Holy Land Grab

[EN only]

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Jerusalem has been fought over, dreamt about and worshipped in for hundreds of years.

Israel was the city’s most recent conqueror, capturing the eastern part of the city in 1967, bringing the whole of Jerusalem under its control – in defiance of international law.

In the 30 years since the country has been working with determination to weld the two parts of the city together to form the eternal, indivisible capital the Jewish state envisions.

This aim is being pursued through the building of houses for Jews whilst destroying houses belonging to Arabs.

The neighbourhood of al Bustan near the Palestinian village of Silwan is one of the areas that has been affected by the settlement policy.

Situated close to the ancient city walls and with a view of Temple Mount the area is considered one of the most important areas in Jerusalem.

Consequently the authorities have plans and say the houses in these narrow alleyways were built without permits. They want to flatten the whole neighbourhood and turn it into open parkland.

It is a tourist development plan that would wreck the lives of an entire Palestinian community but the municipality has slapped demolition orders on 88 houses – which would make 1500 people homeless.

At the same time as physical settlement expansion and demolition projects there is also a battle for historical legitimacy underway.

Archeologists are digging at several sites in East Jerusalem with a clear political agenda to uncover evidence of ancient Jewish life that would strengthen Israelis claim to the whole city.

The excavations are being carried out by the state-run Antiquities Authority who local archaelogists say do not permit access to the sites.

One reason for that: the Antiquities Authority, has handed over some of the sites to a private organisation called El Ad which is run by Israeli settlers.

In a special programme Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reveals Israel’s systematic plan to turn its slogan of Jerusalem as an “eternal, undivided capital” into reality.

Despite United Nations resolutions and a large international presence in Jerusalem, Israel is already close to achieving its aim. “”" [Al Jazeera]

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UN calls on Israel to end abusive evictions .

[EN only]

“”"  The United Nations has called on Israel to stop evicting Palestinians and demolishing their homes in East Jerusalem.

A report of the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs, published on Friday, said an estimated 1,500 demolition orders were pending for homes built without a permit from Israel’s Jerusalem municipality.

At least 9,000 Palestinians would be displaced in east Jerusalem’s Silwan neighbourhood if the orders were implemented, the report said.

Under international law, Israel’s claim to the neighbourhood itself is illegal because it is not recognised by world powers as part of the Israeli capital.

The UN report also appealed to Israel to provide solutions to the housing crisis in the contested city.

Efforts by Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s Israeli mayor, to expand Jewish settlements on occupied land, have stoked tensions in the city.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, visiting Israel in March, said demolitions were “unhelpful”.

In a response to the UN report, Barkat denied the allegations and disputed the facts, but agreed that there was a “planning crisis” in the city.

“This report is about the past, while Mayor Barkat is committed to the future and providing a better quality of life for all residents of Jerusalem,” a statement from his office said.

The crisis “throughout all of Jerusalem … affects Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike”, the mayor said.

He said the issues at hand would soon be tackled comprehensively in the first “master plan for the city” to be drawn up in 50 years.

At least 28 per cent of Palestinian homes were at risk because they were built in violation of Israeli zoning restrictions, the UN report said.

At least 60,000 Palestinians were therefore at risk of becoming homeless.

Many homes were located in areas zoned as “green areas” by the Jerusalem municipality. This included the Silwan area, where the municipality planned to demolish 88 Palestinian residential buildings to make way for an archaeological park.

Palestinians say the planned demolitions were aimed at forcing them out of East Jerusalem.

Israel considers Jerusalem to be its indivisible capital while Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem the capital of their future state.

If the demolition orders are carried out it would represent one of the largest forced evictions since Israel occupied mostly Arab East Jerusalem.

“Although the Israeli government has indicated that the houses being demolished did not have the necessary building permits, the fact is that Palestinians lack meaningful access to such permits,” the UN Human Rights Commissioner said.

Only 13 per cent of annexed East Jerusalem land area was currently zoned by the Israeli authorities for Palestinian construction, the report said.

Most of that land is already overcrowded by existing construction projects, severely restricting the possibility of Palestinians obtaining a permit.

“Meanwhile, the growth in the number of new structures in Israeli settlements and outposts in the West Bank increased by 69 per cent in 2008, compared to 2007,” it noted, citing figures from Peace Now, the Israeli rights group.

The Palestinian population of East Jerusalem, which was approximately 66,000 in 1967, is now about 250,000.

In addition, more than 195,000 Israelis live in Jewish developments – referred to as “neighbourhoods” by the Israelis and as “settlements” by the UN – in east Jerusalem. “”" [Al Jazeera]

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook says (4 weeks after this public declaration he died):

[EN only]

“”" The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the devil only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US. Cook has previously written:

Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Cook is merely confirming what others have said. Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told the Senate that the war on terror is “a mythical historical narrative”.

And see this Los Angeles Times Article, reviewing a BBC documentary entitled “The Power of Nightmares”, which shows that the threat from Al Qaeda has been vastly overblown (and see this article on the people within the U.S. who are behind the hype).

