitchell included a clause stipulating a settlement freeze. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, however, draws significant political support from Israel's religious right, which backs the settlement movement.
6) The Council of Jewish Settlements, the umbrella settlers' organization, said the Peace Now survey was false.
7) But it offered no data of its own on settler attitudes, citing only census figures showing a growth in the settler population of 7.7 percent since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, to a current total of 218,862.
8) Peace Now says its research shows that only a small minority make their homes in settlements for ideological reasons, with most settlers lured instead by cheap housing, tax breaks and rural surroundings that settlements offer.
9) ``The vast majority (77 percent) of settlers chose to live in a settlement for reasons of quality of life,'' said the survey, conducted between April and July.
10) It had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. scw/nvw



2003-02-03
Jewish settler population increases by nearly 6 percent in 2002: settlers
(APW_ENG_20030203.0524)
1) The number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip increased by 5.8 percent last year, settlers said Monday, despite more than two years of Palestinian attacks that have often targeted settlers.
2) The Settlers Council said that 226,028 Jews were living in the West Bank at the end of 2002, compared to 213,672 a year earlier. The increase over the past two years is 11.3 percent, the settlers said, in spite of the violence.
3) The Israeli Interior Ministry said that the 2002 figures were accurate, but the Central Bureau of Statistics said it did not yet have the population numbers for the settlements for 2002. The bureau said that at the end of 2001, 208,300 Israelis were living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
4) At least part of the increase could be accounted for by natural population growth. Also, some Israelis who have left the settlements have not changed their addresses officially, because settlers pay lower taxes, an Interior Ministry official said.
5) Palestinians charge that expansion of Israeli settlements in areas they claim for a state is one of the main obstacles to Mideast peace. While there have been calls from Palestinian leaders for an end to attacks inside Israel, most Palestinians consider settlers and the soldiers who guard them to be legitimate targets.
6) In 28 months of violence, 137 settlers have been killed in Palestinian attacks, out of a total of 720 on the Israeli side. On the Palestinian side, 2,075 people have been killed.
7) Bentsi Lieberman, chairman of the Settlers Council, said in a statement that the increase shows that ''in spite of the terrorism, Israelis continue to put down roots in these areas.''
8) Among the places showing an increase was the tiny Jewish community in the West Bank city of Hebron, where 531 Jews now live, an increase of 50, according to the settlers. The Israelis live in three enclaves in the center of the city under Israeli military control, surrounded by about 130,000 Palestinians.
9) After Palestinian gunmen ambushed and killed 12 Israeli soldiers and guards on a walkway from Hebron to a nearby Jewish settlement on Nov. 15, Israeli forces took control of the Palestinian sections of the city.
10) The embattled, isolated settlement of Kfar Darom grew by 17.4 percent, according to the settlers' figures, and another Gaza settlement, Morag, grew by 12.6 percent.
11) However, Emmanuel, a settlement of ultra-Orthodox Jews hit hard by Palestinian attacks, decreased in population by 11 percent. In Palestinian ambushes near the settlement in December 2001 and July 2002, 19 Israelis were killed, most of them residents of Emmanuel.
12) The largest settlement is Maale Adumim, in the Judean desert east of Jerusalem, with 28,000 Israelis. Several settlements have only a few dozen residents. id/ml



2003-03-23
Israeli Defense Ministry recommends taking larger chunks of West Bank in fence construction
(APW_ENG_20030323.0122)
1) Israel's Defense Ministry wants to move a separation fence between Israel and the Palestinians further eastward to encompass a larger chunk of the West Bank and more Jewish settlements, a spokeswoman said Sunday.
2) Palestinian officials said the new barrier is an attempt to sabotage a U.S.-backed plan for Palestinian statehood. They said they would complain to the Quartet of Mideast mediators _ the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.
3) Israel began constructing the barrier last year to try to keep out Palestinian militants.
4) According to the initial plan, parts of the fence were to run along the now-invisible Green Line, which demarcated the frontier before Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war. Other stretches were to run somewhat further to the east, encompassing several West Bank villages with a total of about 11,000 residents.
5) However, the Defense Ministry now recommends altering the plans and building the barrier deeper in the West Bank, said ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi, confirming a report in the Haaretz daily.
6) Moving the fence would mean including about 40,000 more Jewish settlers and 3,000 more Palestinians on the western, ``Israeli'' side. Among the settlements to be included in the new course of the fence is Ariel, the second largest in the West Bank with about 20,000 residents.
7) Hundreds of acres of Palestinian land have already been expropriated for fence construction.
8) Defense officials will formally present the plan to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in coming days. Haaretz said Sharon supports the idea in principle, and wants the fence to be seen as the border of a temporary Palestinian state which, according to the U.S.-backed peace plan, is to be established by the end of the year.
9) Sharon aides were not immediately available for comment.
10) Haaretz said the Defense Ministry also wants to erect a second line of separation even further to the east to protect Jewish settlements not shielded by the first barrier.
11) Israel's frontier with the West Bank is 365 kilometers (228 miles) long. The government has decided in principle to fence off the whole line but has not yet mapped out the entire route.
12) Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat accused Israel of trying to sabotage international peace efforts, at a time when the world's attention is diverted by the fighting in Iraq. ``This is part of Israel's exploitation of the war in Iraq,'' Erekat said.
13) He said he would seek clarifications from the Quartet.
14) The Palestinian Authority has been assured by top U.S. officials that the peace plan, which envisions full Palestinian independence by 2005, would be unveiled as soon as a Palestinian prime minister is sworn in. That could happen next month, after the designated prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, has formed a new Cabinet.
15) Israel has asked for more discussion on the plan. ``It (the planned change in the course of the barrier) is a serious effort by the Israelis to undermine the Quartet's roadmap,'' Erekat said. lc-kl



2003-08-04
Report: U.S. to punish Israel for security barrier construction by cutting loan guarantees
(APW_ENG_20030804.0477)
1) The U.S. State Department is proposing cuts in American loan guarantees to Israel, hoping to pressure it to stop building a security barrier in the West Bank, an Israel newspaper reported.
2) In March, the United States tentatively approved US$9 billion in loan guarantees and US$1 billion in military aid to Israel. U.S. Congress has yet to approve the aid.
3) The guarantees are regarded as a crucial element in stabilizing the Israeli economy; per capita income has fallen from US$18,000 to about US$15,000 per year since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in September 2000.
4) The U.S. State Department proposed cutting the guarantees by the same amount Israel spends to build portions of the barrier east of the so-called ``Green Line'' _ Israel's border with Jordan before it captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East War.
5) The Haaretz newspaper report, published Sunday, also said that the amount spent on building roads to bypass the West Bank _ to accommodate the movement of Jewish settlers around Palestinian population centers _ would be deducted from the loan guarantees.
6) In Washington, a Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, noted that the United States would deduct money Israel spends on settlements from the guarantees, and in light of that, ``we will examine all Israeli expenditures to see if they are settlement-related.''
7) A senior Israeli official in Jerusalem, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the proposal was not raised last week during Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's visit to Washington.
8) The planned 600-kilometer-long (370 mile-long) barrier is not mentioned in the ``road map'' peace plan. But U.S. officials and Palestinians fear it effectively sets a political border that would hinder key elements of the plan toward setting up a Palestinian state.
9) The first 145-kilometer (90-mile) section of the fence is budgeted at US$300 million. Israel announced last week that the first phase had been completed. The rest of the barrier is still in the planning stages, so the final cost has not been determined.
10) The separation barrier has emerged as a key sticking point in talks about implementing the U.S.-backed ``road map,'' which aims to end fighting and establish a Palestinian state by 2005.
11) Israel says the barrier is necessary to block Palestinian attackers from reaching Israel, but Palestinians consider it an expropriation of their land and have called for it to be dismantled.
12) The barrier plunges deep into the West Bank in some parts to encompass Israeli settlements, cutting off towns and blocking Palestinians from jobs in Israel or other parts of the West Bank.
13) Israel's Maariv newspaper reported Monday that Israel had agreed to alter the route of the barrier so that it cut through less of the West Bank under U.S. pressure.



2003-09-12
Israeli Cabinet to consider two routes for West Bank barrier
(APW_ENG_20030912.0417)
1) Israel's Cabinet is to consider two possible routes for its West Bank barrier, security officials said Friday, one of which would put the large Jewish settlement of Ariel on the ``Israeli'' side, a move likely to upset the United States and enrage the Palestinians.
2) Israel has begun building the 600-kilometer-long (370 miles) barrier of fences, trenches, razor wire and concrete walls, which it says is a defensive measure designed to keep Palestinians militants from crossing over from the West Bank to carry out attacks.
3) The Haaretz daily reported on its Web site that the Cabinet was to consider the plan at its weekly meeting Sunday.
4) U.S. President George W. Bush has called the planned barrier a problem, partly because in some areas Israel has expropriated Palestinian lands, while in others Palestinians have been separated from their lands, towns and villages.
5) U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell repeated that ``there are problems'' with the barrier during an interview Friday with the Arab satellite TV network Al-Jazeera.
6) While some portions of the barrier have been completed, there are disputes over the route in several places, including around Jerusalem.
7) Israel's security Cabinet decided Thursday to speed up construction as part of its response to two suicide bombings Tuesday that killed 15 people.
8) The security Cabinet ``unequivocally decided that we would continue the work on the fence and even speed it up,'' Justice Minister Tommy Lapid said.
9) If the full Cabinet approves a plan to include Ariel and a smaller nearby settlement, Karnei Shomron, inside the barrier, hectares (acres) of Palestinian land will have to be expropriated. Some Palestinians, who currently live in the West Bank, could find themselves cut off from both Israel and the West Bank.
10) The discussion of possible routes comes as Israeli-Palestinian violence is escalating and a U.S.-backed peace plan _ which had brought brief optimism during three years of fighting _ is in tatters.
11) In the 1967 Mideast war, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands Palestinians want for a future state. Palestinians fear the barrier will become the de facto border of any future state they establish.
12) In addition, the Palestinians are urging Israel to dismantle Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but including some settlements within the barrier would make that demand tougher to meet.
13) The United States and other countries are pressuring Israel to build the barrier as close as possible to the 1967 border.
14) The human rights group Amnesty International also has urged Israel to halt construction of the fence, saying it hinders travel for tens of thousands of Palestinians. rpm-imj



2003-09-14

2003-09-23
Report: Israel spends 2.5 billion shekels (US$560 million) a year on Jewish settlements in territories
(APW_ENG_20030923.0273)
1) The Israeli government spends at least 2.5 billion shekels (US$560 million) a year on subsidies, infrastructure and education for 220,000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to a report Tuesday in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
2) The figure does not include military spending in those areas.
3) Since capturing the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel has spent at least 45 billion shekels (US$10.1 billion) on settlements, Haaretz said.
4) Successive Israeli governments have refused to disclose how much they spend on settlements. Haaretz said it compiled the figure after three months of research, including interviews with dozens of government officials and experts.
5) The settlements are seen as one barrier to reaching a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians say Israel uses the settlements to grab lands claimed for a Palestinian state.
6) The number of Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip hit 220,000 last year, an increase of 5.7 percent from 2001, according to a report released Tuesday by Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics.
7) The settlers' growth rate far outstripped the total Israeli growth rate of 1.6 percent and was more than double the growth rate in any region of Israel, according to the report.
8) Nearly 5,000 of the 12,000 new settlers moved into the settlements from Israel or other countries. The remainder of the growth was attributed to new births.
9) Palestinians say continued building in the settlements is proof Israel is not committed to peace.
10) Spending on settlers and settlements also has become a tense issue in Israel, which is suffering from a deep economic crisis. Over the past three years, Israeli salaries have plummeted more than 10 percent and unemployment is approaching 11 percent.
11) According to the Haaretz report, the amount of money spent on the settlements amounted to more than 10,000 shekels (US$2,200) per person.
12) The money included spending on roads, housing, electricity, education and recently canceled tax breaks for settlers, according to the newspaper.
13) The spending on the settlements equals more than 1 percent of the total Israeli budget of 217 billion shekels (US$48.7 billion). rn-kl



2003-09-30
Sharon wants security fence to wrap around settlements deep in West Bank
(APW_ENG_20030930.0480)
1) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wants to shield several large Jewish settlements by extending Israel's security barrier deep into the West Bank, and hopes to defuse U.S. objections by leaving some gaps in the new section, one of his advisers and settler leaders said Tuesday.
2) The plan, denounced by Palestinians as a land grab, comes up for approval before the Cabinet on Wednesday and is likely to pass.
3) In its bid to stop Palestinian suicide bombers and other attackers Israel has already built almost 100 miles (150 kilometers) of the security barrier that will eventually stretch _ depending on the route _ up to four times that distance.
4) Portions of the barrier _ a network of fences, walls, razor wires and trenches _ run on West Bank land, but to date it has largely kept to within a few kilometers (miles) of the Israel-West Bank dividing line known as the ``Green Line.''
5) Under the new proposal the barrier would veer almost 30 kilometers (20 miles) into the territory, cutting the northern section of the West Bank in two for much of its width.
6) The new section will take several months to build and would incorporate on the ``Israeli'' side a bloc of settlements _ Ariel, Kedumim, Karnei Shomron and Emmanuel _ where some 45,000 Israelis live, said Ariel security chief Eli Shaviro.
7) The United States backed the Palestinians' opposition to the barrier's extension when the idea was first raised several months ago. But excluding Ariel _ with 18,000 residents the second-largest West Bank settlement _ is politically tough for Sharon, who draws much of his support from settlers and their backers.
8) Sharon himself avoided discussing the issue in detail until Monday, when he said that Ariel would be included and that ``if we reach a point where the matter once again creates a dispute, we will sit with the Americans again.''
9) In an apparent attempt to dampen criticism, the proposal to be brought before the Cabinet leaves gaps throughout the barrier ``at least for the time being,'' said Sharon adviser Zalman Shoval, adding the idea was discussed with U.S. officials.
10) The gaps would be filled in with ``security obstacles'' including patrols by soldiers ``to make it as impenetrable as possible,'' he said. Shaviro said the gaps would also be policed with electronic sensors and motion detectors.
11) If attackers make it through the gaps, Israel might close off the barrier completely, Shoval said.
12) Israel says the barrier is necessary to stop suicide bombers who alone have killed more than 400 people during three years of fighting _ and it points to the success of a fence already in place for years around the Gaza Strip, from where no suicide bombers have crossed during that period.
13) The Sharon government initially resisted calls, coming mostly from the more dovish opposition, to build the barrier _ precisely because it suggests an abandoning of the land on the other side of the barrier, and raises complex questions about which settlements can be incorporated in the protected areas. But it relented under tremendous public pressure.
14) ``The Palestinians have only themselves to blame for the construction of the fence,'' wrote former defense minister Moshe Arens in a commentary in the Haaretz daily. ``Every murder carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber contributed to the decision.''
15) The completed sections of the barrier run along the northern West Bank and around parts of Jerusalem. In some areas it cuts off Palestinian farmers from their land and isolates villages and towns as it snakes around Jewish settlements. Residents say they are cut off from jobs, schools and clinics.
16) ``The continuation of the wall in any shape or form inside the West Bank is undermining the peace process,'' said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
17) The Palestinians have demonstrated against the barrier and cite it as one of the issues blocking implementation of the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan, which envisions a Palestinian state by 2005. And the United States has threatened to cut back promised loan guarantees if Israel extends the barrier to Ariel.
18) Yehezkel Lein, a researcher at B'tselem, an Israeli group that monitors human rights conditions in Palestinian areas, said that under the new extension 11,000 Palestinians would be caught in the fenced-in area and unable to reach the rest of the West Bank, and tens of thousands of others otherwise inconvenienced.
19) ``It's clear that there is the intention to prepare the ground for future annexation of settlements (to Israel) ... and to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state,'' Lein said.
20) Ariel mayor Ron Nachman said the fence was for security reasons only.
21) But some residents were skeptical even that goal would be achieved.
22) ``Fences don't provide security. They can't,'' said Michale Katerer, 29, an immigrant from former East Germany. ``They didn't do that in East Germany. People were always able to get across by tunnels, or even by air.''
23) (jak/dp)


Fate of Jewish settlement and security barrier come before Israeli Cabinet
(APW_ENG_20030930.0834)
1) ARIEL, West Bank _ The 18,000 Israelis living in this settlement in the middle of the West Bank can't imagine that a security barrier wouldn't include them in Israel. In principle, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agrees.
2) But Sharon also knows that building a barrier deep into the West Bank would anger Israel's chief ally, the United States, while leaving Ariel outside would infuriate one of Sharon's main constituencies _ settlers and their backers.
3) In a meeting Wednesday, Sharon's Cabinet is to decide the route of the security barrier, designed to keep Palestinian suicide bombers from infiltrating from the West Bank into Israel.
4) In more than 100 suicide attacks during three years of violence, hundreds of Israelis have been killed. Dozens of times, bombers have simply walked across the unmarked, mostly undefended line between Israel and the West Bank, blowing themselves up in Israeli cities.
5) The idea of building a barrier to keep the bombers out has widespread support in Israel. The first section _ about 150 kilometers (90 miles) _ has been finished, following the West Bank-Israel line rather closely, though dipping slightly in to enclose some nearby Jewish settlements,
6) Ariel is different. Laid out along a rolling hill, it's halfway across the West Bank, but as the second-largest settlement in the territory, it can't be easily ignored by the barrier planners.
7) ``Just look over there,'' said Tami Green, a 37-year-old mother of three, pointing toward the Palestinian village of Marda, one kilometer (half a mile) from Ariel's northern border. ``You think of what might happen to us if those people decide to attack us, and you know the fence has to be built.''
8) With its Blockbuster Video store, its 6,000-student college and its American-style cookie-cutter suburban housing, the settlement craves to be regarded as an integral part of Israel.
9) ``There's no difference between Ariel and Tel Aviv,'' Ariel mayor Ron Nachman said. ``We carry the same identity cards, speak the same language, share the same culture. It's unthinkable for anyone to try to separate us. We have to be included in the fence.''
10) Palestinians call the barrier an ``apartheid wall'' and a land grab, pointing especially at the Ariel sector. To include Ariel on the ``Israeli'' side, the fence would have to dip 30 kilometers (20 miles) into the West Bank, enclosing thousands of Palestinians as well as 45,000 Israelis in four settlements.
11) The U.S. administration opposes this, fearing that the barrier _ a permanent-looking complex of fences, trenches, walls and security roads _ is as good as a border, pre-empting peace negotiations, though Israel denies that.
12) Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and Gaza for a state and demand that all the settlements be dismantled.
13) The United States is threatening to deduct the cost of the West Bank portions of the barrier from US$9 billion in loan guarantees to Israel, a painful punishment to a country in a deep recession. On Tuesday, the State Department said no decision had been made about how much to deduct for Israeli construction in the West Bank.
14) Sharon is considering a temporizing step _ building the barrier north and south of Ariel but leaving a gap at the touchiest section, to be guarded by checkpoints, obstacles and soldiers instead.
15) The Israelis say they have discussed this with the Americans and hope that the gap would deflect criticism from Washington, at least for now.
16) ``If we reach a point where the matter once again creates a dispute, we will sit with the Americans again,'' Sharon said.
17) All this does not impress the people who live in Ariel.
18) ``With all respect to the U.S., the fence has to be built,'' Nachman said. ``While we take note of the U.S. objections, we say that only Israel can decide its own security needs.''



2003-10-01
Islamic Jihad leader in the West Bank arrested by Israeli troops
(APW_ENG_20031001.0078)
1) Israeli commandos on Wednesday arrested a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad group who a witness says was hiding under a parked car when he was seized in a West Bank refugee camp.
2) Also Wednesday, the Israeli Cabinet met to approve an extension of a security barrier that would run deep into the West Bank to shield Jewish settlements, but would have several gaps to address U.S. objections.
3) In the arrest raid, troops backed by two dozen armored vehicles and two attack helicopters entered the Jenin refugee camp early Wednesday and seized the Islamic Jihad leader, Bassam Saadi, witnesses said.
4) Saadi was hiding under a car when he was caught, said Atef Abu Rub, a resident of the area. Residents of four nearby apartment buildings were ordered out of their homes during the operation, the witness said.
5) The military confirmed the arrest and said 14 other wanted Palestinians were also taken into custody overnight.
6) Saadi was a top fugitive, and became the group's spokesman and apparent leader in the West Bank after other senior members of the group were killed or arrested in Israeli raids last year. Saadi's twin sons were killed at age 21 in separate gun battles with Israeli troops last year.
7) At the center of the Cabinet's barrier dilemma is the settlement of Ariel, with its 18,00 residents, in the heart of the West Bank.
8) The Cabinet met Wednesday to consider a compromise backed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who hopes to appease both the United States and his hardline constituents. Under the proposal, the barrier would run east of Ariel, but would not be connected for now to the main security fence running further to the west, closer to Israel. The open sections would be patrolled by soldiers.
9) ``Certainly it (the barrier) has to pass east of Ariel, but in a manner that will not antagonize the (Palestinian) population of the territories and will be in coordination with the agreements we have with the U.S. government,'' Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said before entering the Cabinet meeting.
10) About one-fourth of the barrier has already been built in the northern West Bank. In some parts, it runs close to the invisible Green Line, the frontier between Israel and the West Bank before the 1967 Mideast War. However, in other areas, the barrier dips several kilometers into the West Bank, isolating several Palestinian villages and cutting residents off from their land.
11) Including Ariel on the ``Israeli'' side would mean the barrier will cut deep into areas the Palestinians claim for a future state.
12) The Palestinians charge that Israel is grabbing land and unilaterally drawing a border that should be determined in future peace talks. Sharon initially opposed construction of the barrier because it would leave tens of thousands of Jewish settlers on the other side, but has relented under growing public pressure following scores of suicide attacks by Palestinian militants.
13) Israel faces heavy opposition to the Ariel section from the United States which fears the barrier will create facts on the ground and pre-empt peace talks.
14) The Bush administration has backed up its opposition with a threat to deduct the cost of the West Bank portions of the barrier from the US$9 billion in loan guarantees to Israel.
15) However, on Tuesday the U.S. State Department said it had no immediate plans to cut the loan guarantees.
16) In more than 100 suicide attacks during three years of violence, hundreds of Israelis have been killed. Dozens of times, bombers have simply walked across the unmarked line between Israel and the West Bank, blowing themselves up in Israeli cities.
17) The idea of building a barrier to keep the bombers out has widespread support in Israel. The first section _ about 150 kilometers (90 miles) _ has been finished.
18) In the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, troops searching for weapon smuggling tunnels along the Egyptian border blew up one tunnel and destroyed several nearby buildings, the army and Palestinian witnesses said.
19) Palestinian security sources said that two of the 13 buildings destroyed were inhabited.
20) The army said that the buildings were used to hide weapons and that troops came under fire from Palestinian gunmen who also set off explosive devices. gr-kl


URGENT Israel's Cabinet approves security barrier that would swing around West Bank's second largest settlement
(APW_ENG_20031001.0175)
1) Israel's Cabinet on Wednesday approved an extension of a security barrier that would swing around several Jewish settlements deep in the West Bank, but would have some gaps for now to address U.S. concerns, Israel Army Radio said.
2) A barrier would be built east of Ariel _ with 18,000 residents the second largest settlement in the West Bank _ but would not immediately be connected to the main security fence which runs further west, closer to Israel. kl


Israel approves security barrier cutting deep into West Bank
(APW_ENG_20031001.0650)
1) Israel decided on Wednesday to extend a partly-built security barrier around much of the West Bank _ including several sections deep inside the territory that are aimed at shielding Jewish settlements but have been condemned by Palestinians as a major land grab.
2) To appease the United States _ which opposes extending the barrier deep into the West Bank _ the new sections will for now be disconnected from each other and from existing barrier sections built closer to Israel's pre-1967 border with the West Bank. The final route will be decided in the coming months.
3) The barrier was conceived, under public pressure, as a means of keeping Palestinian attackers out of Israel, where hundreds have been killed in the recent years' suicide bombings. But the project has been complicated by efforts to incorporate some of the 220,000 West Bank settlers on the ``Israeli'' side.
4) To date, Israel has completed about 150 kilometers (90 miles) of fences, walls and trenches built fairly close to the pre-1967 border but dipping slightly into occupied territory in some areas to include Jewish settlements.
5) The government has struggled with the question of settlements deeper inside the West Bank, especially Ariel, a community of 18,000 residents some 25 kilometers (15 miles) inside. The settlers wanted the fence to incorporate them _ but the idea angered the United States and Palestinians.
6) A senior government official said the Cabinet decided in principle to approve completing the project _ essentially cutting off the entire West Bank _ and to begin construction of several sections totaling some 160 kilometers (100 miles), with the exact route of the rest of the barrier to be decided later.
7) In line with the secrecy that has characterized the project, no maps were officially released Wednesday.
8) But from officials' statements and media reports, it appeared the barrier would stretch all the way around the West Bank to the Dead Sea in the south, sticking close to the pre-1967 border in some areas and cutting into the West Bank to encircle Jewish settlements in several locations.
9) The government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said barriers would be erected around Ariel and several other nearby settlements, and around the Etzion Bloc of settlements near Bethlehem.
10) Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said the Ariel area sections won't immediately be connected to the main security fence.
11) Four fence sections in the area _ as sketched by a senior Israeli official on a map carried by an Associated Press reporter _ would start with horseshoe-shaped barriers.
12) But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the plan calls for the sections to be eventually linked to each other and to the main barrier. According to the rough sketch, that would take a bite some 30 kilometers (20 miles) deep into the West Bank, surrounding an area containing tens of thousands of Palestinians.
13) The United States made its opposition to such a plan clear, with U.S. President George W. Bush calling the barrier ``a problem'' and some officials saying it could be interpreted as an effort to pre-empt negotiations and unilaterally define the border of a future Palestinian state.
14) U.S. officials said Wednesday that they were discussing the decision with the Israeli government.
15) ``We'll look carefully at this decision. It remains our long-standing policy to oppose activities by either party in the West Bank and Gaza that prejudge final-status negotiations,'' said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
16) The Bush administration has said it might deduct some of the construction cost for the barrier from US$9 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel.
17) An Israeli official said Israel would discuss its plans with Washington but would not seek U.S. permission.
18) Palestinians demanded the United States stop the construction.
19) ``All these are procedures and actions that destroy all possibilities for peace and bringing about calm, be it settlements, the wall, or what is happening around Jerusalem,'' said the incoming Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia.
20) Also Wednesday, the government approved two parallel sections that were described by officials as a barrier to protect Israel's international airport from rocket attacks. The official said about 20,000 Palestinians live between the two walls, but it was not clear if the end of the interior barrier would be sealed, trapping them in between.
21) About 40,000 more Palestinians would be hemmed in by walls guarding a planned Jerusalem ring road and by walls and fences to be put up to protect motorists on an existing four-lane highway that cuts through the West Bank on its way from central Israel to Jerusalem, he said.
22) Israeli settlers welcomed the route.
23) ``If you are going to build a fence, it's good to do it along security borders'' including settlements, said Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a settler spokesman.
24) Also Wednesday, an Islamic Jihad member, Mazen Badawi, and a bystander were killed in an Israeli army raid in the West Bank refugee camp of Tulkarem.
25) Palestinian security officials said Israeli undercover troops opened fire without provocation on Badawi outside the camp's sports club. The Israeli military said troops chased the wanted man, and soldiers opened fire after being shot at, though it was not clear whether the fire came from the fugitive. The bystander, Rabah Abu Darka, 21, died several hours later in a hospital.
26) (scw/ml/rn/dp)


Palestinians call on U.N. to make Israel stop building barrier
(APW_ENG_20031001.0792)
1) As Israel decided to extend a security barrier in the West Bank, the Palestinian U.N. observer urged Security Council action to make the Israeli government stop construction and remove the ``conquest wall.''
2) In a letter to U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, whose country assumed the rotating presidency of the Security Council on Wednesday, Palestinian U.N. Observer Nasser al-Kidwa called on the Security Council to ``immediately take the necessary measures ... to address this grave matter and to bring a halt to these illegal actions by the occupying power.''
3) Israel is building a security barrier around much of the West Bank, and on Wednesday decided to extend it. Israel has completed about 90 miles (145 kilometers), about one quarter of the planned barrier _ a system of fences, trenches, razor wire and concrete walls intended to protect Israel from Palestinian suicide bombers.
4) The international community should ``take urgent action to firmly condemn the construction of this wall and demand its cessation and removal,'' al-Kidwa said.
5) He asked that the letter be circulated to the 14 other members of the Security Council, but did not request a council meeting.
6) The barrier runs in some areas inside the West Bank, where 220,000 Israeli settlers live. The settlers wanted the fence to incorporate them.
7) Palestinians condemn the barrier as a major land grab because it cuts through West Bank territory they want for their future state.
8) Al-Kidwa said the course of the barrier has been deliberately planned to include as many Israeli settlements and water resources in the occupied West Bank as possible.
9) ``It is imperative that the conquest wall be understood and addressed in the context of Israel's illegal settlement activities, colonization of the Palestinian land and its expansionist designs,'' al-Kidwa's letter to Negroponte said.
10) The United States made its opposition to such a plan clear. Some U.S. officials said it could be interpreted as an effort to pre-empt negotiations and unilaterally define the border of a future Palestinian state.
11) The incoming Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, said Wednesday the barrier and Israeli settlements ``destroy all the possibilities for peace and bringing about calm.''
12) Arab countries have also condemned the barrier.
13) Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, whose country signed a peace treaty with Israel, said in New York Tuesday that Israel should stop building the barrier because it would ``render any Palestinian state unviable in the future'' by dividing Palestinian territory.



