Israel plans 1,300 East Jerusalem Jewish settler homes
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- Written by Peter Miller Peter Miller
- Published: 08 November 2010 08 November 2010
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Har Homa, 8 November The start of construction in Har Homa in the late 1990s caused a major conflict with the US
Israel has revealed plans to build nearly 1,300 housing units for Jewish settlers in occupied East Jerusalem.
Building settlements is illegal under international law and recent efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have stalled over the issue.
The announcement comes as Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is on an official visit to the US.
Palestinian officials have reportedly described the move as an Israeli attempt to sabotage the talks.
"We thought that Netanyahu was going to the United States to stop settlement activity and restart negotiations, but it is clear to us that he is determined to destroy the talks," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.
The Interior Ministry said that final approval had been given for almost 1,000 new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Har Homa, near the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, and about 300 in an area called Ramot.
A ministry spokeswoman told the BBC that the plans were being published to invite public comment and that actual construction was likely to be years away.
East Jerusalem is regarded as occupied Palestinian territory by the international community, but Israel says it is part of its territory.
'Casting a shadow'
Israel has been urged by many foreign governments, including the United States, to resume a partial building freeze in settlements on the occupied West Bank and to maintain an unofficial status quo in East Jerusalem, in order to help faltering peace talks with the Palestinians.
The news that more than 1,000 new homes have been approved in East Jerusalem could cast a shadow over a visit to the US by Mr Netanyahu, says the BBC's Wyre Davis in Jerusalem.
Israel angered the US administration earlier this year when a similar announcement was made during a trip to Jerusalem by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
Mr Biden and other US officials are holding meetings this week with the Israeli leader about ways to resume the peace talks - and peace campaigners say the latest announcement from the Israeli government is deliberately provocative, our correspondent says.
The Palestinians have refused to go back to the negotiations - which resumed in Washington in September after a break of almost 20 months - without a stop to building Jewish settlements on the territory they want as their future state.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967, settling close to 500,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements.
Full Haaretz expose / How the state helped right-wing groups settle East Jerusalem
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- Written by Nir Hasson Nir Hasson
- Published: 08 November 2010 08 November 2010
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A Haaretz investigation shows the state used a controversial law to transfer East Jerusalem assets to the rightist organizations Elad and Ateret Cohanim without a tender, and at very low prices.
Read more: Full Haaretz expose / How the state helped right-wing groups settle East Jerusalem
Rampant employment discrimination against Palestinian workers in Israel
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- Written by Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada,
- Published: 04 November 2010 04 November 2010
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Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 21 May 2010
Unemployed computer engineer Morad Lashin would like to work in Israel's Electricity Company, a large state utility, but admits his chances of being recruited are slim.
The reasons were set out in graphic form this month when a parliamentary committee revealed that only 1.3 percent of the company's 12,000 workers are Arab, despite the Palestinian Arab minority constituting nearly 20 percent of the population.
The committee's report presents a picture of massive under-representation of Arab citizens across most of the public sector, including in government companies and ministries, where the percentage of Arab staff typically falls below two percent of employees.
According to Sikkuy, a group lobbying for greater civic equality, discriminatory hiring policies have left thousands of Arab graduates jobless, even though the government promised affirmative action a decade ago.
Lashin, 30, from Nazareth, said his remaining hope was to find a job in the public sector after a series of short-term contracts in private hi-tech firms. "Everywhere you go, they ask if you have served in the army. Because Arab citizens are exempt, the good jobs are always reserved for Jews."
Ali Haider, a co-director of Sikkuy, said: "What kind of example is set for the Israeli private sector when the government consistently finds excuses not to employ Arab citizens too?"
Ahmed Tibi, who heads the parliamentary committee on Arab employment in the public sector, said that even when government bodies appointed Arabs it was invariably in lowly positions. "The absence of Arabs in [senior] roles means that they have no say in the ministries' decision-making processes," he said.
The issue of under-representation in Israel's public sector was first acknowledged by officials in 2000, when the Fair Representation Law was passed under pressure from Arab political parties.
However, no target was set for the proportion of Arab employees until 2004, when the government agreed that within four years Arabs should comprise 10 percent of all staff in ministries, state bodies and on the boards of hundreds of government companies. Later the deadline was extended to 2012.
The new report found that overall six percent of the country's 57,000 public sector workers were Arab, only marginally higher than a decade ago.
But Tibi noted that the figures were substantially boosted by the large number of "counter staff" in the interior, welfare, health and education ministries employed to provide basic services inside Arab communities.
On publication of the report this month, Avishai Braverman, the minorities minister, admitted there was no hope of reaching even the delayed target. He criticized his own government for not setting its sights higher, at 20 percent representation.
