How to build an illegal settlement......

Whilst Israel speaks of seeking some sort of accord with the Palestinians - or least the Abbas Fatah group, as distinct to Hamas in Gaza - it continues, unabated, in building settlements in the West Bank.

The way a settlement comes into existence, and grows, is clearly explained in a piece written by dissident Israeli architect, Eyal Weizman, published on SocialistWorkeronline:

"The occupied West Bank, 1999. A group of Israeli settlers complain that their mobile phone reception cuts out on a bend in a road from Jerusalem to their settlements.

The mobile phone company Orange agrees to put up an antenna on a hill overlooking the bend.

The hill happens to be owned by Palestinian farmers, but since mobile phone reception is a “security issue”, the mast construction can go ahead without the farmers’ permission.

Other companies agree to supply electricity and water to the construction site on the hill.

In May 2001 an Israeli security guard moves on to the site and connects his cabin to the water and electricity mains. Then his wife and children move in with him.

In March 2002 five more families join him to create the settler outpost of Migron. The Israeli ministry for construction and housing builds a nursery, while donations from abroad build a synagogue.

By mid-2006 Migron is a fully fledged illegal settlement comprising 60 trailers on a hilltop around the antenna, overlooking the Palestinian lands below."

Read the full piece here - and see how easy it is to get a settlement up and running with active support of the Israeli Government. All up the Israelis can be seen as speaking with either a forked tongue, or falsely, about the removal of all those settlements built on Palestinian land.

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