Comments on: Gov’t committed to saving illegal West Bank neighborhood

By: Piotr Berman

Piotr Berman — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:36:04 +0000

If I translate “neighborhood”, “apartment complex” and “settlement” into my mother tongue I get the same word. Perhaps it is the same in Hebrew?

By: annie

annie — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 08:24:19 +0000

neighborhood?

By: Greg Pollock

Greg Pollock — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:39:59 +0000

I find it strange that a government would “agree” to a Supreme Court decision. Israel has yet to have that showdown. Note that in the US in the 60′s, some Southern States refused to carry out Supreme Court orders. In one case, the governor activated his national guard, sending these troops to a schools to prevent entry of a handful of blacks. President Kennedy nationalized that guard and ordered them to withdraw; their commander obeyed the President. Point being, the federal structure of the US isolated government rebellion; Israel does not have this advantage.
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The Court could act on its own. Simplist would be to refuse all hearings of the State on a topic once the State refuses a prior directive on that topic. Since Habeas corpus exists as a matter of common law in Israel, the State’s punishment power could thereby effectively be shut down.
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I suspect if something as drastic ever occurs it will not be out of Court moral outrage, but rather the Court declaring its true venue. I continue to think that your country is in a slow motion constitutional crisis, with the Court yet to act fully in defining itself. Strangely, coalition politics involving minority parties (your religious right, I guess) may well eventually force the matter. If that happens, the Court may gain legitimacy partly through public revulsion that coaltion politics could lead to such an event.
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Or so I imagine.

By: John Yorke

John Yorke — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:31:26 +0000

The present Israeli administration now appears willing to sanction virtually any Jewish settlement located in the West Bank, defying both international opinion and its own Supreme Court. The combination of party unity, government cohesion, 2013 election prospects and right-wing agendas would seem to outweigh a more circumspect approach.

But is a more circumspect approach possible?
I feel sure there are those who would wish there was one. But, at the moment, it seems to be a case of playing for time and, when time runs out, taking what looks like the path of least resistance.
This is no way to handle such matters. It’s making policy on the run and bad policy at that; no attempt is made to see past the immediate crisis, no coherent plans for the future are in evidence.

If Israel is not to sink even further in the world’s estimation, a fundamental change in its overall strategy towards who has legitimate tile to what parcel of land must be brought about as soon as possible.

But, on the face of it, pressures to act in a very partisan manner seem to be the order of the day and the consequences of that do not bode well for all the other days to come.

What is needed here is pressure way beyond normal limits, counter-pressure of such consistency and force that it will carry all before it, a tsunami of intent to redirect the course of human history and permanently resolve this conflict and, in doing so, many others of a similar nature.

Http://yorketowers.blogspot.com

Try to remember this. We are only tenants of this planet; we do not own it in perpetuity. It’s just a temporary stopover and a place we will all have to leave eventually. At some point, the landlord may be back to check up what we’ve been doing. If the mess we’ve made of it is not cleared away before then, things could go very badly for us. In such a circumstance, certain penalty clauses in the tenancy agreement could be invoked and these, as I understand it, can be quite severe.

By: aristeides

aristeides — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:46:13 +0000

Last time I saw a poll, the Israeli public didn’t much like the settlers and thinks they suck up a disproportionate amount of the national budget. I suspect it’s the rightwing ministries that can’t tolerate their evacuation.

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:09:37 +0000

Nothing spectacular, after all Israel have got away with this for decades and they know they can do this since they are protected by the US.
In fact one could just read the political program of Likud to understand that this is nothing new:
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“The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.”

By: Bruce

Bruce — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:59:04 +0000

Unbelievable what the supposed “only democracy in the middle east” has succumbed to. This is tyranny at its worst. This is the root cause of violence in Israel. The infamous land-grab, along with apartheid, that so many people deny exists. Economic sanctions, that would bring any country to its knees, has been forced down the people of Palestine’s throat. And one wonders how Hezbollah or Nasrollah get their support for the ruthless violence they perpetuate against Israelis. Easy, they just point to this type of behavior, which is psychological violence and literally the cultural rape of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government.
Must all Jews as well as Palestinians suffer, at the hands of the Israeli government!