Israel Building 1,140 Houses In West Bank For Palestinians

While the mainstream Western media is blasting Israel for expanding West Bank settlements, no-one is mentioning anything about the fact that 1,140 of those homes are destined for Palestinians near Jericho.

The Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria has deposited a plan for a large project of 1,140 Palestinian homes on Israeli state land in Area C of the West Bank near the city of Jericho.

The project, on 1,800 dunams of land, would provide a legal housing solution for Palestinians in that area living in illegal homes and unauthorized villages that are not properly connected to utilities, according to the civil administration.

The whole story on CAMERA.

Mahmoud Abbas: Hamas Has Same Policies As the PA So Remove Them From Terrorist Lists

On 'Russia Today' Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas claims there is no difference between the policies of the PA and those of Hamas, so why should they be labeled as terrorists. This was in response to the possibility of the EU removing Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations.

"In my opinion, (the EU) can remove Hamas (from the list), why not?"

The interviewer then asks:

"But do you not fire missiles at Israel?"

And this is where it gets interesting. Mahmoud replies:

"Neither we nor Hamas fire missiles. [snip] ..we have no intention or desire to violate, or rather to engage in an armed Intifada with Israel. [snip] Hamas declared (the same), but then there were skirmishes once or twice. Hopefully that was the end of it."

Well, not quite Mahmoud. Several rockets from Gaza made their way into Israel to greet President Barack Obama as he was leaving Jerusalem for Ramallah in the West Bank.

Hamas doesn't fire missiles? Does he think we're stupid?

Gatestone Institute's Khaled Abu Toameh's has an interesting take on Hamas' bid to be removed from the U.S. and E.U.'s terrorist list:

Hamas wants to be dropped from the list not because it has changed. Rather, Hamas wants to be removed from the list because it feels that the world has changed, and that many naïve Westerners are now willing to tolerate its radical ideology and terrorism.

Anyone who supports Hamas's bid should also vote in favor of removing Al-Qaeda from the same list.

And if the PA has the same policies as those of Hamas, then perhaps the PA should be added to the list of terrorist organizations.

Israeli Settler/Palestinian Drug-Dealing Network Uncovered In West Bank

I guess the bitter, ongoing hostility between Israeli settlers and Palestinians magically disappears when it comes to drugs.

An Arab-Jewish drug-dealing network was uncovered operating in West Bank districts when police detained a group as part of a cross-border probe this week.

Settlers from the Tapuch Junction area in the West Bank were suspected of purchasing drugs from their Palestinian neighbors in the village of Hawara, south of Nablus city, Israeli online site Ynet news reported.

A narcotics investigation resulted in the arrest of Arabs from Hawara and four alleged Jewish drugs “clients.”

It is unclear how many Arabs were arrested on suspicion of drug-dealing.

It surprised everyone, it seems, considering they're usually at each other's throats.  Just last year

“Settlers went on the rampage through the villages damaging property, assaulting residents, burning cars and throwing stones at everything."

Too bad it takes drugs to get them to cooperate and coexist.

Radical Jewish Settlers Allegedly Set Fire to Mosque In West Bank

Although the majority of religious extremists happen to be Muslim, most every other religion has its own coterie of religious fanatics. Be they Jewish, Hindu, Christian or Muslim, extremist acts in any form should be condemned.

Most acts of vandalism are perpetrated by Muslims against the religious institutions of other faiths-Google 'Muslims burn down Christian churches' and you get 1,170,000 pages. On the other hand, Google the inverse and you get about half as many pages.  Christians in most Muslim-majority countries are often persecuted, discriminated against and in some cases subject to having their churches burned down. It's not often you hear about Mosques being burned down or vandalized in the West. For the most part, they live long lives in non-Muslim nations. But they haven't fared so well, however, in the Palestinian West Bank.  Over there, Israelis are dealing with their own kind of extremism in the  guise of radical Jewish settlers. They allegedly have been burning down mosques in what is coined 'price tag' retaliatory violence against the Israeli government's policy of razing illegal settlements. 

The recent spate of mosque burnings has Israeli officials exasperated, and with good reason. Many in the world (especially in that region) already despise Israel, and those kinds of actions are further fanning the flames of anger and hatred towards Israel, as President Shimon Peres put it.

“What these guys are doing is very serious,” he said. “Israel has always been proud of protecting all of the holy sites. Today, when the Muslim world is where it is, to give them justification to attack Israel is a disaster, it’s crazy and it must stopped.”

The latest mosque burning on Thursday in Burqa, a village near Ramallah, occurred in spite of a crackdown by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over escalating violence the past few days. And they're not just attacking mosques, Jewish militants also targeted an Israeli army base located in the West Bank. The 3 days of violence has been condemned by most, and Netanyahu has vowed to "eradicate this evil plague".

The steps announced Wednesday include detention without trial and prosecution in military courts, measures normally applied to Palestinians in the West Bank but not to Jewish settlers there.

Other measures include banning suspected militants from the West Bank and authorizing soldiers in the West Bank to arrest Israelis.

The Israeli government has been criticized for not doing enough to stem the violence, and the Palestinian Authority had the gall to ask the 'international community to hold the Israeli government responsible for the attacks". Right, then Israel should ask the same of the Palestinian government.  And every other country that has been subjected to acts of violence by extremists from a different land should hold their governments responsible.  Israel has as little control over their extremists as Palestine has over theirs.  One major difference, however, is that the Israeli government doesn't encourage the extremism, whereas the Palestinian government does.