Israel’s Palestinian Road Hit by Critics
JERICHO, West Bank, Tue Oct 09, 04:08 PM

Israel confirmed Tuesday it is building a new road for Palestinians in the West Bank, prompting charges an increasingly segregated road system is meant to seal Israeli control over a swath of land near Jerusalem as the sides try to revive peace talks.
Israel said the 10-mile road will help connect Palestinian communities that would otherwise be cut off by a loop of the Israeli separation barrier that is intended to reach deep into the West Bank.
Palestinian and Israeli critics accused Israel’s government of creating “facts on the ground” before peace talks and said it was undermining trust.
“How can we establish a contiguous Palestinian state, in the context of this policy of dividing the Palestinian land and turning it into isolated islands?” said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qureia called on Israel to rescind its decision and urged the U.S. to intervene. “Such measures will eliminate the possibility of establishing an independent Palestinian state and thus the possibility of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he had no information about the plan. “We’re going to look into it,” he said.
The new road is part of what a recent U.N. report called an increasingly separate road system emerging in the West Bank. Some 1,032 miles of West Bank roads are mainly for Israeli use, and Palestinian access is restricted by checkpoints and a permit system, the report said.
A road under construction east of Jerusalem has a stretch in which lanes for Israeli and Palestinian traffic are divided by a tall wall. The Israeli lanes connect to Jerusalem, the Palestinians lanes bypass the city.
The road dispute comes at a particularly sensitive time.
Israeli and Palestinian teams are trying to draft a joint declaration that would guide future peace negotiations. The teams first met Monday, will have a second session next week and are to present the document at a U.S.-hosted conference in November.
The document is to address the most difficult issues in the conflict, such as borders, Jerusalem, Israeli settlements and Palestinian refugees.
Israel insists it is ready to negotiate a peace deal. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his parliament Monday he would not miss this opportunity and warned that failure to reach agreement would mean a “demographic struggle steeped in blood and tears.”
At the same time, Israel has been pressing ahead with its contentious West Bank separation barrier, including a segment around Jerusalem, known as the “Jerusalem Envelope.”
Planned to keep out Palestinian attackers, the barrier will also slice off about 10 percent of the West Bank, and some Israeli leaders have suggested it should form the basis of a future border. According to such proposals, the Palestinians could be compensated with other Israeli land.
In the Jerusalem area, the Israeli measures have had the most far-reaching repercussions for a future Palestinian state. The barrier encircling Jerusalem has been largely completed, but a gap of several miles has been left on the eastern side.
According to a government-approved route, the barrier would dip deep into the West Bank in that area, in order to incorporate not just the Maaleh Adumim settlement of 30,000 residents, about two miles from Jerusalem, but also outlying Jewish enclaves, for a total of 23 square miles.
The construction is on hold because of an appeal to Israel’s Supreme Court by the Council for Peace and Security, a group of hundreds of retired Israeli security officials who have proposed a much smaller loop.
The barrier route proposed by the government would drive a deep wedge into the West Bank, to the midpoint between Jerusalem and the Jordanian border, jeopardizing the contiguity of a Palestinian state.
In confirming plans for the Palestinian road, the Defense Ministry said the highway would run on the “Palestinian side” of that wedge, starting south of Jerusalem.
“Due to the construction of the security fence in Maaleh Adumim, a need arose to build a road to directly connect the Bethlehem and Judea regions (southern West Bank) and the Jericho and Jordan Valley area (in the east), in order to improve quality of life for the Palestinians,” a ministry statement said.
The road will be built on about 400 acres, of which 56 acres were expropriated from Palestinian land owners, the ministry said. Palestinian municipal officials said a total of 275 acres had been expropriated.
Shaul Arieli, a former Israeli peace negotiator and member of the Council for Peace and Security, urged Israel not to go ahead with the wide barrier loop and the new road.
“You cannot talk about a Mideast conference and in the meantime create facts on the ground that create a reality that cannot enable a final peace deal,” he said. “If you want to go to a peace conference, you have to stop these actions.”
Benny Kashriel, the mayor of Maaleh Adumim, said the proposed road would make life easier for Palestinians. He said Palestinian motorists would eventually be able to drive from the southern to the northern West Bank without encountering any Israeli checkpoints.
The mayor denied charges that the road was indirectly linked to plans to expand Maaleh Adumim by building 3,500 more homes on the last stretch of empty West Bank land just east of Jerusalem.
The project, known as E-1, remains on hold because of U.S. pressure, he said. If built, E-1 would cut off a future Palestinian state from its intended capital, east Jerusalem.
The new Maaleh Adumim bypass road could eventually erode opposition to the E-1 project, Arieli said. “If they build this road, they can say there is Palestinian contiguity,” he said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said there is nothing new. “There has been no change in the position of the Israeli government,” he said. “There is no settlement construction in the area of E-1.”

