West Bank settlements still growing

 On a blistering day last week, Michael Plotkin stood beside a bright new children’s swing set and listened to the sounds of his expanding outpost in the desert.

HAMMERS POUNDED out the finishing touches on two trailer homes. A bulldozer chewed away a rocky hillside beneath a newly erected water tower.
       “We need families,” said Plotkin, unofficial mayor of this burgeoning Jewish outpost on the West Bank, about 25 miles north of Jerusalem. “If we have a lot of families, nobody will try to remove us.”
       Plotkin said his outpost of 14 residents and 11 buildings is part of the larger struggle for survival against proponents of a U.S.-backed peace process that calls for dismantling Jewish outposts scattered across the hilltops of the West Bank.
       Last week Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in Washington, promised President Bush that “unauthorized outposts will be removed.” But recent visits by The Washington Post, along with aerial and ground surveys conducted by Peace Now, an advocacy group that opposes Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, found that across the West Bank, the debate over dislodging outposts has instead reinvigorated efforts to expand existing ones, create new ones and rebuild those ripped down by the Israeli military.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/947876.asp?0cl=c3

http://www.geocities.com/darkerxdarker

well that's what comes of too much pills and liquor
but when I saw her laid out like a queen
she was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen...

Okay now that I had my fill of Show tunes.

snip

What we were especially conscious of as we filmed in places like Hebron, Bethlehem and Jerusalem was the mostly unpleasant quality of everyday life for the average Palestinian, whose capacity to earn money or travel has been severely curtailed since Oslo, whose land and homes are constantly threatened or being lost, and whose life under Chairman Arafat's dreadful Authority (buttressed by CIA and Mossad support) has become a nightmare. At least it had been possible to render in images the tiny bit of territory -- about three per cent -- that the Authority controlled -- controlled, that is, except for exits and entrances, water resources, and security, all of which Israel still holds on to. The film's last scene put things very starkly: land was being expropriated on a daily basis, with no one, certainly no one official, able to stop the dreaded Israeli bulldozers with troops who descend on unprotected villagers and immediately begin their destructive, ruthlessly efficient work.



snip

This time -- for the eight days I was there in mid-November -- the Wye Plantation agreement was still fresh in memory, but just as quickly dismissed by everyone I spoke to. I had the impression that, somewhere off the main stage, there were teams of Israeli and Palestinian researchers making sense of the agreement. There is now an amazing network of institutes and thinktanks throughout the Palestinian territories, most of them funded by the Europeans, singly or in groups, many of which work together with Israeli counterparts. Since I am neither a professional expert, nor a policy-maker, nor a journalist, nor a candidate for a job, I became aware of this rather sizable enterprise, which employs many PhDs, out of my rear-view mirror, so to speak, rarely in full frontal view. Undoubtedly a great deal is invested in this peace agreement/process. Preparations were already under way for the opening of the Gaza Airport -- Shyam Bhatia, the Guardian correspondent, almost persuaded me to go down to Gaza just to see the place, into which over $65 million had already been poured, a staggering contrast with the hundreds of thousands of poor refugees eking out a miserable living all through the Strip -- and for the upcoming meeting of the National Council, which is supposed to be addressed by Bill Clinton while it tears up or modifies the legendary Covenant for the fourth time. Repetition is a constant theme wherever I go. The same questions are asked. The same things are said (e.g. Arafat's promise to declare a state on 4 May l999; a state was already declared in l988). The Covenant is to be changed, yet again. And still the Israeli settlers are everywhere to be found, more villages threatened, more roads built, more lands taken. Abu Mazen, Arafat's number two, says that Ariel Sharon is no longer the same man who invaded Lebanon, laid siege to Beirut for two months, bombed the city indiscriminately in l982, was responsible for Sabra and Shatila. I was surprised that he didn't also defend General Pinochet on the same grounds.

Full essay: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1998/407/op2.htm

With Oslo things got worse. With this (cough) roadmap things don't look to be getting any better. It's the third month of the 3 month (cough) truce and counting the days till month's end.

Hold onto THE DREAM. Power to the INITIATIVE!