Israel claims more lebensraum

[bobalot]

IDF agrees to expansion of West Bank settlement
Expansion of Gush Etzion settlement bloc with 40 single-family homes receives approval from Defense Minister Barak.

By Chaim Levinson

Israel's military establishment has approved the establishment of a new, permanent neighborhood and a farm near the West Bank settlement of Efrat. The projects will go beyond the community's current built-up area, constituting an effective expansion of the Etzion Bloc of settlements toward the north and north-east. After they are completed, Jewish settlement in northern Gush Etzion will reach the edges of Bethlehem's southernmost suburbs.

The plan for the neighborhood was approved by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. It calls for building 40 single-family homes on Givat Hadagan, replacing the trailer park on this site at the northern edge of Efrat. The Israel Lands Administration this week published a tender for the homes, a move that requires the defense minister's approval.


Mobile homes in Givat Dagan next to Efrat, which are on their way to becoming a legal part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.

Photo by: Michal Fattal

Approval for the farm was issued by the Israel Defense Forces. It will be built at Givat Eitam, located on the Palestinian side of the planned route of the separation barrier. Its establishment is designed to preserve the territory for the future expansion of Efrat.

Efrat is located on a series of hills on a mountain ridge east of Route 60, which connects the Palestinian cities of the West Bank. Each hill has its own name. Givat Hadagan, the northernmost one, is a few hundred meters from the Deheisheh refugee camp and from the Palestinian town of Al-Hadr, south of Bethlehem. Givat Hadagan was planned as a neighborhood of 500 homes. Construction was approved in the 1990s but never carried out for both diplomatic and bureaucratic reasons. In the late 1990s settlers turned the site into an unauthorized neighborhood of trailer homes that is today the campus of Yeshivat Siach Yitzhak.

Since the start of Benjamin Netanyahu's second term as prime minister, Efrat's leaders have been pressuring Likud representatives to advance the building plans for Givat Hadagan. About 40 percent of Efrat residents voted Likud in the last election. Almost all the Likud cabinet ministers have visited the community and expressed support for its expansion. This pressure bore fruit two months ago, after UNESCO admitted Palestine into the United Nations agency as a full member. Approval was issued for the construction of 2,000 homes in West Bank settlements, including 277 on a third hill in Efrat, Givat Hazayit. This project consists of apartment buildings in an existing neighborhood and is consistent with the Netanyahu government's policy of adding homes within built-up areas of settlements without expanding them, a policy the coalition maintains has broad public support in Israel.


Map of the new fence route, expanding Gush Etzion settlement bloc.

Of the 40 homes planned for Givat Hadagan, 10 are to be sold as finished houses comprising up to 160 square meters of floor space each. The buyers of the remaining 30 lots will arrange for the construction of their homes themselves. The project is expected to be completed within two or three years.

While the state land agency's action will expand Gush Etzion to the north, the army's could lead to an even more significant expansion of this settlement bloc in general and Efrat in particular - to the north-east and to the other side of the planned route of the West Bank separation fence.

The army gave its approval for the Efrat Local Council to build a farm on a 1,700-dunam (425 acre ) area called Givat Eitam by the settlers and Jabel Abu Zeid by the Palestinians. The farm is to be a placeholder until a plan to build 2,500 homes on the site can be carried out.

When the separation barrier was built in the Efrat area, then-Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz included the area on the western side of the barrier, but as the result of deliberations in the High Court of Justice the route was changed to exclude Givat Eitam. It can be expected that the establishment of the farm will be followed by the building of an access road and the deployment of IDF soldiers and other security arrangements, to guarantee the area's future role as part of Efrat.

This was not the first time this year that official approval was given to expand the borders of Gush Etzion. Nine months ago, after the terror attack in Itamar, the cabinet approved the construction of a total of 400 permanent homes in various settlements, including 48 in Kfar Eldad, near Tekoa and Nokdim. These settlements belong to the Gush Etzion Regional Council, but they are located deep within Palestinian areas, east of the separation barrier. At the time it was argued that these projects did not constitute an expansion of the respective settlements but rather the replacement of trailer homes with permanent structures.

