Growth is more 'natural' for some in the West Bank

[Violet_Crumble]

TO MEN like Moshe Ya'alon, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defence Forces and now Vice-Prime Minister of Israel, even the name "West Bank" is a misnomer.

To him, the land on the west bank of the Jordan River wedged between Israel and Jordan is, and always will be, Judea and Samaria — an integral part of the ancient Land of Israel and not a future Palestinian state.

As for the issue of Jewish settlements, Ya'alon dismisses this with a wave of his hand. "The settlements are not now, never have been and never will be an obstacle to peace," he told a private forum in Jerusalem recently.

International demands led by US President Barack Obama that Israel freeze all Jewish settlement construction in the occupied West Bank are an affront to most people on the right of Israeli politics.

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Since Israel accepted then US president George Bush's 2003 "road map", which mandated a freeze on all settlement activity, the settler population in the West Bank has swelled from 211,400 to 289,600 — an increase of 37 per cent in six years, far outstripping natural population growth.

Even more damning is the way that Israeli planning law discriminates against Palestinians who want to expand their towns and villages in the West Bank, on land that is supposed to be part of their future state.

"On this issue, yes, I would say we have an apartheid system," says Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, a planning expert and co-author of a 170-page report titled The Prohibited Zone, which documents Israeli planning policy in the West Bank.

The report, published last month by the Israeli human rights group Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights, makes it clear that for the 150,000 Palestinians who live in the part of the West Bank known in the Oslo accords as Area C — 60 per cent of the total territory, which comes under Israel's direct control — the policies of the Israeli authorities almost prevent any new Palestinian construction.

"We have a system that deliberately allows Jewish settlers to expand West Bank settlements virtually at will, while for the 150 Palestinian villages and communities in Area C, applications to build are mostly rejected," Cohen-Lifshitz says. "On average, 13 building permits are granted each year for Palestinians."

http://www.theage.com.au/world/growth-is-more-natural-for-some-in-the-west-bank-20090717-dobp.html

[azurnoir]

1. the need to allow more land for Israeli "natural growth"

as opposed to Palestinian natural growth which it seems is not allowed for confuses me haven't I read that the Palestinian birth rate is higher than the Israeli? Logic would indicate that the Palestinians need room to grow as it were more so than the Israelis which have an entire country that they can also choose to live.