Israel says it will go ahead with settlement expansion in clear warning to Palestinian statehood bid

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks at a map of the area marked for the construction of new housing units in the Israeli annexed east Jerusalem Jewish settlement of Gilo, Oct. 23, 2012. / Getty

JERUSALEM Israel said Tuesday that it was pushing forward with construction of more than 1,200 new homes in Jewish settlements, in an apparent warning to the Palestinians to rethink their plan to ask the United Nations to recognize an independent state of Palestine.

The government announced late Monday that it was accepting bids from contractors to build the homes in two Jewish enclaves in east Jerusalem, Ramot and Pisgat Zeev. The homes are among 1,200 whose construction Israel ordered fast-tracked in November 2011 after a key U.N. body granted full membership to Palestine.

While construction would take months to begin, officials indicated that the timing of the tenders was meant to signal to the Palestinians that they should consider the possible consequences of their plan to ask the U.N. General Assembly later this month to upgrade their status to non-member observer state.

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Asked whether this was a sign of what could come, an Israeli official said if the Palestinians go to the General Assembly it would be a "blow to peace" and cause problems. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the matter with reporters.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat condemned the Israeli action and urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to halt settlement construction.

"What you need to stop is not the Palestinian efforts at the U.N.," he said. "What you need to stop are these settlement activities that are destroying and undermining the possibility of a two-state solution."

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resume negotiations without preconditions. "Peace may be advanced only around the negotiating table and not via unilateral decisions in the U.N. General Assembly, which will only push peace further away and will only lead to instability," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu met with his Security Cabinet on Tuesday to discuss possible responses to the U.N. bid. There was no word on any decisions. Following last year's move by the Palestinians to join the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, Israel retaliated by accelerating settlement construction and withholding funds from the Palestinian government. The United States also withheld money to the Palestinians, and Congress has threatened similar sanctions if the Palestinians proceed at the UN again.

The Palestinians say the appeal to the United Nations is not designed to replace peace talks, which broke down four years ago. They argue that with talks stalled, they have to look for other ways to push their claims to establish a state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.

The 193-member General Assembly is dominated by countries sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and the petition for a status upgrade is assured. Last year, the Palestinians failed to receive the necessary U.N. Security Council support for their bid to become a full member state.

Palestinians demand an end to all construction in Israeli settlements before peace talks can resume, reasoning that the expanding settler population is making it impossible to establish a functional Palestinian state.

Abbas has signaled he might try to restart talks after the coming U.N. vote.

Israel rejects any conditions to talks and insists the settlements issue will be resolved when borders are defined through negotiations. Unlike the Palestinians and the rest of the international community, it claims annexed east Jerusalem as part of its capital and does not consider the Jewish areas there to be settlements.

More than 500,000 Israelis have moved to the West Bank and east Jerusalem since Israel capturing those territories and Gaza in 1967. Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but still controls access by air, sea and land, except for a crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

[verifabletruthmatters]

Israel has had more than 60 years to prove itself. It's the same religious war the Rabbis started in 1850 to steal back Palestine ignorantly believing Palestine to be the Promised Land. They willingly reduce a Consciousness aligned with 100 BIL galaxies headed to Infinity, to a moron who cares about real estate in the Mideast, on a speck of dust called Earth. There are 1400 planets in the "habitable zone" of their star like our Sun, and 33 of them are the same size as Earth. In other words, there's nothing special about Earth, except that the human species is doing a great job failing the real Program. "Take basic Understandings, Kindergarten material like the TEN COMMANDMENTS, and raise them to the level of the Universal LAWS that govern God's World", to reach an Awareness Level known as THE PROMISED LAND". The message for centuries has been to stop violating the LAWS, because Physics doesn't tolerate being violated. It's the cause of every accident and virtually every tragedy on the planet. EVERYTHING has to be translated to a function of Energy governed by Physics. Teachers who know what they're doing don't leave behind TEACHINGS that are a violation of the Universal LAWS that govern God's World. Fundamentalists are HUGE VIOLATORS of verifiable TRUTH, therefore HUGE VIOLATORS of the associated Universal LAWS that govern the Universe, therefore HUGE VIOLATORS of God's World.