Now let’s have a look at this rant…..

“…When do they stop torturing and raping the population of the region.”

Rape? Rape? I never seen any documentation to support rape by Israeli soldiers of Palestinians. Of course, you can show us lots of documentation to prove this can’t you? Or can you?

“When are Zionists going to stop the lies and deception when they say Iranians are killing American soldiers!!! ”

Well, the UN and NATO forces have been intercepting shipments of weapons including those deadly shaped charges that are clearly marked as manufactured in Iran. But don’t change your story just for me.

http://www.payvand.com/news/07/sep/1287.html
http://www.payvand.com/news/07/sep/1292.html
http://www.ebratha.blogfa.com/post-2.aspx

I THINK you are sitting there with a stainer where you let every thing SLIP DOWN the HOLES!!!
i neither MEANT to nor INTENDED toIMPRESS you n your kind.
ALSO am not EVEN IMPRESSED by you being IMPRESSED BY me~ehhhhhh { but am sOrry that my efforts to put some COMPASSION & sense into your horrendously& completely closed byIRON wall~(which is worse than the one erected in Palestine)MIND went in VAIN}. YOU WANT to be impressed??? Runnnnnn & read the journalist who ARE honest, fair& just AND WHO have spent their WHOLE lives DIGGING the truth & DEFENDING the rights of the MEEK n the WEEK!

IN the MOST PRIMITIVE cultures too,when a GUEST is INVITED {EVEN iF he/she is the WORST ENEMY is TREATED with HIGH HONOR & RESPECT}!!! If you CANNNNOT abide by the BASIC DECENCY thennnnnn DON’T INVITE~~~ IS Thaaaaat sooooo COMPLicaTED jAIME???

YOUR questions are sooooo stupid n childish that i WOULDN’t bother responding & wasting any more time~~~ gooooo EDUCATE yourself, and BEFORE pointing fingers at others~ take a peek under your own carpet and clean all the MESS & theFILTH that you’ve hid!!! I’ve better thing to do than ARGUE with you,,,ANYHOW rest assured that I STAND for JUSTICE & TRUTH for any one n every one~ INDISCRIMINATELY!!!
As for Burma ~~~ keep WAAAAitinggggggg~~~~~~~~~~~~
{GOOD trick to CHANGE the sticky, BURNING topic & issues!

*^*^*WAKE UP and SMELL the BLOOD!!!!!^*^*^

Re: Columbia Chancellor Bollinger’s treatment of the Pres. of Iran….did I miss something? Has Iran stopped hanging people in public from building cranes, beating women in the streets for wearing blue jeans and perscuting Gays? Maybe we’re talking about another Iran?

I can’t wait to see what you have to say about Burma!

Clifton Ross

****Now this’s what Israel & USA be doing~ {APOLOGIZING} to thousands of Palestinian children, women & men~ dead & injured physically & tortured mentally~ that would be the 1st. tiny little step in the right direction~& then start making the amends~~~Salmi

