Amidst tide of violence, Israel approves more settlements

[DemMomma4Sanders]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by mcar (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: CBS

Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1967. Most of the world considers settlement construction illegal or illegitimate.

Their construction continues to be one of the main sticking points hindering a movement towards reconciliation between the two sides, and are often the focus of violence by Palestinians.

Last week, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli teenager to death in her bedroom in the in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. Israelis civilian security officers shot and killed the assailant, identified as Mohammed Tarayreh, 19, from the nearby Bani Naim village. One officer was stabbed before Tarayreh was killed.

Over the last nine months, Palestinians have carried out dozens of attacks that have killed 33 Israelis and two Americans. About 200 Palestinians have been killed during that time, most identified as attackers by Israel.

Kiryat Arba is a settlement adjacent to the city of Hebron, which has been a flashpoint of violence in the recent wave of attacks. There, about 850 Israelis live in heavily fortified enclaves amid some 200,000 Palestinians. Jews and Muslims revere Hebron as the burial place of the biblical Abraham.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-teen-girl-stabbed-death-bedroom-palestinian-west-bank-settlement/

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While it is widely reported that the resulting war eventually included five Arab armies, less well known is the fact that throughout this war Zionist forces outnumbered all Arab and Palestinian combatants combined – often by a factor of two to three. Moreover, Arab armies did not invade Israel – virtually all battles were fought on land that was to have been the Palestinian state.

Finally, it is significant to note that Arab armies entered the conflict only after Zionist forces had committed 16 massacres, including the grisly massacre of over 100 men, women, and children at Deir Yassin. Future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, head of one of the Jewish terrorist groups, described this as “splendid,” and stated: “As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou has chosen us for conquest.” Zionist forces committed 33 massacres altogether.[4]

By the end of the war, Israel had conquered 78 percent of Palestine; three-quarters of a million Palestinians had been made refugees; over 500 towns and villages had been obliterated; and a new map was drawn up, in which every city, river and hillock received a new, Hebrew name, as all vestiges of the Palestinian culture were to be erased. For decades Israel denied the existence of this population, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once saying: “There were no such thing as Palestinians.”[5]

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/

[villager]

1. Because the current politics of both sides depends on endless new excuses for violence

So that's what their politics gives them.

[maxsolomon]

2. Rubbing salt in the wound.

Every new home approved encourages the Settlers, who already feel they have God on their side, and makes the Palestinians more convinced their backs are against the wall.

Like in Gaza, the Settlers in the West Bank have to go for any peace agreement to succeed. And don't tear the homes down first; leave them as a gesture of good will.

I can't see Netanyahu doing any of that, but I can see him straight up annexing portions of the West Bank, and daring the US to do something about it. There needs to be a sea change in Israeli Politics.