According to Peace Now director Yariv Oppenheimer, "The current government dares to go further than any of its predecessors, and systematically legalizes [unauthorized] outposts. Givat Hadagan is a symbol of illegal activity whose purpose is to expand the boundaries of the settlements without state approval. The message of the decision is clear - all illegal building [in the settlements] will be authorized, and the bosses in the territories are the local and regional council heads and the 'hillside youth,'" Oppenheimer said.

Efrat Mayor Oded Ravivi said: "The decision to approve, at this stage, construction of 40 residential units at Givat Hadagan in Efrat, Gush Etzion - which is in the heart of the consensus - is a good decision but far from sufficient. We congratulated Netanyahu for it but also explained that to solve Efrat's serious housing shortage the cabinet must approve 3,000 new homes."

More settlers squatters for the Israeli colonial empire.

[The Romulan Republic]

Not sure what to say about this. Its pretty much par for the course. Will probably make the conflict worse. Same old, same old.

[Thanas]

Sadly, it is what one has come to expect from Israel. Racist to the bone.

[Lord Zentei]

Link, please?

EDIT: Wait, is this it? Looks like it.

I wouldn't call it "racist" technically, not that that's any excuse.

[Kanastrous]

Almost all the Likud cabinet ministers have visited the community and expressed support for its expansion. This pressure bore fruit two months ago, after UNESCO admitted Palestine into the United Nations agency as a full member.

It may be that as much as anything else this is the Israelis saying try end-runs around the existing 'peace process' and you will get more of what you -don't- want.

Of course, sticking with the process appears to also be an effective way for the Palestinians to get more of what they don't want, so...

[bobalot]

Link, please?

EDIT: Wait, is this it? Looks like it.

I wouldn't call it "racist" technically, not that that's any excuse.

I disagree. Israel is claiming another ethnic group's private and public property to build a "JEW ONLY" settlement. What else could it be described as?

BTW, I forgot the link. My apologies.

[Count Chocula]

I don't think I'd want to be in one of those piddling 40 single family homes sitting out in newly (re)claimed land. That could be hazardous to my health.

[Lord Zentei]

I disagree. Israel is claiming another ethnic group's private and public property to build a "JEW ONLY" settlement. What else could it be described as?

It's religious and nationalistic bigotry. Seeing as Israel accepts Jews of any skin colour, it's not the same thing as racism... but only technically.

[SirNitram]

Israel drops pants, shoves dick into hornet's nest.

[eyl]

Almost all the Likud cabinet ministers have visited the community and expressed support for its expansion. This pressure bore fruit two months ago, after UNESCO admitted Palestine into the United Nations agency as a full member.

It may be that as much as anything else this is the Israelis saying try end-runs around the existing 'peace process' and you will get more of what you -don't- want.

Of course, sticking with the process appears to also be an effective way for the Palestinians to get more of what they don't want, so...

Quite likely - there was another expansion approved after Abbas' UN speech - the one in Gilo, IIRC - which had that as a pretty explicit rationale.

[Thanas]

It is the 21st century and Israel is proudly marching backwards. I bet that in a few decades, when the ethnic cleansing is complete one way or the other, you will hear the same justifications used to justify colonialism again, of course this time cloaked in the tunic of "dem dirty terrorists".

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is backing a law to ban the call of the muezzin.

His argument: "There is no need to be more liberal than Europe". Well, hello there, I must have missed that Europe has been settled with Muslims as the dominant culture for over a thousand years.

[eyl]

It is the 21st century and Israel is proudly marching backwards. I bet that in a few decades, when the ethnic cleansing is complete one way or the other, you will hear the same justifications used to justify colonialism again, of course this time cloaked in the tunic of "dem dirty terrorists".

Meanwhile, Netanyahu is backing a law to ban the call of the muezzin.

His argument: "There is no need to be more liberal than Europe". Well, hello there, I must have missed that Europe has been settled with Muslims as the dominant culture for over a thousand years.

Surely you're not suggesting that the dominant culture should get to impose its rules?