2003-10-02
Israel announces plans for hundreds of new homes in settlements
(APW_ENG_20031002.0515)
1) Israel announced Thursday it would build more than 500 new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, violating a U.S.-backed peace plan and angering Palestinians already seething over plans to build a security barrier deep into the West Bank.
2) The ``road map'' peace plan requires a complete freeze in all construction in some 150 Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel seized during the 1967 war.
3) However, an Israeli official said Israel did not have any responsibility to meet its road map obligations until Palestinians crack down on militant groups.
4) ``The road map is stalled as long as there is no action taken by the Palestinians to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure,'' said Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
5) When asked whether the U.S. government backed that interpretation, he said: ``This is our understanding, the understanding that we have had all along, and we haven't changed it.''
6) The Israeli government says it needs the new buildings to account for what it calls the ``natural growth'' of the settlements _ even though the vast majority of the new units were planned for a single settlement that is being dramatically expanded.
7) The government announcement that it planned to build 565 housing units in three West Bank settlements came a day after the Cabinet approved a portion of a security barrier of fences and walls that runs into the West Bank to shield key settlements _ as well as Israel _ from suicide bombers, who have killed hundreds of Israelis over the past three years.
8) Also Thursday, incoming Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia announced he would submit his proposed Cabinet for approval to the Palestinian Parliament on Wednesday.
9) He then accused Israel of trying to circumvent peace talks by seizing land Palestinians want for an eventual state.
10) ``The Israeli decision to continue building the wall and today's decision to build 600 settlement units proves that the Israeli government is not serious about peace and that its goal is to draw the borders unilaterally and to sabotage the possibility for establishing a viable Palestinian state,'' he said.
11) The United States has said the wall's route could be interpreted as an effort to pre-empt negotiations and unilaterally define the border of a future Palestinian state.
12) In an effort to deflect the U.S. criticism, Israel is for now leaving large gaps in the path of the barrier which will be patrolled by troops; the final barrier route will be decided in the coming months.
13) A senior Israeli official said the plan calls for the sections to be eventually linked to each other and to the main barrier. That could take a bite some 30 kilometers (20 miles) deep into the West Bank, surrounding an area containing tens of thousands of Palestinians.
14) The Bush administration has said it might deduct some of the construction cost for the barrier from US$9 billion in U.S. loan guarantees to Israel, and Congress has authorized the administration to reduce the guarantees, dollar-for-dollar, for what Israel spends on new settlement construction.
15) U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday the fence ``presents a problem'' and that ``we also have concerns'' about settlement construction. ``We are examining the loan guarantees to determine what we should do about it,'' he said.
16) According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, 3,525 homes were under construction in West Bank and Gaza settlements in the first three months of this year. Since then, the government has announced plans to build another 1,261 homes, according to Peace Now, a group that monitors settlement activity, though other homes are likely being built privately.
17) The housing ministry said in a statement Thursday it was building the new homes ``according to the government's policy to promote and develop communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip according to their needs and natural growth.''
18) Despite Israel's argument that it is only accounting for ``natural growth,'' more than 40 percent of the 12,000 new settlers in the West Bank and Gaza last year migrated from other areas, according to the statistics bureau. The population growth rate in the settlements is more than three times the total Israeli growth rate _ because of both migration and a high birth rate.
19) A settlement freeze would pose political difficulties for the rightist Sharon government. The roughly 220,000 settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip comprise a strong base of support for the government, and the hardline majority in the Cabinet would likely torpedo any attempt to halt construction.
20) Most of the new homes, 530, were to be built in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Beitar Illit outside of Jerusalem where more than 20,000 people live.
21) The government is taking advantage of the needs of some Israelis to try to push its policy of settlement expansion, said Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now.
22) ``If you have a large family and are Orthodox and you want to live in Jerusalem, it's very hard, it's very expensive. But if you want to live in Beitar Illit, this is the solution for you,'' he said.
23) Despite the government's arguments, it is still bound by the road map, Oppenheimer said.
24) ``If the road map is dead, the Israeli government should tell the public they are not going to follow it. If it is still alive, they should keep it,'' he said.
25) (rn/dp)



2003-10-22
Israel dismisses U.N. vote, says construction on West Bank barrier will continue
(APW_ENG_20031022.0623)
1) Israel's vice premier on Wednesday rejected an overwhelming call by the United Nations to dismantle a massive barrier being built along the line with the West Bank and inside parts of the territory.
2) ``The fence will continue to be built,'' said Ehud Olmert, dismissing the U.N. General Assembly as hostile to the Jewish state.
3) Israel says the wall is necessary to keep suicide bombers out of the country. The Palestinians say Israel is using the barrier as a pretext to take Palestinian land.
4) In Jerusalem, meanwhile, Israel's police minister visited the main holy site in the city. It was the first high-level tour of the compound since Israeli-Palestinian fighting erupted there three years ago. The visit ended without incident, although Palestinians criticized it as a provocation.
5) The site is revered by Jews as the Temple Mount, the site of destroyed ancient temples; Muslims call the compound the Haram as-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, where the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosques are located.
6) Hanegbi's office said the minister surveyed security arrangements in preparation for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week. The site had been open to Muslims only since the violence erupted, and it was reopened to others only in recent weeks.
7) ``We didn't want the visit to have the nature of a demonstration, we didn't want any tension there,'' Hanegbi told Israel Radio.
8) Violence continued to flare in the West Bank and Gaza Wednesday. Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinian militants in a series of raids and clashes. Two Jewish settlers and two Palestinians were also wounded in the violence.
9) Also Wednesday, a Palestinian wounded in Monday's Israeli missile strike in the Nusseirat refugee camp in Gaza died of his wounds, bringing the death toll to eight. Palestinians identified him as Ayoub Manek, 21, a bystander.
10) The General Assembly's call to dismantle the West Bank barrier was passed late Tuesday after more than six hours of negotiations. The compromise resolution wasn't legally binding, but was seen as a gauge of world opinion. Palestinians praised the measure, which passed with 144 countries in favor and four opposed, including the United States. There were 12 abstentions.
11) Olmert, speaking to Israel Radio on Wednesday, dismissed the resolution as an example of the world's hostility toward Israel.
12) ``Everything connected to Israel gets an automatic majority. The one positive element is that the European Union proposal came to replace a proposal that is even more extreme and hostile to Israel,'' Olmert said.
13) In return for EU support, the Palestinians and their supporters agreed to drop a second resolution that would have asked the International Court of Justice at The Hague, Netherlands, for an advisory opinion on the legality of the barrier.
14) The backers of the resolution also agreed to add a condemnation of Palestinian suicide bombings, Israel's targeted killings of Palestinian militants and the Oct. 16 bomb attack on a U.S. diplomatic convoy in the Gaza Strip that killed three American security guards.
15) Asked if Israel would stop building the barrier, Olmert laughed and told the radio presenter, ``You have a sense of humor.''
16) ``We have to worry about Israel's security and it is clear that we will not act according to the instructions of a hostile, automatic majority ... who has always acted against Israel,'' Olmert said.
17) ``If the whole world is on one side and America and Israel on the other side, I'm proud to be on the American side,'' he added.
18) Israel began building the barrier last year after waves of Palestinian suicide bombings that killed hundreds of people in Israel. Attackers had infiltrated easily across the unmarked and almost undefended border with the West Bank.
19) Israel's Cabinet this month voted to speed up construction, aiming for completion in a year.
20) So far the first segment, about 150 kilometers (90 miles), mostly along the northern edge of the territory, has been completed. The final route, which remains undecided, could run nearly 600 kilometers (400 miles).
21) Most of the completed section runs close to the Israel-West Bank border _ but several planned sections would dip deep into the West Bank to incorporate some Jewish settlements on the ``Israeli'' side. The snaking barrier in some areas also surrounds Palestinian communities and cuts farmers off from their land.
22) The barrier also surrounds Jerusalem, cutting off the Eastern sector _ which Palestinians want for a capital _ from its West Bank hinterland.
23) Construction continued on Wednesday.
24) Eymad Eimam, a 21-year-old Palestinian, stood near a stretch of the barrier under construction in east Jerusalem, where he guards heavy equipment used in the project. The barrier here consisted of an electrified fence surrounded by coils of razor wire, with an asphalt patrol road running along the Israeli side of the fence.
25) ``Mortal danger _ Military Zone. Any person who passes or damages the fence endangers his life,'' the sign read in three languages. An armored border-police jeep, with blue lights flashing, drove by as Eimam spoke.
26) Like many Palestinians, Eimam works on a project he personally opposes because of the dire economic situation.
27) The Jerusalem resident said he feared Palestinian laborers from nearby Bethlehem will no longer be able to reach construction jobs in Jerusalem once the barrier is completed. Those workers currently must arrive at four or five in the morning, and wait about a half hour to get into the city. Crossing will only become more difficult once the barrier is completed, he said.
28) ``The fence will be a problem,'' he said. ``People want to work, but after, if they don't have work, they start to steal.''
29) (jmf/dp)



2003-10-23

2003-10-24
Three Israelis killed in Palestinian attack on Jewish settlement in Gaza
(APW_ENG_20031024.0012)
1) Palestinian infiltrators killed three Israelis and wounded two others, one seriously, at an isolated Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip early Friday, Israeli military officials said. Soldiers killed one infiltrator, they said.
2) The attack at the settlement of Netzarim, southwest of Gaza City, came as Israeli officials disclosed that a security barrier Israel is building along the West Bank could become a unilaterally imposed border annexing the strategic Jordan River Valley to Israel, a development that would pre-empt peace negotiations.
3) The military officials said the infiltrators crossed the exterior fence and opened fire. They did not enter the settlement itself, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Two of the dead were women and the other a man, Israel Radio reported, and the seriously wounded Israeli is a woman.
4) Soldiers searching for the Palestinians shot and killed one, the officials said, and were looking for another. Israel Radio said dense fog hampered the search.
5) In northern Gaza, soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian who was apparently trying to infiltrate another settlement, Israel Radio reported. Late Thursday, three members of an Israeli settler family were lightly wounded in a Palestinian gunfire attack in southern Gaza. Settlers said the gunman was shot and killed.
6) The Gaza Strip is surrounded by a security fence, which has prevented most attempted infiltrations from Gaza into Israel. However, Israel's plan to build a similar fence around the West Bank has run into stiff criticism, because it would cut deep into the West Bank, territory claimed by the Palestinians.
7) A senior Israeli official said the Jordan River Valley, at the eastern edge of the West Bank, must remain under Israeli security control, and the plan for a fence that would cut the valley off from the rest of West Bank has been approved. However, no funds have yet been allocated for its construction, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
8) Up to now, most attention has been focused on the other side of the West Bank, where Israel has completed the first section of the barrier and has approved the route for the rest.
9) Israel says the barrier is necessary to keep suicide bombers and other Palestinian attackers out of the country, but Palestinians refer to the complex of fences, walls, electronic sensors and barbed wire as an ``apartheid wall'' designed to confiscate their land.
10) Hundreds of Israelis have been killed in suicide bombings carried out by Palestinians who easily infiltrated the unmarked and unguarded line between Israel and the West Bank, blowing themselves up in crowded Israeli cities.
11) While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said that the barrier is meant as a security measure, not a border, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu _ Sharon's main rival in the ruling Likud Party _ went the extra step in an interview with Channel Two TV, implying that the barrier could be a permanent frontier.
12) ``At this moment, because we do not have an arrangement with the other side, we are making a unilateral arrangement,'' he said in an interview broadcast Thursday.
13) The United States is opposed to unilateral measures by either side that would pre-empt negotiations under the ``road map'' peace plan, which calls for an end to three years of violence and leads to a Palestinian state in 2005. Issues like borders and the future of Israeli settlements are to be negotiated in the final stage of the ``road map'' plan.
14) The senior official said the route of the fence along the Jordan Valley has been approved by the defense establishment, and it fits Sharon's concept of permanent Israeli control over the valley.
15) ``Israel must control the Jordan Valley for security purposes, even if it does not have sovereignty,'' the official said, a rare government indication that Israel might negotiate over sovereignty there.
16) Sharon's long-standing concept of a permanent arrangement with the Palestinians would give the Palestinians authority over populated enclaves around the West Bank, while Israel would maintain control over the entire periphery. Palestinians demand a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a capital in the Arab section of Jerusalem.
17) Nineteen small Jewish settlements dot the Jordan River Valley, a parched, hot strip of barren land punctuated by two main oases _ the Palestinian towns of Jericho and Jiftliq. The kingdom of Jordan is clearly visible across the narrow river.
18) The official said the security fence would prevent infiltrations into the settlements from the West Bank and across the Jordan River, while protecting Israel from attacks from Jordan.
19) He dismissed expert assessments that with the U.S.-led defeat of Iraq, Israel no longer faces a threat from that front, since Israel and Jordan are at peace, and the Jordanian army regularly stops infiltrators.
20) This week the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that Israel stop construction of the barrier and tear down the sections already completed, but Israel rejected the nonbinding resolution.
21) Also Thursday, Palestinians and the United States criticized the latest Israeli tender for building new housing in West Bank settlements.
22) (ml)


Israel publishes map of fence that would cut off 70,000 Palestinians
(APW_ENG_20031024.0764)
1) For the first time, Israel published a detailed map Friday of its planned security barrier, which would encircle tens of thousands of Palestinians, cutting them off from the rest of the West Bank, while keeping about 80 percent of Jewish settlers on the Israeli side of the fence.
2) The fence's snaking path, sloping from flat land up into mountains, cuts deep into the West Bank and will likely enflame already fierce international opposition.
3) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the military also was planning a final section of the barrier in the eastern area of the West Bank and would soon present it to the Cabinet. That section, which would cut Palestinians off from the Jordan Valley, would likely pass a few miles (kilometers) from the Jordan River, he said in a TV interview.
4) ``The route is being planned now. The moment it will be completed, it will be presented to the government,'' Sharon said.
5) Palestinians are strongly opposed to the barrier, saying Israel is using it to create a de facto border that infringes on West Bank land they claim for a future state. Israel says the barrier is intended to keep Palestinian militants from entering the country to carry out attacks.
6) Early Friday, two Islamic militants cut through a fence around the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip and broke into the barracks of soldiers guarding the area. They went from room to room shooting sleeping soldiers, killing three and wounding two, according to the army and media reports.
7) Troops shot and killed one Palestinian, who was armed with an assault rifle, but failed to find the second attacker, the army said.
8) The militant group Hamas later released surveillance video of Netzarim taken before the attack, suggesting an increase in the militant group's ability to plan and carry out such raids.
9) The video, several minutes long and apparently shot from far away, showed the settlements' red-roofed houses, an army truck and a station wagon driving on roads inside and a person riding a bicycle. The video also showed the two attackers practicing throwing grenades and shooting at a plastic soda bottle.
10) The face of the Islamic Jihad attacker, who escaped, was blurred in the video to protect his identity. Militants identified the dead attacker as Samir Fouda, 21, a Hamas militant from Gaza.
11) Gaza is surrounded by a security fence of its own, and none of the more than 100 suicide bombers who have attacked Israelis over the past three years made it past the fence. Israel says it is seeking to replicate that success with the West Bank barrier and has already built 90 miles (145 kilometers) of fences, walls and trenches around the northern part of that territory.
12) But where that section hugs fairly close to the border before the 1967 Middle East war _ dipping slightly into the West Bank to include Jewish settlements _ the new section would extend deep into the West Bank.
13) The map of the new section outlined a series of double fences in some areas to protect Israel's international airport from rocket attacks and a planned ringed road around Jerusalem.
14) Those barriers will surround several West Bank towns, including Qibya, Beit Sira and Bir Nabala, isolating an estimated 70,000 Palestinians, according to some Israeli officials.
15) Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedek-Ashkenazi said defense officials had not finished their estimate of how many Palestinians would be affected, but said 70,000 was much higher than their current assessments.
16) Opponents of the fence accuse Sharon of using it to grab West Bank land and isolate the Palestinians.
17) ``This fence allows Sharon to realize his dreams, to divide up the Palestinian population into small groups, a cantonization,'' said Dror Etkes of the Israeli group Peace Now.
18) The new section of the fence would put 80 percent of Jewish settlers on the Israeli side, security sources said.
19) It would take two more years to complete the fence, and cost another US$230 million, said Amos Yaron, director general of the Defense Ministry.
20) The fence also would contain several unconnected sections around settlements, including Ariel, a community of 18,000 Israelis some 15 miles (24 kilometers) inside the West Bank.
21) This is to allay U.S. fears the barrier would limit Palestinians' freedom of movement and would unilaterally define the border of a future Palestinian state. The United States has said it opposes extending the barrier deep into the West Bank, and the United Nations on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a resolution demanding Israel tear it down.
22) Palestinians say the barrier sabotages any effort to create a viable Palestinian state.
23) ``This wall will create a new fact on the ground, which will make it impossible to reach any political solution,'' said Hassan Abu Libdeh, a spokesman for Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia.
24) Yaron said the fence was designed to keep as many Israelis as possible on the Israel side.
25) The government had earlier released details on the 90 miles (145 kilometers) of constructed barrier, but Friday was the first time it published a map showing the route of the proposed sections.
26) Also Friday, Palestinian doctors said an 11-year-old Palestinian died after being wounded by Israeli gunshots near his Gaza home. Elsewhere in Gaza, a 10-year-old boy was hospitalized after being shot in the stomach. The army said it did not know of the shootings.
27) In northern Gaza, soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian who approached the fence of another settlement, the military said.
28) Two Palestinian men died of wounds from an Israeli missile strike Monday in a Gaza refugee camp, bringing the death toll from the attack to 10. And a 15-year-old Palestinian died of wounds from a battle last week between Israeli troops and gunmen in southern Gaza.



2003-11-11
More than a half million Palestinians to suffer from Israeli security barrier, U.N. says.
(APW_ENG_20031111.0240)
1) A security barrier Israel is building will seriously disrupt the lives of nearly one-third of West Bank Palestinians and carve off 14.5 percent of that territory, according to a new U.N. report.
2) The report, posted Tuesday on a U.N. Web site, says only 11 percent of the planned 687 kilometer (430 mile) chain of walls, razor wire and ditches will actually follow the invisible ``Green Line'' between Israel and the West Bank.
3) The rest will dip into the West Bank _ up to 22 kilometers (14 miles) in some cases _ which the Palestinians claim for their future state.
4) Israel says it is building the barrier to keep out Palestinian militants. The Palestinians accuse Israel of pursuing a hidden agenda and seizing West Bank land they claim for a future state.
5) The planned path for the barrier, also designed to protect Israel's international airport from rocket attacks, would trap at least 274,000 Palestinians between the fence and Israel or pen them into enclaves totally surrounded by wire and concrete.
6) ``More than 400,000 other Palestinians living to the east of the wall will need to cross it to get to their farms, jobs and services,'' said the report, by the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. ``Approximately 680,000 _ 30 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank _ will be directly harmed by the wall.''
7) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denied Tuesday that Israel is unilaterally drawing a border. ``The fence is not a political border,'' he said.
8) The United States has also expressed opposition to parts of the barrier reaching into the West Bank, saying it could harm efforts to set up a Palestinian state. U.S. officials say that some of the money Israel spends on the project could be deducted from the annual U.S. aid package to Israel.
9) Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, currently visiting Washington, said the barrier was not discussed in his talks with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, but if it was raised in meetings with other U.S. officials he would argue that it was a security necessity.
10) ``If any other country lived in our reality, if its international airport was in the range of anti-aircraft missiles, and if a strategic national asset like the international airport was threatened, they would take at least this step,'' he told Israel Army Radio. ``We are doing this because of our deep commitment to the security of Israeli citizens.''
11) Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said the fortifications were proving effective. Along the 150 kilometers (90 miles) completed so far around the northern West Bank, the number of infiltrations into Israel had fallen drastically, he said.
12) ``The purpose of this fence is not to hinder or embitter people,'' he told Israel Radio. ``It is essential to prevent the unending infiltration of terrorists.''
13) Gates along the barrier gave farmers access to their fields, he said, and negotiations were under way to determine financial compensation for those whose land was appropriated to build the barrier.
14) Aid workers said the gates were often closed, preventing farmers from getting to their fields, and diplomats said Palestinian landowners were refusing to accept Israel's money for fear of legitimizing the Israeli confiscation and being branded as collaborators.
15) About 7,000 Palestinians living outside the barrier in the West Bank have been forced to apply for permits to stay in their homes, according to the United Nations.
16) ``What had been a right now becomes a privilege,'' Palestinian human rights lawyer Neta Amar told the radio.
17) (scw,rn)



2003-11-23
Israel's Sharon hints he is considering dismantling isolated West Bank, Gaza settlements
(APW_ENG_20031123.0013)
1) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in a newspaper interview Sunday he is considering unilateral steps to ease tensions with the Palestinians, and Israeli media reported dismantling some West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements by next summer could be part of the plan.
2) The plan, which was heavily leaked to Israeli media, would only go into effect if Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia's new government fails to take the steps Israel deems necessary _ such as disarming militant groups _ to reach a peace deal. Sharon and Qureia are supposed to meet in the coming days.
3) Sharon, in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, did not deny recent media reports that he is drawing up a plan to dismantle isolated settlements and put the residents in newly established towns in the Negev Desert.
4) But he said, ``I would not advise anyone to rush to divide the plots in the new towns.''
5) The media reports follow a speech Sharon made Thursday in which he said he was considering ``unilateral'' steps to ease tensions with the Palestinians. He did not elaborate.
6) On Sunday, Israeli newspapers ran banner headlines that Sharon was planning to dismantle settlements _ among them the Gaza Strip settlement of Netzarim, which in the past he defined as important to Israel as Tel Aviv.
7) A known hard-liner, Sharon has been one of the fiercest supporters of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The communities are built on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and which Palestinians want for a future state.
8) The settlements have been one of the biggest obstacle to a peace deal. Palestinians demand all 220,000 Jewish residents be removed from the land. However, successive Israeli governments have found it difficult to make such a commitment, especially since settlers have significant internal political power and many of them view the West Bank as their biblical birthright.
9) Right-wing factions, which receive a great deal of support from Jewish settlers, hold key posts in Sharon's ruling coalition. Some of those parties have already threatened to bolt.
10) ``The removal of existing settlements will force us to immediately leave the government,'' said Avigdor Lieberman, head of the hawkish National Union party.
11) Seeking to calm anxieties, Sharon told Yediot Ahronot: ``In the end, I have to preserve the government's unity. I see no threat at the moment to the government's existence.''
12) According to several Israeli newspapers, Sharon's plan for unilateral separation from the Palestinians calls for the completion of a barrier being built along the Israel-West Bank border.
13) The planned route of the highly controversial barrier of trenches, razor wire, fences and concrete walls dips in areas deep into the West Bank, confiscating Palestinian land in order to include blocs of Jewish settlements on the ``Israeli side'' of the barrier.
14) Israel would give the Palestinian Authority control over cities in the West Bank, according to media reports, and initiate unprecedented goodwill gestures, such as releasing prisoners and remapping the settlements to meet Israel's security needs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This is when, Israeli media reported, Sharon would dismantle isolated settlements.
15) ``I have been thinking for some time about unilateral steps that will make things easier on Israel and will secure its interests _ without answering the question of whether it is also good for the Palestinians,'' Sharon told Yediot Ahronot.
16) ``I just wanted the public to know that its prime minister never stops thinking about how to get out of the dead end with the Palestinians,'' he said.
17) The Israeli Haaretz newspaper published a map early Monday of isolated settlements that could be removed under Sharon's plan. It marked off 19 settlements _ 16 in the West Bank and three in the Gaza Strip _ that could be dismantled.
18) Meanwhile, Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said he has mapped the illegal outposts in the West Bank, although he refused to say how many such communities have been set up.
19) Israel is under increasing international pressure _ especially from the United States _ to immediately dismantle the outposts which are often made up of just a trailer and an Israeli flag. However, hard-liners live on the hilltop outposts and they have clashed with soldiers and police who have come to remove them. rpm



2003-11-28
Annan: Israel in violation of General Assembly resolution demanding dismantling of security barrier
(APW_ENG_20031128.0448)
1) U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday Israel has failed to comply with a General Assembly demand to halt construction of a security barrier that cuts into the West Bank and has isolated tens of thousands of Palestinians, opening the way for further action against the Jewish state.
2) In a report to the assembly, Annan said Israel failed to comply with a resolution passed by the 191-nation U.N. assembly last month demanding that Israel stop construction of the barrier _ a network of fences, walls, razor wire and trenches _ and dismantle the 90 miles (150 kilometers) it has already erected.
3) ``I have concluded that Israel is not in compliance with the assembly's demand that it 'stop and reverse the construction of the wall in the occupied Palestinian territory,''' Annan wrote in his report.
4) Amid the stalled U.S.-backed peace process, ``the barrier's construction in the West Bank cannot, in this regard, be seen as anything but a deeply counterproductive act,'' the report said.
5) The Palestinians called an emergency General Assembly session last month to address the issue after the more powerful Security Council failed to adopt a similar resolution because of a U.S. veto. Unlike Security Council resolutions, the General Assembly document is not legally binding, though it does not rule out further U.N. action against Israel.
6) Michele Montas, a General Assembly spokesman, said Palestinian representatives had not responded to the report, but the assembly would likely address the issue during a scheduled assembly meeting on Monday.
7) The Palestinians' U.N. representatives did not immediately return a phone call for comment.
8) Member states could ask the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, for an advisory opinion, a possibility to which Israel has strongly objected.
9) Arye Mekel, Israel's deputy U.N. ambassador, urged member states to reject any attempt to seek the International Court's involvement. He said most countries are against the action but also acknowledged ``there is an automatic majority against Israel.''
10) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is facing increasing international pressure to dismantle the barrier which runs roughly parallel to the West Bank's border with Israel, sometimes cutting deep into Palestinian territory to incorporate large Jewish settlements into the ``Israeli'' side.
11) Israel insists the barrier, which it began building last year, is essential to prevent suicide attacks against Israelis and that its construction is purely for security.
12) Palestinians say the structure is a land grab by Israel ahead of possible talks about the borders of a Palestinian state.
13) According to an official map Israel released last month, the barrier would extend some 720 kilometers (450 miles) from north to south and would be completed by 2005.
14) The U.S. administration on Tuesday cut nearly US$300 million from a US$9 billion loan guarantee package promised to Israel, reflecting its disapproval of Israeli actions in the West Bank.
15) Robert Wood, a spokesman for U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte, said he had no immediate comment on Annan's report.
16) Mekel said Israel would not dismantle the barrier ``as long as the Palestinian leadership refuses to pursue a substantial and concentrated effort to confront the terrorists.''
17) ``Israel fundamentally rejects the abhorrent propaganda campaign which seeks to stop and misrepresent the true purpose of the fence,'' Mekel said. ``The fence is an efficient and nonviolent mean of self defense which has proven itself effective in stemming the wave of Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.''
18) Annan's report said the barrier is deepening fragmentation of the West Bank and creating harsh social and economic conditions for Palestinians, who are denied access to jobs, markets, social services and agricultural land.
19) Although much of the barrier runs close to the Green Line _ the Armistice Line of 1949 _ parts of it deviate more than 7.5 kilometers (4.5 miles) from that border.
20) About 56,000 Palestinians already live in enclaves created by the barrier. If the barrier is built as planned, up to 16.6 percent of the West Bank, including the homes of some 220,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem and 17,000 in the rest of West Bank, would fall between the Green Line and the barrier, the report said.
21) Annan said although Israel has the right and duty to protect its people against terrorist attacks, ``that duty should not be carried out in a way that is in contradiction to international law, that could damage the longer-term prospects for peace by making the creation of an independent, viable and contiguous Palestinian state more difficult, or that increases the suffering among the Palestinian people.''



