Olmert Admits Construction Undercuts Peace
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in an unprecedented public acknowledgment, called continued Israeli construction in West Bank settlements a breach of Israel's obligations under a recently revived peace plan.
The remarks, published Friday in The Jerusalem Post daily, came just days before President Bush arrives in the region to build on the momentum created at a Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md.
Bush, in a separate interview, urged Israel to uphold its commitment to remove the settlement outposts in the West Bank.
"The Israeli government announced that it plans to get rid of the unauthorized outposts, and that's what we expect them to do. We expect the Israeli government to honor its commitments," Bush told the daily Yediot Ahronot in the interview, published Friday in Hebrew.
Israel has long maintained it has the right to continue building in existing settlements to account for "natural growth" of the existing population - something the peace plan explicitly bans. But Olmert acknowledged that Israel was not honoring its commitments - a significant development because Israel has never before admitted it was violating the internationally backed "road map" peace plan.
"There is a certain contradiction in this between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised," Olmert said.
"Obligations are not only to be demanded of others, but they must also be honored by ourselves. So there is a certain problem here," he was quoted as saying.
Olmert added, however, that Israel believes a Bush letter to the Israeli government in 2004 "renders flexible to a degree what is written in the road map."
In that letter, Bush wrote that "existing Israeli population centers" should be taken into consideration when the final borders of a Palestinian state are drawn. Israel interprets this to mean it can hold on to major West Bank settlement blocs, where the majority of its 270,000 settlers live, and where much of the contentious construction is going on.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed Olmert's remarks. When both sides admit they are not carrying out their pledges, that "should be the way for both of us to carry out our obligations," Erekat said.
The two sides have agreed that the foundation for any accord would be the road map, which was to have led to the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005, but languished shortly after it was presented in 2003 because neither side met initial obligations. Under the first of the plan's three phases, Israel was to have halted West Bank settlement construction and the Palestinians were to have clamped down on militants.
Settlement construction has been a key obstacle to past peace talks. After recent construction plans announced by lower-level bureaucrats stymied the renewed negotiations, Olmert ordered last week that all new construction receive his approval. He did not, however, halt construction that was in progress.
Meanwhile, an Olmert confidant said Israel might soon begin dismantling some of the more than 100 unauthorized outposts settlers have erected - another peace plan obligation.
"I hope and also believe that in the near future, during the U.S. president's visit to Israel and afterwards, real steps will be taken to remove those outposts," Vice Premier Haim Ramon told Israel Radio.
Settlers have set up the outposts - mostly small encampments - in an effort to break up territory Palestinians claim for a future state. The road map obliges Israel to take down about two dozen erected after Ariel Sharon became prime minister in 2001.
Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for their future state. Israel captured all three territories in the 1967 Mideast war. It immediately annexed east Jerusalem but left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.
Israel has stepped up efforts to make peace with the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, ever since the Islamic Hamas routed Abbas' Fatah forces and took over Gaza in June. At Annapolis, both sides set a December 2008 target - the end of Bush's tenure - for reaching a final deal.
Olmert told The Jerusalem Post that a peace agreement might not be reached this year as Bush hopes. But Bush has not applied any pressure on Israel to advance in the negotiations, Olmert said.
With both sides aiming to work out a final peace deal by the end of the year, Israel has demanded that Abbas crack down on militants, while carrying out its own operations against extremists in the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas has introduced a security plan for the West Bank, but has no influence in Gaza.
Two Hamas gunmen were shot and killed by Israeli troops along Gaza's border with Israel before dawn Friday. That brought to 11 the number of Palestinians killed since Thursday, when militants struck a major Israeli town with a more powerful rocket than they usually fire.
Four of the 11 Gazans killed were civilians.
A rocket fired Friday from Gaza damaged a house in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, but no injuries were immediately reported.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The remarks, published Friday in The Jerusalem Post daily, came just days before President Bush arrives in the region to build on the momentum created at a Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md.
Bush, in a separate interview, urged Israel to uphold its commitment to remove the settlement outposts in the West Bank.
