By Ori Nir
Israel TV Channel 2 recently ran a lengthy report of pre-dawn arrests of Palestinian children -- rock-throwing
suspects -- at a West Bank Palestinian refugee camp. The TV crew was embedded with an Israeli unit that raided the
camp.
According to an Israeli radio report earlier today, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
recently ordered Minister of Housing Uri Ariel not to issue new tenders for construction in settlements.
On the heels of this report, Israel's Peace Now movement today confirmed that, since President Obama's visit to Israel in March, the government of Israel has not announced or approved any new West Bank settlement construction plans, and has not approved any new tenders for settlement construction.
If I were the freshly re-elected prime minister of the State of Israel or the re-elected president of the United
States, I would pay attention to a lovely piece of public art in downtown Ramallah. It features the ethos of a
reformed Palestinian society.
Benjamin Netanyahu Failed With His Most Pandered-To Crowd
How did Benjamin Netanyahu do in West Bank settlements?
Considering his party's pro-settlement policies and the staunch pro-settlement positions of its leading Knesset
members, you'd expect Netanyahu's Likud-Beiteinu list to perform better among West Bank settlers than it did in
Israel proper. It didn't.
Washington, DC - Americans for Peace Now (APN) today joined its Israeli sister organization, Peace
Now (Shalom Achshav) in calling on the government of Israel to repudiate the findings of the commission it
appointed to address the problem of illegal outposts in the West Bank. APN calls on other US Jewish groups that
support the two-state solution to raise their voices in opposition to this report.
The Israeli Supreme Court handed another ruling, on May 7th, blasting the Israeli government's position on illegal West Bank "outposts, built on land privately owned by Palestinians. Peace Now's lawyer, Michael Sfard.
As the Master of Ceremonies at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl announced the end of Yom HaZikaron, Israel's solemn Memorial Day, and ushered in Yom Ha'Atzma'ut, Independence Day, millions of Israelis, having just ended a day of remembrance and mourning for the fallen, are sweeping the streets to celebrate their country's 64th birthday.
The extremist settlers call it "Price Tag." We have always called it by its proper name: Terrorism.
Now, Israel's Shin Bet, the IDF's top brass and Israeli Cabinet members agree with us. On Monday, shortly after a mosque was torched in an Israeli-Arab village in the Galilee and "Price Tag" graffiti was found nearby, Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, a member of the extreme right wing Yisrael Beitenu Party, told an Israel Radio reporter that he prefers not to use the perpetrators self-serving jargon. "This is an act of terrorism," he said.
The problem is that largely because of law enforcement negligence, a terror campaign that has been raging in the West Bank for at least three years, has now mushroomed into a widespread phenomenon - both in the West Bank and in Israel proper - that targets not only West Bank Palestinians but also Israeli Arab citizens, Israeli peace activists and Israeli law enforcement officers.