E-mail updates
Follow on Twitter
Subscribe to RSS
Abir Sultan / EPA
Jewish settlers look for their belongings after Israeli security forces demolished two structures in the unauthorized Jewish settlement outpost of Mitzpe Yitzhar, in the West Bank, early on Dec. 15, 2011.
Abir Sultan / EPA
Jewish settlers look for their belongings after Israeli security forces demolished two structures in the unauthorized Jewish settlement outpost of Mitzpe Yitzhar, in the West Bank, early on Dec. 15, 2011.
Reuters reports:
Israeli forces tore down structures in a settler-outpost built without government approval in the West Bank on Thursday.
Hours later, a mosque in the village of Burqa was defaced with Hebrew graffiti that said "war" and "Mitzpe Yitzhar," the name of the outpost where the demolitions had taken place. Suspicion immediately fell on Jewish extremists.
Attempts to demolish unauthorized outposts have been resisted by radicals who scuffle with troops or carry out night-time sabotage to inflict what they call the "price tag" for "selling out" the settlements.
Although Israel continues to expand larger official settlements, it has been evacuating smaller, unauthorized outposts, in line with court orders to move against them.
Read more about the incidents in our story: Jewish settlers eyed after another mosque burns.
Leave a Comment:
It's about damn time!
The Israeli government will continue to have no credibility in the rest of the world and lose more of the credibility they bought and paid for in America unless they start applying laws equally. Jewish settlers do not have a god-given right to confiscate Palestinian land.
So since they are tearing down unauthorized settlements, do they have credibility now, or are you just another believer that all Palestinians are victims and everything Israeli is bad?
That's a good question. It's pretty clear that the situation has to be resolved through some sort of negotiated agreement today. You can't simply try to go back and back to whatever neolithic farmer was there first. I believe this is a quote from Carl Sandburg:
"GET OFF THIS LAND! THIS IS MY LAND!"
The stranger didn't move; he just looked at the angry farmer coming toward him across the field.
"Where did you get it?" the stranger asked, when the farmer was in earshot.
"I GOT IT FROM MY DADDY!" the farmer replied as he came up to the stranger. "NOW GIT!"
The stranger smiled at the farmer, "Where did your daddy get it?"
"HE GOT IT FROM HIS DADDY, NOW GIT!"
"Where did his daddy get it?"
"GODDAM IT, MISTER, HE FOUGHT FOR IT!"
"Very well, then," the stranger said, "I'LL FIGHT YOU FOR IT."
But a negotiated agreement requires that both sides negotiate. So far, the Israeli definition of negotiation is, "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too." When both sides start to give up something, not just one side, I'll believe Israel is negotiating.