**CounterPunch September 25, 2007**
To Mr. Lee Bollinger,
*Subject:* An Open Letter to Lee Bollinger, President of Columbia University
**By CLIFTON ROSS**
Clifton Ross is the co-editor of Voice of Fire: Communiques and
Interviews of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (1994, New Earth Publications). His book, Fables for an Open Field (1994, Trombone Press, New Earth Publications), has just been released in Spanish by La Casa Tomada of Venezuela. His forthcoming book of poems in translation, Traducir el Silencio, will be published later this year by Venezuela´s Ministry of Culture editorial, Perro y Rana. Ross
teaches English at Berkeley City College, Berkeley, California. He can
be reached at: _clifross@gmail.com_
I’m writing you to express my outrage over your vulgar treatment of President Ahmadinejad yesterday when you invited him to speak at your university. Simple human etiquette of the most primitive and elemental sort, was required in the situation, but you failed to deliver even that. You were obnoxious, insulting and displayed an appalling
ignorance of President Ahmadinejad, Iran and politics, not to mention
the rules that govern “civilized” human conduct (arguably “primitive”
conduct is even more governed by politeness and elevated rules of
conduct).
Moreover, in a context that calls for objectivity, investigation, open
mindedness and a willingness to learn and exchange ideas, you
displayed a remarkable absence of any of those qualities. Instead, you
showed yourself to be one with the bullying, abusive, ignorant and
arrogant people who unfortunately govern our country at the moment and who are attempting to induce a phobic and neurotic xenophobia
comparable only to what Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin inculcated in
their countries during those moments of greatest darkness in human
history. The irony of the situation is that you displayed all those
qualities of which you accused President Ahmadinejad. Where was that
display of that “great tradition of openness” in your callous, close
minded speech? Your speech shows you to “exhibit all the signs of a
petty and cruel dictator” and worse: a bully, a man who invites a
guest into his house, then abuses him before a cheering crowd.
However, when you say “your [Iran's] government is now undermining
American troops in Iraq by funding, arming, and providing safe transit to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces” you show
yourself to be as biased, and blinded by nationalism and an imperial arrogance as the architects of the genocide we’re currently seeing in. Iraq. You don’t ask what “American troops in Iraq” are doing there as invaders, occupiers, who are, de facto, now made war criminals by being the willing instruments of the “war of aggression,” considered the supreme international crime, one committed by Mr. George Bush through fabrications of evidence, lies, and manipulation; you don’t ask what role those resistance fighters like Muqtada Al Sadr are playing, but those less blinded by nationalism than you would compare him to our own patriotic forefathers who fought the British for our own nationhood; and now you don’t bother to ask what your ignorant, uninformed criticisms of President Ahmadinejad will do to help the same war criminals who destroyed Iraq to now go on and destroy Iran.
I’m writing you to express my outrage over your vulgar treatment of
President Ahmadinejad yesterday when you invited him to speak at your university. Simple human etiquette of the most primitive and elemental sort, was required in the situation, but you failed to deliver even that.
You accuse President Ahmadinejad of “a brutal crackdown on scholars, journalists and human rights advocates” but you fail to mention the scores of scholars, journalists and human rights advocates, imprisoned, tortured and murdered by U.S. forces in Iraq. Is that cowardice or a double standard or merely “oversight” on your part? And when you accuse President Ahmadinejad of denying the Holocaust and calling for the destruction of the state of Israel, that is, when you pander to your Zionist supporters, you merely display an ignorance of the actual words of Ahmadinejad (words that were twisted in the translation to English, predictably; see this piece by Virginia
Tilley,), which he corrected yesterday in his comments and
clarifications..
However, when you say “your [Iran's] government is now undermining
American troops in Iraq by funding, arming, and providing safe transit
to insurgent leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces” you show
yourself to be as biased, and blinded by nationalism and an imperial
arrogance as the architects of the genocide we’re currently seeing in
Iraq. You don’t ask what “American troops in Iraq” are doing there as
invaders, occupiers, who are, de facto, now made war criminals by
being the willing instruments of the “war of aggression,” considered
the supreme international crime, one committed by Mr. George Bush
through fabrications of evidence, lies, and manipulation; you don’t
ask what role those resistance fighters like Muqtada Al Sadr are
playing, but those less blinded by nationalism than you would compare
him to our own patriotic forefathers who fought the British for our
own nationhood; and now you don’t bother to ask what your ignorant,
uninformed criticisms of President Ahmadinejad will do to help the
same war criminals who destroyed Iraq to now go on and destroy Iran.
If you knew anything of history, the history of your own lifetime, you
might understand the situation that currently confronts Iran. You
probably know that the U.S. overthrew Iran’s democracy in 1953 and set up a brutal, decadent Shah who was our man in the Middle East for the following two and a half decades. You may even know that the CIA
helped organize the imprisonment, torture and killings of dissidents
under that Shah, which is why the students took over the U.S. embassy
when they finally got rid of the filth the U.S. had imposed upon them
for all those dark years.
We don’t need to agree with the elected President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, to show him the simple respect due an elected head of
state. But you seem incapable of that simple act required of someone
in your position. To call an elected president a “dictator,” however,
is not only insulting but inaccurate. Such epithets are reserved for
those who impose themselves by force and by fraud, such as Mr. Bush,
who has stolen two elections. But I’m sure you wouldn’t use terms to
describe your own head of state so, now would you?
The Chinese have a saying, roughly translated, that goes, “the one
pointing his finger at another, has three fingers pointing at
himself.” But you are so blind to who you are, up there in your
position of power as President of the prestigious Columbia University
of New York in the great empire of the United States of America, that
you don’t see the man being accused by his three fingers. So, to
close, I invite you to take a look at yourself, and our people, as
another sees us. Her name is Layla Anwar and she writes a blog called
Arab Woman Blues which you can find here.