2003-12-08
Justice minister asks for reopening of debate on West Bank security barrier
(APW_ENG_20031208.0428)
1) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed Monday to cooperate with an international court's expected investigation of a contentious West Bank security barrier and Israel's justice minister asked the government to reopen debate on the barrier's planned route deep inside the territory.
2) Israel says the snaking line of trenches, walls, fences and razor wire is needed to keep out suicide bombers, who have killed hundreds of Israelis over the past three years of violence. Palestinians say the barrier's planned route, deep into West Bank land they claim for a future state, is an Israeli land grab.
3) The United States has criticized the barrier's route, and the U.N. General Assembly voted Monday to refer the barrier debate to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
4) Sharon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met Monday before the U.N. decision and agreed to cooperate with the case if it went to the Hague, according to Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin. Israel would tell the court the barrier was needed for self-defense, he said.
5) ``We'll discuss it and present our case in the court,'' Gissin said. ``It will be a discussion of the right of Israel to exist, because the fence is meant to protect our existence.''
6) Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, leader of the centrist Shinui Party, asked the Cabinet to re-examine the barrier's route at its meeting next Sunday, a request that was granted, Gissin said.
7) ``The route that was approved is too long, too expensive, not acceptable to the United States and puts the whole world against us,'' said Lapid, whose party is the second-largest in Sharon's coalition government.
8) The northern 90-mile section of the barrier, which has already been completed, runs mainly along the invisible frontier between Israel and the West Bank. Most of the recently approved 228-mile southern section lies within the West Bank. Another part is slated to cut right down the area's eastern section.
9) The new section in the south would trap 274,000 Palestinians in tiny enclaves and block 400,000 others from their fields, jobs, schools and hospitals, according to a recent U.N. report. The final planned route could gobble up almost half the West Bank.
10) The General Assembly passed a resolution in October calling on Israel to halt construction of the barrier and dismantle the completed section. Israel has ignored the resolution.
11) With the approval of the new U.N. resolution Monday, the question of the wall's legality will be sent to the court at the Hague for an advisory opinion. Such cases usually take between 4 and 15 months, said Ruth Lapidoth, a professor of international law at Jerusalem's Hebrew University.
12) The court's opinion would not be binding, she said.
13) ``It is an advisory opinion ... it is only a question of public relations,'' she said.
14) Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Monday the barrier ``will kill the peace process'' and make it difficult to create a viable Palestinian state.
15) Qureia was speaking on his return from Cairo, where his hopes of persuading militants _ including Hamas and Islamic Jihad _ to stop attacks on Israel were stymied. Queria had hoped to use such an agreement to pressure Israel into signing a cease-fire deal that could kickstart stalled peace talks.
16) ``I believe the discussion was very serious and was constructive,'' he said of the failed talks.
17) Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said the Palestinians still hoped to restart peace talks with Israel, possibly trying to agree on the parameters of a cease-fire agreement and use that to persuade militants to stop attacks.
18) The militants told Qureia: ``Continue your negotiations with the Israelis, if you feel they are ready to reciprocate, come back,'' Shaath said.
19) Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement had insisted on a full cease-fire. Hamas and Islamic Jihad only agreed to halt attacks inside Israel, but said they would continue attacking soldiers and Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel and Fatah both rejected the militants' plan.
20) Israel has demanded the Palestinians crack down on militants, as required under the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan. Qureia has refused, saying he planned to persuade the militants to voluntary stop attacking Israel.
21) As long as Palestinian did not take ``real steps to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure'' the security barrier would continue as planned, Gissin said.
22) ``If Palestinians stop the terror, it could be that it will be possible to change the route or remove the fence altogether,'' he said.
23) Meanwhile, hawkish lawmakers from the ruling Likud party harshly criticized Vice Premier Ehud Olmert on Monday for breaking with party policy and proposing Israel withdraw from most of Gaza and the West Bank and possibly parts of Jerusalem _ even without a peace treaty with the Palestinians.
24) Olmert said in a weekend interview that Israel could not hope to rule over millions of Palestinians and remain a democratic and Jewish state.
25) But Olmert, a key ally of Sharon's, appears to have the support of the prime minister. Political analysts have speculated Olmert was floating a trial balloon for Sharon, and at a Cabinet meeting Sunday, Sharon refused to condemn his deputy.
26) Uzi Landau, a Likud hawk, told journalists outside a Likud parliamentary faction meeting that Olmert's positions contradict those of the party, which has traditionally opposed territorial concessions. The Palestinians would view any withdrawal as a concession and would be less likely to fight terror organizations, Landau said.
27) ``This causes great damage to Israel, to our security and our ability to present our case to the world,'' Landau said.
28) In the interview, Olmert proposed drawing Israel's border with the Palestinians unilaterally, evacuating some Jewish settlements in the process.
29) Olmert said outside the meeting Monday that his proposal for an Israeli withdrawal would ``in no way'' mean a return to the borders prior to the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians demand all this territory.
30) ``I believe there are not a few in the Likud faction who think as I do, and there is no doubt that the great majority of Likud voters think as I do,'' Olmert told reporters after the meeting. rn-dp



2003-12-09
Lawmakers say Sharon tells them he plans to move some settlements
(APW_ENG_20031209.0262)
1) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told lawmakers Tuesday he planned to move some Jewish settlements as part of unilateral measures he is considering toward the Palestinians, according to a lawmaker at the meeting.
2) Sharon's hardline Likud Party has traditionally opposed evacuating Jewish settlements or giving up control of any of the West Bank, which Palestinians claim for a future state, but Sharon has hinted recently he might consider such moves, saying he expects to detail his plans soon.
3) Lawmakers said Sharon told members of parliament's Defense and Foreign Affairs committee he would take unilateral steps before Israel reaches the desperation point in its stalled negotiations with the Palestinians.
4) ``The prime minister said explicitly that we are going to move communities. That's the prime minister's exact expression _ even before his big plan,'' Likud lawmaker Ehud Yatom told Israel Radio.
5) Sharon, a key architect of Israeli settlement expansion for decades, has shied away from saying he would evacuate West Bank settlements, though he has vaguely spoken of ``painful concessions'' for peace.
6) Speaking Monday at an economic conference in Tel Aviv, Sharon said he would propose unilateral steps ``if it becomes clear that our Palestinian partners are not willing to destroy terror organizations and are not prepared for real negotiations to reach an arrangement.''
7) About 220,000 Jews live in 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Some are near main West Bank population centers, while others are close to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, just across the West Bank line.
8) The Palestinians regard the settlements as an illegal encroachment on land they want for a future state and demand that all of them be dismantled.
9) Sharon also told the committee Tuesday he remained committed to the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan, but said there were difficulties implementing it.
10) ``I myself am at this time putting together a series of ideas, perhaps a new program, the same program perhaps that everyone is talking about,'' Israel Radio quoted Sharon as saying.
11) In addition to the settlements, Palestinians are also angry at Israel's construction of a massive security barrier that dips deep into the West Bank. Israel says it needs the barrier to prevent militants from entering Israel: Palestinians say the planned route, which could leave almost half the territory on the ``Israeli'' side, transforms the project into a huge land grab.
12) On Monday, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution turning the barrier issue over to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, for an advisory opinion over its legality.
13) Sharon and Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom met Monday before the U.N. decision and agreed to cooperate with the Hague court if the case went forward, according to Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin. Israel would tell the court the barrier was needed for self-defense, he said.
14) ``We'll discuss it and present our case in the court,'' Gissin said. ``It will be a discussion of the right of Israel to exist, because the fence is meant to protect our existence.''
15) However, there was no indication Israel would abide by any ruling of the court, which experts said would in any case be non-binding.
16) Justice Minister Yosef Lapid called Monday for the Cabinet to revisit the route of the barrier.
17) ``The route that was approved is too long, too expensive, not acceptable to the United States and puts the whole world against us,'' said Lapid, whose Shinui Party is the second largest in Sharon's coalition government.
18) The northern 150-kilometeter (90-mile) section of the barrier, which has been completed, runs mainly along the unmarked line between Israel and the West Bank. Most of the recently approved 380-kilometer (228-mile) southern section lies within the West Bank.
19) That new section would trap 274,000 Palestinians in tiny enclaves and block 400,000 others from their fields, jobs, schools and hospitals, according to a recent U.N. report.
20) Palestinians welcomed Monday's U.N. decision.
21) ``I think it's a very clear message to Israel that ... this kind of attempt to impose unilaterally the borders on the ground or to put the Palestinians in cages doesn't work,'' Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said Tuesday. ``This is not acceptable.''
22) Sharon adviser Dore Gold condemned the U.N. resolution as ``an exercise in total hypocrisy.''
23) Dovish lawmakers called on Sharon during the parliamentary meeting Tuesday to reroute the fence along the invisible barrier between Israel and the West Bank.
24) Meanwhile, Israel's foreign ministry said Shalom planned to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Geneva Wednesday. Israel Radio said Shalom planned to ask Mubarak to help push the peace process forward.
25) (rn-dp)



2003-12-18
Sharon: Israel will disengage from Palestinians and move some settlements if no peace deal in coming months
(APW_ENG_20031218.0563)
1) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday that Israel will take unilateral steps to establish a makeshift border, including relocating Jewish settlements, if Palestinians do not live up to their obligations under a stalled peace plan.
2) Israel would also speed up construction of a contentious security barrier that dips deep into the West Bank and would use it as part of new security lines with the Palestinians intended to make it easier for Israel to defend itself, he said.
3) ``This reduction of friction will require the extremely difficult step of changing the deployment of some of the settlements,'' he said, without naming the settlements that would be moved.
4) Sharon's declaration came as his government faced intense pressure to take action to end three years of violence with the Palestinians that has left many Israelis living in fear and has badly damaged the economy. His popularity has plummeted in recent months.
5) Palestinians and international mediators oppose any unilateral actions, saying that only a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians can end the violence and lead to peace.
6) Palestinians reacted with anger to Sharon's speech.
7) ``This is not a prescription for peace, this is a prescription for more war and more attacks and more isolation and more segregation against the Palestinian people,'' Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said.
8) Hawkish members of Sharon's government also opposed his plan, and pledged to fight any pullback from West Bank settlements.
9) Sharon, the architect of Israel's settlement policy, also came under criticism from the West Bank settlers, who said his plan was a ``plan of illusions that will escalate terror.''
10) ``The dismantling of settlements and expulsion of Jews from their homes will only increase the appetite of the murderers and will bring about the destruction of Zionism,'' said settler spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef.
11) Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said he believes Sharon will give the Palestinians three months to begin complying with the U.S.-backed ``road map'' before imposing his new plan.
12) Sharon told a security conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya that Israel remained committed to the road map, but wanted Palestinians to began dismantling militant groups as required under the peace plan.
13) ``We are interested in conducting direct negotiations, but do not intend to hold Israeli society hostage in the hands of the Palestinians. ... We will not wait for them indefinitely,'' Sharon said. ``If there is no progress toward peace in a matter of months, ``then Israel will initiate the unilateral security step of disengagement from the Palestinians,'' he said.
14) Violence continued early Thursday, as Israeli troops killed at least four Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus.
15) The army moved into the city's ancient bazaar quarter before dawn in a search for wanted Palestinian militants, a military spokeswoman said. Palestinian security sources said one of the dead was unarmed.
16) The military said one man ran toward troops with an explosive device and was shot as he approached, while in a separate incident, three masked men with automatic weapons shot at soldiers from a rooftop and were killed by return fire. The army also reported 10 arrests, including two people it said were planning suicide attacks.
17) ``This was a purely defensive action geared to protect the lives of Israeli citizens,'' said David Baker, an official in Sharon's office.
18) Most attention, however, focused on Sharon.
19) The speech comes after weeks of buildup. Sharon began speaking of undefined ``unilateral steps'' last month, indicating that he might consider moving West Bank Jewish settlements while seizing control of swaths of the West Bank.
20) Much criticism of potential unilateral steps focused on the security barrier under construction.
21) Sharon has said the barrier is meant to keep Palestinian attackers away. But Palestinians say the partially constructed structure amounts to a land grab.
22) Sharon said Thursday construction of the barrier will be accelerated and it, along with the deployment of forces and other physical obstacles will provide security for Israelis.
23) Palestinian and U.S. officials have called on Israel to stick to the road map.
24) The plan envisions an independent Palestinian state by 2005. In the interim, it requires Israel to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and calls on the Palestinians to dismantle militant groups _ steps neither side has taken.
25) Israel has some 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, with about 220,000 Jewish settlers. Settlers have also established dozens of tiny unauthorized outposts in the West Bank in recent years. Roughly 3.5 million Palestinians live in the occupied areas, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
26) Lapid, of the centrist Shinui Party, said Sharon's talk of moving some settlements was ``a major breakthrough.'' Lapid predicted that hard-right members of Sharon's coalition would strongly oppose the move.
27) Labor Party leader Shimon Peres said he was disappointed with the speech.
28) ``I am very frustrated,'' he told Israeli TV. ``In the speech we heard, there is nothing new.''
29) Islamic militants said the speech amounted to a victory for their attacks that have killed almost 900 Israelis in the past three years.
30) ``This is a new language by the Israelis, and this is an evidence that the uprising has created a new fact on the ground,'' said Sheik Nafez Azzam, an Islamic Jihad leader.
31) Speaking before Sharon's speech, Housing Minister Effie Eitam, a strong advocate of the settler movement, said unilateral action would be ``a great victory for terror.''
32) ``The public elected this government, a right-wing government, and if Sharon thinks he can overturn the will of the people this will not happen,'' Eitam told The Associated Press.
33) Some senior members within Sharon's own Likud Party, including Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, say a one-sided pullback would invite more violence.
34) Meanwhile, settlers at the outpost of Migron, north of Jerusalem, welded trailers together and blocked roads on Wednesday ahead of an anticipated army move to evacuate the outpost, where 43 families live. Such unauthorized outposts are to be dismantled under the road map.
35) (pvs-rn/ml)



2003-12-19
In shift, Sharon says some settlements must go With BC-ME-GEN--Israel-Palestinians
(APW_ENG_20031219.0082)
1) In an extraordinary shift of Israeli politics, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the leading patron of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, is talking about dismantling some of them.
2) Sharon floated his once unthinkable idea Thursday at a national security conference, saying he is committed to the U.S.-backed ``road map'' plan. He also called on the Palestinian Authority to disarm militant groups as required by the plan, then enter peace talks.
3) The Palestinians have made clear that they will not forcefully take on the militants, and Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia has tried in vain to instead coax a no-violence pledge from them.
4) In a few months, if this keeps up, Israel will adopt a go-it-alone approach and redraw the West Bank map to the Palestinians' disadvantage, Sharon said. ``Through the 'Disengagement Plan' the Palestinians will receive much less than they would have received through direct negotiations as set out in the road map,'' Sharon said.
5) His speech served as a broad indicator of where Israel is headed: There is a desire to end Israel's presence in the heavily populated Palestinian territories, but little faith in the possibility of doing it by agreement.
6) Instead, Israel would complete its partially built West Bank barrier in a way that gobbles up much of the territory _ perhaps annexing some areas on the ``Israeli'' side and removing settlements on the ``Palestinian'' side and in Gaza. On what is left them, the Palestinians can form a state.
7) ``If they want to dismantle settlements, OK, we will not say no. We'll say that it's a positive step and I hope that it will happen,'' Qureia said.
8) But overall, the Palestinians bitterly oppose Sharon's ideas as a plot to cage them on a patchwork of pitifully little land and cut them off from Jerusalem, which they see as their capital.
9) Settlers and their patrons also can be expected to oppose removal of Jewish settlements from ``the Land of Israel'' _ and some expect the opposition could turn violent.
10) ``The dismantling of settlements and expulsion of Jews from their homes will only increase the appetite of the murderers and will bring about the destruction of Zionism,'' fumed the Settler Council in a statement.
11) Michael Eitan, a lawmaker from Sharon's Likud party, urged the settlers to accept that Sharon was trying to hold on to what Israel can.
12) Israel has some 150 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, with about 220,000 Jewish settlers. Roughly 3.5 million Palestinians live in the occupied areas.
13) Sharon was defense minister when Israel removed its settlements in the Sinai Peninsula before returning it to Egypt. There were protests but no violence then _ but the Sinai did not inspire the same religious fervor as the West Bank, the heartland of biblical Israel.
14) It is a remarkable transformation for the hawkish former general who a few years ago bitterly opposed the creation of even small Palestinian autonomy zones, encouraging renegade settlers to seize West Bank hilltops.
15) He softened his approach somewhat since becoming prime minister in February 2001, supporting a Palestinian a state on some territory. Still, many suspected a ploy to pacify critics while on the ground, settlement continued.
16) Sharon crossed a major line Thursday, parting with the longstanding Israeli position that any transfer of land must be reciprocated by security cooperation, promises of peace, or other Palestinian action.
17) Will Sharon now follow through? He is likely to face stiff opposition from right-wing members of his Cabinet. Further, unilateral steps are opposed by both the Palestinians and the United States, Israel's main ally and patron. Both favor a negotiated settlement.
18) One senior government official said the hope is that the Palestinians will be so peeved that they will be coaxed into cracking down on the militants, which would enable peace talks to commence.
19) The road map calls for a Palestinian state by 2005, but does not outline solutions to complex issues. Indeed, it seems highly unlikely that Sharon could ever meet Palestinian demands for a return of practically all the lands Israel seized in the 1967 Mideast war, including much of the Old City of Jerusalem, site of Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites.
20) Still, Sharon has at least accepted the principle of partitioning the Holy Land, and he is first Israeli prime minister to publicly propose the dismantling of Jewish settlements.
21) What prompted him to change?
22) It appears to be what Israelis call their ``demographic problem.'' The 1.3 million Arab citizens of Israel, combined with 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, almost equal Israel's 5.2 million Jews. Because of the Arabs' far higher birthrate, an Arab majority soon is practically inevitable. Separating Israel from the occupied territories would ensure a Jewish majority under Israeli rule.
23) Already, some Palestinians muse about casting aside the two-state idea, waiting to become a majority, watching Israel wrestle with minority Jewish rule and eventually, with world support, gaining the vote and peacefully taking over the whole country from within.
24) From that perspective, the territorial partition that most Israelis have long viewed as a concession might in fact be vitally necessary for Israel's sake.
25) Sharon is the latest Israeli leader to reach this conclusion. Three years ago, Prime Minister Ehud Barak of the more dovish Labor Party said that if peace talks fail, Israel should simply leave much of the areas. He was subsequently voted out of office.
26) More recently, Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert _ a former hard-line mayor of Jerusalem _ came out in favor of a unilateral pullout from much of the territories.
27) Polls have shown that the idea is popular among a population increasingly fed up with the 36-year occupation and its myriad troubles.
28) One survey published Thursday showed that 51 percent favored a unilateral dismantling of settlements in the West Bank, while 27 percent were opposed; a higher proportion _ 61 percent _ favored a unilateral evacuation of the entire Gaza Strip. The poll of 506 Israelis _ which carried a 4.5 percent margin of error _ showed that even a majority of voters of Sharon's hawkish Likud Party favored the ideas.
29) The demographic argument _ couched in nationalist logic of maintaining a ``Jewish state'' _ appears to be winning over even hawkish Israelis traditionally skeptical about peace efforts. _ _ =
30) EDITOR'S NOTE: Dan Perry is the Associated Press bureau chief in Jerusalem.



2003-12-24
Palestinians cancel meeting to protest Israel's Gaza raid that killed nine Palestinians
(APW_ENG_20031224.0315)
1) Palestinians postponed efforts to set up a leadership summit with Israel to protest a raid on a Gaza refugee camp that killed nine Palestinians, a Palestinian official said Wednesday. The long-delayed meeting was intended to reinvigorate stalled peace efforts.
2) Meanwhile, officials said Israel's government has modified construction of its West Bank separation barrier in a move that could lay out its route much sooner than previously envisioned. The decision could bring even more international criticism of the contentious project.
3) Israeli said it entered the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza on Tuesday morning to search for weapons-smuggling tunnels.
4) The troops pulled out Wednesday morning, leaving homes damaged, streets ripped up and one tunnel destroyed. The raid was marked by heavy fighting between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants.
5) Israeli and Palestinian officials have been trying to arrange a meeting between their prime ministers to restart stalled peace efforts since Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia formed a new government in November.
6) Officials had hoped to hold the summit this week. But Qureia aide Hassan Abu Libdeh canceled a preparatory meeting planned Wednesday with Dov Weisglass, the director of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office in response to the Rafah incursion, according to Palestinian officials.
7) ``When you have (so many) Palestinians killed in one day it is very difficult to hold a meeting on the same day as the funerals,'' said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat.
8) Palestinians have said one of the issues they want addressed in the meeting is the separation barrier. The structure's planned path would gobble up significant parts of the West Bank, where Palestinians say they want to establish an independent state.
9) Officials close to the project said Israel's government has changed its approach to building the barrier in recent days. Contractors have been ordered to build all of the structure simultaneously, and not section-by-section as was previously intended, according to senior officials involved in the project.
10) Although the target date for completion remains 2005, the entire route of the barrier would be at least partially built much sooner, the sources said. So far, about 100 miles (150 kilometers) of the 450-mile (700-kilometer) barrier have been completed.
11) The change is aimed at establishing facts on the ground before the issue is examined at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
12) Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Sharon, noted that the prime minister last week promised to speed up construction of the barrier for security reasons. He denied that this was connected to the Hague court, saying it lacks authority over Israel.
13) ``It's irrelevant,'' Gissin said. ``It's not a court that can enforce decisions ... The fence is a reversible means to avert terrorism, but the lives that are lost are irreversible.''
14) Israel says the barrier _ a complex of fences, walls and trenches snaking around the West Bank _ is intended to keep out suicide bombers. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed in more than 100 suicide bombings since violence erupted more than three years ago.
15) But the project has drawn widespread condemnation for dipping deep into the West Bank in several areas, bringing major Jewish settlements onto the ``Israeli'' side in what the Palestinians call a major land grab.
16) Last week Sharon also said he might dismantle some Jewish settlements as part of a unilateral pullout from parts of the West Bank. Some officials say the tactic is aimed at pressuring the Palestinians to return to peace talks.
17) Earlier this month, the U.N. General Assembly asked the Hague court, the U.N.'s highest legal authority, to consider the legal implications of the barrier. In October, the 191-nation assembly passed a resolution demanding Israel stop the project.
18) Israel began construction of the barrier about a year ago. Israeli officials have said the completed sections have already prevented attacks.
19) Other violence, however, has continued.
20) Nine Palestinians, including three civilians, were killed in the Rafah clashes and more than 40 were wounded. No Israeli soldiers were killed or wounded.
21) The refugee camp is split in two by the Egyptian border, and Israel charges that Palestinians often smuggle weapons into Gaza using makeshift tunnels. Egypt has denied that the tunnels originate on its side of the border.
22) (jf/dp-rpm)



2004-01-18
Israel's inner cabinet to discuss changing route of security barrier to make it defensible in court
(APW_ENG_20040118.0049)
1) Israel's top-level security cabinet on Sunday was to begin discussions on changing the contentious route of a West Bank barrier to try to make it more defensible in an Israeli and an international court, senior government officials said.
2) Israel's acting Attorney General Edna Arbel told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other officials at a meeting last week that the current route of the barrier _ which dips deep into the West Bank in some areas _ would be difficult to defend before Israel's Supreme Court, a senior government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
3) The barrier will also be difficult to defend before the International Court of Justice at the Hague, but Israel's working assessment is that the court will rule against the barrier no matter what its route, the official said.
4) Israel defends the barrier as necessary to defend itself against Palestinian attackers. In 39 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence, some 500 Israelis have been killed in 107 Palestinian suicide attacks, almost all on the Israeli side of the ``Green Line,'' the informal boundary between Israel and the West Bank prior to the 1967 Middle East War.
5) The Palestinians consider the barrier of razor wire, concrete walls, chain-link fences and trenches a land grab. In some places Palestinian land has been confiscated, and in others Palestinian towns and villages have become isolated enclaves, cut off from both Israel and the West Bank.
6) Arbel specifically said an area around Jerusalem _ which cuts tens of thousands of Palestinians off from the city that has been the mainstay of their existence for decades _ and another portion around the Jewish settlement of Ariel, could be problematic, officials said.
7) However, Sharon and other top officials have made it clear that the barrier will not be built along the internationally recognized 1967 border _ which they describe as indefensible and say would send a ``political message.''
8) Israel will not build the barrier along the so-called ``Green Line'' because then the Palestinians will think ``it is an achievement, that they pushed Israel to the Green Line with terrorism,'' a senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
9) In the 1967 Mideast war, Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Jordan and Egypt respectively and has since occupied and settled them. Palestinians want the land for a future state and demand Israel withdraw to the line that existed before the war erupted.
10) Sunday's discussion will focus on Israel's presentation to the world court in the Hague. Israel has until the end of the month to present its arguments ahead of the Feb. 23 hearing on the barrier's legality, a senior government official said.
11) The five top-level cabinet ministers _ headed by Sharon _ will also discuss alternate routes in problematic areas, but will make no decisions on Sunday, the official said.
12) The ministers, he said, are more concerned about an appeal to Israel's Supreme Court made by an Israeli civil rights group regarding the barrier's legality, the official said. A three-judge panel will hear the appeal in the coming month.
13) Justice Minister Tommy Lapid _ one of the five ministers in the inner cabinet _ has said that the current route was hurting Israel and would spell disaster in the Hague. He has called for the route to be changed.
14) Interior Minister Avraham Poraz _ a member of Lapid's Shinui Party _ said the current route of the fence ``causes us a great deal of damage internationally, costs us a great deal of money ... and hurts our claim that this is a security fence.''
15) ``We have to bring this fence back to sanity. This is a fence that has to move more or less along the Green Line, it can cut inside (the West Bank) a few kilometers here and there,'' Poraz told Israel Radio.
16) But Tourism Minister Benny Elon of the hawkish National Union Party said the state prosecutor's office was cynically exploiting the judicial argument to try to change a government decision. He said Sharon should not place much importance on the World Court in the Hague.
17) In the Gaza Strip, thousands of Palestinian workers could not get to work in Israel on Sunday. The army lifted a closure that it clamped on the coastal area following a suicide bombing last week that killed four people at the main crossing point into Israel.
18) Stringent checks _ sometimes forcing the laborers to remove clothing _ kept people waiting for hours, and many turned away frustrated and tired after hours of standing in the cold morning air, witnesses said.
19) Just a few hundred Palestinians _ of the 4,000 who have permits to work in Israel _ made it to work on Sunday, Palestinian security officials said.
20) The army did not immediately comment on the crowding at the Erez crossing point. rpm-pe


Israel might change route of barrier because of Palestinian humanitarian hardships
(APW_ENG_20040118.0241)
1) Israel might change the route of its planned barrier in the West Bank because of hardships it causes Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday.
2) The partially completed barrier, which Israeli says is designed to keep suicide bombers and other attackers out of Israel, cuts deep into the West Bank in several places, encircles Palestinian towns and villages and cuts tens of thousands off from farmlands and vital services.
3) Palestinians charge that the real purpose of the barrier is to annex large parts of the West Bank to Israel and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. A U.N. report found that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face hardships because of the barrier.
4) On Sunday, Sharon and four senior Cabinet ministers discussed the route of the barrier as part of Israel's preparations for a Feb. 23 hearing by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, on the legality of the project.
5) Sharon said that the barrier has already been successful in preventing Palestinian attacks, but said in a statement by his office that it was ``not satisfactory'' in humanitarian terms.
6) Sharon told the ministers that ``additional thought is needed to allow for the possibility of changing the route'' for humanitarian reasons, the statement said.
7) Sharon said that he would not alter the route of the barrier ``as a result of Palestinian or U.N. demands, including those from the court.'' However, domestic considerations could lead to changes.
8) Security officials said Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who opposes changing the route, said he would agree to setting up a panel in his ministry to handle Palestinian appeals.
9) Israel insists that the barrier is a temporary security measure, but its estimated cost of more than US$1 billion and its solid components _ trenches, walls, fences and electronic sensors _ look to many like a border.
10) Also, Sharon has warned that if peace talks remain frozen in the coming months, he would impose a boundary on the Palestinians, indicating that the route of the planned barrier would be the basis of the new line.
11) Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip for a state, with its capital in east Jerusalem _ all captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.
12) The first section of the barrier, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) in the northern sector, has been completed, and Israeli security officials say it has already impeded potential suicide bombers from that part of the West Bank.
13) Cabinet Minister Tommy Lapid of the centrist Shinui Party has called for changes in the route for political reasons, saying that the current plan is indefensible in the world court and also in a case pending before Israel's Supreme Court.
14) An Israeli official said the acting attorney general told Sharon that the state prosecutor would have difficulty in defending the current plan before the Israeli court.
15) Many dovish critics of the government say Israel should confine its security barrier to the pre-1967 cease-fire line between Israel and the West Bank, but Israel has never recognized that as a border.
16) Cabinet Minister Dan Naveh of Sharon's Likud Party said building a barrier along the old line would be acknowledgment that it constitutes a legal border.
17) Also Sunday, Sharon signed orders for the dismantling of three unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank. As part of the stalled U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan, Israel is to dismantle dozens of outposts set up by settlers in recent years. Both sides have failed to comply with the first requirements of the peace plan.
18) Also Sunday, thousands of Palestinian workers waited in long lines to cross from Gaza into Israel. The army lifted a closure it clamped on the impoverished strip following a suicide bombing last week that killed four people at the main crossing point into Israel.
19) Stringent checks kept people waiting for hours, and many turned away frustrated and tired after hours of standing in line, witnesses said.
20) In all, 14,000 workers and 4,000 merchants from Gaza have permits to enter Israel.
21) In Nablus, Israeli troops arrested Ahmed Bseisi, the local leader of the Islamic Jihad. Witnesses said soldiers pulled Bseisi and two other men out of a taxi and took them away.
22) (pvs-ml/kl)



2004-02-08
Israel to shorten West Bank barrier route, hopes to ease Palestinian lives, travel restrictions
(APW_ENG_20040208.0195)
1) Israel has decided to shorten the route of its West Bank separation barrier in hopes of easing hardships on the Palestinians and receiving U.S. support for the contentious structure, a senior aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Sunday.
2) The announcement came ahead of two legal challenges to the barrier. On Monday, the Israeli Supreme Court is to hear a case brought by a civil rights group that is arguing the barrier infringes on human rights.
3) Later this month, the world court in the Netherlands is to open hearings into the barrier's legality. The U.N. General Assembly, with the backing of the Palestinians, has asked the court for a nonbinding, advisory opinion on the matter.
4) Israel says it is building the barrier to block Palestinian suicide bombers. But Palestinians condemn it as a land grab and violation of international law. Many countries, including the United State, have objected to the barrier's route, which dips deep into the West Bank in some areas.
5) Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Sharon, said the changes are meant to garner U.S. support for the barrier. Israel is concerned that after the world court case, the issue could reach the U.N. Security Council, Shoval said.
6) The United States, which can veto council resolutions, could help protect Israel from in the council, Shoval said. ``We want as much as possible to draw a line with the Americans,'' he said.
7) The barrier has virtually enclosed some Palestinian population centers, making it difficult for residents to reach jobs, schools, farmland and medical services in the West Bank.
8) Palestinian Cabinet minister Jamal Shobaki said the Palestinian Authority will oppose the barrier if it infringes ``even one centimeter'' on lands Palestinians want for a future state.
9) ``If they want to build a wall, they must do it on the Green Line,'' Shobaki said, referring to the boundary that existed before Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war.
10) In other developments, Israeli forces on Sunday killed a fugitive from the radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. In all, troops killed three Palestinian militants, including an Islamic Jihad leader, as well as a 12-year-old boy, over the weekend.
11) About 1,500 Palestinians attended the funeral of Aziz Shami, the Islamic Jihad leader killed in an Israeli missile strike on Saturday. Hoisting black banners and Palestinian flags, scores of armed men from Islamic Jihad's military wing vowed to avenge the death of their Gaza City leader.
12) The violence came days after Sharon said he would evacuate 17 of 21 Gaza Strip settlements as well as some West Bank settlements. Sharon has said he would carry out his plan, aimed at reducing friction with the Palestinians, if peace efforts fail in the coming months.
13) In Cairo, Egypt, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia said he expects a long-delayed summit with Sharon before the end of the month. The meeting would be a critical step to restarting peace talks, which have been stalled for months.
14) Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi said Sunday that Sharon's proposed withdrawal from Gaza is the result of Palestinian resistance. ``Sharon's step is a declaration of defeat,'' he said.
15) Israeli security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Israel plans to step up military pressure on the Palestinians in the near future to ensure the evacuation plan is not perceived as a defeat. They did not say whether the latest attacks over the weekend were part of this strategy.
16) The changes in the West Bank barrier's route will be made mostly around the town of Qalqilya and other areas where Palestinian population centers are to be surrounded, Shoval said. He said this could include taking down or moving concrete barriers that have already been erected.
17) Qalqilya, a West Bank town just over the boundary with Israel, has been a focus of the dispute. The town is largely encircled by the barrier, and its only exit is through a military checkpoint.
18) Israel wants to ``make things as easy as possible for Palestinians who need to get to their fields (and) to have less checkpoints,'' Shoval said. He declined to elaborate on the changes.
19) In some areas, Shoval said, Israel will move the barrier closer to the pre-1967 border.
20) ``The starting point is not necessarily the Green Line. The starting point is really how to get the best security ... and how to avoid making life difficult for those 50,000 Palestinians who find themselves ... on the wrong side of the fence,'' he said.
21) Shoval said the new route would certainly make the barrier shorter, but could not confirm a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the structure would be shortened by 100 kilometers (60 miles). The barrier, which is about one-fourth complete, had been expected to stretch about 750 kilometers (450 miles).
22) The new plan will be presented to U.S. Mideast envoys who are to arrive in Israel this week, Shoval said.
23) Sharon's spokesman, Assaf Shariv, said the decision was also made in part due to a request by Israel's Supreme Court. He did not elaborate.
24) The court is to begin reviewing a challenge to the barrier on Monday brought by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. Yoav Loeff, a spokesman for the human rights group, said the government's proposed changes are ``very vague.''
25) Meanwhile, two Israeli Arab political activists were indicted for allegedly spying and planning attacks for the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Israeli media said.
26) The suspects, brothers Ghassan and Sirhan Atmala, were senior activists in Balad, an Arab political party, and were arrested several weeks ago, Army Radio reported. Party officials denied any wrongdoing. rpm-jmf



