Is Israel’s Government Serious About Peace?

[Purveyor]

Israel’s latest decision to build hundreds of new apartments in remote settlements in the West Bank is a badly timed blow to the newly resumed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and raises big questions about the government’s true commitment to the peace talks.

Haaretz reported that the Civil Administration, Israel's highest civilian authority in the West Bank, approved construction plans for 878 housing units in isolated settlements. The Defense Ministry must approve the decision before construction can go ahead. The news came after the Israeli Cabinet voted Sunday to establish a new “national priority” list that included a record 90 settlements eligible for state benefits, among them several that had previously been seen as illegal even under Israeli law.

The decision was even more troubling when considered in the light of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s willingness to release over 100 Palestinians convicted of violence and terrorism as part of the agreement that paved the way for a resumption of peace talks.

While he agreed to release the prisoners, Israeli media outlets reported that Netanyahu refused to freeze settlement building or accept that the talks should be conducted on an agreed basis that Israel’s border with a future Palestinian state should be drawn on the basis of the 1967 line plus land swaps.

This raises the question of whether the Netanyahu government values its ability to keep building settlements in areas that the Prime Minister himself has said will have to be evacuated as part of a peace agreement more than it cares about the lives of those potentially put at risk by the release of violent offenders.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/08/is-israel-s-government-serious-about-peace.html

[PDJane]

1. The answer to that is a definitive no.