I'm starting to wonder if Netanyahu isn't courting an eventual revolt in his own party with the recent wave of legislation (most of which ahs been characterized as anti-democratic, such as the change to libel laws or various other shenanigans, much of which has come or at least been co-sponsered by Israel Beitenu MKs) - there's an increasing number of Likud MKs who've been publicly objecting to them, as in the case you cited here.

[Thanas]

Surely you're not suggesting that the dominant culture should get to impose its rules?

No, just pointing out that restricting the religious worship of people who have been in the majority for over a thousand years is on a whole other level and not equivalent to what the EU is doing (which also limits noise made by churches btw).

[Kanastrous]

Israel is claiming another ethnic group's private and public property to build a "JEW ONLY" settlement. What else could it be described as?

I haven't been able to find out one way or the other whether Israeli law prevents Christian, Muslim, or Druze (well, or any other group) citizens of Israel from moving to these settlements. Obviously the majority of settlers will be at least nominally-Jewish Israelis, but that doesn't mean that non-Jewish Israelis are excluded.

Also, I don't believe that Jews are an 'ethnicity.' Not when there are black African Jews, Chinese Jews, fair-skinned blond-haired blue-eyed Jews, and Jews who could blend into any crowd of Arabs so well that you'd be unable to pick them out, unless they were done up like Chasidim, or something.

Israel drops pants, shoves dick into hornet's nest.

After one's been doing that long enough, it probably becomes the only way that one can get off.

[evilsoup]

Well don't the Jews self-identify as a race? Given that 'race' is a pretty nonsense distinction in the first place, wouldn't 'group self-identifies as a race' be the only meaningful way to distinguish that?

[Kanastrous]

'Race' is absolute nonsense, yes. Most Jews I know use 'the Jewish people,' not 'the Jewish race.' Since from its inception anyone may become a Jew if they want to, it's pretty impossible to define Judaism as 'racial.' Cultural, traditional, sure. But since 'race' is usually used for 'phenotype,' and since there is no particular phenotype to which Jews conform (big hook-nose caricatures notwithstanding) the term impresses me as pretty worthless as a descriptor.

[Lord Zentei]

While "race" is largely a matter of a group's self-identification, it is usually understood to be self-identification based on inherited phenotypic characteristics, as opposed to cultural ones.

EDIT: And I somehow managed to miss Ninja Kanastrous, there.

[evilsoup]

I'd say that making a distinction between 'Jewish race' and 'Jewish people' is splitting hairs. You may be technically correct (the best kind of correct): what is going on here might not fit into a strict definition of racism, but it's so close that it has the same principle problems that racism has. Sort of like how when I say 'all Irish are feckless' or 'all Americans are stupid' of 'all Australians are thieving bastards' or 'all Frenchmen have terrible personal hygeine (and eighty thousand types of cheese, each less like G-d's true cheddar than the last)' or 'all Germans are sensible' - it's not racism per se (because those nationalities contain a mixture of races/phenotypes/whatever), but it's just as contemptible.

[Lord Zentei]

Yes: and that's why I specified that it was not technically racism, but that this wasn't an excuse.

[Kanastrous]

I'd say that making a distinction between 'Jewish race' and 'Jewish people' is splitting hairs.

It's the fact that one may convert to Judaism, regardless of one's ethnicity or religious origins, that seems to me the most significant difference. And in traditional Judaism 'race' or ethnicity is not even mentioned in-text: it's about entering into a covenant and following its laws, not the conditions of your birth (with the exception of the two 'priestly' tribes, which I think do insist upon bloodlines strictly for Temple-ritual purposes, which survives in certain specific prayers in synagogue Judaism, and who is tapped to recite them). I don't think there's any definition of 'race' that would admit the idea that one can just decide to join up, if one wants to. Well, that and the fact that as you observe, within the larger group you can find any number of very different phenotypes, some of them as unconnected as can be from the original levantine people who presumably made up the Twelve Tribes.

I find it's less like anything answering to 'racism' and more a pernicious kind of jingoistic, nationalistic group identity.