Israel
Expands Illegal West Bank Settlement
Palestine Media
Center
23 April, 2003
Despite international
calls for a halt of illegal settlement-building in the occupied Palestinian
territory, the speaker of the Israeli parliament, Reuven Rivlin, laid
the first stone on Tuesday in a project to build more units in a West
Bank Israeli settlement that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had
earlier hinted might be dismantled, as part of a future
peace settlement.
Rivlin, a close
associate of Sharon, visited the illegal Israeli settlement of Shiloh,
10 kilometers north of the central West Bank city of Ramallah, to take
part in the inauguration of new housing unitswhich will grow big
enough to become a neighborhoodunder construction.
Sharon said
in an April 13 interview that as part of the peace process, Israel would
have to relinquish what he referred to as some areas closely associated
with Jewish history.
We are
talking about the cradle of Jewish civilization. Our whole history is
bound up with these places. Bethlehem, Shiloh and Beit El, he
said.
And I
know we will have to part with some of these place. There will be a
parting from places that are connected to the whole course of our history.
As a Jew, this agonizes me, he added.
His comments
caused anger among pro-settlement Israeli right wing politicians, who
saw in them a hint that he might be willing to give up the settlements
named.
But Rivlin,
who made only guarded comments on Sharons words, visited Beit
Eil, saying he traditionally spent the Jewish festival of Passover
in that illegal settlement.
The latest Isareli
attempt to create a new status quo in the occupied territoryby
building more settlements therecome in stark contrast with a survey
conducted by the Israeli arm of marketing information group Taylor Nelson
Sofres last April, which showed that more than a third of Israelis supported
the removal of all or most illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian
territory to achieve a true and comprehensive peace.
The findings
distinctively differ with the policies undertaken by Sharon, who has
long been a champion of the settlement movement in the West Bank, although
a new international peace plan still under wraps in Washington, and
which he says he accepts in principle, calls for a freeze
in settlement growth.
Adi Mintz of
the so-called Jewish settlers council said Sharons words had reinforced
the need for settlers to expand their illegal communities.
This project
has been planned for a long time. Shiloh is now full up. There is a
lot of demand (for housing). Sharons words have bolstered the
need to build, he told AFP.
Israeli radio
said the new project involved the construction of some 30 private homes.
Israeli settlements,
considered illegal by the international community, are the main focus
of the 30-month long Palestinian uprising, which has left more than
3,000 people dead, mostly Palestinians.
Around 200,000
illegal Israeli settlers live in settlements in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, which are built on Palestinian land occupied after the 1967 war,
according to Israeli statistics.
IOF Persist
in Detention Spree
Meanwhile, Israeli
occupation troops shot and seriously wounded a senior Islamic Jihad
activist, Anas Sheritah, in the West Bank city of Nablus early Wednesday,
Israel Radio reported.
The Palestinian
activist was later detained by occupation soldiers and was taken to
an unknown location, witnesses said.
Meanwhile, Israeli
Occupation Forces (IOF) detained Nur Titan, the leader of The Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the West Bank city of
Qalqilyah, along with seven other Palestinians, Israeli state radio
said.
Elsewhere in
the occupied territory, two Islamic Jihad activists were detained in
Jenin, the radio added.
The two men
were kidnapped from a hospital in the northern West Bank city, where
one of the men was receiving treatment for gunshot wounds, after he
was shot by IOF.
IOF also detained
fourteen Palestinians in the West Bank overnight, including four men
from a village near Bethlehem.
Moreover, IOF
opened fire at Palestinian students as they were trying to pass an Israeli
roadblock between Ramallah city and Birzeit University in the West Bank.
A number of
students and university staff were also detained by IOF, witnesses said.
In the Gaza
Strip, IOF shelled Palestinians houses in Tel al-Sultan neighborhood
in Rafah, Palestinian security sources said.
No casualties
were reported in the attack, Palestinian medical sources said.