This adorable little girl lived in Gush Katif when she and her family had to evacuate.
Netanyahu defies Obama on Israeli settlement freeze
* Netanyahu rejects full freeze to settlement growth
* Obama wants halt to settlement activity
* Palestinians see settlements as threat to statehood
JERUSALEM, May 24
Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rebuffed U.S. calls to impose a freeze on all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, setting the stage for friction with President Barack Obama.
“We do not intend to build any new settlements, but it wouldn’t be fair to ban construction to meet the needs of natural growth or for there to be an outright construction ban,” Netanyahu told his cabinet, according to officials.
The note of defiance came less than a week after Netanyahu held talks in Washington with Obama, who wants Israel to halt all settlement activity, including natural growth, as called for under a long-stalled peace “road map”.
Netanyahu’s comments reaffirmed a position he took in his bid for the premiership in a February election. By natural growth, Israel refers to construction within the boundaries of existing settlements to accommodate growing families.
Obama was expected to prod Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resume long-stalled peace talks during a major speech in Cairo early next month.
Abbas has ruled out restarting those talks until Netanyahu, whose right-leaning government took office on March 31, commits to a two-state solution and halts settlement expansion.
Obama has surprised Israel with his activism on the settlement issue, but it is unclear how much pressure he will put on Netanyahu to freeze construction entirely, Israeli and Western officials said. Former President George W. Bush called for a freeze but building continued largely unchecked, Israeli anti-settlement advocacy groups say.
Half a million Jews live in settlement blocs and smaller outposts built in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, all territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.
The World Court says all are illegal. The United States and European Union regard them as obstacles to peace.
Palestinians see the settlements as a land grab meant to deny them a state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
PEACE TALKS
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Netanyahu, said the fate of existing settlements should be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians. “In the interim period, we have to allow normal life in those communities to continue,” he said.
Netanyahu has so far balked at committing to entering negotiations with the Palestinians on territorial issues.
A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Netanyahu’s government hoped to sidestep U.S. pressure by committing to uproot smaller hilltop outposts built without official authorisation, a step also set by the road map.
“Moving on outposts is relatively easy” compared to freezing growth of larger settlements, which Israel wants to keep as part of any future peace deal, the Israeli official said.
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Wild Thing’s comment……….
Welcome BiBi!! I would suppose after this that Netanyahu is most likely added to the Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s terrorist list. heh heh Well if he is he would be in the grandest company of all ……our Veterans and Spouses.
“…Obama, who wants Israel to halt all settlement activity, including natural growth,…”
Natural growth = births , this is about population control of Jews. Anytime we see these words natural growth that is what they are talking about. (Gore/Obama/Pelosi etc. all have been pushing population control and using this phrasing “Natural Growth”)
Not very hard to see whose side commiebama is on…that would be Iran and the other enemies of Israel. No doubt when Kenya breath Hussein Obama bowed to the prince he kissed his ring and promised to “take care of the Israel problem”.
I’ve noticed a common phrasing in many stories out now, and it is “Obama wants…”. Well, the only saying is, he can want in one hand and…well you know the rest.
No doubt the grandma he threw under the bus doted on him to relieve her guilt and he got his way a lot – you can see that when someone defies him and he gets in one of his snits.
The only difference is, now that he has “power”, it’s not “What little Barry wants, he gets.” Now it’s “What the Kenyan wants, he TAKES.”
The “settlement policy” is a huge, stinking pile of bullsh*t.
It’s all part of the same, Big Lie, that “Jews stole land from Palestinians.” You know, the same peaceful “Palestinians” who occupy Israel and who danced in the street on 9/11? The same ones who shouted, “Death to Jews” in this country, in New York City, San Francisco, and Ft Lauderdale.
There is no such place as Palestine. There has never been an independent nation or state known as Palestine. “Palestinians” are Arabs and not a distinct group of people. There are no “Palestinian lands.” Ninety percent of the Arabs living in the West Bank and Jerusalem came there AFTER Israel became a state.
PLO admits Palestinian People is a myth.
“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.” PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein, March 31, 1977
There already is an independent “Palestinian” state called, Jordan, which consists of 80% of the land mandated by the League of Nations/United Nations to be the Jewish Homeland.
Jews have lived continuously in the West Bank for over 3,000 years. Jewish settlements are not illegal and never were.
No other nation in the history of the world has ever had to give back land it captured while fighting a DEFENSIVE WAR — especially NOT the land that belonged to them in the first place.
There are, however, hundreds of thousands of ILLEGAL ARAB SETTLEMENTS throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem. These are Arab squatters on Jewish land and have no right to be there. It is the Arabs who are making the land grabs, not the Jews.
Look at the world map, in its 60 year history, Israel has not even expanded out to its original borders that existed 2,000 years before the myth of “Palestine and the Palestinians” was created in 1964 by Yassir Arafat and the terrorist PLO.
In the same period, Muslims have waged a bloody, worldwide conquest of non-Muslim countries extending from Eurasia to Africa to Eastern Europe, and onto Western Europe.
Muslims insist that Spain belongs to them because they briefly captured it during their first worldwide conquest of foreign land: a Muslim Empire that began in the 7th Century and ended in the early part of the 20th with the defeat of the Ottomans. Why not force Spain to give up their land?
Muslims believe that if they once occupied a piece of land, even for a day, it is theirs for eternity.
They’ll be coming for our land next if we as a country don’t wake up to the real danger we face.
As Israel goes, so goes America.
There are things in life worth fighting, and dying for. Giving over our own property, freedom, and God given rights for the sake of “just getting along” with an unreasonable neighbor, is not living: it’s simply existing in horrible bondage.
Our founding fathers understood this all too well, and they made a stand. Many of them lost everything they had, including their lives for it. But they passed on a heritage in this country which has been the greatest force for good ever known to civilization, our military fought to keep it so, and up until a few months ago, you and I have been benefiting in more ways that we may never even realize until our individual freedoms are gone.
“I will plant them [the Jewish people] in their land, and they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them…” – Amos 9:15