2004-02-09
Israeli Supreme Court hears case against West Bank security barrier
(APW_ENG_20040209.0355)
1) The Supreme Court heard petitions from two Israeli human rights groups against the West Bank separation barrier Monday, a day after the government said it would change the route to minimize hardship for Palestinians.
2) The rights groups argue that any construction on occupied land is illegal and that the barrier violates human rights by disrupting lives of thousands of Palestinians.
3) ``It's a matter of building a fence which breaches the human rights of Palestinians along its path,'' Avigdor Feldman, lead lawyer for the Center for the Defense of the Individual, said after the hearing.
4) Government attorney Michael Blass told the court that the barrier's route is still not complete and that every effort will be made to help Palestinians cut off by the barrier.
5) ``We are learning lessons, the whole thing is dynamic,'' he said. ``We have to help them, solutions will have to be found.''
6) The case was heard two weeks before the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands is to examine the legality of the barrier.
7) Supreme Court Chief Justice Aharon Barak, who presided over Monday's hearing, said the three-judge panel would issue a ruling ``as soon as possible.'' He didn't say whether the decision would come before the case in The Hague.
8) Barak said he was considering sending the matter to a larger panel, a step that is usually taken for the court's most serious cases.
9) Any Israeli court decision could affect Israel's case before the world court, which is to issue an advisory ruling at the request of the U.N. General Assembly.
10) Israel insists that the barrier is necessary to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers, who have killed hundreds during three years of violence. Palestinians say it is a land grab aimed at preventing them from creating a state.
11) The barrier is seen as part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's emerging plan to separate Israelis and Palestinians. Sharon has said he will carry out other parts of his plan, including the removal of most Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, if peace efforts fail in the coming months.
12) Sharon, who has come under criticism both from the Palestinians and within his own government for his disengagement plan, canceled all events on his schedule Monday after being diagnosed with kidney stones, his office said.
13) A spokesman said Sharon, 75, was to undergo treatment later Monday and was expected back at work on Wednesday.
14) Settlers in Gaza have pledged to fight a withdrawal. On Monday, leaders of the 7,800 Gaza settlers said they were preparing to move 500 families into the area to thwart Sharon's plan.
15) A senior Palestinian official said Monday that Yasser Arafat's government is considering declaring an independent state if Israel tries to impose a boundary on the Palestinians. The state would include the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem.
16) The official, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said the proposal was raised at a meeting of Palestinian leaders over the weekend. Abed Rabbo, who is close to Arafat, said many of those present supported the idea but did not say whether Arafat was in favor.
17) However, other participants said the proposal was only raised informally.
18) An aide to Sharon, Zalman Shoval, said that Israel could react by annexing disputed land if the Palestinians declare a state unilaterally.
19) The Palestinians say that if Israel wants a barrier, it should be built on territory that Israel held before seizing the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.
20) The route of the 440-mile (750-kilometer) barrier, which is about one-quarter built, dips into the West Bank and encircles several Palestinian towns and villages. It has cut tens of thousands of Palestinians off from farmland, schools and social services.
21) With the court challenges looming, Israeli officials have said this week that they plan to change the route of the barrier to ease the burden on the Palestinians.
22) Giora Eiland, the head of Sharon's National Security Council, said Israel failed to forecast how much the barrier would disrupt Palestinians' daily lives and said the route must be changed, the Haaretz daily reported. Eiland made the comments Sunday at a conference in Munich, Germany, the paper said.
23) Israeli security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that only minor changes in existing sections are planned.
24) Haaretz said Israel was considering alternative roads, tunnels and gates to ease the movement of Palestinians throughout the West Bank.
25) In Monday's Supreme Court cases, the Center for the Defense of the Individual asked the court to order that the barrier be rerouted along Israel's pre-1967 boundary with the West Bank, said Feldman.
26) The court also heard a petition from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, demanding that the army drop its demand that Palestinians trapped by the fence apply for permits to cross it.
27) The association says thousands of Palestinians are caught in a no-man's land, and some have been declared illegal residents in their own homes.
28) Meanwhile, a new poll found that Palestinian support for violence and suicide bombings against Israel has dropped sharply during more than three years of fighting.
29) Only 35 percent of respondents support continuing the violence, down from 43 percent in November and 73 percent in November 2000. The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion poll surveyed 500 Palestinian adults and had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
30) In new violence, two Palestinians were killed by Israeli troops in Gaza and another in the West Bank, Palestinians said. One of the Palestinians was identified as Khalil Bawadi, a 22-year-old member of Hamas. The army said it had no part in the man's death.
31) The second Palestinian was a 17-year-old boy, the Palestinians said. No further details were immediately available.
32) In the West Bank, Palestinians said Ahmed Mahadi, 26, with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed in a shootout with Israeli soldiers near the town of Jenin. The military said Mahadi fired at construction workers near an Israeli settlement, wounding a civilian, and was hit by return fire from soldiers. jmf-kl



2004-02-12
Israel decides not to attend world court hearings on West Bank barrier
(APW_ENG_20040212.0530)
1) Israel decided Thursday not to attend world court hearings on the West Bank separation barrier, saying the judges don't have the authority to rule on this case.
2) Palestinian officials said Israel's decision to stay away is an admission that the barrier is illegal and indefensible.
3) However, Israel won't remain entirely on the sidelines in the closely watched case, which begins Feb. 23 at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. The Foreign Ministry is dispatching spokespeople, hundreds of Israeli demonstrators plan to fly to the Netherlands, and an Israeli rescue service is sending the skeleton of a Jerusalem bus mangled in a Palestinian suicide bombing.
4) Israel says it needs the barrier _ fences, trenches and walls that could run for up to 750 kilometers (440 miles) _ to keep out Palestinian attackers.
5) The Palestinians charge that the barrier constitutes a land grab, since it cuts deep into the West Bank at points to include several Jewish settlements on the ``Israeli'' side, and it disrupts the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians who can't reach jobs, schools and farmland.
6) Israel Channel Two TV reported Thursday that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided to shorten the planned route and that the settlements of Kedumim, Emmanuel and Karnei Shomron would now be left on the ``Palestinian'' side of the barrier. The route of the barrier near Ariel, the second largest West Bank settlement, remains unclear, the report said.
7) Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, leader of the moderate Shinui Party, said he proposed to Sharon to shorten the barrier by nearly one-third, to save money and construction time. ``I understand that the prime minister has accepted this position, although I'm not sure he's accepting precisely what I'm advising,'' Lapid said.
8) In December, the U.N. General Assembly asked the world court, its highest tribunal, to issue an advisory ruling on the legality of the barrier. Israel and the Palestinians attach great importance to the case, because a ruling could set the stage for a binding U.N. Security Council decision.
9) So far, 44 U.N. member states, as well as the Palestinians, the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic States, have submitted briefs.
10) Israel challenged the court's authority to rule on the barrier, arguing that the issue is being manipulated for political ends. Israel says the United States, Britain, Germany, Australia and Canada and others have presented similar arguments.
11) The decision to stay home was made Thursday by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and five senior Cabinet ministers.
12) Alan Baker, the Israeli Foreign Ministry legal adviser, said that ``after having examined all the written statements that were submitted by other countries, Israel does not feel it has anything to add.''
13) However, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said it will send spokespeople to the court.
14) The Israeli rescue service ZAKA said it is flying the charred frame of a Jerusalem bus blown up by a Palestinian suicide bomber to The Hague. Eleven people were killed and dozens wounded in the bombing last month.
15) ZAKA members collect body parts of victims in the aftermath of suicide bombings. The rescue service said ZAKA volunteers would deploy outside the court, alongside the bus, and talk to passers-by about their work.
16) An Israeli grass roots group, meanwhile, is arranging for discount flights to The Hague for Israeli demonstrators. Shahar Ervin, the director of the group, the Citizens Coalition, said more than 600 have approached him over the last two days.
17) Palestinian officials said Israel's decision not to go was an admission of failure.
18) ``This is a recognition that the Israelis cannot face the international community and international law and justice,'' said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
19) The Palestinians will argue before the court that the barrier is illegal because it is built on occupied land. Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. It began building the barrier in response to an onslaught of suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis since 2000.
20) (kl/ml)



2004-02-13
Route changes in West Bank barrier could have helped Israel's case before world court, Israeli legal adviser says
(APW_ENG_20040213.0422)
1) Redrawing the route of the West Bank separation barrier might have silenced criticism that it's eating up Palestinian land and bolstered Israel's case at upcoming world court hearings on the issue, a government legal adviser said on Friday.
2) The barrier dips deep into the West Bank in places, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is reportedly ready to push sections of it closer to Israel's boundary with the territory. A group of U.S. envoys is expected to press him on the matter during a visit to the region next week.
3) Israel decided on Thursday not to attend oral hearings at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, rejecting the judges' authority to level an advisory ruling on the barrier's legality. Hearings are set to start on Feb. 23.
4) ``If we had changed the route earlier it could have had an effect (on the hearing). It would have taken the wind out of their (the opponents') sails,'' said Irit Kahan, head of the international division in Israel's attorney general's office.
5) ``Already some time ago, the government realized that the route of the fence was problematic, but they didn't begin to change it in time for the court discussion,'' Kahan told The Associated Press.
6) ``The issue is not the fence itself, but the route of the fence,'' Kahan said.
7) The Palestinian U.N. observer, Nasser Al-Kidwa, said in a statement Friday that Israel's refusal to come to the court shows it can't defend the project.
8) ``Israel's decision not to participate in the ICJ hearings on the legal consequences of Sharon's Wall is an admission of guilt,'' said Al-Kidwa, who will lead the Palestinian delegation at the proceedings.
9) Israel says the barrier is meant to keep Palestinian suicide bombers and other attackers out of its towns and cities. The project is about one-quarter complete and is to stretch up to 750 kilometers (440 miles).
10) Palestinians say the massive string of obstacles is part of a plan to seize chunks of land they want for a future state and say that it cuts tens of thousands of Palestinians off from jobs, schools, medical clinics and farmland.
11) Israel TV's Channel Two reported Thursday that Sharon has decided to shorten the planned route and change its course. The report said the barrier's path would no longer cut deep into the West Bank to wrap around three of the West Bank's large Jewish settlements: Emmanuel, Karnei Shomron and Kedumim _ home to more than 10,000 Israelis.
12) Sharon's office confirmed the prime minister is considering changes to the route but refused to elaborate.
13) Palestinians worry the barrier will crush chances to build a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
14) Recently Sharon announced plans to unilaterally withdrawal settlers and soldiers from some of those areas, but the plan would leave Palestinians with much less land than they seek.
15) Sharon said he would put that program into action in the coming months if there is no progress on the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan. Both sides have failed to meet the plan's requirements since it was launched last June.
16) A team of U.S. envoys is to meet Sharon here next week to discuss his unilateral pullout plans.
17) On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington supports the dismantling of settlements, but added that the team of visiting representatives will be looking for specifics on Sharon's ideas.
18) The visiting envoys _ Elliot Abrams, Stephen Hadley and William Burns _ are also likely to discuss the separation barrier and its route, which the United States has criticized. jak



2004-02-19
Sharon lashes out at world court hearings on West Bank barrier
(APW_ENG_20040219.0641)
1) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday criticized the upcoming world court hearings on Israel's West Bank separation barrier, saying they were an expression of the world's cynical disregard for victims of terrorism.
2) Israel will speed up the construction of the barrier, Sharon said, arguing that it has proven to be an effective shield against Palestinian militants who have killed hundreds of Israelis in bombings and shootings in more than three years of fighting.
3) Also Thursday, an Israeli army reserves colonel familiar said Israel could build a far less intrusive barrier without compromising on security.
4) The officer, Shaul Arieli, estimated that the barrier, in its current route, will disrupt the lives of 800,000 Palestinians and chop off 15 percent of the West Bank.
5) The estimate is in line with figures published by the Israeli human rights group B'tselem. A U.N. report on the barrier gives a somewhat lower estimate, but _ unlike the colonel and B'tselem _ does not count Arab residents of the larger Jerusalem area.
6) The Israeli Defense Ministry's web site on the barrier does not address the issue of how many Palestinians would be affected, and Raanan Gissin, a Sharon adviser, declined comment.
7) On Monday, the International Court of Justice in The Hague begins hearings on the legality of the barrier, at the request of the U.N. General Assembly.
8) Many Western countries have sided with Israel's claim that the world court does not have the authority to hear the case, but have also criticized the barrier's planned route, which dips deep into the West Bank in many areas. The barrier is to run for up to 740 kilometers (450 miles). About one-third has been completed.
9) Israel has presented written arguments, but is not sending a legal team.
10) Sharon said Thursday that ``there is no better example of the cynicism of the world than the decision to hold political discussions in the international court in The Hague, discussions against the fence that will save human lives.''
11) Palestinians say the barrier amounts to a land grab. Israel says the obstacles are necessary to keep out Palestinian militants, but is considering some route changes to reduce hardships.
12) The barrier should be moved much closer to the ``Green Line,'' the invisible boundary between Israel and the West Bank, said the army colonel, Arieli, who is touring with a computer map presentation of an alternate route.
13) His proposed route ``doesn't harm the Palestinians, doesn't annex Palestinian territories, it only protects Israelis,'' he said.
14) Under the current route, about 400,000 Palestinians would be imprisoned in enclaves and another 400,000 would be cut off from jobs, schools, fields and municipal services, said Arieli, who helped oversee an Israeli troop withdrawal from West Bank towns as part of interim peace agreements in the 1990s.
15) He said the current barrier route will grab about 900 square kilometers (360 square miles) of the West Bank, or about 15 percent of the territory.
16) Earlier this year, a U.N. report gave a similar assessment, saying the barrier will carve off 14 percent of the West Bank, trap 274,000 Palestinians in tiny enclaves and block 400,000 others from their fields, jobs, schools and hospitals. lc-kl



2004-02-20
Israel to begin removing small section of West Bank barrier
(APW_ENG_20040220.0577)
1) Israel will take down a section of the West Bank separation barrier that had isolated a Palestinian town, an official said Friday, just days before world court hearings on the legality of the divider.
2) The removal of the 9-kilometer (6-mile) section appears intended to help defuse criticism over the route, which at times veers several kilometers (miles) into the West Bank and disrupts the lives of thousands of Palestinians.
3) Workers will begin Sunday to remove the barrier section that cuts off the town of Baka al-Sharkia from the rest of the West Bank, a security official said on condition of anonymity. Another barrier, to the west of the town, will remain in place. Israel will open a gate to allow passage to a ``sister'' town, Baka al-Gharbia which is in Israel, the official said.
4) The International Court of Justice, in The Hague, Netherlands, begins hearings on Monday. Israel has come under growing pressure _ including domestic legal challenges _ to reroute the barrier to reduce hardship for the Palestinians.
5) Meanwhile, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath leveled rare public criticism of Arab allies, saying some Arab countries are not doing enough to back the Palestinian campaign against the barrier before the world court.
6) Seventeen countries are scheduled to present verbal arguments to the court next week, including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Algeria, as well as the Arab League.The United States, the European Union and Israel will not appear before the judges. Earlier, 44 countries presented written arguments.
7) ``I feel so sorry that many of the Arab countries have not even sent a written statement to the court against the wall,'' Shaath said. He did not single out any Arab country.
8) Israel began building its West Bank separation barrier more than a year ago and argues it is needed to stop suicide bombers and other attackers from reaching Israeli towns and villages. The barrier is to run up to 740 kilometers (450 miles), and about one-third has already been built.
9) The upcoming sections would cut deep into the West Bank in places to wrap around Jewish settlements, and would separates thousands more Palestinians from farmland, schools and jobs. Palestinians say Israel is grabbing land and that the barrier would make a Palestinian state impossible.
10) Israeli security officials said State Attorney Edna Arbel has rejected portions of the route that she believes cannot be defended in court. Arbel has ordered changes both in the section already built and in the planned route, the officials said, on condition of anonymity.
11) Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, confirmed that the state attorney has become the final arbiter, but would not discuss the changes she has ordered.
12) ``If changes need to be made, they are made based on her opinion, on whether it will stand up in court,'' Gissin said.
13) He said Israel is looking for ``creative'' ways to solve problems caused to the Palestinian population by the barrier.
14) In at least one case, the Defense Ministry is trying to arrange school buses for Palestinian children who are having difficulty getting to and from school, a security official said.
15) Sharon has said he will speed up construction of the barrier as part of his so-called disengagement plan, which could include the removal of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
16) Israel's vice premier, Ehud Olmert, Sharon's top deputy, said Friday Israel would remove West Bank settlements ``wherever possible,'' but leave major communities in place. His comments indicated that the pullback could be on a larger scale than the prime minister initially indicated.
17) Sharon has said he will remove 17 of 21 Gaza Strip settlements as part of his plan, which will be implemented if the sides fail to make progress on the U.S.-backed road map to peace. About 7,500 Israelis lives in the Gaza Strip, and another 230,000 are scattered in the West Bank.
18) ``What is clear is that we will evacuate: in a process of disengagement that will widen, not only along the Gaza Strip, obviously, but will also expand into the West Bank wherever possible,'' Olmert told Israel Radio.
19) On Thursday, Sharon briefed three senior U.S. envoys on the plan, but reportedly did not present maps. Sharon said he would coordinate his plan with the United States, which officially remains committed to the road map.
20) Olmert said ``major (West Bank) settlement blocs have to stay under our control.''
21) ``The Americans understand this ... the argument is over all those areas where the Jewish settlements are mixed in with the Palestinian population in a way that causes confrontation and damage to both sides,'' he added.
22) Palestinian officials have said they would welcome any dismantling of settlements, but suspect Israel is avoiding negotiations to try to keep large parts of the West Bank. rpm-kl



2004-02-21
Thousands of Palestinians protest Israel's West Bank barrier
(APW_ENG_20040221.0325)
1) Thousands of Palestinians staged protests of Israel's West Bank barrier Saturday and Israel prepared to remove a small stretch of its fencing just two days before the start of world court hearings on the legality of the structure.
2) In one of the largest public outpourings of anger over the barrier, Palestinians across the West Bank fired guns in the air and shouted anti-barrier chants _ the first of several protests planned to coincide with the opening of hearings on Monday at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.
3) On Sunday, Israeli workers are to begin removing a part of the barrier _ about 8 kilometers (5 miles) of fencing, razor wire and trenches _ that has isolated the Palestinian town of Baka al-Sharkia from the rest of the West Bank for more than a year, Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi said.
4) That section of fence is to be removed now that workers have completed a series of concrete walls and fences separating the town's western side from Israel, she said. A gate will allow passage to a ``sister'' town, Baka al-Gharbia, just inside the boundary with Israel.
5) ``Since there is no intention to annex land or annex Palestinians to Israel, we are removing this part of the fence,'' Niedak-Ashkenazi said.
6) The move appeared aimed at softening international criticism of Israel ahead of the world court hearings. Israel has come under increasing pressure _ even domestic legal challenges _ to reroute the barrier, which dips deep into the West Bank in places.
7) The complex of walls, fences, razor wire and watchtowers has become one of the most contentious issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel says the barrier is needed to stop suicide bombers and other attackers from entering Israeli towns and cities.
8) Palestinians are outraged because parts of the barrier that cut into the West Bank disrupt the lives of thousands. They also worry it will make it impossible to build an independent Palestinian state on the territory.
9) Construction of the barrier began more than a year ago and about a third of its eventual 740 kilometers (450 miles) is complete.
10) In later stages of the project, the barrier complex is to cut even deeper into the West Bank to wrap around Jewish settlements. That would separate thousands more Palestinians from their farmland, schools and jobs.
11) Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia dismissed Israel's route adjustment and said all parts of the barrier built on West Bank land must be removed. ``We do not approve of even 1 millimeter of this wall that falls on our land,'' he said.
12) The largest Palestinian demonstration Saturday was in the city of Nablus, where 2,000 people, including dozens of gunmen in black ski masks, marched through the streets.
13) The noisy display was punctuated by the rattle of gunshots fired into the air.
14) In the West Bank towns of Ramallah and Jenin, hundreds of people, including women and children, carried banners with slogans against the barrier.
15) Near Qalqiliya, a Palestinian town that sits on the boundary with Israel and is surrounded by walls and fences, about 1,000 people protested. ``Peace without the wall,'' some shouted.
16) Palestinians are planning several demonstrations and general strikes Monday as a backdrop to the opening of The Hague proceedings. Church bells will be rung and sirens sounded across the Palestinian territories as a moment of silence is observed.
17) The International Court of Justice is the highest judicial body of the United Nations and took on the case at the request of the U.N. General Assembly. Its ruling on the barrier's legality is nonbinding, but both sides have invested great effort in the case because the outcome is likely to influence international opinion.
18) Also Saturday, Israeli officials close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon left for Britain to update Prime Minister Tony Blair's aides on Israel's so-called unilateral disengagement plan that could include the removal of several Gaza Strip and West Bank settlements, Israeli media reported.
19) In violence Saturday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian man in an off-limits military zone near the fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip, the military said. An army spokesman said he did not know if the man was armed. Palestinian officials said he was a policeman. rpm/jak



2004-02-23
Arafat calls on Palestinians to make voices heard against West Bank barrier
(APW_ENG_20040223.0070)
1) Yasser Arafat urged Palestinians on Monday to ``make their voices heard'' against Israel's separation barrier, as the world court was holding a first day of hearings on the legality of the partition.
2) In a televised speech, Arafat said the barrier, which at times cuts deep into the West Bank, is meant to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. He also said that the barrier would not bring Israel peace and security.
3) Israel says the barrier is a last line of defense against suicide bombers, who have killed 463 people in 110 attacks in more than three years of fighting. On Sunday, a Palestinian bomber killed eight Israelis and wounded dozens on a Jerusalem bus.
4) The Palestinians argue that the barrier is a land grab, and demand it be taken down. Protest marches against the barrier were planned across the West Bank and Gaza Strip later Monday.
5) In his speech, broadcast from his West Bank headquarters, Arafat urged his people to ``make their voices heard against this wall of expansion and annexation.'' kl


Thousands of Palestinians march in protest against separation barrier
(APW_ENG_20040223.0474)
1) Palestinians held coordinated protests _ occasionally rebuffed by Israeli tear gas _ throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip on Monday aimed at persuading the world court to rule against Israel's separation barrier.
2) Thousands responded to Yasser Arafat's call to ``make their voices heard'' on the first day of the court hearing. Some of the marchers burned Israeli flags, destroyed fake walls or threw stones at Israeli soldiers.
3) Palestinians say the partially built barrier, which would dip deep into the West Bank along its planned 740 kilometer (450 mile) route, is an Israeli effort to take land they want for a Palestinian state. The sections already built make it hard for thousands to reach jobs, schools, fields and hospitals.
4) ``We should build love and peace not walls,'' said Salam Mashal, 50-year-old computer engineer, as she marched in the center of Ramallah.
5) Israel says the barrier, a snaking web of walls, razor wire, patrol roads, watchtowers and electric fences, is crucial to stopping Palestinian suicide bombers, such as the one who killed eight Israelis on a Jerusalem bus on Sunday morning.
6) ``I'd rather the Palestinians be inconvenienced and my children be alive,'' said Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. ``This is a lifesaving fence.''
7) Early Monday, as the International Court of Justice in the Hague began hearings on the barrier, Israel towed the twisted remains of the bombed bus next to an 8-meter-(25-foot-) high section of wall separating the West Bank town of Abu Dis from Jerusalem.
8) Later in the day, the Palestinian protests rang out in towns and cities.
9) ``The wall must fall,'' read one placard. ``Sharon's hatred wall,'' read another.
10) In Nablus, protesters constructed an 2 1/2-meter (8-foot-) high cardboard mockup of a concrete section of the fence. Then men wearing construction helmets and wielding hammers joined masked militants swinging rifles in knocking down the cardboard barrier. In Gaza, they burned another mock wall in effigy, and in Hebron, they burned Israeli flags.
11) In Bethlehem and Abu Dis, protesters threw stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas. Soldiers fired tear gas near the towns of Jenin and Tulkarem to keep thousands of marchers from coming too close to the barrier.
12) The demonstrations were organized by the Palestinian Authority, which closed schools and government offices at the time of the rallies.
13) Even businesses got involved, with billboards emblazoned with the logo of a local cellular telephone company hanging over the square in Ramallah showing a white dove surrounded by barbed wire and reading ``No to the wall.''
14) ``Peace will not be achieved between the two peoples and in the entire region in the presence of the wall of annexation, expansion and apartheid,'' Arafat said in a televised speech, accusing Israel of using the barrier to seize large chunks of West Bank land.
15) Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia told a rally in his hometown of Abu Dis that the barrier would not guarantee greater security for Israel, just further tension.
16) ``If you want peace, the path is known,'' he said, addressing Israel. ``If you prefer violence, the path is known as well.''
17) Small sympathy protests were held across the Arab world.
18) About 2,000 Palestinians marched through the refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh in southern Lebanon, and another 500 protested outside United Nations House in Beirut.
19) In Damascus, Syrian courts fell silent for an hourlong work stoppage in solidarity with the Palestinians.
20) In the Egyptian capital of Cairo, 125 protesters, surrounded by 350 riot police, chanted: ``We oppose the racist wall!''
21) Meanwhile, Sharon told legislators from his Likud Party that his plan to unilaterally disengage from the Palestinians would ensure that Israel keeps most settlements, according to a participant in the closed-door meeting.
22) Sharon said Israel would not withdraw from Ariel, Israel's second-largest West Bank settlement with 18,000 residents.
23) The disengagement plan includes imposing a boundary on the Palestinians.
24) Sharon has said he would implement his plan, including dismantling some Jewish settlements, if there is no progress in peace efforts.
25) He said the depth of Israel's pullback would be determined by the amount of U.S. support for maintaining Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank. The United States has traditionally opposed all Jewish settlements.
26) ``I can bring a diplomatic initiative that in its first phase ensures that most of the settlers in the West Bank and Gaza will stay under Israel's control,'' he told Likud legislators, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Sharon warned rebellious lawmakers that without his plan, Israel would be at a disadvantage when peace talks resume and would end up relinquishing even more territory.
27) (rn/ml/kl)



2004-02-24
World court wrapping up hearings into Israeli barrier
(APW_ENG_20040224.0826)
1) The world court on Wednesday wraps up three days of hearings into Israel's disputed separation barrier, a case in which participants have put the spotlight on Israel's 37-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
2) The 22-member Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a grouping of 56 Muslim countries, were scheduled to testify on the final day of hearings.
3) Israel, which says the West Bank barrier is for self-defense, has avoided the hearings at the International Court of Justice. It says the structure is a matter for negotiations, not a courtroom, and has questioned the fairness of the court.
4) Jordan led the continuing attack on the Israeli barrier during Tuesday's session, arguing the structure threatens the kingdom's stability.
5) Jordan fears the barrier will make life so hard for Palestinians that they will flee into the neighboring kingdom, straining its resources and upsetting a delicate demographic balance.
6) Echoing the arguments of other participants, Jordan also took aim at Israel's wider policies in the West Bank, in particular the establishment of dozens of settlements on land it captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
7) ``This wall is not primarily about the defense of Israel's territory,'' said Sir Arthur Watts, counsel for the Jordanians. ``If the wall defends anything, it is ... the position of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.''
8) Israel says the barrier is meant to stop suicide bombers. It has built about one-fourth of the structure, a series of walls, fences, razor wire and trenches that could stretch 740 kilometers ( 460 miles) when completed. It has not made a decision on the final route and has said the structure could be dismantled if there is peace.
9) The hearings began Monday, a day after a Palestinian suicide bomber in Jerusalem killed eight people on a bus. Israel has pointed to the attack as proof of the need for the barrier.
10) The Palestinians say the barrier, which dips into the West Bank, is causing hardship for tens of thousands of their people and will make it impossible to establish an independent state alongside Israel.
11) The U.N. General Assembly asked the world court in December to give an advisory opinion on the barrier's legality. The court's rulings are not binding, but can be influential.
12) A total of 15 countries and organizations are participating in the hearings, all of them sympathetic to the Palestinians. The United States and European Union countries have stayed away, agreeing with Israel that the court is not the proper venue for the dispute.
13) Outside the Peace Palace, several dozen people gathered in the cold, wet weather to demonstrate in support of the barrier. Relatives of suicide bombing victims held prayers and wept as they told stories of their loved ones and clutched their photographs.
14) In a newspaper interview Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon denounced the hearings as ``a campaign of hypocrisy.''
15) The court usually takes months to issue a decision.



2004-04-28
As part of disengagement plan, some 100 West Bank settlements would also be removed
(APW_ENG_20040428.0069)
1) In promoting his plan of unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is evading a central question: what will happen to about 100 West Bank settlements on the ``wrong'' side of Israel's separation barrier?
2) Senior Israeli officials and government advisers acknowledge privately that many _ if not all _ of these isolated enclaves may eventually be taken down, even without a peace deal, if they become increasingly indefensible.
3) Sharon's program reflects a sea change in attitudes toward Israel's 37-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, increasingly seen an intolerable burden after more than three years of violence.
4) Sharon, the settlements' historic patron and architect, appears personally torn and is cagey on his long-term plan.
5) For now, he speaks mostly about its first stages: an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements by 2005 and completion of a barrier between Israel and the West Bank. In addition, he says, Israel will keep and develop several large West Bank settlement blocs that would end up on the ``Israeli'' side of the barrier.
6) The blocs have more than 20 settlements and are home to about 75 percent of the 223,000 Israelis in the West Bank. This leaves about 100 settlements on the ``Palestinian'' side of the barrier.
7) These settlements will be ringed by individual fences. If the Palestinians don't agree to a resumption of peace talks, under terms acceptable to Israel, ``we take out those isolated communities that can't be defended and move on our way,'' a senior Israeli official said on condition of anonymity.
8) The official did not say how many settlements might in the end be removed. However, it appears the enclaves will become increasingly difficult to protect as Israel withdraws troops from Palestinian towns.
9) Dozens of settlers have been killed in Palestinian attacks in the West Bank in more than three years of fighting, despite strict travel bans imposed on Palestinians there with a network of Israeli roadblocks.
10) The dismantling of up to 100 settlements in the West Bank, heart of the biblical ``Land of Israel,'' would mark a far more drastic change of policy for Sharon than the withdrawal from Gaza.
11) In promoting his plan, Sharon has said he wants to reduce friction with the Palestinians in the absence of peace prospects. The Palestinians suspect he is trying to increase his hold on chunks of the West Bank by giving up Gaza and avoiding negotiations.
12) Sharon has sent ambiguous messages to activists of his Likud Party and to U.S. officials. In conversations with Likud members, he suggests that after the Gaza pullback, there might be no further withdrawals for years.
13) In talks with U.S. officials, Sharon and his aides say the Gaza withdrawal is only the first stage, and could pave the way for a resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.
14) Settlers say they will fight for every inch of the West Bank. However, settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein said that if the Likud approves the disengagement plan Sunday, he expects 15 to 20 more West Bank communities to be dismantled after the completion of the separation barrier.
15) The removal of the first four West Bank settlements _ Ganim, Kadim, Homesh and Sa-Nur _ is meant to provide territorial continuity between the cities of Jenin and Nablus, in an area that is home to more than a half-million Palestinians.
16) Two other isolated settlements _ Mevo Dotan and Hermesh _ cut into some of that territory, and could be next in line for evacuation.
17) Sharon's plan falls far short of Palestinian demands. They seek a state in all the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. They also want recognition of a ``right of return'' for millions of Palestinian war refugees and their descendants to what is now Israel.
18) However, the prime minister's blueprint, which got U.S. President George W. Bush's endorsement earlier this month, marks a dramatic departure from Likud ideology. The prime minister and other senior Likud figures, including Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, are now seeking separation from the Palestinians, an approach once espoused by Israel's left wing.
19) Many Israelis no longer believe that they could win Palestinian cooperation on security or a peace treaty in exchange for land. The change results from a lack of trust after the collapse of past peace efforts and a belief that controlling a hostile population is a losing proposition.
20) Cabinet minister Tzipi Livni of Likud said her party's belief that Israelis and Palestinians could somehow intermingle no longer holds.
21) ``The entire process today is really a process of each side living their own lives,'' Livni said.



