All the Palestinian land.

[james armstrong]

Extract from Madeleinbe Albright’s,   “The Mighty and the Almighty”  2006. 
(Madeleine Albright was U.S. Secretary of State 1997 to 2001)
 
“Israel’s long standing policy of building settlements on territory occupied during the  war of 1967.
  The first settlements established in the  mid-1970’s, were justified by the government based on  specific security concerns, such as control of high ground. 
Then conservative governments headed by Menachim Begin  and Yitzhak Shamir came to office intent on the idea of a “greater Israel,” reestablishing the country’s claim to the  entire West Bank (all of biblical Judea and Samaria) and essentially ignoring the aspirations of millions of Palestinians.   Under their leadership, Israelis were given financial incentives to establish communities  in places historically lived in by Arabs. Begin referred to the conquered territories as “liberated Israeli land.”* Shamir called the establishment of settlements “Holy work.”
…………………….
Before falling prey to a stroke in  January 2006 ,  Ariel Sharon had embarked on a plan to make Israelis secure by taking unilateral steps to separate them from Palestinians. This plan, never fully spelled  out, was designed to ensure the survival of a  predominantly Jewish  state  by leaving as many Jews and as few Palestinians as possible on Israeli-held territory.  It specifically ruled out the possibility of dividing Jerusalem  or of full Israeli withdrawal to pre 1967 borders. The steps already taken towards implementation include the construction of the security fence, the  re-deployment from Gaza, and the “thickening”  of settlements in and around Jerusalem.
 …………………………………………..
Beginning in the seventh century Muslims controlled Jerusalem for most of 1,300 years; less than sixty years- a historical eyeblink -  have elapsed since Israel became a state.
…………………………………………..
 
*  Between 1997 when Begin took office, and 1992, when Shamir left office, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank , the Gaza strip, the Golan heights, and East Jerusalem rose from about 57,000 (of which 50,000 were in East Jerusalem) to more than 240,000.”


      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.gn.apc.org/mailman/private/diggers350/attachments/20090429/23a2eec6/attachment.html>