Israel to raze illegal Arab buildings in Jerusalem?
Well, if this actually happens, I'm sure it will go over really smoothly at the White House and the State Department. Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch on Wednesday said that Israel will demolish Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem in the coming days despite the renewal of indirect peace talks.You mean we're actually going to enforce the law?
Aharonovitch made his remarks at Wednesday's Knesset plenum session, during which he said that demolitions had been postponed in recent months so as not to harm efforts by U.S. special envoy George Mitchell to get peace talks off the ground.
Aharonovitch, however, clarified that currently there is no order in effect instructing police to not to raze homes.
"As of right now, there is no directive for police not to implement the demolition orders," said Aharonovitch, adding that Jerusalem Police are prepared to deploy the forces necessary for the demolitions.
The minister also said that the demolitions were postponed because some in Israel's political echelons felt the timing was wrong. "If there was a postponement, it has now ended," he said.
The JPost adds:
Aharonovitch made the comments in response to a question by Knesset Member Yariv Levin (Likud), who claimed that the Jerusalem Municipality is not carrying out demolition orders allocated against Arab homes. The minister said there had been delays in carrying out the orders due to diplomatic concerns, but added that the concerns no longer applied and that the demolitions would go ahead.The first stage of the 'road map' did not call for a stop to demolishing illegally built homes - and certainly not in Jerusalem. The first phase of the 'road map' called for
...
Activists who protest such demolitions however, cried foul at the minister's remarks, claiming that such policies were a continuation of the status quo and would harm the current round of proximity talks with the Palestinians.
"Essentially, the resumption of house demolitions goes to show that Israel really isn't serious about negotiations," Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) told the Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
"Aharonovitch says that there are no legal impediments to carrying out demolitions," Halper continued, "but that's not true."
"The first phase of the Road Map, which is officially still in effect, calls for the cessation of house demolitions and other steps that undermine trust between the two sides."
"That said, this is obviously not a legal or technical issue, but a political one," he added. "It's always been political. This is a way of Israel asserting that it's the owner of Jerusalem, it will do what it wants to do here, and that the city is outside of negotiations."
"It has nothing to do with the police and certainly has nothing to with anything urban," Halper said. "It's simply a continuation of the same thing."
End to Palestinian violence; Palestinian political reform; Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian cities and freeze on settlement expansion; Palestinian elections.And by the way, one of Israel's 14 reservations subject to which it accepted the 'road map' called for each item of the 'road map' to be carried out in sequence. The 'Palestinians' still have not carried out the first item.
Here's betting this comes up at the next State Department briefing.
UPDATE THURSDAY 1:27 AM
Sure enough, Israel Radio's 1:00 AM news reports that the White House has issued a 'stern warning.'
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:34 PM
2 Comments:
Once again, a neighborhood-by-neighborhood GIS map with linked US-style title search info would go a very long way to making the Israeli case to reasonable people. The people who don't want to enforce land ownership laws would have to say that they think different treatment under the law for Jews and Arabs is appropriate or that land can be stripped from Jews in Israel like it was in Europe. I don't even know many lefties that will say that publicly. And if they do, it will be used in campaign ads against the Dems. Also, the areas with Palestinian farmers separated from their land by the security barrier need to be "title searched". I read somewhere that on some of the sites with the loudest objectors, the Palestinians don't even own the land they are farming (and have to go through a gate to reach). Their families just started farming land they didn't own.
But the State Department will raise no objection to the demolition of a Jewish home in Beit Yohanan in Jerusalem.
Just don't call it a double standard.
What could go wrong indeed
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