[LottiFurmann]

Originally posted by fred
While the government spends billions on gleaming new suburbs for Jews Off-topic, but does it really? I have heard many dramatic accounts of housing shortage, especially affecting new immigrants.

[S.T.D.]

Originally posted by ibrodsky


I see: people who lose some property acquire the right to mass murder civilians who had nothing to do with it.

I suspect there is another side to this story. But since you lay the foundation for justifying terrorism, we shouldn't expect to hear it from you.
There is no justification for terrorism.
However terror does not happen in a vaccum. the american Indians responded with terror when their land was taken and settled by Europans during the pioneer era.

I made the point in my previous post since the vast majority of Israelis seem to think that most demolished houses are homes of terrorists. this is not true. The vast majority of demolished homes are reduced to rubble because of Israel's demographic policies. This is reflected in the land use and zoning laws of Jerusalem, and the continuing confiscation of land for by-bass roads and settlement expansion. Demolishing homes is also intended to encourage Palestinians to live in ever smaller areas surrounded by the expanding settlements.

Anyone willing to address this issue?

[9mm_fan]

Originally posted by Vic
<b>Where does the number -

[Beerinkol]

It was said:

"Moawiya Kabha, an Arab ambulance driver on duty nearby, rushed to the scene, gathered the unconscious bleeding boy in his arms and delivered him to the hospital emergency room Sunday -- just in the nick of time.
"The doctors said one more minute and he would have lost all his blood," said Kabha, 24. "

So why then are these 'Good Arabs' (who prefer to call themselves Palestinian-Israelis. 'Israeli Arab' is a Jewish designation) so discriminated against in israeli society. For example I imclude a recent story of one family's tragedy.

Dabash Family
Sur Bahair - Jerusalem

The Dabash family patriarch, Ahmed Dabash, is in his eighties, a gentle old man with a white Kaffeyah on his head, looking every inch the proud father of four sons and an extended family of 55 people. Their family history in Sur Bahair extends back before the Ottoman Empire claimed Palestine and beyond. Five or six hundred years of continuous residence. The lore has been handed down from father to son, with tales of the great Grandfather’s exploits as a soldier in The Ottoman Army.

The village of Sur Bahair is home to 14-15,000 Palestinian Muslims and sits at the crest of a hill overlooking the valleys separating Jerusalem from Bethlehem and Beit Sahour. It is a pastoral scene of olive trees and farming plots, marred only by the lines of Israeli tanks on the opposite hills. The tanks occasionally fire shells into Beit Sahour and Bethlehem, seeking the perpetrators of real or imagined resistance to the Israeli Occupation. Usually it is the innocent who are killed or maimed. Sur Bahair is hemmed in on three sides by encroaching Israeli settlements. Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, Hermon Anatseev, Har Homa, West Talpiot and the growing suburbs of Jerusalem. A four lane highway circles one side of the village, a stark strip of concrete forging a link to Maale Adumim, the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, east of Jerusalem. Thus the Jerusalem Municipality is ensuring territorial contiguity for the ever-expanding Jewish presence on the land, without regard of the rights of the existing Palestinian population, and in violation of International law.

The four sons of the Dabash family are thrifty, hard working men. Ibrahim works for Israeli radio, Mohammed is an ambulance driver, Omar drives a bus for the Israeli national company, Egged, and Imad is a driving instructor. Imad is also a volunteer for the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross, Mogan David Adom. Together they support their father, wives and children, a total of 55 people living in a single home of perhaps 150 meters (approx. 1,400 square feet), the size of a suburban home in the USA or Europe. Fifty-five people! Their home is immaculate; the children friendly and well behaved. Exactly the kind of decent people anyone would welcome as neighbors.

Two of the brothers, Omar and Imad, bought a small building plot in 1997 from the Abu Kaf family and spent their life savings to build a home for their two families and father. The other two brothers were to keep the original home, thus allowing all their families to live in relative comfort instead of on top of one another. Over $100,000 was invested in the new home. The family paid cash, the net result of endless years of savings and dreams, and by the beginning of June 2002 the home was being painted and almost ready to occupy. On the 11th June those dreams were smashed by the Jerusalem Municipal authorities.

At 8am, without notice, over 200 police and combat troops arrived and stationed themselves around the home and the adjacent neighborhood. Then the Caterpillar bulldozers arrived and proceeded in a short time to totally destroy the home. The work of years reduced to rubble in a few hours. The hopes of 55 people reduced to shattered dreams. And why?

