Israeli obstacles to free movement in Palestinian territories mount
by Report, UN News • Friday, Oct. 13, 2006 at 4:38 PM

Not only has there not been any significant improvement in Palestinian movement in recent months but the number of Israeli checkpoints and other obstacles has actually increased, hindering access to essential services, according to the latest United Nations update published today.

Israeli obstacles to free movement in Palestinian territories mount, UN reports
Report, UN News, 13 October 2006

Not only has there not been any significant improvement in Palestinian movement in recent months but the number of Israeli checkpoints and other obstacles has actually increased, hindering access to essential services, according to the latest United Nations update published today.

"The closure system is a primary cause of the humanitarian crisis in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip," the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned. "It restricts Palestinian access not only to basic services such as health and education, but divides communities from their land and one another, places of work and sites of religious worship."

Obstacles include permanent and partially manned checkpoints, roadblocks consisting of rows of one-metre concrete blocks, metal gates, earth mounds, earth walls, trenches, road barriers and an elaborate system of permits.

"The purpose of these obstacles, as the Israeli Government states, is to protect Israeli citizens from Palestinian militant attacks that have killed around 1,000 Israelis since September 2000," OCHA noted.

The closures continue to carve up the West Bank, leading to the isolation of communities, in particular the cities of Nablus, Jerusalem as well as the Jordan Valley.

As of 20 September, the West Bank closure system comprised 528 checkpoints and physical obstacles – an increase of almost 2 per cent on the 518 obstacles reported in June, an 11 per cent rise since the start of 2006, and almost 40 per cent since August 2005 when the total was 376.
Report:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5847.shtml

bump to the top

UNICEF: Palestinian Child Toll Nearly Double 2005
In the Occupied Territories, the United Nations Children's Fund – UNICEF -- says the number of Palestinian children killed this year is nearly double the number for all of 2005. Thirtreen-year-old Suhaib Kadiah became the 92nd Palestinian child this year Thursday when she was shot during an Israeli attack on Gaza. Overall, Israel has killed more than eight hundred Palestinian children since the beginning of the second intifada six years ago.

and damnit, they move around so much. Much better to wait until they stop to eat a sandwich.
-Five year-old killed during fifth day of attacks in Nablus
December 22, 2003

A five year-old boy was killed by Israeli troops today during a fifth day of confrontations in the Belata refugee camp in Nablus.

Mohammed Al Araj had just left his house and was standing at his gate when he was shot in the heart by a single live bullet from random Israeli gunfire.

For the last five days, Israeli soldiers have conducted house-to-house searches for Palestinian militants. Typically these raids have involved soldiers firing with impunity and a number of innocent civilians have been killed or injured in the process.

This morning’s invasion involved 30 vehicles that were confronted by Palestinians throwing stones. A witness of Mohammed’s death however told Palestine Monitor that the boy was taking no part in these clashes and was merely eating a sandwich at his gate when he was killed.-

Wish the adults would keep the children out of their dirty work

Do you know how to do wedding photos too?
My unit needs to know.
This is insulting and obvious.

And there are so many of them even after israel abducts and kills as many as they can get away with.

Didn't israel effectively declare war on the H by capturing Palestinian and Lebanese children and refusing to allow Red Cross visitation, Geneva Convention rights and unconditional release to begin with?

I'm just here to stick out my foot.
You seem to do the rest.

"Obstacles include permanent and partially manned checkpoints, roadblocks consisting of rows of one-metre concrete blocks, metal gates, earth mounds, earth walls, trenches, road barriers and an elaborate system of permits."

And these security precautions have decreased Israeli casualties by 85%. When there is a true and lasting peace perhaps these precautions will no longer be needed.