2004-07-02
Sharon says he's ready to move West Bank barrier a little closer to Israel, wherever possible
(APW_ENG_20040702.0036)
1) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he is ready to move the West Bank security barrier a little closer to Israel, wherever possible, in order to avoid trapping Palestinians in fenced-in enclaves.
2) Sharon's remarks were reported on the Web site of the Haaretz daily late Thursday, a day after the Supreme Court told the government it must pay more attention to the possible hardships the barrier can cause to Palestinians.
3) In the Gaza Strip, five Palestinians were killed in an hours-long gun battle with Israeli troops, the army said. The Palestinians apparently had planned to ambush Israeli traffic on Gaza's main north-south road, according to military officials.
4) Israel's high court had reviewed a planned 40-kilometer (25-mile) section of the barrier near Jerusalem, and ordered the government to reroute most of it. The judges said the original path would have caused too much hardship to thousands of Palestinians and would have violated international law.
5) In response to the court ruling, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz met with army planners Thursday and ordered them to review most of the barrier, which is to run 680 kilometers (425 miles), security officials said. They said the 25 percent of the barrier already built and judicially unchallenged would not be affected.
6) Later Thursday, Mofaz informed Sharon and Justice Minister Yosef Lapid at a meeting that he had ordered a review. Sharon said that when precise plans are ready, the full Cabinet will vote on them, officials said.
7) The Haaretz Web site quoted Sharon as saying he is willing to accept changes.
8) "We need to simplify things and not create ... closed-off Palestinian enclaves since we have not succeeded in creating convenient conditions for moving through the fence," Sharon said.
9) The stretch of barrier built so far has severely disrupted the lives of Palestinians living nearby. Children have to pass through army-operated gates to reach their schools, communities are encircled, farmers cut off from their fields, workers' commutes have lengthened considerably.
10) Sharon said that in areas not considered problematic, construction should begin immediately. "In areas where we cannot compromise on security, don't make concessions," Sharon was quoted as saying. "But in places where we can, we need to do as little damage as possible to the Palestinians' way of life, and we can move the fence a little closer to the Green Line."
11) The Green Line is Israel's old frontier, before it captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war.
12) Israel says the barrier is crucial for keeping out Palestinian attackers who have killed hundreds of Israelis in nearly four years of fighting. Palestinians say the divider, which at times dips deep into the West Bank, amounts to a land grab.
13) Palestinian officials have said in the past they have no problem with a separation barrier, provided it is not built on West Bank land. However, Sharon has said he would not have the barrier run along the Green Line, for fear it would be interpreted as Israel's agreement that this will be the future border.
14) Hassan Abu Libdeh, the Palestinian Cabinet secretary, said any route cutting into the West Bank is unacceptable. "We will not accept the wall as long as it takes even a few centimeters of Palestinian territory," he said.
15) Next week, the world court at The Hague, Netherlands, is to issue an advisory ruling on the barrier's route, at the request of the Palestinians.
16) In central Gaza, near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, soldiers spotted a group of armed men approaching and opened fire, the army said.
17) The ensuing gunfight lasted several hours and reached the outskirts of nearby Gaza City. Five gunmen were killed, the army said. There was no immediate Palestinian confirmation of fatalities but hospital officials said three bystanders were wounded, including a cameraman for a Palestinian satellite TV channel.



2004-07-14
Moderate Labor Party approves talks toward entering Sharon government
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1) Leaders of the moderate Labor Party gave approval for talks toward joining Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, a partnership that would greatly improve prospects for a plan to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
2) In a related development Tuesday, the military, in a meeting between U.S. envoys and Israel's defense minister, presented options for moving Israel's contentious West Bank separation barrier closer to Israel.
3) In Gaza early Wednesday, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a metal workshop in Gaza City, setting a huge blaze, residents said. No casualties were reported.
4) The military said the building contained several workshops where militants made rockets. Crude rockets are often fired at Jewish settlements in Gaza and Israeli towns just outside the territory.
5) Sharon lost his parliamentary majority while gaining Cabinet backing for his plan to evacuate 7,500 Israelis in 21 settlers, as well as four West Bank settlements _ the first time Israel ever approved removing authorized settlements from the West Bank and Gaza in 37 years of occupation.
6) Labeling the plan "unilateral disengagement," Sharon said the pullbacks are necessary to reduce friction with the Palestinians and forestall unfavorable international peace initiatives, while Israel refuses to negotiate with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, charging that they are implicated in terrorism.
7) The pullout plan angered large parts of Sharon's constituency.
8) Labor has long favored trading most of the West Bank and Gaza for peace with the Palestinians, while Sharon and his Likud traditionally backed holding on to the territories and expanding Jewish settlements there.
9) Meeting in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, the Labor Party leadership authorized representatives to open coalition negotiations despite stiff opposition in both parties to a joint government between the longtime ideological rivals.
10) Hardliners in Likud, who oppose the Gaza pullout, are against Labor's joining the government to boost the plan.
11) Labor critics say the party should be working to bring down the government and force elections instead of joining up with Sharon again. Labor served in Sharon's government for more than a year, pulling out in late 2002 in a dispute over funding for Jewish settlements.
12) At the Tel Aviv meeting, Peres responded to critics who charged that Sharon was using Labor to maintain his hold on the premiership.
13) "They say we're being used," he said. "What are they using us for? To bring peace? Should we be embarrassed by that?"
14) The West Bank barrier is an indirect part of Sharon's disengagement plan, as he has pledged to finish its construction before evacuating settlements.
15) The barrier is about one-quarter completed, and Israel says it has already contributed to a reduction in Palestinian attacks. During four years of conflict, hundreds of Israelis have been killed in bombings by Palestinians who infiltrated from the West Bank.
16) Two weeks ago, Israel's Supreme Court said the separation barrier could be built to keep out Palestinian attackers, but its planned path violates international law and should be redrawn to ease the lives of Palestinians.
17) "We're looking at ways to bring the fence closer to the Green Line," Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir said, referring to Israel's pre-1967 Mideast War frontier with the West Bank.
18) On Tuesday, the military presented options for changing the route in a meeting between U.S. envoys Elliot Abrams and Steve Hadley and Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, officials said. The Defense Ministry is to choose among the options in two weeks, officials said.
19) Last week, the International Court of Justice, in a nonbinding ruling, declared the barrier illegal and said it must be dismantled.
20) Israel rejected the ruling. Sharon said Israel would continue to build the planned 685-kilometer (425-mile) complex of concrete walls, wire fences and trenches.
21) "What counts is the decision of the Supreme Court of the state of Israel," Meir said.
22) Hassan Abu Libdeh, the Palestinian Cabinet secretary, said Israel must build the barrier entirely on its territory, and that any changes falling short of that are unacceptable.
23) The deviations from the old West Bank cease-fire line were meant to enclose some of the 150 Israeli settlements, but now it appears many more will be left out.
24) Sharon, who met Tuesday with Abrams and Hadley, told them Israel would fulfill its obligations, including dismantling dozens of unauthorized West Bank outposts under the internationally backed "road map" peace plan. Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the envoys pressed for quicker action.
25) The U.S. envoys met Monday with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia. They were due to return to Washington on Wednesday.



2004-08-12
Vice premier says Israel must evacuate more that four West Bank settlements
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1) Israel will have to evacuate more West Bank Jewish settlements than the four mentioned in the government's "unilateral disengagement" plan, Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said Thursday.
2) Olmert spoke during a tour of a section of the separation barrier Israel is building along and in the West Bank.
3) According to his office, he said that Israel would have to evacuate more settlements because of international pressure and Israel's own desire to remain a Jewish state _ an indication that the disengagement plan is not the last pullback Israel would make.
4) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan is to pull out of Gaza, removing all 21 settlements there, toward the end of next year. Also, four small West Bank settlements are to be evacuated as part of the plan.
5) While about 8,000 settlers live in Gaza, more than 230,000 live in 150 West Bank settlements. Sharon has said that one goal of the plan is to solidify Israel's hold on the main West Bank settlement blocs, implying at the same time that settlements outside the blocs would be expendable.
6) Sharon's plan has evoked stiff opposition among many of his own supporters. For decades, Sharon was the main force behind building and expanding settlements, and his Likud Party supports keeping the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli control.
7) Olmert, a Likud stalwart, often speaks for Sharon. He said even the United States, Israel's main ally, favors an Israeli withdrawal from almost all of the West Bank, and that would mean removing settlements to reduce friction with the international community.
8) "If we don't do this we will pay a very tough price," his office quoted him as saying. He did not say when he thought Israel would have to remove additional settlements.
9) (ml)



2004-08-16
Jewish settlers spell out compensation demands for leaving Gaza, West Bank
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1) Jewish settlers facing evacuation from the Gaza Strip and West Bank are discussing compensation terms with the government, their lawyer said Monday, a concrete sign that many are prepared to move instead of resisting.
2) The settlers want compensation to be based on the side of their families and their chances of finding new jobs, lawyer Joseph Tamir said.
3) According to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "unilateral disengagement" plan, Israel is to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the northern West Bank by late 2005. Israeli lawmakers are working on compensation legislation for the settlers.
4) The withdrawal plan has evoked strong opposition from hardline Israelis and many settlers. Last month more than 100,000 demonstrated by creating a human chain from the Gaza Strip to Jerusalem, a distance of about 90 kilometers (55 miles).
5) On Sunday, 100 families of settlers, mostly from the northern West Bank, submitted a list of demands for compensation to a government planning committee, said Joseph Tamir, their lawyer.
6) According to the demands, the criteria for deciding compensation should take into account the cost of a similar house in a high quality community inside Israel, Tamir said. They should also consider the number of children in each family, the years they have lived in the home and the age of the parents, since older Israelis might face difficulties finding new jobs.
7) Many Jewish settlers have large families and have lived in their homes for many years. Israel began building settlements in the West Bank and Gaza in the early 1970s after capturing the territories in the 1967 Mideast war..
8) The settlers have not yet requested specific sums, Tamir said.
9) Also, settlers are not interested in a government offer of advance payments for agreeing to move voluntarily, he said. The settlers would not relocate until they are sure the withdrawal will actually take place and they will get full compensation.
10) (lc/ml)



2004-08-23
Palestinians denounce apparent U.S. agreement for building in West Bank Jewish settlements
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1) A fresh diplomatic crisis loomed after U.S. officials indicated they would not object to continued construction in Israeli West Bank settlements, and Palestinians warned such a policy shift would wreck Mideast peace efforts.
2) The disagreement, which surfaced Sunday, concerned the U.S-backed "road map" peace plan, presented last year but never implemented. It mandates a complete halt to Israeli settlement construction alongside Palestinian dismantling of violent groups responsible for attacks against Israelis.
3) Neither side carried out the initial steps, but its terms had been considered binding on both sides until the U.S. administration recently began indicating a change in its policy.
4) U.S. officials in Israel confirmed to The Associated Press that though there has been no formal decision, the American government is not objecting to construction in the main settlement blocs, as long as the settlements themselves are not expanded _ while an internal administration debate over the issue continues.
5) Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia refused to accept the possibility that U.S. policy has changed.
6) "I can't believe that America is now saying that settlement expansion is all right," he said. "This will destroy the peace process."
7) Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a top aide to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, called on the White House to "clarify" its position, fearing it would "encourage the Israeli government to continue and escalate its war against the Palestinian people."
8) The U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said an American team will visit Israel next month to discuss where construction would be permitted.
9) In Washington, administration officials insisted they are not signaling any major change in policy.
10) "We continue to work with the Israelis on progress toward the settlement freeze," Jim Wilkinson, deputy national security adviser, said Sunday.
11) In a related development, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office announced Sunday that the government bureau providing compensation to settlers who leave Gaza and four West Bank settlements is officially in operation.
12) According to Sharon's "unilateral disengagement" plan, Israel is to evacuate all 21 Gaza settlements and the four in the West Bank by late next year. However, the plan has triggered widespread opposition in Sharon's own party.
13) Sharon has said one of the indirect goals of the plan is to allow reinforcement of the main West Bank settlement blocs.
14) Also Sunday, the Israeli Interior Ministry announced a freeze of US$13 million in funding for the settlements, but it was a budgetary issue and was likely to be reversed.
15) The settlement question is one of the touchiest of the disagreements between Israel and the Palestinians. Since taking control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, Israel has built more than 150 settlements, where about 235,000 Israelis live, but only abut 8,000 of them in Gaza.
16) Palestinians claim the territories for a state and demand that all of the settlements be removed. Israel counters that there is no permanent border between the West Bank and Israel, and the settlements question should be answered as part of peace negotiations.
17) Peace talks broke down in January 2001, and since then, Israel has continued to build in existing settlements. Also, dozens of unauthorized outposts have sprung up on West Bank hilltops, some consisting of a trailer or two, but others featuring permanent housing and asphalt access roads.
18) The first signal of a U.S. policy shift came on April 14 from U.S. President George W. Bush himself, after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Bush wrote that borders drawn in a peace deal would have to take into account "already existing population centers," and it would be "unrealistic" to expect Israel to evacuate all of the West Bank.
19) Last week, U.S. officials withheld judgment on Israeli plans to build 1,000 new housing units in existing settlements. Before, U.S. officials have repeatedly pressed Israel to carry out its road map obligations.
20) On Aug. 6, the AP reported for the first time that the U.S. administration was lifting its objections to construction inside West Bank settlements. Israeli officials said they were working for additional tacit understandings that would allow expansion of individual settlements inside the boundaries of the main blocs.
21) Also Sunday, several thousand Palestinians rallied in Gaza to back Palestinian prisoners, who have been on hunger strike in Israeli jails for a week, demanding better conditions.



2004-08-24
Army planning to mobilize thousands of reservists to implement Gaza pullout
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1) The Israeli military is planning to mobilize thousands of reserve soldiers to help implement next year's planned exit from the Gaza Strip, according to defense officials.
2) The reservists are to replace regular army forces, who would be transferred from their usual posts in the West Bank or along the borders to secure the Gaza Strip while the evacuation is underway, the officials and Israeli media reported on Monday.
3) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's "unilateral disengagement" plan calls for all 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza, with their 8,000 residents, along with the Israeli military, to be out of Gaza by the end of September 2005.
4) The plan has ignited stiff opposition not only from settlers, but also from their supporters in Sharon's Likud Party. Last week a Likud convention moved to scuttle the plan by banning Sharon from bringing the moderate Labor Party into his Cabinet. Sharon needs Labor to guarantee a majority in favor of evacuating settlements.
5) Labor, Likud's longtime rival, favors far-reaching territorial concessions for peace, unlike Likud. Sharon broke with traditional Likud ideology in calling for dismantling settlements.
6) On May 2, Likud members voting in a nonbinding referendum soundly rejected the pullout, but Sharon ignored the vote and forced the plan through his Cabinet by firing a small pro-settlement party to secure a tenuous majority.
7) Despite the second party setback, Sharon has said he will go ahead with his efforts to broaden his government and carry out the Gaza pullout plan despite the wishes of his party.
8) In the wake of the Likud convention vote, Labor has descended into internal bickering over how to proceed. Some favor continuing contacts with Sharon, while others prefer working for early elections _ and a leadership battle is blossoming.
9) Another key element of Sharon's "unilateral disengagement" plan has run into problems _ the contentious barrier Israel is building to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of the country.
10) The barrier is not formally part of Sharon's separation plan, but it fits neatly into his concept of reducing friction with the Palestinians and, in turn, with the world community.
11) However, local and international courts have assailed the planned route of the barrier, and on Monday, an official planning the complex of fences, walls, barbed wire and trenches said completion of a key section would be delayed by a year.
12) The original route of the barrier snaked in and out of the West Bank, encircling some towns and villages close to the old line separating Israel from the West Bank _ cutting tens of thousands of Palestinians off from farmlands, schools and services.
13) The Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government to redraw the route to ease hardships on the Palestinians, bringing it closer to the "Green Line," the cease-fire line that marked the border between Israel and the West Bank between the 1948-49 and 1967 Mideast wars. Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 conflict.
14) Appearing before the parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday, Dany Tirza, the Defense Ministry official in charge of planning the barrier, said that the rerouting would delay construction of a key section until the end of 2005 _ a year behind schedule.
15) The 90-kilometer (55-mile) section runs north from Jerusalem, and Israeli media said that the new route would leave part of the main highway through the area outside the barrier. The highway is used as an alternative route to the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv thoroughfare.
16) Palestinians reject the barrier as a land grab. Israel says it's needed to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out of the country and note a significant drop in such attacks since the first quarter of the barrier was completed along the northern section of the West Bank.
17) Also coming into play is a July ruling by the International Court of Justice that the barrier is illegal and must be torn down. The ruling is a recommendation to the U.N. General Assembly, and Israel rejected it as politically motivated and one-sided.
18) However, in recent days the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the government to explain how the ICJ ruling would affect its construction of the barrier, and the attorney general warned that if Israel continued to ignore the ICJ, it could face international sanctions.



2004-09-06
Israeli defense minister says southern route of barrier will run along line with West Bank
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1) Israeli officials have redrawn the planned route of an unfinished stretch of Israel's separation barrier so that it will not take West Bank land, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Monday.
2) Mofaz said the route, reconsidered after a critical Israeli Supreme Court decision, had been approved by the defense establishment and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. A spokesman for Sharon, however, said a final decision hadn't been made.
3) Israel had originally planned to include several Jewish settlements in the southern West Bank on the "Israeli" side of the barrier.
4) The route would have effectively annexed about 70 square kilometers (20 square miles) of disputed territory that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War.
5) Israel's barrier, which it says is meant to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers, has come under serious legal criticism internationally and inside Israel.
6) The string of fences, walls and barbed wire that will eventually stretch 680 kilometers (425 miles) has cut of thousands of Palestinians from their work, schools and services.
7) Palestinians say the barrier constitutes a land grab since it cuts in several places into the West Bank, which they want to include in a future state.
8) The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in June that the route of the barrier must be changed in places to take Palestinian humanitarian concerns into account, even at the expense of security.
9) In light of this, the defense establishment reviewed the southernmost stretch of the obstacles, where construction had not yet begun, Mofaz said Monday.
10) The new route will run along the Green Line, the 1967 cease-fire line dividing Israel and the West Bank, he said.
11) "We reached the agreement that the line will be on the Green Line," Mofaz said. Sharon has "agreed" with the security establishment's recommendation, Mofaz told Army Radio.
12) But a spokesman for Sharon, Raanan Gissin, said a final decision on the southern route had not yet been made. Other officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sharon would be meeting with advisers on Wednesday to discuss the issue.
13) Israeli military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on condition of anonymity that the Cabinet still had to approve the route.
14) Construction on a southwestern portion of the barrier began on Sunday, days after a twin suicide bombing in southern Israel that officials blamed on the lack of a barrier in the area. Building on the southernmost section of the obstacles will begin in another month or two, Mofaz said.
15) Several Jewish settlements running near the Green Line in the southern West Bank will be included on the West Bank side of the barrier but will be encircled with fences to protect them from nearby Palestinian areas, Mofaz said.
16) Sharon had reportedly wanted to include these settlements on the Israeli side of the barrier, but defense officials feared this would not hold up in legally following the Supreme Court decision.
17) lc-jmf



2005-02-01
Israel says it will not sanction move of Gaza settlers to West Bank
(APW_ENG_20050201.0611)
1) Israel will help move Gaza settlers to areas within Israel, but will not sanction the move of entire communities to settlements in the West Bank, an Israeli government official said Tuesday.
2) Israel has offered to relocate entire communities from the Gaza Strip to Israel as part of compensation deals for 8,500 settlers living in the coastal strip. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon hopes to pull all troops and settlers out of the coastal strip by the end of this summer.
3) The communities that are evacuated will not be moved to the West Bank, a senior Israeli official said on condition of anonymity. But those settlers who take compensation individually will be allowed to move to where ever they want, he said.
4) Israeli Cabinet Minister Meir Sheetrit said Tuesday that the government would not create new settlements in the West Bank with the settlers who are evacuated from the Gaza Strip, Army Radio reported.
5) Communities that collectively wish to move from the Gaza Strip will be relocated to Israel's Negev Desert or northern Israel, the official said.
6) The government expects that many of the settlers will not want to move to the West Bank, since some of those areas will probably be evacuated in the long run as well, the official said.



2005-02-23

2005-03-13
Israeli army plans to build temporary separation barrier around Jerusalem
(APW_ENG_20050313.0389)
1) Israel plans to build a temporary fence separating Jerusalem from the West Bank by July, leaving the structure in place while legal challenges to a permanent barrier play out in court, Israel's military chief said Sunday.
2) The announcement by Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon threatened to ignite a new controversy over the barrier project. Israel says the structure is needed to protect its cities from suicide bombers. But the Palestinians criticize the barrier, which juts into the West Bank, as an illegal confiscation of land they claim for an independent state.
3) The planned construction around Jerusalem has been especially sensitive. Traditionally Arab east Jerusalem is a commercial center for the Palestinians, and completing the barrier would prevent thousands of people in the West Bank from reaching jobs, public services and holy sites in the city.
4) Although Israel recently completed plans for the barrier, the route in the Jerusalem area remains in dispute due to legal challenges filed by Israeli and Palestinian residents of border villages.
5) Yaalon said the army plans to build a temporary barrier in disputed area around Jerusalem while the courts consider the cases.
6) "The plan is to construct by July an improvised barrier, a temporary one, in those areas where a permanent one cannot be built at the moment, mainly because of legal reasons," he told Army Radio after meeting Jerusalem's mayor. "We will establish fences in certain areas, patrol roads ... until the legal proceedings are completed."
7) During more than four years of fighting, Jerusalem was a frequent target of Palestinian suicide bombers. Israeli defense officials say completed sections of the barrier have been extremely effective at keeping attackers from entering the country. About one-third of the 440-mile (660-kilometer) structure has been built.
8) But the barrier has drawn heavy international criticism due to the land confiscations and hardship it has caused for Palestinians. Residents have been separated from fields, jobs and relatives by the structure. The world court ruled in a non-binding decision last year that it is illegal and must be taken down.
9) The Israeli Cabinet approved a new route last month that would run closer to the West Bank line than original plans, following Israeli Supreme Court orders to reduce hardships on the Palestinians.
10) Even that route, however would encompass 8 percent of the West Bank, according to Israel's Justice Ministry. The barrier places the largest Jewish settlement, Maaleh Adumim, and the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements on the Israeli side. Both are near Jerusalem.
11) Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, criticized the Israeli announcement Sunday, saying it "prejudices the outcome of permanent status negotiations." He called on the United States and the rest of the international community to put pressure on Israel to revoke its decision.
12) Palestinian officials have repeatedly called on Israel to build the barrier on Israeli territory.
13) Senior Israeli officials have acknowledged the route of the barrier would influence the final border between Israel and a Palestinian state.



2005-06-14
Anti-settler group makes point in Wild West Bank Internet game
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1) An anti-settler group has launched an Internet game called "Wild West Bank," to demonstrate the difficulty of evacuating Jewish settlers from the territory Palestinians want for a future state, the group said in a statement Tuesday.
2) The game, with a cast including a sheriff, Israeli soldiers, Palestinians and gun-toting Jewish settlers, is part of a new campaign by a coalition of dovish organizations against Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
3) It comes as settlers wage a loud campaign against government plans to evacuate all 21 settlements from the Gaza Strip and four from the West Bank this summer.
4) While settlers object to removing settlements in principle, dovish groups warn that the limited pullout could lead to expansion of West Bank settlements. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said the pullout would allow Israel to strengthen its grip on main West Bank settlement blocs.
5) The coalition, calling itself "Back to Israel," constructed a game that has the player acting as an Israeli sheriff who must try to take down settlements, while Jewish settlers constantly set up new communities in the area.
6) Through chasing the slippery settlers evading the security forces, players are supposed understand that it will be almost impossible to carry out the government's "disengagement" plan. With simple animation, happy soldiers returning to Israel yell "yeah!" but settlers do not budge.
7) Just as the player drags the settler homes into Israel, settlers set up more mobile homes on the same spot. Meanwhile, Palestinians wander about their territory aimlessly.
8) "Since the disengagement discussion started, no one in Israel is talking about the occupation ... but the building is continuing there," said Arik Diamant, development coordinator of "Back to Israel."
9) "After disengagement, there will be more settlers than before the disengagement. This is a very dangerous situation," he said.
10) More than 20,000 people downloaded the game in the first three days of its posting, Diamant said.
11) The coalition plans a series of films, a rock concert and tours of settlements and Palestinian areas this weekend, to persuade Israelis to dismantle all settlements set up in the West Bank and Gaza, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.



2005-07-11
Jerusalem barrier meant to boost Jewish majority as well as stop bombers: Israeli Cabinet minister
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1) Israel's separation barrier in Jerusalem is meant to ensure a Jewish majority in the city and not just serve as a buffer against bombers, an Israeli Cabinet minister acknowledged on Monday, confirming Palestinian claims that demographics _ and not just security _ determined the barrier route.
2) The plan, whose final details were approved Sunday, would separate 55,000 Palestinians from the city both sides seek as a capital _ bringing to the fore an explosive disagreement over who controls the holy city and where its boundaries should be.
3) The 60-kilometer (40-mile) Jerusalem segment is part of a complex of walls, trenches, fences and electronic devices Israel is building along the entire West Bank, dipping into the territory in some places to enclose main settlement blocs _ leading to Palestinian charges that the project is a land grab, not a security measure.
4) Palestinian Foreign Minister Nasser Al Kidwa on Monday called for stepped up street protests against the barrier. Marking a year since the world court in the Hague handed down a nonbinding decision calling the barrier illegal and ordering it torn down, he said Palestinians should organize for a "higher level of daily confrontations against the wall."
5) Palestinians and Israeli backers demonstrate almost daily at West Bank sites where the barrier construction uproots orchards or cuts Palestinians off from their farmland or services.
6) Israel began building the barrier more than two years ago at the height of a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings. More than 100 bombing attacks took the lives of nearly 500 Israelis during four years of conflict.
7) In Jerusalem, 170 people have been killed in 22 suicide bombings since 2000.
8) Haim Ramon, the Israeli Cabinet minister in charge of Jerusalem, said Monday that demography was also a main factor for the route of the barrier in the city. It encloses Maaleh Adumim, a settlement with nearly 30,000 Jews, while excluding four Arab sections, including a refugee camp _ 55,000 Palestinians altogether. Of Jerusalem's 700,000 residents, about a third are Palestinians.
9) Besides keeping suicide bombers out, the route of the barrier "also makes Jerusalem more Jewish," Ramon said. "The safer and more Jewish Jerusalem will be, it can serve as a true capital of the state of Israel."
10) Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat objected, "The whole idea is to get as many Palestinians outside Jerusalem, and get as many Israelis (as possible) inside," he said. "This is determining the fate of Jerusalem before we begin negotiations."
11) Erekat said he would raise the issue with international envoys visiting the region this week, including senior U.S. State Department official David Welch. "We have contacted them (the Americans), but they haven't responded," Erekat said.
12) Zeev Boim, Israel's deputy defense minister, denied the route of the barrier was dictated by demographic considerations. "The fence was put up because of security needs, to stop terrorism," he told Israel Army Radio.
13) Ramon said it was a "mistake" to enclose more than a dozen Arab villages in the city limits drawn after the 1967 war, when Israel captured the Arab section of Jerusalem along with the West Bank and Gaza.
14) No other nation recognized Israel's annexation, including the Old City, with key sites holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews.
15) In peace talks in 2000, Israel offered to hand the Arab neighborhoods over to Palestinian control while keeping the Jewish neighborhoods, but no agreement was reached. After violence erupted in September 2000, Israel took the offer off the table.
16) Visiting EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana criticized the Jerusalem barrier. "We think that Israel has a right to defend itself, but we think that the fence, when it is done outside the territory of Israel, is not legally proper and it creates also humanitarian problems," he said after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
17) In another development, Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Monday that Israel will seek US$2.2 billion (euro1.84 billion) in additional U.S. aid for the summer's withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements. The request was to be made later Monday in a meeting between Israel and U.S. officials in Washington.
18) Israel is the biggest recipient of U.S. aid, getting an annual US$2.3 billion (euro1.9 billion) for economic and military purposes, but Peres said it needs more money to remove 9,000 settlers and develop the Galilee and Negev Desert regions for resettlement.
19) (pvs-ml)



2005-08-01
West Bank settlers outside separation barrier ask government to move them inside
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1) West Bank settlers whose communities lie outside Israel's separation barrier are asking the government to buy their houses so they can move back to Israel.
2) The settlers say the barrier, coupled with Israel's withdrawal from 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank, signals the death knell for their communities, too. They would rather leave now than spend years living in fear and uncertainty.
3) "I know that in one or two years, there will be a knock on the door and they will say they are taking me out in withdrawal No. 2 or 3," settler Benny Raz said Sunday. "I don't want to wait."
4) Raz and other settlers have formed the "One Home" movement to seek government compensation for their homes.
5) Settlers like Raz are raising an issue that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has carefully avoided so far in pushing his plan of "disengagement" from the Palestinians _ what will happen to some 80,000 Israelis in dozens of communities on what has become the "Palestinian" side of the barrier.
6) The Palestinians suspect the route of the barrier is meant to demarcate Israel's future border, even if the Israeli government portrays it as a temporary security measure to keep out Palestinian bombers and gunmen.
7) Sharon has said there would be no more unilateral withdrawals after Israel pulls out of Gaza and some of the settlements in the northern West Bank. However, government officials have acknowledged privately that some settlements outside the barrier eventually may be taken down if they become indefensible.
8) Raz said he desperately wants to move, but he is an economic hostage. The 51-year-old minibus driver bought his house in Karnei Shomron for $100,000 five years ago, just months before the start of the second Palestinian uprising, or intefadeh. Now, he would be lucky to get $40,000 for it because everybody believes his community is doomed, he said.
9) "I have to stay here," he said. "I have no way to leave."
10) The One Home settlers say the government must help them out since it lured them into the settlements with economic incentives, and is now signaling that it wants them to leave.
11) "You helped me come here, now you have to help me leave," Raz said of the government.
12) The first signal they were no longer wanted, Raz said, was the barrier, a series of fences, walls and trenches Israel began constructing in 2002. Palestinians said the route of the barrier, which dips into the West Bank to encompass major settlement blocs but not many smaller communities, is a de facto border that annexes land they want for a future state.
13) The second signal is the August pullout from 25 settlements, including four not far from Karnei Shomron, a settlement of some 300 families.
14) Taken together, the developments gave many settlers the ominous feeling that Israel planned to pull back to the barrier, dismantling all the settlements on the other side, Raz said.
15) Sharon spokesman Raanan Gissin said Sunday that Israel remains committed to protecting the settlers outside the fence and sees no reason to compensate them.
16) "The question of what kind of economic incentives the government would give them, I'm sure that would be raised if and when any of those settlements will have to be removed. But that's not the issue, it's not on the agenda right now, so I don't see any reason to complain," he said.
17) But many are worried.
18) Raz said his organization represents more than 100 people, but a hot line he started last week received between 2,000 and 3,000 phone calls from anxious settlers seeking information. Few are willing to talk publicly for fear of alienating their neighbors.
19) One member of the group living in the settlement of Tekoa, who asked that his name not be published, told The Associated Press he recently put up for sale the house he bought for $150,000 nine years ago. He did not receive a single phone call.
20) A poll commissioned by Israel's Channel 2 TV station, which broadcast a story on the new movement Friday, said more than 50 percent of residents outside the barrier are worried about their security, and more than a quarter of those responding know someone in their community who would leave if given fair compensation.
21) Settler spokeswoman Ahuva Sheelo said it was understandable for those outside the barrier to feel abandoned.
22) "It's like a border, and nobody wants to live in his own country on the other side of the fence," she said.
23) However, she believed most of the settlers retained strong attachments to their communities and only a tiny fraction wanted to leave.
24) Avshalom Vilan, a lawmaker from the dovish Yahad party who is working with One Home, said he plans to propose a bill giving the affected settlers between $200,000 and $250,000 to leave their settlements.
25) "It's just a question of time until Israel will give back these territories or there will be a third intefadeh and they will be the next victims," he said.