"The Israeli government announced that it plans to get rid of the unauthorized outposts, and that's what we expect them to do. We expect the Israeli government to honor its commitments," Bush told the daily Yediot Ahronot in the interview, published Friday in Hebrew.
Israel has long maintained it has the right to continue building in existing settlements to account for "natural growth" of the existing population - something the peace plan explicitly bans. But Olmert acknowledged that Israel was not honoring its commitments - a significant development because Israel has never before admitted it was violating the internationally backed "road map" peace plan.
"There is a certain contradiction in this between what we're actually seeing and what we ourselves promised," Olmert said.
"Obligations are not only to be demanded of others, but they must also be honored by ourselves. So there is a certain problem here," he was quoted as saying.
The comments build on Olmert's recent efforts to defuse friction over construction in disputed territories. Construction plans announced after the Annapolis conference have antagonized the Palestinians and disrupted fledgling peace talks, renewed after seven years of simmering violence.
Olmert added, however, that Israel believes a Bush letter to the Israeli government in 2004 "renders flexible to a degree what is written in the road map."
In that letter, Bush wrote that "existing Israeli population centers" should be taken into consideration when the final borders of a Palestinian state are drawn. Israel interprets this to mean it can hold on to major West Bank settlement blocs, where the majority of its 270,000 settlers live, and where much of the contentious construction is going on.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat welcomed Olmert's remarks. When both sides admit they are not carrying out their pledges, that "should be the way for both of us to carry out our obligations," Erekat said.
The two sides have agreed that the foundation for any accord would be the road map, which was to have led to the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005, but languished shortly after it was presented in 2003 because neither side met initial obligations. Under the first of the plan's three phases, Israel was to have halted West Bank settlement construction and the Palestinians were to have clamped down on militants.
Settlement construction has been a key obstacle to past peace talks. After recent construction plans announced by lower-level bureaucrats stymied the renewed negotiations, Olmert ordered last week that all new construction receive his approval. He did not, however, halt construction that was in progress.
Meanwhile, an Olmert confidant said Israel might soon begin dismantling some of the more than 100 unauthorized outposts settlers have erected - another peace plan obligation.
"I hope and also believe that in the near future, during the U.S. president's visit to Israel and afterwards, real steps will be taken to remove those outposts," Vice Premier Haim Ramon told Israel Radio.
Settlers have set up the outposts - mostly small encampments - in an effort to break up territory Palestinians claim for a future state. The road map obliges Israel to take down about two dozen erected after Ariel Sharon became prime minister in 2001.
Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for their future state. Israel captured all three territories in the 1967 Mideast war. It immediately annexed east Jerusalem but left Gaza in 2005 after a 38-year occupation.
Israel has stepped up efforts to make peace with the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, ever since the Islamic Hamas routed Abbas' Fatah forces and took over Gaza in June. At Annapolis, both sides set a December 2008 target - the end of Bush's tenure - for reaching a final deal.
Olmert told The Jerusalem Post that a peace agreement might not be reached this year as Bush hopes. But Bush has not applied any pressure on Israel to advance in the negotiations, Olmert said.
With both sides aiming to work out a final peace deal by the end of the year, Israel has demanded that Abbas crack down on militants, while carrying out its own operations against extremists in the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas has introduced a security plan for the West Bank, but has no influence in Gaza.
Two Hamas gunmen were shot and killed by Israeli troops along Gaza's border with Israel before dawn Friday. That brought to 11 the number of Palestinians killed since Thursday, when militants struck a major Israeli town with a more powerful rocket than they usually fire.
Four of the 11 Gazans killed were civilians.
A rocket fired Friday from Gaza damaged a house in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, but no injuries were immediately reported.