Not only has the U.S. government hyped Al Qaeda, but it has issued numerous fake terror alerts to scare people.

There is a word for intentionally creating fear in order to manipulate opinion for political ends: terrorism. (…)Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the RussiansInexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden’s organisation would turn its attention to the west. “”" [source 1 ;  source 2 ; source 3 ]

AFGHANISTAN – NATO troops killed a 12-year-old girl.

NATO-led troops shot and killed a 12-year-old girl and wounded two other civilians in western Afghanistan after they opened fire at a vehicle close to a convoy, police said on Sunday(3.05.2009).

The girl and her family were driving into Herat from a neighbouring province for a wedding party when the troops passed from the other direction, said police spokesman for western Afghanistan Abdul Rauf Ahmadi.

The girl was shot in the face, said her uncle, Ahmad Wali, who had been driving.

“It was rainy and we had poor visibility. All of a sudden, I saw sparks in front of our vehicle and then a foreign forces armoured convoy coming from the opposite direction,” Wali told reporters.

“After the convoy had passed by, we realised that half of my niece’s face was missing, her mother was wounded in the chest and I had blood on my face caused by broken pieces of windshield,” Wali said. [ source ]

Israeli Terrorist Cell Discovered in Australia

April 21 / 27 Nisan – Holocaust Remembrance Day ?!

6th anniversary of Iraq War/genocide

cartoons by Latuff

TRAITOR. ACCOMPLICE. ALSO A MURDERER. FOR SHURE NOT A REAL MUSLIM.

NOBODY CAN SELL (SO CHEAP) THE LIFE OF HIS BROTHERS .  ONLY A MURDERER , AN ACCOMPLICE OF MURDERERS CAN DO AND SAY SOMETHING LIKE THIS!

[EN only]

“”" The Afghan ambassador to the United States has told Al Jazeera that civilian casualties during US military operations are “a price that we have to pay” if the Taliban and al-Qaeda are to be defeated.(…) Jawad’s remarks come after the US military apologised for killing four civilians, including a child, in a raid earlier this week. “It’s not just the cost of the Afghan people; it’s the freedom, it’s the security of Afghanistan, of Pakistan, of the world,” Jawad said. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in operations by Afghan and foreign forces, an issue that has angered residents and increased pressure on Hamid Karzai, the country’s president. (…) A 13-year-old boy who survived the US raid on his home overnight on Wednesday told Al Jazeera that his mother, brother, uncle and another female family member were killed. A woman who was nine months’ pregnant was wounded and lost her baby.

Brigadier-General Michael Ryan, a US military spokesman, said in a statement late on Thursday: “We deeply regret the tragic loss of life in this precious family.”(…) “”" [for more click here]

“Gaza deaths dog Israeli military”

[En only]

“”" Reports have surfaced in the Israeli media suggesting that Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under what may have been lax rules of engagement during the Gaza offensive.Quoting Israeli soldiers who fought in the offensive, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Thursday that soldiers had also ransacked and destroyed civilian property.

The soldiers’ testimony, made at a course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon, runs counter to the Israeli army’s claims that troops observed a high level of moral behaviour during the operation.

The testimonies include a description by an infantry squad leader in which he relates an incident where an Israeli sharpshooter shot a Palestinian mother and her two children, Haaretz reported.

If proved, the soldiers’ testimonies could lead to war crimes charges against Israel.

The Israeli army issued a statement in response to the Haaretz article saying it would look into the veracity of the allegations and investigate them if necessary. (…)“The important point to remember is that the Israeli military does not publish its rule of engagement, so it will be very difficult for the public to juxtapose the soldiers’ testimonies with what is actually allowed by the Israeli military, in terms of operations and conduct during the war.”

Mikhael Manekin, from Breaking the Silence, an organisation of veteran Israeli soldiers gathering evidence on the Gaza war, said the testimonies in Haaretz corroborate the group’s findings.

(…)Haaretz quoted one soldier as saying: ”There was a house with a family inside … We put them in a room. Later we left the house and another platoon entered it, and a few days after that there was an order to release the family. They had set up positions upstairs. There was a sniper position on the roof.” “The platoon commander let the family go and told them to go to the right. One mother and her two children didn’t understand and went to the left, but they forgot to tell the sharpshooter on the roof they had let them go and it was OK, and he should hold his fire and he … he did what he was supposed to, like he was following his orders,” it said.

The paper said that the squad leader argued with his commander over the rules of engagement, which he said allowed the clearing of houses by shooting without warning residents beforehand.

Israel launched its offensive on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip in December saying it aimed to stop rocket fire by Hamas into southern Israel.

A ceasefire was declared on January 18 after the offensive left 1,300 Palestinians dead, many of them women and children. Three Israeli civilians and 10 soldiers were killed during the offensive. (…) “”" [Al Jazeera]

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