'They believe Israeli casualties should *increase*'
What a load of crap. I think the consensus of rational people who are anti-zionist merely want you to stop stealing and killing in the name of 'greater israel'. And stop treating the Palestinians in their own land, like vermin.
Otherwise all the walls and military wont protect you from yourselves. You're going to choke on your own 'superiority'. And no one will give a damn because of the universal disgust you have reaped.

ahh go gargle someone else's balls.
I'm going to dig up a row for red cabbage this winter. Planting time.
You can 'terrorize' the other readers for awhile .
Still haven't provided any EVIDENCE whatever about me 'badmouthing Jews' but I already knew you couldn't.

That and the shortcomings of your much hated Israeli hasbara, apart from the damage wrought yearly by the extreme Israeli left wing, especially Ha'aretz.

That's it, Tee Wdumbya. The remainder of your post is just the usual TWitty racist jibber-jabber.

I'm sure we haven't heard the last of your attempts to prove Jewishness (crypto or non-crypto) in Becky Johnson and Seferad.

So Becky stating that she isn't Jewish indicates that she is ....Jewish?
Huh?

So, whats the real reason you hate Jews, TW? Was your father Jewish?
Your kind of pathological hatred must stem from somewhere or something .Have you ever examined this issue?

Oh, so you mean Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, Unocal, the Rockefeller family, etc. -- the same scum who have the Bush administration riding in their hip pockets -- are pressuring the UNGA to vote AGAINST Israel?

That just doesn't make any sense, zio-douche!

Hey asshole: Arab-run governments don't control the world oil supply. Giant Western corporations do. Every time a Middle Eastern leader (e.g. Mossadheg, Qassem, Qaddafi, Saddam...) tries to change this, he gets a pair of cross-hairs itching his forehead. Where the fuck you been for the past 60 years? Oh yeah: zio-looney-tune-landia on Planet JS

I'm sure you draw on the some perveted illogic to yank out of your brain's dopey-most recesses a conspiracy theory to account for the OPEC instigated oil crisis that was imposed on the West in the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippor war.

"So Becky stating that she isn't Jewish indicates that she is ....Jewish? "

Surely it's not a surprise to you to learn how terrible TW is at even the simplest logic.

@%<

A 16 year old boy was caught three days ago with a suicide bombers vest and one more needless child death, not to mention an act of jihadist Palestinian terror, was averted at an Israeli checkpoint. It follows that Israel engaged in more anti-terror.

The rabid anti-Zionists have proven themselves yet again to be callous and willing to sacrifice Palestinian children and youth on the altar of massacring the Zionists. They don't care about the Palestinians at all.


Them peace loving males do nothin', only stage unarmed non-violent peaceful protests in front of soldiers and policemen and hunger strike for days on end...The abducted parliament members all followed Momma Theresa's example and are paragons of pacifism...

BIG SPOON WRITES: "I think the consensus of rational people who are anti-zionist merely want you to stop stealing and killing in the name of 'greater israel'. And stop treating the Palestinians in their own land, like vermin."

BECKY: Israel is not mistreating the Palestinians. Walls, fences, checkpoints, and permits are all to fight terrorism which is rampant among Palestinian society. It would be suicide for the Jewish people to take down these defenses at this time.

Nor is Israel "stealing Palestinian land." At no point in the past 2,000 plus years has the land EVER belonged to a group of people called "Palestinians".

Even Arabic websites list ownership as going from the Caananites to the Hebrews to the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Persians to the Mesopotamians to the Greeks to the Egyptians to the Selucids of Syria and then back to the Hebrews, then to the Romans, to the Christian Byzantines, to the Saudi Arabians (638 to 750AD) who administered from Damascus, to the Abasid of Iraq to the Fatimads of Egypt to the Saljuks, to the Christian Crusaders, to the Kurds, to the Mamluks, to the Turks (Ottoman empire) for 400 years, then to the British, then to the United Nations, and then to the Jews (Hebrews).

As for the West Bank and Gaza, both of which belonged to ancient Israel, Jordan took over the West Bank and Egypt seized Gaza in 1948. It didn't come under Israeli control until 1967.

