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By Ching Kwan Lee $19.62
By Alan Abramowitz
$35
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16.jpg) World Economic Forum
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Although the U.S. has requested that Israel stop building new settlements in the West Bank, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has apparently refused to put a halt to those projects. About the best he was willing to do Monday was say that construction might be scaled down “for a temporary period.”
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 AP / Sebastian Scheiner
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In a strong rebuke of Israeli policy, the White House has expressed “regret” over an announcement by Israel that it will expand its illegal settlements in Palestinian areas. Hundreds of new housing units are expected to be approved for construction in the West Bank in a move seen as placating the rightists in power.
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 Flickr / ST33VO
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday strongly opposed President Obama’s call to freeze settlement activity in the West Bank. The Israeli parliament, meantime, has proposed that Jordan should become the new homeland of those Palestinians living on the West Bank, but the Jordanian government is not exactly thrilled by that idea.
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 aljazeera.net
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Tensions have been mounting between the U.S. and its usual BFF, Israel. President Obama’s demand for an end to the construction of settlements in the West Bank was rejected by Israel earlier this week. Obama has responded by suggesting that Israel’s intransigence endangers U.S. security.
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 Flickr/Creap
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In a surprisingly strong statement Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Israel to freeze all settlement activity in the West Bank. On Thursday, an Israeli government spokesman insisted that while they would cease building new settlements, “normal life” (read “new construction”) would continue in those that already exist.
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 guardian.co.uk
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In a political blast from the past, former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been chosen to form Israel’s next government, ending a nine-day struggle between the candidates and paving the way for a coalition arrangement with a strong right-wing bent.
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 AP photo / Alessandro Della Bella
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By Sandy Tolan — Dear Mr. Prime Minister: I write with grave concern over your impertinent remarks to the president of Israel at the World Economic Forum last week, which threatened to delay dinner for hundreds of extremely important global thinkers.
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 AP photo / Hatem Moussa
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In this installment of BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen’s diary about the Israeli-Palestinian war, Bowen describes how, thanks in part to technology, the word on Gaza is getting out despite the Israeli ban on foreign journalists.
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 Theatrum Belli
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By Robert Fisk — So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
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 Ma'an Images
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The United Nations marked Israel’s seventh day of aerial attacks by warning of a “critical emergency” in the Gaza Strip, as Palestinians endure food and medical supply shortages and distribution problems even as estimates of dead and wounded Palestinians continue to rise.
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 AP photo / Khalil Hamra
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By Robert Fisk — No one in 1967 dreamed that the Israeli-Arab conflict would still be in ferocious progress 41 years later, but the wording in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 has something to do with this ongoing clash.
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Israel denied Hamas a proposed six-month truce in the Gaza Strip on Friday, claiming such a lull would be used by Palestinians to prepare for future attacks against Israel. The cease-fire bid was seen by Israel as a “game” by Hamas, as Israeli airstrikes and commando raids continued in Gaza.
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 nytimes.com
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An interim decision by the Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday marked the beginning of what could become a two-tiered road system in the West Bank. With two separate legal systems for Palestinians and Israelis already in operation, critics fear segregated roads would lead toward further institutionalization of apartheid in the occupied territories.
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 White House photo / Tina Hager
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For the first time during his presidency, in the final year of his final term, George W. Bush is headed to Israel and the West Bank. Given that he’s even less popular in the Mideast than he is at home, massive security preparations are under way.
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sworn in a new government that excludes Hamas, a move praised by both the U.S. and Israel. But the emergency government is likely to preside only over the West Bank because Hamas—which Israeli officials described as a “terrorist entity”—retains control of Gaza.
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 news.bbc.co.uk
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Hamas’ exiled political leader has recognized rival Mahmoud Abbas as the “legitimate” president of the Palestinian people, but the militant group, which now controls Gaza, has also called Abbas’ dissolution of the government illegal. Tensions remain high in the divided Palestinian territories, despite a pledge from Hamas to work with Abbas “for the sake of national interest.”
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 AP Photo / Emilio Morenatti
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By Chris Hedges — Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank 40 years ago this week. The victory was celebrated as a great triumph, at once tripling the size of the land under Israeli control, including East Jerusalem. It was, however, a Pyrrhic victory. As the occupation stretched over the decades, it transformed and deformed Israeli society.
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 Sheinbaum: Jewish Journal; Carter: Amazon.com
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By Joshua Scheer — Internationally renowned diplomat, peace activist and scholar Stanley Sheinbaum (above) discusses Jimmy Carter’s controversial new book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”
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 guardian.co.uk
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Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has offered to recognize an “independent and viable Palestinian state ... with full sovereignty and defined borders” in exchange for a new Palestinian government, the recognition of Israel, a renewed commitment to the “road map” and the release of a captured Israeli soldier. What, no free landings?
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 AP Photo / Nasser Nasser
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By Chris Hedges — If we allow Israel to complete its massive $2-billion project to ring Palestinians in militarized, pod-like encampments in Gaza and the West Bank, we will condemn Israel and the Palestinians to endless cycles of violence that could ultimately doom the Jewish state.
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Chris Hedges, the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, argues that there can be no hope for peace in the Middle East as long as America continues to aid Israel in its dehumanizing practices.
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Unsettling prospects: “If the Jewish state were to annex all of the Jordan Valley, which is dotted with small settlements, it would leave a future Palestinian state on the West Bank entirely surrounded by Israel and without a direct link to neighbouring countries.” | story
Posted on Feb 8, 2006
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