[Peace-discuss] Obama into the tank again?

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Israel’s Jerusalem evictions defy Obama, undermine peace process
	The international community objected strongly as Israel
	moved settlers in and longtime Palestinian residents out.
	By Dan Murphy | Staff writer 08.03.09

Israel said the evictions were legal and mandated by a ruling of its supreme 
court. But the country’s decision Sunday to forcibly remove two Palestinian 
families from their homes in East Jerusalem – and to immediately usher in Jewish 
replacements – has complicated the prospects for successful peace talks any time 
soon.

On Monday, three people protesting the eviction were arrested by the police. The 
two families had lived in the homes for almost 50 years. They moved in to the 
neighborhood after being evicted from their homes in West Jerusalem in 1947 by 
Israeli forces.

Two families might not seem like much after a 50-year conflict that has 
displaced hundreds of thousands and cost countless lives. But they came in 
symbolically fraught East Jerusalem, where President Barack Obama has 
practically begged Israel to stop settlement expansion to give peace talks a 
chance. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 - a move that the international 
community has not accepted — and Palestinians hope the eastern portion of the 
city will one day form the capital of their own independent state.

The images beamed around the region were a stark illustration of the 
Israeli-Palestinian divide as could be imagined: Israeli soldiers force 
distraught families from their homes and then stand guard as Orthodox Jewish 
settlers bring in moving vans and take possession (an Al Jazeera English video 
report on the event is here). The event will have likely deepened a growing Arab 
belief that Obama will not be more successful than his predecessors in advancing 
the peace process.

The Times of London quoted chief Palestinian negotiator Saab Eraket as saying 
Israel was not committed to a renewed peace process. “While Israeli authorities 
have promised the American administration that home demolitions, home evictions, 
and other provocations against Palestinian Jerusalemites would be stopped, what 
we’ve seen on the ground is completely the opposite,” he said. The paper also 
quoted an unusually stern statement from the British consulate in East Jerusalem.

     Israel’s claim that the imposition of extremist Jewish settlers into this 
ancient Arab neighbourhood is a matter for the courts or the municipality is 
entirely unacceptable… Their actions are incompatible with Israel’s desire for 
peace. We urge Israel not to allow extremists to set the agenda.”

As we reported in July, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively 
told the Obama administration to buzz off when it asked him to suspend 
settlement expansion in Jerusalem last month. That dispute was over the plans of 
American Bingo magnate Irving Moskowitz, a major bankroller of settler activity, 
to convert a hotel he owns in East Jerusalem into apartments for settlers. Then, 
when Obama’s Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell visited Jerusalem in late July 
to press again for a settlement freeze, 11 new settler outposts were set up in 
the West Bank.

Moskowitz’s hotel, like the houses seized on Sunday, lies in Sheikh Jarrah (a 
map of the area, with a rough idea of the Palestinian and Israeli breakdown, is 
here), a largely Palestinian neighborhood that is home to the famous American 
Colony hotel and has seen a number of evictions of Palestinians over the years 
in favor of religious Israeli settlers.

Palestinians charge that the idea is to place enough Israelis in East Jerusalem, 
whose annexation by Israel has not been recognized internationally, to make it 
impossible for any compromises over sovereignty in the area to be made in a 
theoretical future peace deal. In particular they allege an effort to isolate 
the Palestinian community in Jerusalem’s Old City from the heavily Palestinian 
northern neighborhoods of the city by taking control of Sheikh Jarrah, which 
would essentially cut the Palestinian community in East Jerusalem in half.

http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/08/03/israels-jerusalem-evictions-defy-obama-undermine-peace-process/