At NO POINT was any of this land "Palestinian" land.
the closest you can get is that in 1947, the partition called for those areas to be designated to form the new nation of "Palestine". It did not happen. the Arabs chose war instead of peace and partition, therefore those lands freely given to the Arabs instead became "disputed" territories where the Israelis want them for security reasons and for religious and historical reasons. The Palestinians want those lands because of a mandate from some Islamic sect that said that any lands that have EVER been a part of Islam still belong to Islam. Remember back in 638 to 750AD???

The OTHER reason the Palestinians want the land is that Muslims believe that AFTER Mohammed died, he rode a magical flying horse to Jerusalem's Temple Mount, and there ascended into heaven.

The Koran calls this place "Al Aqsa" or "The furthest Place."
Mohammed never went to Jerusalem in real life, nor is Jerusalem mentioned even once in the Koran.

The Al Aqsa Mosque was built and named some 12 years after Mohammed's death. The obvious attempt to co-opt the most holy site in Judaism is transparent and not highly respected outside of Islam.

Probably the real reason the Palestinians want Israel is because once the Jews drained the swamps, grew trees and crops, built towns, cities, and industries, the land became highly desirable. In fact, there are those who claim that the Jews "took the best lands" when the opposite was true. The early Zionists were sold tracks of land that were considered worthless--sand dunes, swamps with malaria, and land that had not seen a plow for decades.

Sometimes the grass really IS greener on the other side of the fence!

As for treating the Palestinians like "vermin" I'd like to see some particulars on that. Palestinians can utilize Israeli courts, and live under the same laws as Israelis do.
While not citizens, they are not deported, taxed differently, or required to abide by an different laws than Israelis do.

So what "rights" do the Israelis have that the Palestinian's don't?

Israel has built 166 health clinics for the Palestinians, 20 community colleges, and 6 Universities. They even built them a sports stadium.

since the PA was formed, civil authority was transferred to Palestinian governance. 97% of all Palestinians live under the PA and are governed by officials they elected.

the Palestinians have a pretty miserable existence right now. There is no doubt that unemployment, food and other shortages, and high stress contribute to an unenviable lifestyle. But Israel is hardly to blame for this. The PA leaders corruption and negligence are far more causative.
Likewise is the choice of the majority of palestinians to continue to wage war on Israel, rather than being productive peaceful neighbors.

They're just hoping that if they go along with the jihadi meme they wont be victims like everybody else if and when the 'kilafah' is established.....

You 'Sheepdog' change your choice lines as the mood strikes, hoping we fail to notice your cunning dance movements.

1. Thinking what the anti-Zionist consensus is doesn't cut it. We need empirical evidence.

2. Very few rational people are anti-Zionist at all, and that's only because they were misinformed or underinformed to begin with. The ultra-religious anti-Zionist Jews you drool over don't count as rational people just because you wish them to be since they share your rabid ideology and fall all over themselves worshipping Israel's enemies, even the Holocaust deniers. Most rational anti-Zionists that become privy to the entire picture with all the nuances distance themselves from anti-Zionism.

3. Of course you spend your entire life hanging the Jewish Baruch Goldsteins on Israel's neck, but "we" only kill in self-defense. Hell, we don't do good enough a job of that since we're overall so moral and loath of inflicting death on foreign populations. I've heard of soldiers who went hungry in Lebanon since their unit couldn't supply them with battle rations, and after stealing food from grocery stores or residents they were courtmarshaled and penalized... This travesty of justice doesn't happen in any other army.
You obviously want to cackle as we "converge" into Israel proper, let down all defenses and Palestinians then would flood into Israel and proceed to butcher us. Won't happen.

4. I went over why Judea and Samaria are disputed rather than occupied. I saw what you really think when I came to this IMC back at spring. You're changing your tune and pretending your beef is only with Israeli control of the disputed territories and not Israel proper that you maintain we stole from the Arabs beginning in 1881. You're a pathetic liar doing the worse slick dance moves I've seen yet in these parts. There's no "Greater Israel". There's only Israel proper and the Land of Israel from which the eastern bank was torn unjustly by the British bastards back in 1923. The disputed territories aren't and never were "Palestinian land". They deserve certain rights, but not at the expense of Jewish residents present there, nor do they have a right to prevent Jewish settlement on land tracts to which they have no title.

