Taking the Real Measure of Netanyahu, An Arab Woman Speaks Up

There's a new name being given to Benjamin Netanyahu's newest illegal settlement crime.  It's being called the "Doomsday Settlement," a term coined by the Israeli founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, Daniel Seidemann.

Nicola Nasser, an Arab journalist based in the West Bank, or at least what remains of it after years of Israeli predations, warns that this settlement is unlike all of the others.

The international outcry is not against the Israeli policy of settlements on Palestinian occupied land per se, but against this one particular settlement, known as East One (E-1), and Netanyahu's answer to the overwhelming recent recognition of Palestine as a non-member state by the UN General Assembly.

On the ground, the site of some 4.6 square miles (12 square kilometers) on the easternmost edge of eastern Jerusalem will close the only link between the north and south of the West Bank. Therefore it would sever the territory from East Jerusalem, the prospective capital of the State of Palestine, thus undermining any viable and contiguous Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and turning the recognition of the UN General Assembly on November 29, 2012, as merely a Palestinian achievement on paper. 

...The international community's inaction could not but vindicate the expected Palestinian reaction. President Mahmoud Abbas late on December 4 chaired a Palestinian leadership meeting in Ramallah, attended for the first time by the representatives of the rival Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements. They decided to ask the UN Security Council to adopt a binding resolution obliging Israel to stop all settlement activities in the occupied State of Palestine, concluding that Israel "is forcing us to go to the International Criminal Court".

Netanyahu's defiance and the Palestinian leadership's decision will both put the credibility of all the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to an historic test: They either decide to act on their own words or their inaction will inevitably leave the Palestinians with the only option of defending their very existence by all the means available to them.

For Palestinians, to be or not to be has become an existential issue that can no longer be entrusted to the international community.

And This Is Our "Ally"?

The U.N. acts to overwhelmingly upgrade the status of the Palestinian state.   Israel retaliates by stealing more Palestinian lands in the West Bank, enough to sever the West Bank itself.   This is what we call our "ally"?

 "Israel has authorised the construction of 3,000 more housing units in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, according to Israeli officials.

"It is also speeding up the processing of 1,000 planning permissions.

"The Palestinian Authority has said it will not return to peace talks without a freeze in settlement building.

"The decision comes a day after a vote at the UN General Assembly upgraded the Palestinians' status at the UN to that of non-member observer state.

"According to the Israeli Haaretz newspaper, some of the new units will be between Jerusalem and the settlement of Maale Adumim.
Plans to build settlements in the area, known as E1, are strongly opposed by Palestinians, who say the development will cut the West Bank in two, preventing the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state."

If this is Canada's ally, we've got a real scumbag for an ally.