Which is exactly where we find 6 million genocidal Jews in a nation of hypocrites called Israel, pushing a pack of bogus and violating religious ignorance, easily disproved. They ignorantly believe they can force the SECOND COMING by stealing back a piece of real estate, when they've spent centuries butchering the TEN COMMANDMENTS. They ignorantly believe they are "A CHOSEN PEOPLE" when Physics is running the show & it doesn't play favorites. A Consciousness aligned with 100 BILLION galaxies going to Infinity isn't going to violate the Physics running the show. The Consciousness that was Jesus, left the area around Jerusalem and spent 17 years studying under THE MASTERS in Tibet, where he left behind TEACHINGS on Reincarnation that have been stripped from the 100 versions of a very adulterated, highly politicized book, called the Bible. The current texts read nothing like the original documents, which in the case of the New Testament are 300 years old. Until humans are willing to translate the most original documents of any Sacred Text to a function of Energy governed by Physics, they're not going to have a clue what the TEACHER was trying to say. Jesus spent the last 300 years traveling among the Indians of North and South America leaving behind the same TEACHINGS as he did in the Mideast. If... there was going to be such a thing as "A CHOSEN PEOPLE" the title would go to the Indians, then to the people of Tibet, NOT the Jewish People.

Pro-Israeli, Jewish, Judge Goldstone chose 3 dozen war crimes out of 3600 atrocities committed by Israel in Jan 2009, which were released in the Goldstone Report, because he has a long history of investigating war crimes in Rwanda, Cosovo, Africa, etc.(Bill Moyers Journal 10-23-09) We have Separation of Church & State in the US because religions have a long history of destroying, causing most wars, and being incessant about pushing their violating ignorance. Which is all that Israel is--scheming, manipulating, lies, deceit, betrayal, theft and genocide--wasting BILLIONS in US taxpayer money. 17 million people were harmed by "white-supremacist, racists" in Nazi Germany. It was an atrocity for 17 million people, not just 6 million Jews. The Jews were already engaged in their "religious Supremacy ignorance" in 1850, decades before Germany ever happened and Germany knew what England and the Zionists were up to. Israel is backed by 50 million Evangelical Fundamentalists in the US pushing a completely different pack of violating, religious ignorance around the SECOND COMING, The End of Days, their highly violating interpretations of the Book of Revelations, and being taken into heaven in THE RAPTURE. That's why Israel gets away with murder, theft, scheming, manipulation, and incessant lies to push violating ignorance and obnoxious abuse. There could be peace in the Mideast. The US & England are responsible for creating the atrocity and abomination that is Israel. Cut off all aid, force them to the table for one discussion: how to move them out. Give them the ability to immigrate to US and England. (The Israeli Lobby by John Mearsheimer, "The Mideast: A Century of Conflict" by NPR, Morning Edition, Sept 2007 a 7 part series w 13 good references, The Palestinians by Jonathan Dimbleby, The Accidental Empire by Gorshum Goremberg, Pity The Nation: Israeli Atrocities in Lebanon, Against The Tide by Lincoln Chaffee, Bill Moyers Journal 11-30-07 w John Hagee head of Christians United For Israel (CUFI), NPR, Fresh Air, 11-24-09 &12-6-09; 11-29-11; 8-24 & 10-3-2011 on New Apostolic Reformation)

[Alberich873]

It is interesting how differently Americans see this issue from the rest of the World. Surely something is wrong when 9 countries vote against 130 plus others.

[karlimhof]

israel doesn't want peace, it wants l a n d....even if it doesn't belong to them. No problem for nethanyahoo and the other zionists, just call "their" friends in DC. They'll shut their eyes. But in the end it's U.S. who foot the bill for a problem state no bigger than New Jersey who sucks up over 5 billions tax-payer dollars every year for the last 30 years!