5. We've got our problems with Israeli Arabs too. It's not just a matter of a few rotten apples.

6. Since the Mideast isn't like the Nordic expanse in Scandinavia, the choice here is between Arab superiority and our superiority, so we'll choose ours and dismiss your contempt on this account.

7. You don't speak for all Americans, and evidently not for most. We neither want nor need your care.

Yup, the 1973 OPEC oil embargo was the Persian Gulf countries retaliating against the US for its assistance to Israel during the Yom Kippur war, that's right.

OPEC was first organized in 1960, but had little effect on Western control of petroleum until the embargo

http://www.buyandhold.com/bh/en/education/history/2002/arab.html
"...OPEC really had little impact from its founding in 1960 until 1973. Then all hell broke loose."

This brief show of force (by Iraq and the Saudis, mainly) convinced the Western Empires that recovering their former control of the oil was a priority 1 "national security" red alert, and so that's what they did. They made Saudi Arabia the prime target of a covert monetary conquest that ended that kingdom's autonomy. John Perkins describes this in his book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." He should know: he was one of the key private-sector spooks who made the plan come together in the 1970s

http://www.johnperkins.org/Book%20Overview.htm

According to Perkins, Saddam could not be brought to heel in the same way, which is the REAL reason the US Empire escalated to the NEXT means of controlling him, and then the next...

If the Saudis hadn't let Unkie Sam have his way, we would have done it to them too.

Jimmy Carter told them so in 1980 by asserting the Carter Doctrine, which informed the Saudis in no uncertain terms that the Persian Gulf oil region was to be "a US sphere of influence," and if any of them tried fucking with *OUR* oil ever again they were gonna be picking their asses up out of bomb craters. God only knows what was done to underscore the threat. They haven't given us a bit of trouble since.

So you can stop citing OPEC's ancient history as if it still holds true today. With the sole exception of Iran, every Persian Gulf oil state does exactly what Big Daddy Murkah tells it to do -- or else

BECKY: The lead article mentions only what Israel is doing in this conflict as though the Palestinians are just peacefully going about their business not bothering anyone.

This is not the case. See this article which appeared
in Ha'aretz today.

FROM HA'ARETZ:

HAMAS READYING FOR WAR

Amos Harel (Ha'aretz)

Recently, Hamas took possession of a shipment of dozens of Russian Concourse antitank missiles. These relatively precise missiles have a range of 4.5 kilometers, similar to those used by Hizballah during the war. IDF officers believe that Hamas will try to smuggle in hundreds more.

In the IDF's assaults in Gaza since the kidnapping of Cpl. Gilad Shalit over three months ago, more than 300 Palestinians have been killed, many of them militants. One IDF soldier has died.

The next stage of IDF operations is expected to include an expanded offensive focused on impeding weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza via Rafah.

BECKY: And they continue firing qassam rockets at Israel's civilian areas:


Palestinians Rocket Sderot, Wound Three

- Tova Dadon

Palestinians in Gaza fired two Kassam rockets toward the western Negev city of Sderot Friday night, the eve of the Simchat Torah holiday. One person sustained moderate injuries and two others suffered light wounds when a Kassam rocket landed in the backyard of a Sderot home. (Ynet News)

BECKY: And they STILL have not returned the kidnapped soldier. So between firing rockets daily, keeping a prisoner without the protections of the Geneva convention, and in violation of international law (you can't hold captured soldiers for ransom), the Palestinians are doing plenty to keep the conflict roiling with the inevitable loss of life and suffering for the civilian population.

I understand that its knee-jerk to blame Israel, but the situation is far more complicated than that.

