Reuters News Article: "Truce-Bound Israel Stops Razing Palestinian Homes | Thu Feb 17, 2005 09:27 PM ET | By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel ordered a halt on Thursday to the demolition of Palestinian militants' family homes, a tactic decried internationally as collective punishment but which the Jewish state had long argued deterred attacks.

Israeli security sources said the decision followed a review that found the policy's efficacy against a revolt raging in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since September 2000 was off-set by the violent resentment it spread among Palestinians.

"The Israel Defense Force has in the past exercised its legal authority to demolish terrorists' houses," the army said in a statement. "The necessity of this tactic as part of the fight against terror is often re-evaluated."

The turnaround was part of a truce declared by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a Feb. 8 peace summit in Egypt, officials on both sides said.

"This is the result of the Sharm el-Sheikh understandings and the outcome of the Palestinian-Israelis talks," Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters.

Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said the army had bulldozed or dynamited 675 Palestinian dwellings since the outbreak of violence, leaving 4,239 people homeless.

At least seven Palestinians have also been killed during the operations -- crushed under rubble, witnesses said, after failing to hear or heed the army's evacuation orders.

"Demolishing their (militants') homes is a clear case of collective punishment, and violates the precept that a person should not be punished for the acts of others. Thus, the practice is illegal, regardless of its effectiveness," B'Tselem said....
- posted by Editor @ 10:02 AM

Haaretz - Israel News - Pines-Paz blasts racist citizenship legislation: "Pines-Paz blasts 'racist' citizenship legislation | February 02, 2005 | By Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondent

Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz is drafting a bill meant to make it easier to bestow Israeli citizenship on Palestinian residents of the territories, including through family reunification."

"The current law is draconian and racist," Pines-Paz told Haaretz Tuesday, saying his bill would be drafted in coordination with Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Attorney General Menachem Mazuz.

The minister's comments followed a Knesset vote on Monday to extend a temporary law governing citizenship and entry to Israel, which was originally meant to restrict the right of Palestinian residents of the territories to obtain Israeli citizenship through marriage to Israelis. The law also proposes imposing restrictions on granting permits to enter and spend time in Israel. The temporary law was slated to expire in May.

The government decided in 2003 to initiate the legislation after it became convinced that thousands of Arab residents of the territories had received Israeli citizenship in recent years and settled in the country.
- posted by Editor @ 3:58 PM

Haaretz - Israel News - Zionism on trial: "January 31, 2005 Shvat 21, 5765 By Akiva Eldar

The controversy surrounding the Jewish National Fund lands, like the dispute over the Law of Return, touches on the thin line that practical Zionism has tried to tread for more than 100 years: living in coexistence with democracy. At the beginning of its response to the petition on the matter of allocating its lands to Jews only, the JNF mentions that it was founded by the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 to serve as the World Zionist Organization's arm for purchasing land - land that would belong to the Jewish people.
...
Tens of thousands of acres on which settlements, industrial zones and roads have been built were purchased by a subsidiary of the JNF - Himnuta, Ltd. - which specialized in buying land from Palestinians through "straw men." The 2003 State Comptroller's Report notes that "the Settlement Division (under the WZO) works on behalf of the state to promote and develop rural settlement in Judea and Samaria, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights." The comptroller's reports, including the report of Talia Sasson - a former senior member of the State Prosecution's Office - that was published yesterday reveal a little of the exploits of these two institutions; others are hidden in the pages of plans and in budgetary data known only to a handful of people.
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Under the heading, "Zionism on trial," JNF chairman Yehiel Leket writes that when Chaim Herzog tore to shreds the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, "he surely never imagined that a generation later, an Israeli court would be called on to debate the question of whether one of Zionism's central organizations was guilty of racism."

Herzog surely never imagined that those same Zionist organizations would also be party to the sin of racist occupation that its arm created at the time at the first "outpost," Sebastia, which was supposed to be a Zionist response to that miserable UN resolution.
- posted by Editor @ 7:29 PM