Jerusalem has a policy of restricting the growth of Palestinian communities. The land use planning regulations and zoning laws have decreed that the privately owned land in and around most Palestinian villages to be green space, "for the villagers own benefit" according to Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert. However the village families must build new homes to accommodate growing families. They must build, and they do it in the traditional fashion by adding homes to the edge of the community, on their own land. If they try and apply for a building permit it will cost $20-30,000, go through a process often lasting years, and then be routinely denied. So the Dabash brothers, like many others, had gone ahead and built without a permit.

Currently the village of Sur Bahair has about 50 homes under threat of demolition with 7 houses destroyed so far this year. None of the families are offered any aid by the Jerusalem Municipality. This would be unthinkable for a Jewish family in similar circumstances. No social worker calls, no temporary shelter is offered, nothing. The family is left to their own resources.

The contrast to this situation is the adjacent Jewish settlements that are provided with spacious public areas, community facilities, subsidized synagogues, low cost housing and subsidized mortgages. Yet their encirclement of the villages is strangling the life out of Palestinian communities, reducing their daily existence to a fear of the bulldozer and the police. Even access to villages is often restricted through arbitrary closures of the winding roads that hug the hillsides and follow trails that are centuries, perhaps millennia old. Four lane highways now slice through the hills destroying the biblical landscape, and huge settlements built with no regard to the topography of the land.

The Dabash family story is repeated daily throughout East Jerusalem and the West Bank as the expansionist policies of the Israeli government continues to create the Zionist dream. A total of 10,000 homes are under threat of demolition in the Occupied Territories. 10,000 families living with little hope. 10,000 families with no future. 10,000 families with 3-400,000 dependants. What are they to do?
*******************

We have to keep in mind that less than 1% of these demolished homes were the houses of terrorists or their families. I have visited many of them and they clearly fall under the category of 'Good Arabs'. However don't be surprised if their children become the next attacker of israeli civilians.

Imagine the American Indians, back in the pioneer days, watching their land swallowed up by hoards of European settlers. They became terrorists too, and had their culture destroyed, and confined to reservations. Is this what we truly want to do to the Palestinians? It looks that way to me.

[Drugmachine]

Originally posted by Vic
Did the Palestinian deeds exist for all of the 73% of WB you mention?What was the official reason for the demolitions?What does "expropriated" mean? Who were the previous owners? Most of the land expropriated in the West bank had private deeds dating back hundreds of years. Some of the land was not privately owned and held by previous administrations (Ottoman, British, Jordanian) as public land.

There are many official reasons for demolitions by the Israeli authorities.
1. No valid deed. This often means that the land was not registered according to israeli regulations after the Occupation started in 1967
2. No building permit. Permits are not issued to Palestinians in areas slated for Jewish settlement expansion.
3. Confiscation for the public good, by-pass roads, settlement expansion, 'green areas'. Of course 'public good' always refers to the Jewish public

Expropriated means confiscated by the Israeli State


Originally posted by Vic
What exactly were the "settlements and infrastructure" build on the land - roads, etc.? How is it possible that all of the expropriated land was "farm and pasture land"?Does tha last sentence mean that house demolitions are restricted to certain areas? Otherwise it would make little sense.What exactly do you call "Greater Jerusalem"? The 90,000 housing units? On maps, what you describe looks much less dangerous. Wouldn't it take a much greater territorial expansion (covering the whole area to the shore of the Dead Sea???) to achieve what you describe? How does all of this "cut the economic heart out of the [non-existant] Palestinian state"? Settlements and infrastructure include hundreds for kilometers of 4 ane highways that cut a swath 4 football fields wide through the West Bank. All agricultural land, homes etc are demolished within this width.

House demolitions are conductd in areas where the government wants to ensure either a demographic majority of Jews (as in Jerusalem), or clear areas for settlement expansion (as in Shuafat)

Actually there are 3 Jerusalems. Municipal Jerusalem, Greater Jerusalem, and Metropolitan Jerusalem by which the government describes the boundaries of the city of Jerusalem. The most interesting is 'Metropolitan Jerusalem' which encompases an area reaching Ramallah in the north, Ma'ale Adumim in the East, and Bethlehem/Gush Etzion in the south. In all it comprises about 10% of the West bank. When the Israeli government taks about 'Jerusalem' this is what's meant - it's on their maps. And yes, if you include the boundaries of Ma'ale Adumim (now calld a Jerusalem suburb) then Jerusalem does indeed stretch almost to the Dead Sea.

The Israeli Government is building up this area as fast as possible. I'm out there almost daily and see the construction activity. The area known as E1 by city planners is the last undeveloped land between Jerusalem proper and Ma'ale Adumim. Once this area is built up then the West Bank will be divided in half then a viable Palestinian State will never emerge.