Tee Wdumbya, you and this kooky evil crackpot -- two peas in a pod. I've read the amazon.com reviews of his book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". He's so ovewrflowing with horseshit.... he's no reliable source. He was a smalltime operative at best, albeit with boundless delusions of grandeur that impelled him to paint himself as pivotal kingpin to US foreign policy where he was stationed.

You stand refuted.

So, some other desperate nattering open-content PR fascists (other than YOU, that is) don't like Perkins' book, eh? BFD, punk! Try reading the actual BOOK

Perkins is not a gifted writer, and he doesn't name names. Having actually read the book, his reasons for the second omission are clear enough: he'd already been bribed to put this book on permanent ice, which he had done for many years, accepting instead a cushy "consulting" gig in which he was paid massively for being on permanent vacation. Coming from the background he did, the meaning of this needed no explaining: "you'll take this juicy bribe, Perkins, or sometime soon you'll wake up (briefly) with the 'Jackals' in your bedroom"

In the end, he could not accept this deal, so he compromised: he wrote the book but left out enough detail that he wouldn't be in a body-bag headed for the bottom of the Marianas trench the day before the manuscript was completed

You need to wake up and set foot somewhere outside Izzie-whacko-stan, dirtbag. Even Hollywood has a clue these days

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/6165451/syriana

Not going to read the book. Too many reviewers have done that from every imaginable angle, including the Peace Corpse's, and exposed his follies for me to perform such an exercize in futility. I'll put my time to better uses. Your thesis about his omissions is complete garbage -- your run of the mill conpiracy theorism..

This Perkins has been exposed as a lying scumbag through and through. Virtually all his claims have been refuted.

"Virtually all his claims have been refuted"

WHERE? LET'S SEE

Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, regarding 'resistance': "It is the Palestinian people's right to engage in resistance until the occupation ends. As long as the resistance is legitimate, everything related to it is also legitimate."

Then, pursuant thereto, in relation to suicide bombing: "It is legitimate, of course, as long as it plays a role in the resistance."

Speaking as a private individual, I would like to see this dog whupped.

An authoritative religious figure who supports terrorism and the killing of innocents has no place in the civilized world, and is a danger to everyone everywhere.
The attitude that suicide bombing (or any bombing that targets innocents) is justified is so utterly appalling and dangerous that those who enable and empower the perpetrators of such acts forfeit all right to protection.
By saying such things, this sheikh encourages such acts. By virtue of his position, his utterances are de facto instruction to murderers to persevere in their perverse enterprise, and he functions as an ideological leader for terrorists. Such people deserve whatever ill happens to them.


Given that Grand Mufti Hajji Amin El-Husseini yemach shemo (kinsman of Yassir Arafat yemach shemo) was an open supporter and ally of Adolf Hitler (yemach shemo) and a leader of terrorist gangs himself, and given that recently retired Grand Mufti Sheikh Ikrima Sabri actively strove to destroy any chance of peace, and also encouraged terrorism, it is clear that the position of grand mufti itself is due for reassessment.
There is no place in a rational world for such a melding of religious law, secular function, and political leadership. Nor should such a disturbing inheritance from the Ottoman period, kept in place by the British as a means of pacifying and controlling the Islamic element, be preserved.


There is no longer any purpose that is validly served by maintaining this position, there is no justification for appointing an Ottoman functionary since the fall of the Caliphate. A loose cannon with a murderous agenda needs to be terminated, the position expunged entirely.

And the American native people were also justified in their violent resistance.
Resisting genocide is a human right.

Sheikh Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and his **Muslim Brotherhood**, THE CIA'S PREMIER POST-WWII "STAY-BEHIND" CELL OF UNDERGROUND TERRORISTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST (see also "operation GLADIO," the 1980 Bologna train station bombing, etc.)

http://www.navyseals.com/community/articles/article.cfm?id=4328

Which goes right back to Perkins' indictment of the TRUE Great Evil in the world: Western Empire

Yup, whenever these slimes try pointing damnation toward the Arabs, the finger very often bounces off a mirror and comes right back at them