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All you are doing with your blind 700 Club support of Isreal is repeating the same mistakes of the 1950''''s & fuelling the terrorism problem.
http://www.politicsandcurrenta
ffairs.co.uk/Forum/world-events/28154-je
wish-extremists-we-killed.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by FloydZepp at 07:14 AM : Jan 06, 2008
Wow Zeppo, you are dang good. I haven''t been on this thread for a day and I''m still on your PS I love you list. You sure know how to find those linkees like a pro. Got any of Israelis who have gotten blown up while shopping to even it all out ?
By the way, do you even work or have ever worked as your timeline shows there are only 8 hours between the time you get off and then back on .
Love ya babe
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137521.ece
Bush is going to Israel to discuss attack options against Iran and also to receive "rock solid" intel on what the insidious Iranians are up to... according to the liars he will meet with in Israel. It should be remembered that the Israelis also said that Iraq had WMDS.
It smells like Bush will try to strike at Iran before his term is up--unless he is stopped by patriots within our armed forces and security apparatus. The Establishment will then try to manage the uproar with the new president spreading on the mind balm about "beginning the healing" etc. and giving the new president "a chance".
Troops Home Now!! The enemy is in Washington!! The borders are still wide open!! No more wars for Oil, Israel and Opium!!
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/941798.html
The Housing Ministry is pushing forward with the construction of 1,000 units in East Jerusalem''s Har Homa neighborhood on land held by "absentee" Palestinians. it is in violation of an instruction from the attorney general and explicit promises to the US not to apply that law in the capital''s eastern quarters.
the Housing Ministry published a tender to build 300units of the Har Homa plan. The tender evoked international outrage and US and Palestinian pressure to block the construction. the land belongs to residents of Beit Sahur who were declared absentee, so their lands were taken by the state without compensation or legal hearings.
the absentee law has been controversial ever since the annexation of the city after the Six-Day War. attorney general Meir Shemgar that there was no "justification for the annexation of East Jerusalem to amount to taking a person''s property" and recommended not applying the law. in late 2004 the Ministerial Committee on Jerusalem Affairs decided to resume application of the absentee law.
the U.S. demanded it be changed. in February 2005 Attorney General Menachem Mazuz adopted the 1968 Shemgar opinion and ordered the "immediate cessation of the application of the absentee law on East Jerusalem assets."
Apparently that instruction has not been implemented.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=12159
From Israeli sources it reveals that the IDF "blended" itself into the Israeli civilian infrastructure to launch attacks against Lebanon... flagrantly defying international law and practice by putting their firing positions close to villages of their own Arab population to draw fire upon them. It also reveals how Human Rights Watch served the Israelis.
There is also a link on the antiwar.com main page to the TIMES ON-LINE that says Obama has a 10 point lead in New Hampshire and an article on SIBEL EDMONDS, the tough little Turkish-American Jew who blew the whistle on the prior knowledge of the US regarding the 9-11 attacks and a high level State Department official and ring that was selling US nuclear secrets to Middle Eastern countries that ties in Lawrence FRanklin...Is it any wonder there is so much pressure to keep the AIPAC spy trial under wraps?
Its time to end aid to Israel.
And so when they don''t, whatcha gonna do, Bush yediot?
Translation; "I knew genocide is wrong, and illegal, but no one applied any pressure on us to stop, so were going to keep on doing it."
Why didn''t the reporter who heard this quote ask the next and most obvious question?
Re: "Olmert Admits Construction Undercuts Peace"
Mr. Olmert is now an admitted undercutter, on top of being a war criminal, an determined enemy of peace, and a habbitual liar.
earth561,
Re: "So I am to believe what one person within this group that this actually was said, mind you in Hebrew."
Here is the URL for a very admirable human rights group inside of Israel:
http://adalah.org/eng/index.php
I''m sure that they would be happy to provide a Hebrew description of these events for you, if you so desire.
Just out pf curiosity I googled the exact words from above and guess what ?
The only results to this claim was to solidarity groups. Not CNN,BBC,MSNBC.FOX...not one news organization. The exact phrasing of this news story was layed out to the exact letter on all 49.
So I am to believe what one person within this group that this actually was said, mind you in Hebrew.
Its on the web so it must be true !
Okee Do Keee