2005-08-11
Details of Israel's Gaza withdrawal plan
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1) Details about Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank:
2) THE PLAN: Israel will dismantle all 21 Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the northern West Bank. It is the first time Israel is to take down settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, lands it captured in the 1967 Mideast War that are claimed by the Palestinians for their future state.
3) SETTLERS: About 9,000 Jewish settlers are to be removed from their homes.
4) ACTING ALONE: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced the unilateral plan in 2004 as a way to separate Israelis and Palestinians after four years of conflict. He says the withdrawal will improve security and strengthen Israel's hold on large West Bank communities where most of the 240,000 Jewish settlers live.
5) OPPOSITION: Sharon has overcome fierce opposition by settler groups and hard-line politicians, who accuse him of caving in to Palestinian violence and ignoring Judaism's biblical connection to the territory, particularly the West Bank. Settlers fear Israel will eventually withdraw from the rest of the West Bank.
6) PALESTINIANS: The Palestinians have welcomed the withdrawal, but say it must be followed by a resumption of peace talks aimed at leading to further Israeli withdrawals and full independence. Since the death last year of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Israel has agreed to coordinate the withdrawal with the Palestinians. But Sharon says Palestinians must dismantle violent groups before negotiations resume.
7) SECURITY: About 55,000 Israeli soldiers and police will participate in the month-long operation, preparing for violence by either withdrawal opponents or Palestinian militants. The Palestinians have promised a large security deployment to ensure quiet.
8) COOPERATION: Israel and the Palestinians have made significant progress in security matters, but many issues, including border crossings, the fate of abandoned settlements and Palestinian movement between Gaza and the West Bank, remain unresolved.


Facts and figures about Israel's Gaza pullout
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1) Starting next week, Israel will pull out of the Gaza Strip and a small part of the West Bank, removing 9,000 Jewish settlers from their homes. It will mark the first time Israel dismantles Jewish settlements in either the West Bank or Gaza, both captured in the 1967 Mideast War and claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.
2) Q: Why is Israel doing it?
3) A: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says Israel will not keep these areas under a future peace deal, and that the withdrawal will reduce friction with the Palestinians and improve Israel's security. Sharon also believes the withdrawal will enable Israel to consolidate control over large settlement blocs in the West Bank, where the vast majority of the 240,000 Jewish settlers live.
4) Q: What are the logistics?
5) A: Israel has given about 8,500 Jewish settlers in Gaza and about 500 in the West Bank until the end of Aug. 16 to leave their homes voluntarily. Starting Aug. 17, some 55,000 troops will forcibly evacuate remaining residents. Officials expect more than half of the settlers to leave voluntarily, with most of the others resisting without violence. However, the army is preparing for possible violence by a small number of extremists. The army is also preparing for attacks by Palestinian militants and has threatened to retaliate with a ground incursion. The Palestinians say they will deploy thousands of troops to ensure calm.
6) Q: How long will the withdrawal take?
7) A: Military officials expect the Gaza withdrawal to last about three weeks, with another week needed for the West Bank pullback. The army says it will need another two to three weeks to demolish abandoned settler homes. The Palestinians support the demolitions, saying the one-story cottages are unsuitable for large Palestinian families and take up too much space in overcrowded Gaza.
8) Q: Are settlers compensated?
9) A: Yes. The government is compensating settlers through a complex formula that takes into account such issues as home size, number of family members and amount of time residing in the settlement. Compensation usually amounts to US$200,000 to US$300,000 (euro150,000-euro230,000) per family. Settlers who stay in Gaza after the Aug. 16 deadline are supposed to lose up to a third of their compensation, though it's not clear if that will stand up in court.
10) Q: Is this is a peace plan?
11) A: No. Sharon proposed the withdrawal in early 2004, when fighting with the Palestinians was raging and his nemesis, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was still alive. Although the fighting has slowed and relations have improved with Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, Sharon says it is still too early to resume peace talks. He says a smooth withdrawal and a Palestinian crackdown on militants could lead to a resumption of peace talks.
12) Q: What do the Palestinians want?
13) A: The Palestinians have welcomed the withdrawal but say it must be the first step toward carrying out the "road map," an internationally backed peace plan calling for an independent Palestinian state. The Palestinians claim Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and say all West Bank settlements should also be dismantled.
14) Q: What is the U.S. role?
15) A: Washington, the main backer of the road map, has welcomed the pullout. But it says the withdrawal must be the first step toward resuming peace talks. The U.S. has encouraged Israel to work closely with the Palestinians ahead of the pullout, sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region three times this year and appointing an army general as a special security coordinator.
16) Q: Is Israel coordinating the pullout with the Palestinians?
17) A: Under U.S. pressure, Israel and the Palestinians are working together on security matters to ensure a quiet pullout. But the two sides have not yet resolved other issues, including the movement of people and goods across Gaza's borders.
18) Q: What's next for Gaza?
19) A: Israel expects to complete the pullout by October, leaving the Palestinians with a formidable task. About 1.3 million Palestinians live in Gaza, an area about one-eighth the size of Luxembourg. Most live in extreme poverty. The Palestinians must build new housing in the abandoned settlements and try to provide jobs in an area with an unemployment rate of 60 percent.
20) Q: Will this help or hurt Sharon?
21) A: By reversing decades of support for settlement construction and expansion, Sharon alienated his traditional constituency and faces defeat in a party primary. However, he has won new friends in Israel's center and might emerge as a centrist consensus candidate.
22) Q: Will this help or hurt Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas?
23) A: Abbas stands to gain if the Israeli pullout proceeds calmly and his forces assume control of Gaza smoothly. If Palestinian militants disrupt the pullout by attacking the withdrawing settlers and soldiers, or if armed clashes erupt among rival Palestinian groups after the pullout, Abbas could be perceived as a weak leader and international pressure on Israel for further withdrawals would likely subside.



2005-08-12
As Israel leaves Gaza, the bill for its settlement ambitions is shrouded in mystery
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1) Israel's effort since the 1967 Mideast war to fill the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jews has grown from the scattered actions of zealous squatters into a network of 142 settlements that house nearly 240,000 people.
2) Now that Israel plans to spend some US$2 billion (euro1.6 billion) to dismantle just 25 of these enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza _ for which U.S. aid has been requested _ it raises the question of how much money has been poured into the ambitious settlement project, and exactly where it came from.
3) The official answer: No one knows.
4) Vice Premier Shimon Peres estimates Israel has spent about US$50 billion (euro40 billion) since 1977, when the hard-line Likud government took over from his Labor party. Other former finance ministers and government officials don't discount a price tag _ commonly floated but never documented _ of $60 billion (euro48.5 billion).
5) "No one eye in the world saw the whole picture," says Labor Party lawmaker Danny Yatom, a confidant of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. "Most of it is not camouflaged, but it is not possible to connect A to B to C to D to E to F to G."
6) Calculating an exact figure is impossible because much of the building was financed through winks and nods, an opaque state budget and secret military spending that sometimes violated Israel's laws and undercut international peacemaking efforts, according to official Israeli inquiries as well as Associated Press interviews with past and present officials, settlers and their opponents.
7) Among the methods used, the interviews show, were government subsidies, shadowy land deals, loopholes in military spending, and an auditing bait-and-switch in which U.S. aid was used to free up billions of dollars for spending on the settlements formally opposed by the United States.
8) Even today, with preparations under way for demolishing 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank, housing and roads continue to be built in West Bank settlement blocs Israel wants to keep in a final peace deal with the Palestinians. This contradicts the internationally backed "road map" peace plan to halt settlement expansion.
9) And a government-commissioned inquiry in March revealed similar methods were used to build and expand dozens of unauthorized West Bank "outposts" _ set up as flag-showing exercises and usually consisting of a handful of people in mobile homes.
10) It found widespread government complicity in establishing more than 100 such outposts, and the inquiry's chief, former prosecutor Talia Sasson, called the government's actions "a blatant violation of the law."
11) Last year, the funding of the outposts came in for sharp criticism from the State Comptroller, the government's main watchdog. It found at least two cases where the Housing Ministry funded outposts that the military had ordered demolished.
12) Now settler leaders, eager to embarrass Prime Minister Ariel Sharon over his Gaza withdrawal plan, say they had official backing in all their ventures.
13) "Let me be very, very clear: It's not a question of dark-of-night grabs, or hide-and-seek or deceit on anyone's part," said lawmaker Yitzhak Levy of the pro-settler National Religious Party, who headed ministries in Likud and Labor governments.
14) "It is government policy," he said.
15) The settlements started after 1967 under Labor governments, which sought to confine them to border areas they considered necessary for national security. But then Likud came to power in 1977, claiming a God-given right to the whole West Bank and Gaza Strip. The chief settlement advocate was Ariel Sharon, the former general who _ now as prime minister _ has ordered the Gaza pullback.
16) Using his Cabinet posts between 1977 and 1992 _ agriculture, defense and housing _ he doled out government grants, low-cost loans and tax breaks to settlers. He also gave birth to the idea of advertising the enclaves as bedroom communities just minutes from Israeli urban centers.
17) Some settlements close to towns in Israel proper were subsidized by giving the inhabitants tax cuts, cheap mortgages and grants of between $6,900 and $57,000 (euro5,575 and euro46,053) _ perks ordinarily reserved for outlying areas.
18) Maaleh Adumim, the largest settlement with about 30,000 people, received this "priority" status even though it is just five kilometers (three miles) from Jerusalem. So did Elkana, an affluent settlement eight kilometers (five miles) from Israel's economic hub, Tel Aviv.
19) Settler leader Adi Mintz said even some of the settlers thought the tax breaks for bedroom communities were unfair.
20) The state also picked up as much as half the tab for hooking up utilities. And pro-settler lawmakers fought to control key ministries such as Construction and Housing, National Infrastructure, and Transportation so they could direct money to settlements.
21) "When I was at the Ministry of Housing, I set the objective of expanding (settlements in) outlying areas," said lawmaker Levy.
22) The classified defense budget further propelled expansion, funding troop deployments to guard settlements, and building fences and wide roads for settlers living among more than 2 million Palestinians who adamantly oppose their presence.
23) The estimates of US$50 billion-US$60 billion (euro40 billion-euro48.5 billion) do not include the 32 settlements built on the Golan Heights which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, and whose native populace is Druze, not Palestinian.
24) In the West Bank, entire settlements were built under the guise of military or security needs, even though they weren't formally authorized by the government, according to Yatom, a former West Bank military commander.
25) A government official conceded that some uses of military funds "in hindsight ... aren't legal and shouldn't have been done." He spoke on condition of because he was discussing possible violations of the law by the government.
26) At times, government watchdogs balked at the way government funds were being used. Most recently, the Interior Ministry launched an investigation into the transfer of US$2.8 million (euro2.26 million) in 2003 and 2004 from settlement municipalities to a settlement lobby group, which is funding the fight against the Gaza pullout.
27) Because the state and separate ministerial budgets don't break down outlays by region, it is difficult to identify the flow of money to settlements. Supporters and detractors both say this allowed Israeli governments to hide behind the budget when it came to settlement financing _ and forestall friction with Washington.
28) "The state of Israel didn't want a head-on confrontation with the United States ... therefore Israel always did things with winks and nods," said Mintz, the settler leader.
29) Despite its declared opposition to settlements, Washington only began taking action in the early 1990s, when Israel sought billions of dollars in U.S. loan guarantees. Washington said it would deduct sums that went into settlements dollar for dollar.
30) In 2003, when Israel was granted US$9 billion (euro7.27 billion) in loan guarantees over three years, the cut was US$289.5 million (euro234 million). Officials familiar with the issue, and speaking on condition of anonymity, say that low figure was reached with the help of the influential pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC.
31) AIPAC officials refused to discuss the issue on the record, but denied they helped to negotiate the numbers.
32) Israel also used private U.S. donations for which it secured U.S. tax-exempt status, said David Newman, a political scientist at Israel's Ben Gurion University who researched settlement funding.
33) U.S. tax laws don't exempt donations for political activities such as settlements. Israel separated the World Zionist Organization from the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency, a move that allowed donors to inject money into settlements without losing tax exemptions. In reality, the two groups operate under one umbrella, with the same officials, departments and administrators overseeing the activities, Newman said.
34) Perhaps the grayest area is how Israel expropriated, confiscated or purchased land for settlements.
35) During the first 12 years of occupation, more than 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of land confiscated by the military for security needs were handed to settlers, according to Defense Ministry statistics quoted in "Lords of the Land," a book by Israeli authors Akiva Eldar and Idit Zartel.
36) Even after Israel's Supreme Court in 1979 raised the bar for security-related land confiscations, the state seized thousands more hectares (acres) of West Bank land on security grounds and turned it over for settlers, some living in unauthorized enclaves.
37) The state-funded Jewish National Fund, along with settler groups and their supporters, also bought land from private Palestinians, using middlemen to cloak the sellers' identity and shield them from attack by other Arabs.
38) Shaul Goldstein, head of the Gush Etzion Regional Council in the West Bank, said his council recently paid $10,000 (euro8,080) for 990 square meters (11,000 square feet) of Palestinian land _ about one-twentieth the cost of land just over the border.



2005-08-15
Israel seals off Gaza to Israeli civilians, signaling start of historic withdrawal
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1) Defiant Gaza settlers blocked the gates of their communities Monday and vowed to prevent Israeli troops from delivering eviction notices _ a first sign of resistance as Israel's historic pullout from the coastal territory got under way.
2) In the largest settlement, Neve Dekalim, dozens of men wrapped in white prayer shawls held roadside morning prayers, while teens _ many sporting orange ribbons, the color of defiance _ danced in circles.
3) Troops planned to fan out across Jewish settlement to deliver the notices. Shortly after 8 a.m. (0500 gmt), army convoys reached the first two settlements, Nissanit and Netzer Hazani. Troops were to go from house to house, knock on doors and hand over the notices. Settlers will be told they have one last chance, until midnight Tuesday, to leave voluntarily. Those ignoring the that final deadline will lose up to one-third of their compensation.
4) However, in Neve Dekalim and other settlements there were few signs that residents would cooperate.
5) Dozens of Orthodox Jews held morning prayers outside Neve Dekalim's gate, hoping that divine intervention would somehow prevent the plan from going forward. "Who dares to do battle with God," read one protester's T-shirt. "Brother, don't expel me," said another.
6) Under the pullout plan, Israel will remove all 21 Jewish settlements from Gaza as well as four enclaves in the West Bank. While many of Gaza's 8,500 residents have already left, the army estimates that several thousand people remain, including extremists who infiltrated Gaza.
7) Settler leaders have promised to resist without resorting to violence, though security officials fear extremists might violate that pledge.
8) The withdrawal marks the first time Israel would dismantle settlements in areas captured in the 1967 Mideast War and claimed by the Palestinians for their future state. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes the withdrawal will improve Israeli security by reducing friction with the Palestinians.
9) "It's a painful and difficult day, but it's a historic day," Israel's defense minister,100 Shaul Mofaz, told Army Radio.
10) At the small settlement of Netzer Hazani, resident Anita Tucker said only one of the 70 families has left, and 17 others would leave Monday.
11) The others would resist without violence, she said. Speaking before soldiers came with eviction orders, Tucker, 59, originally from Brooklyn, New York, said hundreds of people came to reinforce the settlement. "We know we can't fight the Israeli army. We don't want to," she said. "We are the Israeli army."
12) Israeli officials, police commanders and army officers were determined to carry out the evacuation, known as "disengagement." Israel's Cabinet was to meet later Monday and give final approval for removal of additional Gaza settlements in a step seen as a formality.
13) The pullout got under way after months of political wrangling and mass protests. The complex operation began at midnight Sunday (2100 GMT), when soldiers lowered a road barrier at the Kissufim Crossing, signaling that it had become illegal for Israelis to be in Gaza. As the barrier went down, a traffic light changed from green to red.
14) Thousands of Palestinian police, meanwhile, moved into positions near Jewish settlements to keep away Palestinian crowds and prevent attacks by militants during the pullout _ something that Israel warned would bring harsh retaliation.
15) Palestinian residents watched settlers packing up, and seeing moving trucks leave settlements dispelled the skepticism many Palestinians felt until the last minute.
16) "They are actually leaving. Who would have ever thought?" said Palestinian farmer Ziyad Satari, 40, standing on the roof of his three-story home in the Palestinian town of Khan Younis, which overlooks the Morag settlement.
17) Hundreds of supporters of the militant Islamic Jihad group celebrated in Gaza City on Sunday, with gunmen firing in the air, and teens setting off fire crackers and distributing sweets.The violent Hamas group organized special midnight prayers of thanks at Gaza mosques.
18) Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas offered the Israelis reassurance.
19) "We tell the Israeli people, `You have chosen the right path,'" he told Channel 10 TV. "Don't listen to the voices of the extremists who want a continuation of the occupation. I don't want _ and I will not accept _ any clashes with the army or the settlers."
20) However, there were exchanges of fire early Monday between soldiers and Palestinians near the Kfar Darom settlement, and mortar shells fell in two settlements and near an army base. No casualties were reported.
21) Many hope the pullout from the territory Israel captured in 1967 will be the start of a true partition of historic Palestine between Arab and Jew.
22) Others fear it is a ploy by Sharon to get rid of areas he doesn't consider crucial to Israel while consolidating control of parts of the West Bank, where the vast majority of the 240,000 Jewish settlers live.
23) The Palestinians want to create their own state out of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, with east Jerusalem as their capital.



2005-08-20
Israel's lightning removal of settlers sets dramatic precedent in Mideast conflict
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1) With its lightning operation in Gaza _ nearly all Jewish settlers evacuated in just 55 hours _ Israel has shown the world that it can dismantle such enclaves with relative ease, despite the settlers' tears, anguish and occasional violence.
2) Having set this precedent, Israel will likely come under increasingly intense pressure to do the same in the West Bank _ though Israeli officials insist it could be years before settlements there even come up for discussion.
3) On the Palestinian side, leader Mahmoud Abbas' success in preventing deadly attacks by militants during the pullout has boosted his image as a peace partner and given new weight to his demand that Israel resume negotiations.
4) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has repeatedly said his decision to withdraw from Gaza was the hardest he ever made, and the events of the past few days seemed to back his claim that Israel was making a painful concession.
5) With the world watching via live TV broadcasts, troops dragged sobbing settlers from homes and synagogues and battled rioting youth on rooftops. Soldiers and police often broke down in tears themselves as they carried babies out of nurseries and endured abuse from settlers who called them Nazis and traitors.
6) By Friday, 17 out 21 Gaza settlements had been evacuated, or 85 percent of the settler population. And while some say these agonizing scenes will eventually be forgotten, the swiftness of the pullout will not.
7) "If we can withdraw from Gaza in two days, speaking about the West Bank is now possible," said Yossi Beilin, leader of the dovish Yahad Party. "The biggest victory of the past two days is the feasibility of withdrawal."
8) Amnon Dankner, editor of Israel's mass-circulation Maariv daily, said the uprooting of settlers has shattered the widespread Israeli belief that the settlement movement is so powerful that it can veto any land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians. "The resistance (of the settlers) was squashed on first day," he said.
9) Shaul Goldstein, head of the Yesha council of settlements, acknowledged defeat, despite months of bitter struggle on the streets and in parliament.
10) He said settlers would now return to political lobbying to make sure the evacuation of four small West Bank settlements next week _ also part of Sharon's "disengagement" from the Palestinians _ will be the last time any of their enclaves are taken down.
11) Israeli security officials fear one of those West Bank enclaves, Sanur, will be a bastion of resistance, and that violence there will be much more intense than the worst of the Gaza clashes, when rioters threw paint, chemicals and sand at troops trying to haul them off the roof of a synagogue in the Kfar Darom settlement.
12) Goldstein said he was resigned to the loss of the four West Bank settlements and even pessimistic about the settlers' political prospects. "We are very frustrated and disappointed in the whole political system," he said.
13) Early Israeli elections could be held in the spring. However, it appears unlikely a pro-settler candidate, such as former Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will defeat the popular Sharon.
14) Zalman Shoval, a foreign policy adviser to Sharon, said the prime minister is in no rush to start negotiating with the Palestinians over the fate of the 122 West Bank settlements. "The West Bank is not on the agenda right now, and it will probably not be for a very long time," he said.
15) Sharon says that after the Gaza pullout, the Palestinians must work hard to prove themselves worthy as peace partners by dismantling militant groups and carrying out government reform. Only then could the two sides get started on the "road map" _ the internationally backed plan that would eventually lead to Palestinian statehood.
16) Shoval said negotiations on the terms of Palestinian statehood "may be years ahead." He also bristled at the idea that the Gaza pullout sets a precedent. "This is an isolated step taken by Israel," he said.
17) Earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested that Israel must keep going. "Everyone empathizes with what the Israelis are facing," she told The New York Times, referring to the Gaza pullout, but added that "it cannot be Gaza only."
18) Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said that "a certain taboo has been broken" with the removal of settlers, and that it is important the two sides now keep going and negotiate a final deal.
19) She noted that many Palestinians were amazed at the patience of Israeli troops with the settlers. "They (Palestinians) are used to the Israeli army shooting at them, giving them two minutes to leave their homes," she said, referring to Israeli army actions during nearly five years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
20) In Gaza, Abbas' security forces were working hard to keep Palestinian militants from disrupting the pullout by opening fire on soldiers or settlers.
21) Throughout the week, various militant groups staged "victory" marches toward the Gush Katif settlement bloc, with crowds led by masked gunmen. Initially, Palestinian police were ill-prepared to stop the marchers but in recent days deployed rows of riot police.
22) On Friday, Abbas was quick to ride the growing wave of joy over Israel's departure, and promised fenced-in Gazans freedom of movement, jobs and housing.



2005-08-26
Population in West Bank settlements grew by 12,800 over past year
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1) While Israel has emptied its Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, the population in its West Bank settlements has quickly grown over the past year, a government official said Friday.
2) The population in the West Bank settlements grew by 12,800 in the year ended in June, to about 246,000 people, said Gilad Heiman, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.
3) Heiman said the roughly 5 percent increase was due to new births in the settlements and an influx of new residents. He could not a breakdown for each figure.
4) Israel this week completed the evacuation of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four isolated enclaves in the West Bank. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said the withdrawal would bolster Israel's control over large settlement blocs in the West Bank _ where the vast majority of Jewish settlers live.
5) In the largest West Bank settlement of Maaleh Adumim, the population grew by about 1,000 people in the same period, Heiman said.
6) Earlier this week, Israel said it had issued land-seizure orders to confiscate land around Maaleh Adumim, which is home to about 30,000 settlers, for construction of a massive separation barrier. The barrier will go around the settlement, located about five miles (eight kilometers) east of Jerusalem, effectively annexing the land.
7) The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank as part of a future independent state, with east Jerusalem as their capital. They say the barrier and expansion of Maaleh Adumim and other settlements will make it impossible to create a viable independent state.
8) The United States has repeatedly criticized Israel for constructing in the settlements, saying it pre-empts a final agreement with the Palestinians. However, President George W. Bush has said a final settlement would have to recognize "new realities" on the ground.
9) (lc)



2005-09-10
Hundreds of apartments being built in Israeli settlements in West Bank, despite road map's demand for construction freeze
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1) Gravel-laden trucks rumbled up dirt roads, and laborers plastered walls of high-rise apartments in this fast-growing Jewish settlement, one of several across the West Bank where Israel is flouting its obligation under a U.S.-backed peace plan to freeze expansion.
2) Since the plan's launch two years ago, some 4,200 houses have gone up in settlements _ enough to increase the settler population, now 240,000, by 10 percent.
3) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be asked about his vision for the West Bank _ including Palestinian fears that he is unilaterally drawing a border there while blocking attempts to renew talks _ when he meets next week with world leaders in New York during the United Nation's 60th anniversary celebrations.
4) Sharon may not be grilled too harshly, however. He earned international accolades for pulling out of the Gaza Strip. And the Palestinians haven't kept their key promise under the "road map" plan, the disarming militants.
5) Israel's message is that it has paid a high price by withdrawing from Gaza, and that peace talks cannot resume so long as militants remain armed, Sharon's aides say. Until then, Israel doesn't consider itself bound by the plan.
6) "We need to make sure the Palestinians stick to their commitments," said Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir.
7) The Palestinians fear the Gaza pullout is the first stage of a plan by Sharon to tighten Israel's hold over the eastern sector of Jerusalem _ which they want for a capital _ and large tracts of the West Bank. "What Sharon is doing is negotiating with himself," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
8) The Palestinians point to the barrier Israel is building to separate it from the West Bank, saying its route is dictated by politics, not security, as Israel claims. The barrier is to encircle Jerusalem and meanders into the West Bank to enclose major settlement blocs.
9) Sharon says he wants to hold on to large blocs in any peace deal, but is not specific. Nor does he explain what would happen to the dozens of smaller Israeli communities on the "Palestinian" side of the barrier, where about one-fourth of the settlers live.
10) A recent tour of five of the fastest-growing settlements helped to fill in the picture.
11) Four of the five _ Betar Illit, Maaleh Adumim, Alfei Menashe and Kiryat Sefer _ fall on the Israeli side of the barrier. They are relatively close to Israel and already so large that they would stay under Israeli rule even under the so-called "Geneva Initiative," a peace deal proposal formulated by former Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.
12) In Betar Illit, a sprawling ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlement of 26,000 southwest of Jerusalem, hundreds of apartments are being built. One sign advertised 175 apartments under construction; another advertised 136.
13) The pounding of jackhammers broke the stillness of the West Bank. Palestinian laborers climbed up scaffolding and plastered facades, and trucks kicked up dust.
14) Israel insists settlements are not growing territorially, and that construction is restricted to built-up areas.
15) However, in Alfei Menashe, a settlement of 5,500 northeast of Tel Aviv, a new neighborhood is being built on a hill separated from the "mother settlement" by a dry riverbed. In Maaleh Adumim, the largest settlement with 29,500 residents east of Jerusalem, new construction is spreading deeper into the West Bank.
16) The U.S. acknowledged Israel may retain control over large West Bank settlements under a final Mideast peace deal.
17) But there has been friction with Washington over expanding the communities, particularly a plan to build a Maaleh Adumim satellite settlement with 3,650 homes that would cut off east Jerusalem from the West Bank and kill Palestinian hopes to set up a capital there.
18) The U.S. has also vetoed plans to swing the barrier around Ariel, the third-largest settlement, which unlike the other major settlement blocs, is located deep in the West Bank. Plans to take the barrier in an extra-wide loop around Maaleh Adumim _ almost halfway through the West Bank in an east-west direction _ are also on hold.
19) Israeli officials are reluctant to discuss the fate of dozens of settlements on the "Palestinian" side of the barrier. Sharon's formal position is there won't be further unilateral withdrawals. However, some officials acknowledge that some of the enclaves might eventually whither away. Residents of some communities have already urged the government to move them back to Israel, in exchange for compensation.
20) Even Ariel, which has around 17,000 residents, might not survive because it's 17 kilometers (10 miles) from Israel, a senior Housing Ministry official suggested. This week, "For sale" signs hung from a number of balconies in Ariel. Yet, the government also approved construction of 117 new homes, and a sports center is to be built by April.
21) In Israel, once bitterly divided over the fate of settlements, there is a growing consensus to keep just some of the blocs. The left-right debate is now being waged over Jerusalem _ Sharon says the city is non-negotiable _ and over how much of the West Bank to annex.
22) The Palestinians complain that the line Sharon is drawing would deny them a viable state. But the Israeli leader, fighting off a challenge from rebels in his Likud Party who want to depose him because of the Gaza pullout, is not likely to be pressured by the international community in coming months, Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher said.
23) "As long as Sharon delivers something successful, like disengagement (from Gaza), and as long as no strong, stable Palestinian leadership emerges, he could have something of a free ride, at least in America," Alpher said.



