On the heals of the Annapolis peace conference in which Israel and the Palestinians agreed to move forward on bringing peace to the region and launching talks on final status issues, which are supposed to end up with the establishment of an independent Palestinian state; Israel doesn’t seem to want to stop building illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land, and it has been revealed that money will be put aside to construct 740 new buildings next year.
The construction ministry’s proposed budget for 2008 includes 500 apartments for the Har Homa area in east Jerusalem, and 240 at Maale Adumim, just outside Jerusalem and one of Israel’s biggest West Bank settlements.
Despite calls to freeze all settlement activity, Israel insists it will continue to build.
That shows how much Israel is really “committed” to the peace process, and how it will do anything to undermine it and keep things going as they are with it taking more and more land from the Palestinians, tightening the siege around them even more and doing as it pleases with total disregard to Palestinian lives and rights.
The quartet, that is supposed to be pushing for peace; the United Nations, that useless puppet; and the whole world just sit around watching.
Of course in the end, the failure of any peace negotiations will be pinned on the Palestinians, as usual, and things will go on like they have been for years; until we approach the end of another US president’s term and they suddenly feel like leaving on a bright note: that they at least gave Middle East peace a shot.
I don’t know why we even bother let our hopes get lifted by these peace conferences, agreements, negotiations and crap anymore. It’s obvious that until Israel is held accountable for its actions just like Palestinians are, there will be no peace!
As I may have mentioned, my Jewish in-laws, staunch, American Liberals all, always voted for Bush because “he lets Israel do whatever it wants.” Which would seem to be true. (I did once ask if they’d vote for Hitler if he’d let Israel do whatever it wanted, only to be greeted by a stony silence. 🙂 )
A lovely Christmastime here–my German student’s on the psychiatric ward after a psychotic break. (I put him there. Bi-polar with homicidal ideation, as they say. Good news is, there’s never any danger of his killing himself. 🙂 ) So, am ferrying stuff over to him daily. Guess since his wretched mother’s now officially thrown him out, he’s going to be on my pull-out sofa for the foreseeable future. Ah, well, always nice to have someone close at hand to play chess with.
Cheers.
Annapolis is just another joke about peace, just some folks trying to build up their political careers.
I bet all I have on more israeli settlements, more incursions and more assassinations. Happy new year 2008 🙂
-Imed
I used this blog of yours as a cite in a blog of mine. I hope you don’t mind.
check it out here
If you have an issue let me know and I’ll remove it. 🙂
Maasalama