Dear friends, The settlers took over a house and the area beside it in Abu-Dis and set caravans and tents there. The way things are looking, there is a danger of setting a settlement there, as they brought equipment and all, the news are talking about 100-150 settlers. We are trying to arrange that activist get to the area. If you could help, please contact Arik from Rabbis for human Rights at: 050-607034 please spread the word to whoever could get there. All the best, Leena Dallasheh FOTO: Israeli settlers and a security guard stand next to a national flag hung outside their new house in Abu Dis on the eastern outskirts of Arab east Jerusalem. Four Jewish families moved into flats in the Palestinian West Bank village today, under police supervision and escorted by some 100 settlers as well as members of the Ateret Cohanim organization, which finances settlement activity in Jerusalem areas.(AFP/Eitan Abramovich)
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Settlers move into flats in West Bank town, launch new Gaza neighbourhood-AFP
Jewish settlers maintained an aggressive stance on the ground after their defeat of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon 's Gaza pullout plan, as families moved into an Arab suburb of Jerusalem and Gaza settlers inaugurated a new neighbourhood.
The families moved into their new homes in Abu Dis under police supervision and escorted by some 100 settlers as well as members of the Ateret Cohanim organisation, which finances settlement activity in Jerusalem areas.
Abu Dis is a Palestinian town of 12,000 which is considered a suburb of annexed east Jerusalem but lies outside of the municipality's borders. Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei has offices in Abu Dis.
Ateret Cohanim member Itzik Konki told AFP that the timing of the move by the group of 20 settlers was not linked to Sharon's unilateral withdrawal plan, which members of his Likud party overwhelmingly voted down on Sunday.
"There is absolutely no link between what happened today and the Likud vote," he said. "We have been working on this for 14 years and it could have happened next week or last week."
On March 31, some 40 Jews settled in the Arab east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan, also as part of Ateret Cohanim's and some other organisations' "judaisation" efforts in annexed east Jerusalem.
For several years, three ultra-nationalist organisations have been acquiring land and houses from Palestinians through various means to settle Jews in several Arab neighourhoods on the inner rim around the Old City.
"We buy house after house to restore Jewish sovereignty on Jerusalem's Old City and its surroundings," Konki explained.
He said that the area in Abu Dis where the settlers moved in on Monday and which they call Kidmat Tziyon had been bought by Jews in 1928, but that the neighbourhood was not built at the time due to the political situation.
Last year, Ateret Cohanim subitted a project to the Jerusalem municipality for the construction of some 250 housing units and two synagogues in Kidmat Tziyon.
"Today is just the beginning," said Konki.
The Israeli anti-settlement organisation Peace Now and the Palestinians repeatedly condemn this state-approved settlement activity in east Jerusalem, which they charge is aimed at preventing shared sovereignty over the Holy City as part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
Since it occupied and annexed east Jerusalem in 1967, Israel has created 11 Jewish neighbourhoods which house no fewer than 200,000 settlers as well as half a dozen small enclaves such as Silwan or Kidmat Tziyon.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040503/wl_mideast_afp/mideast_jerusalem_040503145547
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Suburbanite settlers relish security at expense of friends from Gaza
By Harvey Morris, Financial Times
Published: April 16 2004
"We felt pretty secure yesterday," said Paul Katz, a retired rabbi who moved to the West Bank's largest Jewish settlement almost two decades ago. "But I suppose we feel even more secure today."
He and other locals gathered at the coffee shop of the Ma'ale Adumim mall yesterday welcomed President George W. Bush's endorsement of what they already take for granted - that they are here to stay.
"He articulated what no other US president has before," said Shachar Loshinsky, who arrived from New York 21 years ago. "It's just a pity the media chose to ignore what Israel is giving up by unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza."
If there was any regret, it was for the 7,500 settlers of Gaza who are due to be evacuated under Ariel Sharon's separation plan - "some of the most wonderful people in this country", according to Rabbi Katz's wife, Hannah.
Ma'ale Adumim - Red Heights - is a settlement of more than 30,000 people that commands the hills between Jerusalem and the Jordan River.
In 1991, the government designated it as the first Jewish city in what it calls Judea and Samaria and the rest of the world knows as the West Bank.
The first 23 families arrived in 1975. The local Bedouin were moved out. Twenty years later, the population had reached 20,000, and 1999 saw the inauguration of the Canyon Mall, which would not look out of place in the Katzs' native Los Angeles.
Some elements are missing. Burger King closed its franchise in the face of a worldwide boycott threat. But many of the Israeli chains have outlets and there is a Blockbuster video rental machine in the parking lot.
"We're suburbanites," said Mrs Katz. "And this is a suburb with affordable private homes."
The sentiment was echoed by London-born Dalia Edell, who moved here 18 years ago, after seven years in Israel, to take advantage of cheaper housing in the West Bank. "It was not a political decision," she said.
"I never gave it two thoughts to it being anything other than part of Jerusalem," said Rabbi Katz. "No Arabs ever lived here."
In January 2003, the settlement was further integrated into the Jerusalem conurbation with the opening of a $70m road that tunnels eastwards under the city, putting Ma'ale Adumim within seven minutes drive.
Before that, the quickest drive was through nearby Abu Dis - once earmarked as the putative capital of a future Palestinian state - a route now barred by Israel's eight-metre defensive wall that cuts the Arab neighbourhood in two.
Ma'ale Adumim is one of the "existing major Israeli population centres" that Mr Bush referred to on Wednesday when he told the Israeli prime minister that Israel was not expected to hand over to the Palestinians all the territory it captured in 1967.
Mr Sharon had promised the locals as much on Monday night when he visited the settlement to celebrate the end of Passover.
So far, he has only given a verbal indication that he would evacuate four small settlements in the northern West Bank that house a handful of the 220,000 Jewish settlers in the territory. A similar number live in East Jerusalem, annexed after the 1967 war.
Mr Sharon appears to be under no pressure from Mr Bush to make further commitments on the West Bank at this stage. In a letter to Mr Sharon, the president referred to Israeli withdrawal from Gaza "and/or" parts of the West Bank.
Having endorsed the existence of the settlements, regarded as illegal under international law, it might prove difficult for the US administration to object to their expansion, which contravenes the "road map".
The outcome of the Washington summit has yet to pacify the settler movement, whose leaders oppose any withdrawal from the occupied territories. Demonstrators yesterday clashed with security forces sent to dismantle some outposts that the Israeli government calls unauthorised.
However, Mr Sharon - with the help of Mr Bush - may have taken most of the sting out of the rightwing resistance. Benny Kashriel, the mayor of Ma'ale Adumim and a leading member of Mr Sharon's Likud, said he was now considering dropping his opposition to the Gaza withdrawal and expected the prime minister to win a May 2 referendum on the issue among the ruling party's 200,000 members
http://www.middleeastinfo.org/article4285.html
