Comment: Peace settlement not for peace at all, but a time to expand settlements. If no real basic common aim between negotiating sides, negotiations are a farce. Arab and other early 1990 efforts to avoid the Gulf War were a waste, as the US had made up it's mind. Here the same. Netanyahu, Israeli and American right all want to expand Israel influence and control. Agree .. so far it looks simply a political CHARADE, to help politicians look good and to keep all sides, except the Palestinian side 'happy'.
Israeli construction in the West Bank and Gaza
Sep 27th 2010
ISRAEL’s ten-month moratorium on construction of settlements in the West Bank expired late on Sunday September 26th, and building has resumed in some parts. Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement pressure group, estimates that construction on over 2,000 dwellings could now begin or resume. Over the last two decades official statistics (which exclude East Jersualem) show that settlement construction in the West Bank and Gaza has tended to intensify around the time of peace talks, as Israeli prime ministers have sought to placate right-wingers. The last freeze was brought in by Yitzhak Rabin in 1992, but from the first contained loopholes. It was formally cancelled by Binyamin Netanyahu when he was elected four years later. This in part accounts for the drop in government construction during the '90s. The shift towards private construction reflects a general trend throughout Israel, though it is less pronounced in the settlements than elsewhere.
More Daily charts .. Comment: hey, these are good, neat little comment and chart snacks, as the above, on all different subjects .. http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/display.cfm?id=7933596 .. you guys, and interestingly Mexico, are still tops on the obesity stakes, but we are gaining.
PLO urges Abbas to quit peace talks .. i guess you know, heh, see below ..
Influential Palestinian leaders urge President Abbas to quit direct talks with Israel, owing to settlement construction.
Last Modified: 02 Oct 2010 19:07 GMT
The Palestinians want Israel to extend construction freeze in the occupied territory which expired last Sunday [AFP]
An influential Palestinian body has urged the Palestinian president to quit direct talks with Israel, saying there should be no further peace talks as long as Israel continued settlement construction in the occupied territories.
Reading from a statement on Saturday, Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee, said Israel's failure to extend a 10-month partial freeze in settlement construction in the West Bank has made the negotiations "devoid of any meaning".
The Israeli government bore "full responsibility for the current impasse in the peace process" and "the collapse of negotiations," Rabbo continued.
The PLO statement, which comes just days before an Arab League committee meets on the issue, exerts more pressure on the Palestinian president to disengage from the direct talks - a decision he said he would make after the Arab League consultations.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has repeatedly threatened to walk out of the US-sponsored talks if the moratorium is not extended. The direct talks were relaunched a month ago with a declared goal of a two state solution within a year.
Abbas has said he would not make a final decision on the talks until after meeting Arab foreign ministers in Libya on Friday, giving US mediators another few days to try to strike a compromise.
'Foiling efforts'
In order to continue the talks, the PLO committee demanded that Israel make similar concessions.
"The resumption of negotiations requires tangible steps from Israel and the international community beginning with a halt of settlement activity," the PLO statement said.
"We have alternatives [to the negotiations] which we will announce soon," it said after holding a special meeting attended by Abbas and members of his Fatah movement's Central Committee. It did not provide further details.
"The Palestinian leadership holds the Israeli government responsible for foiling the international efforts and the peace process in the region because it is determined to combine negotiations with settlements," it said.
The PLO, a Fatah-dominated umbrella group headed by Abbas that includes most Palestinian factions but not Hamas, is the Palestinians' sole internationally recognised representative.
Fatah, meanwhile, appeared to have adopted an even harder line on the negotiations, with one member of the Central Committee suggesting the international community reconsider Israel's existence.
"The ball is now in the court of the international community to stop the unilateral aggression on Palestinian lands on which a Palestinian state must be established," Jibril Rajub, a leading member of the Fatah movement, said.
"If the world cannot do that, then it should re-examine the legitimacy of the continued existence of the state of Israel, which was established with an international birth certificate."
The Arab League follow-up committee on the peace talks will meet to form its own position on Friday in the Libyan city of Sirte, officials in Cairo said, after the meeting was postponed twice.
Settlement activity
Abbas - who previously secured the endorsement of a group of Arab foreign ministers for launching indirect peace talks and then again for upgrading to direct talks - plans to announce his position after the meeting.
Israel has made no moves to extend the moratorium despite international pressure [GALLO/GETTY]
"We want the Arab follow-up committee to support the Palestinian position on the negotiations," Rabbo told the AFP news agency after Saturday's meeting.
"But we have taken a decision on the negotiations and we will bear the consequences."
A Palestinian official, meanwhile, said on condition of anonymity that Abbas would ask for Arab and international assistance in bringing the settlements issue before the UN Security Council.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, allowed the restrictions to end despite international pressure, but has said he will restrain settlement construction and repeatedly urged the Palestinians to continue the talks.
George Mitchell, the US special envoy for the peace process, held meetings with both sides last week before heading for meetings with Arab leaders in a bid to keep the peace talks alive.
He arrived in Cairo on Saturday after holding talks in Qatar.
The Palestinians have long viewed the presence of some 500,000 Israelis in more than 120 settlements scattered across the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem as a major obstacle to the establishment of a viable state.
A Palestinian labourer works at a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Yakir south of Nablus September 26, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Nir Elias
By Ali Sawafta .. RAMALLAH, West Bank | Sat Oct 2, 2010 8:37pm EDT
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Direct talks with Israel will not resume unless it halts the building of Jewish settlements on occupied land, the Palestinian leadership said on Saturday. .. more .. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68R24A20101003
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