2005-09-16
Israeli court rejects world court ruling against West Bank separation barrier
(APW_ENG_20050916.0135)
1) The Israeli Supreme Court has rejected an opinion by the International Court of Justice calling for the removal of Israel's West Bank barrier, upholding the structure's legality and but also instructing the government to reroute a section to avoid encircling Palestinian villages.
2) In its first ruling on the world court opinion, the nine-member panel of Supreme Court justices said Thursday that the July 2004 judgment by the tribunal at the Hague, Netherlands, did not sufficiently consider Israel's security needs.
3) The world court delivered a nonbinding opinion calling the barrier illegal and recommending that it be torn down. Israel did not take part in the hearing, charging that it was a political show.
4) In its decision discarding the world court ruling, the Israeli panel also determined two key parameters: The barrier can extend into the West Bank, but it cannot impose undue hardships on Palestinians.
5) "The court reached the conclusion that the reason behind the fence is the security consideration of preventing infiltration by terrorists into Israel and Israeli communities (in the West Bank)," the ruling said. "On the other hand is the consideration of the human rights of the local Arab population."
6) The world court, it said, heard only arguments relating to the Palestinians' plight, "without dealing with the factual basis regarding Israel's security-military need to erect the fence."
7) Welcoming the ruling, Israeli Cabinet minister Haim Ramon of the moderate Labor Party urged around-the-clock construction to finish the project. The barrier is about one-third completed.
8) "On the strategic level," Ramon told Israel Radio, "the Supreme Court ruled that Israel has the full right to build the barrier to defend and protect the lives of its citizens."
9) Palestinians say the complex of walls, fences, trenches and razor wire is a land grab. In several places it cuts into the West Bank, which the Palestinians claim as part of their future state.
10) Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said if Israel wanted to build a barrier, it should do so on its own territory and not on Arab land it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
11) "Had it been built for Israel's security, it should have been built on the 1967 borders," he told The Associated Press.
12) Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the barrier has already blocked many potential bombers. "This fence is vitally important," he said. "This fence saves lives."
13) Israel began building the barrier along the West Bank at the height of a wave of Palestinian suicide bombing attacks in 2002. Bombers were easily walking or driving across the unmarked and unfortified line between the West Bank and Israel and blowing themselves up in Israeli cities, killing hundreds.
14) The original path would have encircled the West Bank and cut off more than a third of the territory. Successive suits by Palestinian villagers, isolated from schools, services and farmland by the snaking path of the barrier, forced the government to revise the path repeatedly, bringing it closer to the "Green Line," as the 1949 cease-fire line between Israel and the West Bank is known.
15) By the time the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, the barrier had been scaled back to the point it would cut off 6 to 8 percent of the West Bank, encircling main West Bank settlement blocs and some Palestinian villages between them and Israel.
16) The court ruling cuts the barrier back further, and legal experts said it would serve as a precedent for other disputed sectors, including the most sensitive _ the Jerusalem area, Gush Etzion near Bethlehem and Ariel in the center of the West Bank. The U.S. has complained about the barrier routes in these locations because of disruptions for Palestinians.
17) The case before the court concerned a portion of the barrier complex that has already been in place for two years around the settlement of Alfei Menashe, six kilometers (four miles) inside the West Bank, but also encircling five small Palestinian villages. The court ordered the military to find ways to free the villages from the encirclement _ dictating a "balloon" configuration around the settlement and a new road to be built directly to Israeli territory.
18) Alfei Menashe mayor Eliezer Hisdai welcomed the decision. "The court has stopped sanctifying the Green Line," he told Army Radio. "It talks about security for the people."
19) "I feel good," said Imad Ouda, mayor of Wadi Rasha, one of the encircling Palestinian villages. "We will feel even better when we can get up in the morning and look outside for the fence, and there's no fence," he told Israel Radio. "Our children will go to school with no permit, no gate, no checkpoint."



2005-10-14
Every inch counts in battle to reshape Israel's West Bank barrier
(APW_ENG_20051014.0546)
1) It's the same ritual every Friday: residents of this Palestinian village march from the local mosque to protest the construction of Israel's West Bank separation barrier on their land.
2) Villagers hope their stubborn protests, along with a petition to Israel's Supreme Court, will sway Israeli public opinion and force the government to move the barrier away from Bilin, closer to the 1967 Israel-West Bank frontier.
3) Court challenges and protests _ as well as a U.S. veto of barrier segments jutting deep into the West Bank _ are increasingly reshaping what started out three years ago as a route drawn solely by the Israeli government.
4) In this battle, every inch counts, particularly for the Palestinians who say Israel is drawing its own border without waiting for peace talks. Israel insists the barrier is meant solely to keep out Palestinian attackers and that a future border will be determined in negotiations.
5) Yet Israel has been drawing the line inside the West Bank, rather than on the old frontier, to encompass the largest Jewish settlements. The barrier route slices off some 8 percent of the West Bank _ land the Palestinians seek for their state _ and hampers the access of thousands of Palestinians to farmland, jobs and schools.
6) The Palestinians have had some success in getting the barrier moved closer to Israel and won a moral victory in 2004 when the world court at the Hague, Netherlands said in a non-binding ruling that the structure is illegal and should be torn down.
7) Nearly three-fourths of the 680-kilometer (425-mile) barrier have been built.
8) Segments amounting to about 10 percent of the total route are hung up in court, and the legal challenges are delaying construction of some of the adjacent stretches where the government can't start building until it knows the court's rulings, said a senior Defense Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly.
9) In addition, construction of two large segments that would cut deep into the West Bank to encompass large Jewish settlements has been frozen under American pressure.
10) In a landmark ruling in September, the Supreme Court ordered the army to tear down a section of the barrier encircling the Jewish settlement of Alfei Menashe and five Palestinian villages. The court said the barrier can extend into the West Bank, but cannot impose undue hardships on Palestinians, and asked that the loop around the Palestinian villages be removed.
11) The residents of Bilin hope the Alfei Menashe ruling will help their case.
12) More than half of Bilin's land _ 575 acres (235 hectares) _ has been confiscated by Israel for a wide barrier loop around the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Sefer, which is rapidly expanding with hundreds of new housing units.
13) Bilin's initial Supreme Court appeal has failed, but the village of 1,700 has now hired a new attorney and is preparing for a second legal battle, said Abdullah Abu Rahmi, a resident leading the fight against the barrier.
14) On a recent Friday, some three dozen Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners marched from the mosque toward an olive grove adjacent to the barrier, attempting unsuccessfully to harvest olives. Some carried ladders and children held plastic buckets, using them as makeshift drums amid chanting.
15) Troops' loudspeakers warned that entering the grove would be considered "act of aggression." A cat-and-mouse chase evolved into a shouting match. Eventually, the sides tired of the weekly ritual, and the bulldozers rumbled on. Construction of the Bilin segment is nearly complete, with less than 5 kilometers (3 miles) remaining.
16) "We're hoping that if we continue with the same determination and with the same persistence, using peaceful means to resist, the courts might also come under pressure," Abu Rahmi said.
17) Elsewhere along the route, Palestinians in the pastoral West Bank farming village of Wadi Fukin, tucked into a valley next to Israel's 1967 frontier, have banded together with their neighbors in the Israeli town of Zur Hadassah to try to stop construction.
18) Wadi Fukin residents say their livelihood is at stake. They rely on six hilltop cisterns that feed an underground aquifer and fear construction of the 3-kilometer (1.9 miles) section of barrier there will disturb irrigation.
19) One cistern has already dried out due to expansion in Beitar Illit, a nearby Jewish settlement of some 26,000 residents, said Etai Hovav, a Zur Hadassah geologist who is fighting the barrier's route in court.
20) Despite the challenges, Israel expects the barrier to be completed by the end of 2006, said the Defense Ministry official. Israel is building high-tech terminals as crossing points, and soldiers operating them will be replaced by civilians within two years.
21) Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev denied Israel is unilaterally drawing a border. "We are committed to negotiations by which the final border will be agreed to between Israelis and Palestinians," he said.
22) Other officials, however, acknowledge that while the barrier's route can change, it is likely to form the point of reference in future negotiations.
23) Dror Etkes, a barrier specialist at Israel's Peace Now group, said there's no going back: "The investment and the infrastructure they are putting into it screams, 'Border, border, border.'"



2005-10-26
Jewish settler leaders propose cactus shrubs replace Israel's separation barrier in some West Bank areas
(APW_ENG_20051026.0966)
1) Cactus shrubs, radar and security cameras: This is the obstacle a Jewish settler leader has proposed to keep Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel, instead of the high-tech West Bank barrier now under construction.
2) The settlers, concerned that the West Bank separation barrier would suffocate their communities, have told Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz their idea would be as effective at stopping Palestinian attackers as the government's original plan to build an obstacle of razor-wire fences, concrete walls and electronic devices.
3) the barrier is about one-third completed. Israel began building it more than three years ago after a wave of suicide bombing attacks in Israeli cities, in which bombers crossed the unmarked West Bank line and entered Israeli cities unhindered.
4) But neither the settlers nor the Palestinians want a permanent-appearing barrier that would amount to a border, said Shaul Goldstein, mayor of the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements, who made the proposal.
5) Palestinians complain that the route of the barrier cuts off some of their land and creates hardships. Jewish settlers are concerned that communities on the "Israeli" side might not be able to expand. Also, settlers on both sides of the barrier contend that even when it is completed, it would not mean that Israel is giving up most or all of the West Bank.
6) Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and Gaza for a state.
7) Goldstein proposed the green, prickly obstacle to separate his settlement bloc _ in the Judean Hills just outside of Jerusalem _ from the rest of the West Bank. The cacti would also not be an eyesore in the hilly landscape around Jerusalem, Goldstein said.
8) "I wanted to prevent this (attacks) without the downside of the barrier, which has the connotations of a border," Goldstein said. "So the cacti prevent passage. Second, it's not a border. Third, it's part of an entire system, including radar and cameras."
9) Cactus plants, while formidable, can be felled easily with a long-handled ax, unlike razor wire and concrete walls.
10) Mofaz and other military officials responded favorably to the idea and agreed to discuss it further at a meeting on Friday, Goldstein said. Defense Ministry officials were not available to comment.
11) (rpm/ml)



2006-02-06
Anti-settlement group: construction in illegal outposts continued last year
(APW_ENG_20060206.0859)
1) Construction in unauthorized West Bank settlement outposts continued in 2005, according to the annual report of the anti-settlement Peace Now group, and the overall population of the settlements grew despite Israel's Gaza pullout.
2) The Israeli watchdog group counts 102 unauthorized outposts and said that permanent housing was built in 33 of them last year.
3) Last week Israeli forces battled settlers and their backers at Amona, an outpost north of Jerusalem, destroying nine houses. More than 200 settlers and police were injured in the clashes.
4) Israel is obligated by the internationally backed "road map" peace plan to remove unauthorized settlement points erected after March 2001. Israel has acknowledged about two dozen such points, while Peace Now puts the number at 52.
5) Most of the outposts consist of a few trailers next to a veteran settlement, but Peace Now found that many outposts are taking firm root in the West Bank, listing the 33 points where permanent construction is underway.
6) Peace Now complained that the Israeli government is not enforcing its own laws, which require removal of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has pledged to take down the outposts in keeping with the "road map" plan.
7) Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called on the U.S. to press Israel to keep its promises. He said the report showed that "Israel is in violation of its commitments emanating from the road map that specifies a cessation in expansion including natural growth."
8) On the other hand, no new settlements were created in 2005, the report found. Israel knocked down veteran settlements for the first time, pulling out of Gaza and part of the West Bank in the summer and destroying 25 settlements.
9) According to figures compiled by Peace Now, at the end of December 2004, 243,900 Israelis lived in 146 settlements. A year later, the number of settlements was down to 121, but the population increased to 253,748.
10) The report said most of the new construction was in settlements on the "Israeli" side of the barrier being built along and in the West Bank. Israel has said the barrier is a temporary security measure, but Palestinians fear it will turn into an Israeli-imposed border.
11) The report said Israel also continues to build bypass roads for use by settlers in the West Bank. The report said the largest project is meant to serve just 2,500 settlers in isolated enclaves south of Jerusalem.
12) (ml)



2006-03-13
Anxious settlers look to elections with sense of dismay
(APW_ENG_20060313.0679)
1) Jewish settlers are looking to Israel's March 28 election with growing despair: Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the front-runner, says openly that he wants to give up large areas of the West Bank and uproot most settlements there, and the settlers don't have the political clout to stop him.
2) Still disheartened after last year's Gaza pullout, settlers are torn over what to do. Opinions run from collecting compensation and leaving willingly, to negotiating with the government or even resisting with force.
3) Giving up more land is "surrendering to terror" and will bring Hamas militants, who won Jan. 25. legislative elections, "to our doorsteps," said Bentzi Lieberman, head of the settlers' council. "We will do everything we can to stop it," he added.
4) The 250,000 Israelis living in 120 West Bank settlements make up only 3.5 percent of Israel's population, but for years wielded disproportionate political influence, bolstered by powerful allies in parliament.
5) That began to change last summer, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, their longtime patron, withdrew from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, uprooting 25 settlements.
6) Many settlers acknowledge that public opinion has shifted. "We understand that what we think should be the Israeli dream is no longer shared by the entire society," said Shaul Goldstein, another settler leader.
7) Sharon said that separating the settlers from Palestinians would improve security and help ensure Israel's future as a democracy with a Jewish majority. It was the first time Israel removed settlements built on land captured in the 1967 Mideast War and claimed by the Palestinians for their state.
8) Settlers said they were mistreated at the time, and a new government report backs the claim. The state comptroller said poor planning and handling of the evacuees caused unnecessary suffering, leaving thousands of settlers in temporary quarters months after the pullout.
9) Olmert, who has been running the Israeli government since Sharon's massive stroke Jan. 4, appears even more willing to take on the settlers. Last month, Israeli troops demolished nine homes in the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona, in what became the most violent clash ever between settlers and the security forces.
10) The incident has shaken the settlers. "They're trying to demonize us. They're trying to demoralize us," said Batya Medad, a New York native who settled in Shilo nearly 25 years ago. Nestled on a wind-swept ridge in the northern West Bank, the community of 250 families is a strong candidate for removal under Olmert's plan.
11) Polls predict Olmert's Kadima Party will win about 38 seats in the 120-seat parliament, putting it in a strong position to lead a coalition with moderate parties.
12) The settlers are in "deep deep trouble," said Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at Hebrew University. "Their future is to make a very big decision whether to fight or pack up nicely."
13) Goldstein said the settlers won't go against public opinion if Olmert wins a clear mandate. If Olmert goes forward with his plan, settlers will try to rally public opposition but also work with the government. "They will try to fight, scream and shout, and then negotiate," he said.
14) Olmert scored a public relations coup recently when Yoel Bin-Nun, an influential settler rabbi, announced his support for Kadima.
15) Bin-Nun said he appreciated Olmert's offer to consult with settlers as he determines the border. "If we say all or nothing, we could end up with nothing," Bin-Nun said.
16) However, Bin-Nun said he believes he is in the minority among settlers. He said many people have told his friends and students they are upset with him, though he has not been directly confronted.
17) Avshalom Vilan, a lawmaker from the dovish Yahad Party, has launched a program promising a home in Israel to anyone living in a settlement outside Israel's West Bank separation barrier. Under Olmert's plan, the barrier is to be the basis of the final border.
18) Vilan said his group, One House, has been contacted by about 1,000 people since it began work last year. He estimates that half of the roughly 80,000 people living beyond the barrier would move out willfully. "They know they don't have any future," he said.
19) The other half, however, are likely to resist in one way or another, he said. Most resistance would likely be passive, as was the case in Gaza. But given the religious significance of the land, violence is a possibility.
20) "If Olmert decides to uproot the settlements, that is a violent act," said Yair Shalev, a real-estate developer in Shilo. "If Olmert is going to be violent, some people are not going to be the battered wife. They might fight back."
21) During the Gaza withdrawal, and more recently in Hebron and Amona in the West Bank, small numbers of protesters threw skin-burning chemicals, eggs, bricks and other debris at security forces.
22) Government inquiries have noted in the past that militants among the settlers have acted with impunity, both against the Palestinians and against Israeli security forces.
23) Beyond the violence, Israeli critics of the settlers have long complained that the settlers have led the nation astray for decades and antagonized the international community. Israeli governments have invested billions of dollars in settlement construction, including generous subsidies for settlers.
24) The settlers still believe they are the vanguard of Zionism. They have transformed barren West Bank hilltops into bustling communities, fulfilling what they believed was God's command to settle the biblical Land of Israel.
25) Shilo resident David Rubin, a U.S.-born Orthodox Jew who survived a roadside shooting that wounded his 3-year-old son, said the attack only increased his resolve to remain.
26) "Olmert is going against his heritage and right to be here," he said. "Hopefully the rest of the country will wake up in time."



2006-06-19
Israeli defense minister to review route of separation barrier
(APW_ENG_20060619.0317)
1) Defense Minister Amir Peretz has ordered a review of the route of Israel's separation barrier with the West Bank to better reflect Palestinian concerns, his office said Monday, a decision that could have significant implications for Israel's future borders.
2) Peretz, the leader of the dovish Labor Party, wants the route to meet security needs, and not serve as a tool to expand settlements and cement Israel's hold on lands the Palestinians claim for a future state, the Haaretz newspaper reported.
3) Peretz's office confirmed he was reviewing the route with Palestinians in mind, but would not provide further details.
4) If security considerations are the sole basis for the route, then the barrier's course will be changed in several areas, especially around Jerusalem, said Shaul Arieli, a retired colonel who has issued expert opinions on the barrier route to the Supreme Court.
5) Israel began building the 760-kilometer (470-mile) barrier in 2001 in an effort to bring down the number of Palestinian attackers coming in from the West Bank.
6) But because the current route would put about 10 percent of the West Bank on the "Israeli" side of the barrier, Palestinians and other critics regard the enclosure as a thinly veiled land grab.
7) The barrier has also created great hardships for many Palestinians, by cutting them off from relatives, jobs, schools, hospitals and farmlands.
8) The decision to review the route was a further sign of Peretz's intent to overhaul Israeli defense policy with regard to the Palestinians. Since taking office in April, he has increased the number of permits for Palestinians to work in Israel, opened key cargo crossings with the Gaza Strip, and promised to remove illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank.
9) If security becomes the sole determiner of the barrier's route, then changes are likely around Jerusalem and the nearby settlement of Maaleh Adumim, where the state has taken large swaths of land for political reasons, Arieli told Army Radio.
10) "There are more than a few places where there is indeed a deviation whose entire goal is to appropriate lands where there are future plans ... to expand the settlements," Arieli said.
11) The barrier's entire route will be reviewed, including sections that have already been built and might need to be rerouted as a consequence, Haaretz said.
12) Peretz ordered the review after the Supreme Court ordered the defense ministry last week to reroute a 3-mile-long section of the barrier near the Palestinian town of Qalqiliya, saying it was being used to allow an expansion of the Jewish settlement of Tzufin, and not for security reasons.
13) The defense minister wants to avoid similar rulings in the future, Haaretz said. Human rights and Palestinian groups allege that in at least 10 places, the barrier's sole intent is to allow settlement expansion.
14) Israel has had to modify the barrier's route several times before following Supreme Court rulings. The original route, before the changes, included at least 150,000 acres (60,704 hectares) of West Bank land that was taken for political reasons, Arieli said. He had no updated figures.
15) The Israeli government has repeatedly insisted that the barrier is being built for security reasons alone. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said Israel's final borders would approximate the barrier's route.
16) If Israel includes within its final borders only those settlements that abut the line separating Israel and the West Bank, then 200,000 of the 250,000 Jewish settlers will be included on the "Israeli" side of the fence, Arieli said.



2006-11-22
More than a year after Israel ' s Gaza pullout, most settlers still live in limbo
(APW_ENG_20061122.0015)
1) A few electric lamp posts, water pipes and roads -- in a village without houses -- amount to the only permanent infrastructure the Israeli government has built for the 8,500 settlers it uprooted from the Gaza Strip more than a year ago.
2) After Israel proved it could pull out the settlers swiftly, it has not yet shown that it knows what to do with them. Most are still lodged in temporary communities and prefab homes across southern Israel.
3) Frustrated settlers accuse politicians of reneging on promises. The government says the settlers slowed the process by resisting.
4) Pressure remains on the Israeli government to prove it can handle the logistics of resettling its people. Though a West Bank pullout has been temporarily shelved, the prospect of another unilateral withdrawal involving 10 times as many settlers still looms. And opponents of the plan are waiting to seize on the government's possible failure.
5) In Bat Hadar, near the Mediterranean, the government spent close to US$3.5 million (euro2.8 million) to carve the foundation for the community from the sandy earth. Construction of the first 21 houses, funded by the settlers with compensation they received for their homes in Gaza, is scheduled to begin soon.
6) "This is my place," said David Saadon, the community's leader, standing proudly on an empty gravel lot where his home is to be built. "I hope that by summer next year most of the people will have their new homes and will be starting their new lives."
7) The attitude is far less optimistic a few miles north, in the temporary community of Nitzan, where 480 families -- the biggest concentration of former Gaza settlers -- live in neat rows of temporary, modular homes with villa-style rooftops.
8) "I don't have a house. I only have a place where I can be for a short period of time," said Laurence Beziz, project coordinator for the Gush Katif Committee, one of several settler advocacy groups. "The fact is that the government has not even bought the land to start building the infrastructure. It's incredible that after a year, we're still at this stage."
9) As part of the withdrawal, the government said it would compensate the settlers for their property and build the infrastructure for resettled communities of more than 20 families.
10) But Shaul Goldstein, a settler leader in the West Bank, said communities have received little help during the transition. There is widespread unemployment, families and communities have splintered and children have fallen behind in school, he said.
11) Settlers claim compensation for businesses has not been fully paid and land for permanent communities has not been secured. Most settlers blame partisan bickering and government bureaucracy.
12) Still, it is not fair to characterize the resettlement as a failure, said Haim Altman, spokesman for the government body responsible for compensating the settlers. The government has paid nearly US$470 million (euro375 million) in compensation and 94 percent of settlers have received money for their homes, Altman said.
13) Some of the families took their compensation money and found new housing for themselves.
14) The government also built 1,400 temporary homes, though not required to do so by the compensation law, Altman said. The prefab houses range from 90 to 120 square meters (970 to 1,290 square feet) -- much smaller than the sprawling houses many settlers had -- and are laid out in sections to keep old neighbors together.
15) Altman said the resettlement is moving faster than most other government projects in Israel.
16) Many believe the government shouldn't be on the defensive given that, until the evacuation, most settlers refused to cooperate with the pullout plan. Some thought the plan was only a bluff and others hoped for divine intervention. Many settlers had not planned for what to do after being pulled out.
17) Beziz said she and the other settlers couldn't bring themselves to cut a deal before the withdrawal. "This feeling that we needed to hold on to what we had until the last moment was very strong among the people," said Beziz.
18) Saadon, on the other hand, entered negotiations a year before the pullout, and now Bat Hadar is the first to receive infrastructure.
19) Even a perceived failure of the resettlement could shake support for the eventual West Bank pullout, analysts said.
20) Such backing will be crucial if Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ever wants to revive his plan to draw Israel's borders unilaterally by dismantling most West Bank settlements, but annexing the largest ones close to Israel.
21) Olmert was elected on his "consolidation plan" but had to shelve it after the summer's Lebanon war, which turned many Israelis against the idea of unilateral pullouts. Critics say the withdrawal of the Israeli army from south Lebanon in 2000 enabled Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas to gain enough power to threaten northern Israel.
22) Many Israelis will look to the Gaza precedent in making up their minds about a possible West Bank pullout, experts say.
23) If Gaza settlers aren't resettled properly, "it's going to raise questions on how capable any government can be in dealing with the resettlement of not 7,000 or 8,000 people, but up to 10 times as many," said political analyst Yossi Alpher.
24) Even Olmert, at a recent meeting of ministers in charge of the Gaza settlers, acknowledged his administration's shortcomings.
25) "It's inconceivable that the matter of the settlers should drag out for so long," he said. "We must use all of the tools at our disposal to prevent bureaucracy that is unnecessary and inconsiderate of the settlers."



2007-01-09
West Bank Jewish settlement population grew 5.8 percent in 2006
(APW_ENG_20070109.1003)
1) The population of Israel's settlements in the West Bank grew by 5.8 percent to 268,379 in 2006, the Israeli Interior Ministry said Tuesday.
2) Israel is supposed to have frozen construction in settlements according to the internationally backed "road map" peace plan, but Israel insists it must build to accommodate natural growth, despite the plan's ban.
3) One portion of the growth in the West Bank was an influx from Gaza. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and dismantled its 21 settlements there in 2005, and most of the 8,500 settlers moved to the West Bank, according to settler leaders.
4) Also Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered a halt to construction of a 30-kilometer (18-mile) stretch of the separation barrier Israel is building along the West Bank, his ministry said. The section is in the sparsely populated southern part of the West Bank in the Judean Desert.
5) Peretz called the halt to allow examination of environmental aspects of the construction, the ministry said. Environmentalists warned that the barrier would interfere with movement of animals in the desert.
6) Israel began building the barrier in 2001 after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings carried out by infiltrators from the West Bank. However, a series of court cases has forced changes in the route and delays in construction.
7) Because the barrier dips into the West Bank in some places to place main settlements on the "Israeli" side, Palestinians have denounced it as a land grab, also cutting them off from the Arab section of Jerusalem.



2007-01-23
Palestinians may have to leave enclaves caused by separation barrier: report
(APW_ENG_20070123.1436)
1) A report by an Israeli watchdog group has warned that Israel's barrier along and in the West Bank might force thousands Palestinian villagers to leave their homes because they are cut off from the world.
2) Around 250,000 Palestinians in the West Bank will live in 21 enclaves, cut off from their communities, jobs and education in nearby towns, once Israel completes building its separation barrier -- according to the report by Bimkom, an Israeli planning rights group. The report was released on Monday.
3) Many of the affected Palestinians would eventually leave, warned Alon Cohen-Lipshitz, one of the report's authors.
4) "The planners of the barrier want a quiet transfer," or removal of the population, he said.
5) Palestinians are already moving away from their communities in areas where the separation barrier is already built, the report said.
6) The report cited the case of , Mahmoud Subeih, 59. He used to live in Azzaim village close to Jerusalem, where he worked and his children attended school. He moved to Jerusalem after his village was surrounded by the barrier in 2003, turning a 10-minute drive down the road into a two-hour journey with a checkpoint search.
7) Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the barrier has saved lives by preventing suicide bombers from entering Israel. Hundreds of Israelis have been killed in suicide attacks originating in the West Bank.
8) "I understand for Palestinians the fence can bring about a degree of inconvenience and its our obligation as a government to minimize that, but ... if one puts on the scale quality of life and life and death, life has to have paramount importance."
9) Palestinians have accused Israel of grabbing land under the guise of security and using the barrier to unilaterally set the borders of a future Palestinian state. Israel maintains that the barrier, including 8-meter (30-foot) concrete walls, is a temporary security measure.



2007-01-31
Israel looking into moving separation barrier route to include two West Bank settlements
(APW_ENG_20070131.0714)
1) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office on Wednesday said the government is looking into moving a stretch of its separation barrier deeper into the West Bank to include two Jewish settlements, a route would leave thousands of Palestinians on the Israeli side of the fence.
2) Palestinian officials immediately condemned the plan as an attempt by Israel to annex territory they claim for a future independent state.
3) Olmert's office denied a report in the daily Haaretz that the prime minister had already approved the new route, saying he had only ordered officials to look into the possibility.
4) "The prime minister asked to look into the matter and announced that at the end of the necessary examinations the matter will be discussed by the Cabinet," according to the statement, which said no date had been set for a Cabinet discussion.
5) According to Haaretz, the new route would enclose the Jewish settlements of Naaleh and Nili -- home to 1,500 Israelis -- on the Israeli side of the barrier. The new route would also enclose roughly 20,000 Palestinians between the barrier and the frontier with Israel.
6) The report said residents of the two settlements had asked for the new route.
7) Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Olmert, said the Haaretz report was untrue because Olmert "couldn't simply overturn a Cabinet decision" on the original route of the barrier. Construction in the area of the settlements is incomplete.
8) Israel says the separation barrier, which is about two-thirds complete, is necessary to stop suicide bombers from reaching Israeli population centers. When it is finished, the massive complex of concrete walls, barbed wire and electronic sensors is expected to stretch roughly 425 miles (680 kilometers) in length.
9) The Palestinians charge that the barrier, which dips into the West Bank in many areas to include Israeli settlements, is being used by Israel to take land the Palestinians want for a future state.
10) Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel, said the Israeli move "undermines everything we're doing to revive the peace process."
11) "The wall is the continuation of unilateralism and dictation, and destroys the prospects of any real negotiations," he added.
12) The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War, as part of a future independent state.
13) In the past, the Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the government to move the barrier route closer to Israel's pre-1967 frontier. Should the government approve the new route, it too would almost certainly be challenged in court.



2007-06-07
Disputed Hebron house emerges as latest flashpoint in divided West Bank city
(APW_ENG_20070607.1180)
1) When 14 Jewish families moved into a Palestinian house in this sacred West Bank city -- the traditional burial site of the biblical patriarch Abraham -- Israel vowed to kick them out. Three months later, they're still there -- children huddling on a single mattress, mothers cooking in a makeshift kitchen, and soldiers patrolling the rooftop.
2) The scene highlights the Israeli government's inability to carry through with its electoral pledge to begin removing West Bank settlers, who are becoming increasingly bold in the face of failed peacemaking.
3) Hebron, a frequent flashpoint of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, is home to about 500 Jewish settlers living in heavily-guarded enclaves among some 160,000 Palestinians. Clashes are frequent.
4) Israel controls the center of the city, while the Palestinians have the rest. Israel's large military presence often hinders the movement of Palestinians.
5) The disputed house has only added to the tension. Situated on a hilltop, the four-story building is of strategic value-- it overlooks the city and is a gateway between Hebron and the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba. The settlers say they want to create a land link between the two.
6) Dozens of Jewish settlers moved into the building in March, saying the house was purchased legally. The Palestinian owner denied selling the home but has since been jailed by the Palestinian Authority because of the deal. Regardless, any settler real estate purchase or building of a new home in the West Bank requires government approval.
7) Defense Minister Amir Peretz initially ordered the settlers to leave, but he was overruled by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who ordered a legal review. The matter is currently in the hands of government and military legal advisers and will likely be followed by a settler appeal to Israel's Supreme Court.
8) Israeli military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Thursday that it would take months before any action could be taken against the settlers, if at all.
9) The settlers have erected a synagogue in the squalid building, moved their large families into its bare housing units and placed their appliances and belongings on the concrete floors.
10) "We have no plans of leaving. It belongs to us, why would we ever leave it?" said David Wilder, a spokesman for Hebron's Jewish settlers. "We spent a lot of money to move here and we will renovate it ... we will never be expelled from the building."
11) Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza 40 years ago, and 270,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, which Palestinians claim as part of a future independent state. In 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza and took down four small settlements in the West Bank.
12) With peace efforts in the deep freeze, the settlers are making a comeback,
13) In addition to taking over the Hebron house, settlers are planning a march next week to the site of the evacuated settlement of Homesh in the northern West Bank. Settlers have staged a number of standoffs at the site and are pledging to rebuild it.
14) "We took a hard hit (in Gaza)," said Yishay Hollander, spokesman for the settlers' council. "They took off our hand, but we still have the whole body and it is getting stronger -- and we believe we can also fix the hand."
15) Israeli doves say the government must crack down on settlement expansion if it has any hopes of ultimately reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians.
16) "There is a principle involved here: the settlers are proving that every house they buy they move into," said Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the anti-settlement Israeli group Peace Now. "And the government is sending a message that the power to decide where Jews live in the West Bank belongs to the settlers and not the country."
17) Olmert was elected last year on a pledge to evacuate additional West Bank settlements and draw Israel's borders without waiting for a peace deal with the Palestinians. However, he shelved the plan after emerging politically weakened from Israel's war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon last summer.
18) Olmert and Peretz have also repeatedly vowed to dismantle dozens of unauthorized settlement outposts, but have not done so since a violent clash with settlers in the evacuation of the outpost of Amona in February 2006.