I warn you. A man of your highly sensitive sensibilities may find some
of her language harsh, painful, distasteful. But I assure you, she has
far more justification for saying what she does than you did in your
pronouncements against the President of Iran yesterday. And it is
long, but I plead for you to have patience because you are a man in
need of an education, and sometimes education is a very painful process.
> >> She writes>>>>*************>>>>>>>>>>>>

It’s O.K., this is not my first encounter with Jewish antisemites.

And if you like alternative for alternative sake (though here my postings tend to be alternative…think about that one) you’ll LUV David Icke and his Illuminati elite who really call the shots around here..and they’re shape-shifting lizards from another dimension. Yowza!

How can you not luv a guy like this ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke

Heeeeeeere’s Dave:

“I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War. This Jewish/non-Jewish Elite used the First World War to secure the Balfour Declaration and the principle of the Jewish State of Israel. They then dominated the Versailles Peace Conference and created the circumstances which made the Second World War inevitable. They financed Hitler to power in 1933 and made the funds available for his rearmament.”

Jews have half the claim on palestine that Muslims have over Spain!
Get your History Ironed out~~~pleeeeaaaseeee

Your calling people racists and”Joo haters” is what’s being deleted, not your “unnacceptable viewpoint”.

If debate continues to lead you to frustrated attempts to deceive or change subjects (or reality), maybe it’s time you started learning without bias?

Israel’s existence is a fact. Get over it. Make peace with it. Half-baked rhetorical pronouncements like “not recognizing the existence of israel” are just plain violently racist as well as ignorant.

A copy of this is being kept in case this “unacceptable viewpoint ” is erased by “management.”

I never ceased to be amazed at how Zionists like yourself, when responding to inconvenient points made by others, entirely ignore those points in favor of a straw man.

You addressed none of the points I made except to grandly wave your hand and declare them “faulty.” For why this may be the case, you offer no proof or argument, but proceed to assume that I am for total anihilation of The Jews.

This, again, is one of the favorite canards of your ilk. Bring up the Holocaust, shreik “anti-Semitism” and equate anyone who does not support your myth of supremacy with a neo-Nazi. That is certain to silence all debate.

Sorry, that no longer works.

And yes, you are correct. I DO believe that the state of Israel has no right to exist. No state has a “right” to exist, but less one that won’t even define the actual borders of that state and which keeps millions of the original inhabitants in what amounts to an open-air prison.

That being said, Israel is a fact, like it or not. I do not wish for its removal, but for it to follow international law and honor the terms laid down for its creation.

Of course expecting Jews like yourself to do so is ridiculous as you believe yourselves to be above any law, and Israel to be uniquely chosen and supreme to any other state.

And of course none of this would even be happening if the Palestinians would just behave and let your friends and relatives take their land and resources.

But please keep writing and ask your like-minded friends to do the same here and elsewhere. Nothing reveals the utter bankruptcy of your soul and the very rotten heart of Zionism better than its adherants.

What other state has a “right to exist”, much less a right to force other states to recognize that right?

how much money do US tax payers give Israel? Maybe a plane ticket for Israeli Jews to the US would be cheaper, and I’m sure the lobby could chip in or at least create enough sympathy so that they’d get a better head start than most “refugees”

There too is always the live side by side in an equall environment scrapping the racist Jewish only welcome wagon (New York sound better than that?)

I’m not Opeluboy, but now that something other than the mass murdering of Jews has been offered for a logical conclusion, are you going to switch back to religious burying ceremonies?

This is a basic multi-billion dollar part of the peeyar war for Israel’s very survival. There is no way out of this basic realization. Some Israeli agent is data mining even this blathering typing here.

All of it is framing, peeyar, and pure unadulterated brain damage.
It has worked very well up to now, and the Zionists are throwing everything into the war.

You will have a difficult time finding any innocuous article, blog, movie, or tv discussion where Israel’s position isn’t pitched in some form or another. Madonna mia in the Holy Land hobnobbing with Olmert is a recent classic. Pelosi becomes Speaker of the House and immediately jets to Israel for photo ops.

YABUT, it’s ONLY about the OIL?

Weissman and Jacobs here on the pages of DV now are just two more of them. Yes, I am not sure as to whether their motives are conscious or unconscious, direct or indirect. They are selling the Israel First anti Arab peak oil with peace and justice HYPE, whether they like to be called on it or not. This is truly the age of propaganda, and the propaganda can only escalate.

Israeli designs could very well set the entire world ablaze soon. Joe Lieberman is real.

Taking your argument to it’s logical conclusion…effectively the state of Israel with some 7 million inhabitants “therefore” has no legitimate “right to exist.”

What do you propose as a logical solution? ….Mass murder?

A copy of this is being kept in case this “unacceptable viewpoint ” is erased by “management.”