The committee's findings, said Tibi, showed officials had systematically broken their promises on fair representation. He noted that even in the parliament itself there were only six Arab workers out of 439, or 1.6 percent. "What does it say that in the temple of Israeli democracy there is such rank discrimination?"
Similar percentages were found in key government departments, including the prime minister's office, the foreign ministry, the treasury, the housing ministry and the trade and industry ministry, as well as such state agencies as the Bank of Israel, the Land Administration and the Water Authority.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, to which Israel acceded last week, reported last year that 15,000 Arab graduates were either unemployed or forced into work outside their professions, often as teachers.
Tibi said he was particularly concerned that there were no Arabs in key roles inside government ministries. "Not by chance are there no senior Arab civil servants, no deputy directors in the ministries, no legal advisers," he said.
He said the absence of Arab policy-makers was reflected in the lack of public services and resources made available to Arab communities. Poverty among Arab families is three times higher than among Jewish families.
Yousef Jabareen, director of the Dirasat policy centre in Nazareth, said increased recruitment of Arab workers by the government could solve at a stroke two urgent problems: the large pool of Arab graduates who could not find work, and the community's lack of influence on national policy.
He added that discrimination against Arabs was "built into the institutional structure of a Jewish state."
The report was received with hostility by some MPs. Yariv Levin, chairman of the parliament's House Committee and a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, said the report was "delusional and ignores the fundamental fact that a significant portion of Israel's Arabs are disloyal to the state."
Saleem Marna, 37, who graduated as an information systems engineer 10 years ago from the prestigious Technion University in Haifa, said he had given up hope of finding regular work in either the private or public sectors.
Married with four children, he said he had applied to emigrate to Canada. "I am hopeful that being an Arab won't count against me there."
Hatim Kanaaneh, a Harvard-educated doctor who worked as one of the few senior Arab officials in the Israeli health ministry until his resignation in the early 1990s, documented the many battles he faced in the government bureaucracy in his recent book Doctor in Galilee.
Kanaaneh said no Arab had ever risen above the position of sub-district physician he held two decades ago. Although the health ministry had the largest number of Arab employees of any ministry, he said none had ever been appointed to a policy-making position.
"In fact, people in the ministry tell me things have gone backwards under recent right-wing governments."
He added that the lack of Arab policy-makers in government had concrete consequences that damaged the Arab community. When he worked in the health ministry, he noted, the Arab infant mortality rate was twice that of the Jewish population. Two decades later the ratio of Arab to Jewish infant deaths, rather than declining, had increased by a further 25 percent.
The prejudice faced by educated Arabs seeking employment was highlighted by a survey last November. It found that 83 percent of Israeli businesses in the main professions admitted being opposed to hiring Arab graduates.
Yossi Coten, director of a training program in Nazareth, said of 84,000 jobs in the country's hi-tech industries, only 500 were filled by Arab engineers.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Window of opportunity for two-state solution closing, British foreign secretary Hague warns Israel
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- Written by Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
- Published: 04 November 2010 04 November 2010
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William Hague lays a wreath in the Hall of Remembrances during a visit at the Yad Vashem William Hague lays a wreath in the Hall of Remembrances during a visit at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem today. Photograph: Kobi Gideon/EPA
William Hague warned today that the window of opportunity for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was closing and failure by the two parties to reach agreement would be a "serious setback".
Speaking at the end of a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, after visiting Jerusalem's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, the foreign secretary urged Israel to renew its freeze on settlement construction to allow direct talks between the two parties to resume.
"There are many important issues, but this is one that has the potential to get direct talks going," he said. The British government wanted Israel to renew the moratorium on building, and he had "made his views clear" to Israeli politicians and officials during his visit, he said.
Hague met the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as well as the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, during his visit.
"I am very worried that the window of opportunity is closing. There is real urgency to that," he said. The current talks were the third attempt in a decade to reach a comprehensive settlement and a two-state solution.
"If they don't succeed there will be a loss of hope. We must never give up trying, but [to fail] would be a serious setback," Hague said.
Direct negotiations began in early September but stalled shortly afterwards when the 10-month partial freeze on construction in settlements expired. The Palestinians insist they cannot negotiate on the boundaries of a future state while Israel continues to build and expand settlements on Palestinian land. All settlements are illegal under international law.
The message is clear. When shall we Understand it?
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- Written by Gush Shalom Gush Shalom
- Published: 04 November 2010 04 November 2010
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Gush Shalom Ad in Israeli paper
“Caterpillar” has suspended
The supply of D-9 bulldozers
To the IDF.
The Dutch police have raided
The offices of a company
That builds in the settlements.
The British Foreign Minister
Has met with
The Bil’in and Sheikh-Jarrah
Protesters.
The message is clear.
When shall we
Understand it?