2007-06-08

2007-08-16
Three-fourths of settlers live on
(APW_ENG_20070816.1277)
1) Three-fourths of all Jewish settlers live in communities that will lie on the "Israeli" side of the barrier Israel is building along and inside the West Bank, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Thursday.
2) Nearly 210,000 settlers -- 76 percent of the total number -- live in 48 settlements that will lie west of the fence once it is completed, Haaretz said on its Web site, citing Interior Ministry data. The remaining 65,440 settlers live in the 74 settlements that lie east of the fence route, the newspaper said.
3) Israel has said it expects to hold on to the blocs where most settlers live in any final peace deal with the Palestinians. It says it is building the barrier to keep out Palestinian attackers, but because the enclosure dips into the West Bank, the Palestinians and other critics denounce it as a land grab.



2007-11-17
Thousands of Palestinians hemmed into Israel seperation barrier face hardship: U.N. report
(APW_ENG_20071117.0351)
1) Only 18 percent of some 30,000 West Bank farmers who used to work the lands cut off by Israel's separation barrier now have Israeli permits to reach their fields, the U.N. said in a report on the lives of some 230,000 Palestinians in 67 communities close to the barrier.
2) The report by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs looked at 15 communities with about 10,000 residents trapped between the barrier and Israel, and at 52 communities with 220,000 residents on the "Palestinian side" of the divider.
3) Those in the hemmed-in villages require permanent residency permits, while those on the east side of the barrier need Israeli-issued visitors permits to reach lands or visit family in the enclosed communities.
4) Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the report is "one-sided" and that Israel is working to reduce the barrier's impact on the Palestinians.
5) Israel started building the barrier in 2002, saying it is a temporary security tool meant to keep out of Palestinian attackers who by then had killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in bombings and shootings. However, the barrier is largely built on West Bank land and Palestinians say its meandering route amounts to a land grab.
6) Once completed, it would slice off 8.6 percent of West Bank land and, according to U.N. data, incorporate 380,000 of 450,000 Israelis living on war-won land the Palestinians demand for their state-to-be.
7) The U.N. report, citing local community leaders, said that of some 30,000 Palestinians who used to work their fields on the "Israeli" side of the barrier, only 18 percent currently have permits to reach their fields. Some 3,000 people stopped applying because they'd been repeatedly rejected in the past.
8) Sixty-seven gates are built into the 200 kilometer (125 mile) stretch of barrier studied, the report said.
9) Of those, 19 are open daily to those with permits, but are closed at night, while another 19 are open during special harvest seasons, or weekly, the report said.
10) Of the 15 villages hemmed in by the barrier, nine reported that pregnant women had to leave their homes weeks before birth to ensure they could access proper health care, and just over half the villages said they had no access to basic health care, meaning they had to pass through gates in Israel's barrier for treatment.
11) The U.N. report said all the hemmed-in villages reported single people had problems meeting spouses because of that isolation -- a burden in conservative Palestinian society, which expects men and women to marry quite young, and looks disapprovingly upon those who delay marriage.
12) The barrier, alongside Israeli settlements and Israeli-only roads, has fragmented the West Bank.
13) Some 60 percent has been completed, mostly in the northern West Bank and around Jerusalem. In an advisory ruling in 2004, the International Court of Justice said the parts of the barrier that jut into the West Bank are illegal and called on Israel to dismantle them.
14) Regev said the barrier has boosted Israeli security. "We have seen since the barrier has gone up, a 90 percent reduction of suicide bombings into Israel, surely these are facts that can't be ignored," Regev said.
15) "Ultimately the route of the barrier is for security reasons. We have a policy to find the greatest possible security to Israelis and minimize the negative impact to Palestinians," he said.



2007-12-07
Poll: Few Israeli settlers will leave homes for cash
(APW_ENG_20071207.0766)
1) A minority of Israeli settlers would leave their West Bank homes voluntarily if the government paid them compensation, a poll revealed Friday.
2) Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak voiced support earlier this week for a proposal to offer cash compensation to Jewish settlers living on the West Bank side of Israel's separation barrier, saying it will help avoid forced evacuations when Israel cedes land to the Palestinians.
3) The route of the contentious barrier encloses major settlement blocs, home to two-thirds of settlers, which Israel plans to retain in a final peace agreement. The proposal suggests that the rest of the settlers, reportedly about 70,000, would be able to claim compensation and leave even before a peace agreement is signed.
4) This week, an official in the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Olmert is considering the idea.
5) Friday's poll indicated that few settlers would agree to leave.
6) Only 11 percent of the settlers left outside the barrier's current route would move if offered compensation equal to the value of their homes, according to the poll. If the government offers double the value of their property, 17 percent would leave and 76 percent would stay, the poll said.
7) The survey, carried out by the TNS Teleseker company and published in the daily Maariv, questioned 400 settlers and had a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points.
8) Almost 270,000 Israelis live in settlements in the West Bank, land Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians claim for a future state.
9) Israel began building the barrier in 2002, saying it was a necessary measure to stop Palestinian suicide bombers. The Palestinians oppose the barrier's route, saying it dips too deeply into the West Bank at points and is designed to seize Palestinian land.
10) More than a third of the barrier has yet to be built, held up by court appeals, international pressure and bureaucratic delays.
11) When Israel dismantled its settlements in the Gaza Strip in 2005, soldiers and policemen had to physically remove many of the 9,000 settlers there. The images were painful for much of the Israeli public, prompting politicians to consider ways to avoid such scenes in future West Bank evacuations.
12) Friday's poll showed that nonreligious settlers -- many of whom moved to the West Bank for cheap housing and not for ideological reasons -- are far more willing to take compensation and leave than their religious neighbors. Most of the Orthodox Jewish settlers are committed to the hardline ideology of the settlement movement and see living in the West Bank as the fulfillment of a biblical commandment.



2008-04-24
Israeli law would pay settlers to leave West Bank
(APW_ENG_20080424.0569)
1) When the Ventura family moved to this West Bank settlement from a Tel Aviv suburb 20 years ago, they sought open spaces and mountain air.
2) But years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting have scared away their children and grandchildren. Now the retired couple wants to move back.
3) "We came here for quality of life when there were no worries here," said Tzuri Ventura, 68, a retired truck driver. "We just want to get out of here ... but we don't have enough money."
4) A new bill would compensate West Bank settlers like the Venturas who voluntarily leave their homes, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to decide within days whether to support it.
5) The idea is to get a head start on the evacuation of West Bank settlements that would have to be dismantled anyway in a final peace deal with the Palestinians. Olmert and the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank are trying to conclude such an agreement by year's end, despite enormous obstacles.
6) Getting settlers to move of their own accord could help Israel avoid the violence and anguish that accompanied the country's 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
7) During Israel's evacuation of 8,000 settlers from Gaza, sobbing residents were dragged from their homes and others violently resisted. Many of the settlements were built during the euphoria that swept the country after Israel captured the Gaza Strip and West Bank in 1967.
8) While Israel hopes to hold onto several clumps of settlements, Olmert has said Israel will have to give up most of the West Bank for a future Palestinian state. Those sections will likely be those located on the other side of the massive separation barrier Israel is erecting in the West Bank and that is nearly complete. More than 70,000 Jewish settlers live in these areas.
9) As part of U.S. involvement in Mideast peace talks, American officials have expressed interest in the bill. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has raised the issue in meetings with Olmert, officials from his Kadima Party said.
10) A key backer of the bill, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, will give Olmert a report on the bill in the coming days to persuade him to support it, government officials said on condition of anonymity since Olmert and Ramon were declining to comment on the bill.
11) The offer would apply to residents of 74 settlements expected to lie outside Israel's West Bank 790-kilometer (490-mile) separation barrier, said Avshalom Vilan of the dovish Meretz Party, a co-author of the legislation.
12) The bill's sponsors hope the U.S. government would offer aid to compensate the settlers. If half the settlers in question agreed to leave voluntarily, Vilan estimates the total cost of buying them out would be between $2 billion (euro1.25 billion) and $2.5 billion (euro1.57 billion).
13) Ramon's report shows that 25 percent of the settlers living in these communities would leave their homes if compensated, the Yediot Ahronot daily said this week. Sponsors of the proposal say the number is as high as 50 percent.
14) Settlers who support the proposal say many of their neighbors are afraid to admit they want to move. About half of the settlers are religious hard-liners who believe God promised the West Bank to the Jewish people. For them, moving constitutes betrayal.
15) "Many people are afraid to speak up because of public pressure," said Benny Raz, a resident of Karnei Shomron and founder of One Home, an organization of settlers who want to move.
16) Raz and Vilan travel all over the West Bank, holding "parlor talks" with settler families who are anxious to return to Israel proper but cannot find anyone to buy the homes whose property values have fallen in recent years.
17) Hard-line settlers sometimes demonstrate outside the meetings. Opponents also warn participants they could be fired from local jobs. Raz himself lost a security job in Karnei Shomron after he began pushing for compensation four years ago.
18) The fate of Karnei Shomron's 7,000 residents is particularly unclear.
19) The community sits just outside the Ariel settlement bloc, which Olmert has said he wants to keep in a final agreement along with other blocs closer to the Israeli frontier with the West Bank.
20) Israel began to build a separate fence around Ariel, creating a finger that stretches well into the West Bank, but halted the work two years ago after the United States protested.
21) Government officials have refused to tell Karnei Shomron's residents where the community will fall. One of the Orthodox Jewish founders of the settlement in 1977, Herzl Ben-Ari, believes the area will be annexed to Israel in the end.
22) "When we came here we built big to show how serious we were, to show we were here to stay," said Ben-Ari, the local municipal leader. "In the end we will be like the Tel Aviv metropolitan area."
23) Tzuri Ventura disagrees. He points to "for sale" signs that dot properties along his street. Assessors told the Venturas their apartment is worth the same as it was when they bought it in 1989. The couple says they couldn't afford to buy anything in Israel if they got such a paltry price.
24) After fighting in four of Israel's wars, Ventura is not sure Israel should transfer West Bank land to the Palestinians. He just wants to be able to see his grandchildren as he grows older. An upstairs apartment built for the younger generations sits empty.
25) "Our daughter has two children, ages four and seven months," Ventura said. "She has refused to visit since a suicide bombing here four years ago. Now we are left alone."



2008-07-28
Defense Ministry: Israel will move part of West Bank barrier to restore Palestinian land
(APW_ENG_20080728.0815)
1) Israel has agreed to move part of its West Bank separation barrier. A statement from the Defense Ministry says that in response to an appeal to Israel's Supreme Court, the barrier will be moved to restore access to land that belongs to Palestinians in the area of Qalqiliya in the northern part of the territory.
2) Israel started building the barrier after a series of suicide bombings. The barrier goes along the line between Israel and the West Bank but dips into Palestinian territory. That cuts people off from their land.
3) Palestinians have mounted a series of Supreme Court challenges to the route of the barrier, forcing Israel to move it back.
4) The Defense Ministry's Sunday statement came in reply to a query from the Associated Press.



2008-09-03
Cabinet to discuss compensation for settlers
(APW_ENG_20080903.0816)
1) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office says for the first time, the Israeli Cabinet will discuss the issue of compensation for settlers who leave their West Bank homes voluntarily.
2) The statement from Olmert's office says the item is on the agenda for the Cabinet's weekly meeting on Sunday. But there won't be a vote. The Wednesday statement says that work is not completed.
3) Removing settlers from the West Bank is one of the most volatile issues in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Israel compensated 8,000 settlers when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but bitterness remains.
4) About 260,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank. In a peace accord, Israel hopes to keep blocs where most of them live. Palestinians insist all settlements must be removed.



2008-09-07
Israel ' s government puts off evacuation discussion
(APW_ENG_20080907.0351)
1) Israel's government on Sunday postponed discussion of landmark legislation that would pay Jewish settlers to leave their homes in the West Bank, but said it would take up the matter next week.
2) At the opening of the meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his Cabinet that Israel would likely have to uproot West Bank settlers as part of a future peace agreement.
3) In light of Israel's continuing peace talks with the Palestinians, he added, "it would be proper" to think about providing cash incentives for settlers to leave voluntarily.
4) Olmert said it was important to learn from the mistakes of Israel's last evacuation of settlers -- the 2005 pullout from the Gaza Strip -- and it was important to plan ahead.
5) "I think it is good to start thinking about these issues and to see how we prepare for them in the right way," Olmert said.
6) Israel evicted 8,500 settlers from the Gaza Strip and four small West Bank settlements in mid-2005. Many settlers refused to plan for or cooperate with the operation. But a government watchdog has accused the government of poorly planning for the settlers after their evacuation, most prominently by not doing enough to move them into permanent housing from temporary quarters.
7) Dubbed "evacuation-compensation," versions of the proposal have been pushed in recent years by dovish lawmakers. Sunday's discussion, though a symbolic step, was to be the most prominent sign so far of its acceptance at the highest levels of Israel's government.
8) But other issues took precedence at the meeting. Government spokesman Mark Regev cited "time constraints" and said the legislation would be discussed next week.
9) Under the proposed bill, Jewish settlers willing to leave their homes in territory thought likely to be transferred to the Palestinians in the future would receive payment from the government.
10) The bill is aimed at minimizing friction with settlers and paving the way for a large pullback from the West Bank, which the Palestinians claim as part of a future independent state. Proponents of the bill have said up to half of the 70,000 residents of settlements expected to be evacuated would leave if they had the financial means.
11) The proposal is nowhere near implementation, and Olmert had not even planed to ask his ministers to vote on it. Making any progress more unlikely, Olmert has said he will step down after his party elects a new leader this month, a step likely to throw Israel's government into turmoil and which could lead to new elections.



2008-09-14
Israeli government debates settler evacuation
(APW_ENG_20080914.0684)
1) Israel's government had its first discussion Sunday of a plan to offer West Bank settlers cash to leave their homes, a largely symbolic step taken as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government approaches the premature end of its term.
2) The plan would pave the way for a large-scale pullback after a peace agreement with the Palestinians. But both sides say such a peace accord, or even a partial agreement, are far from completion.
3) Israel is pushing for adjustments in the line between the West Bank and Israel, allowing it to keep main settlement blocs where most of the nearly 300,000 Jewish settlers live, offering to trade Israeli land for the blocs. The Palestinians have not accepted the idea.
4) The politician behind offering compensation to the settlers, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, believes that only about 62,000 would have to move from 72 locations deep in the West Bank that would be turned over to the Palestinians as part of their state.
5) Ramon said surveys show about 11,000 would initially agree to take the money and leave, and more would follow.
6) However, bitter confrontations between soldiers and just 8,000 settlers when Israel evacuated the Gaza Strip in 2005, and continuing hardships faced by the settlers, cast a long shadow on the larger-scale evacuation plans for the West Bank.
7) Also, many of the West Bank settlements that would be removed are home to the most extreme religious and nationalistic elements among the settlers, including many who do not accept the right of the Israeli government to order their removal. Violent clashes are a high probability.
8) For now, at least, the plan is theoretical because of lack of apparent progress in peace negotiations that were restarted with great fanfare last November, when a target date of January 2009 was set for an agreement.
9) Over the weekend Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told an Israeli newspaper that no agreements have been reached on any of the outstanding issues. Ramon was just as downbeat on Sunday.
10) "I'm not optimistic that an agreement will be signed by the end of this year, or next year," he said.
11) But Ramon said he did not think West Bank settlers should have to live in limbo until an agreement was signed.
12) The average payment under the plan would be 1.1 million shekels ($300,000) to every family that leaves the West Bank, with bonuses for moving away from the heavily populated center of the country.
13) The plan would apply to areas east of the separation barrier Israel is building along the West Bank. Israel initially claimed that the barrier was a security measure that had no political significance, but Ramon said Sunday the barrier marked Israel's future border.
14) "Everyone dealing with the negotiations knows that everything east of the fence will not be under Israeli sovereignty," he said in a briefing for reporters. "We are fighting to keep everything west of the fence under Israeli sovereignty." Palestinians charge that the route of the barrier is an Israeli land grab in the West Bank, cutting many Palestinians off from their fields and services.
15) Ramon said he hoped to turn his plan into legislation within weeks and present it to the government.
16) But Israel's political system is headed for a period of turbulence. On Wednesday, Olmert and Ramon's Kadima Party is set to elect a new leader, after which Olmert -- who has been plagued by corruption allegations -- says he will step down. If Olmert's replacement cannot put together a new coalition government, Israel will hold elections.
17) Both of the leading candidates to replace Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, have said they oppose Ramon's idea because it compromises negotiations with the Palestinians by giving up too much too early.
18) Although the Cabinet took no action on the proposal, Olmert said it marked an important step in preparing the nation to withdraw from occupied land. Olmert took a shot at the West Bank settler movement during the Cabinet meeting, ridiculing those who think Israel can hold on to all of the territory in the long run.
19) "Whoever speaks to the contrary is deceiving the people," Olmert told the meeting, according to his office. Yishai Hollander, spokesman for an umbrella group representing settlers, called the evacuation plan "unrealistic" and said most settlers wouldn't take it seriously.
20) "There have been other prime ministers who have said the idea of 'Greater Israel' is finished. And the only thing that has finished is their term in office," he said.
21) Also Sunday, Israel said it would close vital Gaza crossings Monday in response to a rocket attack. A rocket fired from Gaza exploded in the border town of Sderot in violation of a June cease-fire. It caused a fire, but no one was hurt.
22) No one claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. Hamas denounced the Israeli reaction as "sabotage" against the truce.



2008-12-04
Israeli security forces evacuate West Bank house
(APW_ENG_20081204.1248)
1) Israeli troops and police on Thursday raided a disputed building in the West Bank city of Hebron, one of the region's most explosive hotspots, swiftly dragging out 250 settlers and trying to send a tough message to Jewish extremists fighting to keep what they see as God-promised land.
2) But they responded with a wave of attacks against Israeli forces and Palestinians, even as Israeli politicians and even settler leaders denounced them.
3) After battling soldiers with fists, kicks and chemicals, the settlers -- many of them teenagers led by a radical from another part of the West Bank -- rioted in Hebron, setting fires near at least three Palestinian houses and burning nine cars, the Palestinian fire chief said.
4) Nearby, frightened Palestinians cowered in their houses as settlers pelted the buildings with rocks. Jewish children went on a rampage, breaking windows. Meanwhile, Palestinians on rooftops threw rocks at the settlers and Israeli forces below.
5) About 35 settlers and soldiers were hurt in the battle. Rescue workers and Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital said one settler was moderately wounded, and the others were lightly injured. Palestinian hospital officials said 17 Palestinians were wounded, including five from bullets.
6) The Israeli rights group B'Tselem released video that appeared to show a settler shooting a Palestinian in the stomach from point-blank range, and Palestinians pelting the settler with rocks.
7) In other parts of the West Bank, settlers threw rocks at Palestinian vehicles and burned an olive grove, Palestinians said.
8) The Palestinian governor in the Nablus region, Jamal Moheisen, warned that if Israeli forces did not bring its settlers under control, "we will call on the Palestinian residents to go out to the streets and fight back."
9) In a statement late Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that "violent elements" who try to attack Palestinians would "face a quick, stern response from security forces."
10) After nightfall, settlers were still scuffling with Israeli forces and Palestinians.
11) Thursday's action at the structure the settlers named the "House of Peace" was the first major West Bank evacuation since a violent 2006 confrontation that injured dozens.
12) Settlers attempted to go back into the four-story building, but soldiers, who cleared the structure in just 20 minutes, formed a human chain to keep them from doing so.
13) This confrontation has been brewing for years, and the violent reaction of extremist settlers suggested it might not be the last.
14) Settlers have built more than 100 unauthorized outposts on West Bank hilltops, but despite promises to the U.S, Israel's government has failed to take them down, instead building roads and providing services for some of them.
15) Though the government tried to intimidate the extremists with its swift assault on the Hebron building on Thursday, the response from a group that says it answers only to God is likely to be further defiance. With the backing of rabbis in the settlements, they believe God gave the West Bank to the Jews, and no one has the right to take it away.
16) Hebron is a crucible of the most extreme religion-driven settlers, and the only place with settlers and Palestinians in the same city.
17) About 600 live in Israeli-controlled enclaves in the middle of Hebron, home to 170,000 Palestinians. Clashes between the two sides are frequent. Hebron settlers say openly they want all Palestinians expelled from the city, which they claim because it is the traditional burial place of the biblical Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and three of their wives. Muslims claim it for the same reason.
18) Yet many of the most violent young Jews came to Hebron from other parts of the West Bank, including their leader, Daniella Weiss, a firebrand from in the northern West Bank. Weiss has led shrill opposition to efforts to rein in the most aggressive settlers for decades, backing their creation of dozens of rump settlements on hilltops to try to prevent an Israeli pullback and creation of a Palestinian state.
19) "Daniella Weiss and her gang should leave Hebron," said Pinchas Wallerstein, director of the Settlers Council, just hours before the evacuation. "They don't belong there," he told Israel Radio, in an appeal for calm that was ignored.
20) About 275,000 Jewish settlers live among 1.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel wants to hold on to major blocs of West Bank settlements in a land-for-peace deal with Palestinians, offering to trade Israeli territory for about 10 percent of the West Bank.
21) Some 600 soldiers and police took over the house in a surprise operation and quickly began dragging out the people inside one by one, their hands and legs held by teams of two or four officers. Settlers, including young girls, punched and hit soldiers. Others threw acid, police said.
22) Security forces in full riot gear used stun grenades and tear gas.
23) Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he ordered the army to evict the settlers after all attempts to persuade them to leave peacefully failed. Barak met with settler leaders earlier in the day, but they failed to reach an agreement.
24) Settler leaders reacted angrily to the army raid.
25) "This could have been done peacefully and legally. Instead Barak chose violence," said Danny Dayan, leader of the Settlers Council. "This surprised us completely."
26) Settlers moved in to the house in March 2007 after claiming they bought it from a Palestinian. The Palestinian denies the claim, and Israeli authorities have not recognized the sale as legal. Israel's Supreme Court ordered the house evacuated last month.



2008-12-15
High court restricts West Bank barrier route
(APW_ENG_20081215.0947)
1) Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank cannot run in wide loops around Israeli settlements to allow for their expansion, the country's Supreme Court ruled Monday, in what a lawyer for Palestinian villagers hailed as a precedent-setting victory .
2) The barrier, widely seen as the basis for Israel's future border, is two-thirds complete. Critics say that in many areas, the barrier route was not determined by security needs, but by Israel's desire to incorporate as many settlements as possible on the "Israeli side" and to allow for their expansion.
3) Israel says it built the barrier to keep out Palestinian attackers, including suicide bombers, but the Palestinians and Israeli critics charge that the barrier is part of a land grab.
4) The high court ruled Monday in the case of Bilin, a West Bank village that has become a symbol for Palestinian opposition to the barrier with weekly protests and clashes between villagers and Israeli troops. Bilin has lost half its land, or 500 acres, to the barrier and to Modiin Illit, home to 40,000 people and expanding rapidly.
5) Last year, the high court ruled that Israel must move the Bilin barrier westward, concluding that its location had little to do with making the settlement more secure and a lot with giving it more land.
6) On Monday the court rejected the latest route proposal and said the state must come up with a more appropriate path, in line with the court's criteria, as soon as possible.
7) Bilin's lawyer, Michael Sfard, said the ruling is unprecedented in its detail and would help others challenging the barrier route.
8) "Security considerations that will shape the new route must only take into account houses that have already been built, and not plans for future construction," the decision said, referring to arguments by state planners that they need a security buffer zone between settlements and the barrier.
9) The high court said the security buffer, defined in previous court rulings as about 200 meters (yards), "will be measured from existing buildings (of settlements) and not from houses that are planned and were not constructed yet."
10) Sfard said that if the Defense Ministry complies with the ruling, it would likely prevent the construction of more than 1,000 homes in Modiin Illit and restore about 250 acres to Bilin.
11) Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Shlomo Dror was not immediately available for comment.
12) Israel has left several large gaps in the barrier, including around the large settlements of Maaleh Adumim and Ariel. There, the government hopes to build barrier loops deep into the West Bank that would take tens of thousands of acres the Palestinians seek for their future state.
13) Shaul Arieli, a barrier expert, said that in the case of Maaleh Adumim, the court decision would only have limited weight because topographic factors also play a role. "But if the government decides to build around Ariel, Kedumim and Karnei Shomron, then it (the ruling) could be very important," he said.



2009-07-08
UN: Israel must tear down West Bank barrier
(APW_ENG_20090708.0923)
1) Israel must tear down its West Bank separation barrier, a senior U.N. official said Wednesday, marking five years since the International Court of Justice declared the barrier illegal and a violation of Palestinian rights.
2) The barrier separates Israel from the West Bank and in places cuts into Palestinian territory. Israel started building it in 2002 to stop a wave of suicide bombing attacks by Palestinians, who infiltrated across the cease-fire line.
3) Palestinians charge the complex of walls, trenches, barbed wire and electronic sensors is a land grab that cuts people off from their property and basic services.
4) Israel did not recognize the 2004 ruling against the barrier by the International Court of Justice, an advisory opinion with no enforcement mechanism.
5) The barrier is about two-thirds completed. The southern section, near sparsely populated areas on both sides of the line, has not been constructed. Israel's Supreme Court has forced rerouting of several segments closer to the Israel-West Bank line.
6) At a news conference in Jerusalem to mark the anniversary, the U.N. released a statement concluding that the completed barrier would close in 35,000 Palestinians and wall off another 125,000 on three sides. About 2.4 million Palestinians live in the West Bank.
7) The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said the barrier is only part of the problem.
8) "The wall is but one element of the wider system of severe restrictions on the freedom of movement imposed by the Israeli authorities on Palestinian residents of the West Bank," Pillay said. Israeli must "dismantle the wall" and "make reparations for all damage suffered by all persons affected by the wall's construction," she said.
9) Israel's Foreign Ministry did not comment on the statement Wednesday. Israel's government has said in the past that the completed sections of the barrier have significantly reduced Palestinian attacks in Israel.
10) The U.N. said it will release a full report on the humanitarian impact of the barrier later this month.



2009-12-10
Israeli PM offers new benefits to settlers
(APW_ENG_20091210.0870)
1) Israel's prime minister on Thursday offered additional funds and new social benefits to tens of thousands of Jewish settlers in a move seen as an attempt to soothe tensions over new restrictions on construction in the West Bank.
2) Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled the proposal a day after thousands of settlers and their supporters demonstrated against the West Bank building restrictions outside his Jerusalem residence.
3) Netanyahu infuriated settlers and their backers two weeks ago when he imposed a 10-month moratorium on the construction of most new homes in the settlements. He said the freeze was meant as a gesture to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
4) The Palestinians say the Israeli freeze is insufficient because it excludes east Jerusalem and more than 3,000 homes already under construction in the West Bank. The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, for a future state. They insist on a total freeze before peace talks resume.
5) Netanyahu's proposal Thursday appeared to do little to ease the anger of settlers, who have grown increasingly strident in their attempts to block building inspectors from entering their communities to enforce the ban.
6) Yishai Hollender, a settler spokesman, said that the proposal is "a step in the right direction, but there is still a long way to go. We will continue to struggle against the freeze in construction until the edict is reversed," he said.
7) Dovish lawmakers accused the prime minister of caving in to settler pressure. Labor Party legislator Amir Peretz said, "If anyone doubted that the whole intention of the freeze was just to buy time, now all of those doubts have been proven false."
8) Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said the proposal was not connected to the settlement controversy.
9) He said the funds would assist many distressed populations, including residents near the Gaza and Lebanon borders and Israeli Arab communities. The program will give preferential treatment to about two million Israelis, about 100,000 of whom are Jewish settlers.
10) "The position of this government is that the future of settlements must be negotiated," said Regev. "In the interim period, those who live in communities which face special challenges will receive the same things that other Israeli citizens receive."
11) The program, which is expected to be approved by Israel's Cabinet, will provide a boost in funds for transportation, education and health care, Regev said.
12) Also Thursday, Israel arrested the leader of the most persistent Palestinian protests against Israel's West Bank separation barrier.
13) Abdullah Abu Rahmeh has been leading weekly barrier protests in the Palestinian village of Bilin for almost five years. His wife Majida said her husband was taken from his home early Thursday.
14) Israel began building the barrier during a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings that originated in the West Bank, with the purpose of keeping attackers out. The line was mostly unmarked and unguarded until then, but the path of the barrier cuts into the West Bank in many places.
15) Bilin is a symbol of opposition to the barrier, portrayed by Palestinians as a land grab. The barrier separates Bilin from 60 percent of its land.
16) Since June, 31 Bilin protesters have been arrested. The protests include marches and stone-throwing. The military says the arrests are meant stop violence. Bilin activists say Israel's clampdown is meant to silence a nonviolent movement.
17) On Thursday, Karen Abu Zayd, the outgoing head of UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees, toured the tense east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah.
18) In recent weeks, Israeli settlers have evicted families from several houses in Sheik Jarrah. Both sides claim ownership of the properties.
19) Abu Zayd warned that by mixing the populations, Israeli actions in the neighborhood endanger efforts to solve the conflict with two states.
20) "Such acts are in violation of Israel's obligations under international law," she said.