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KC Star "Gaza Pullout" Article Ignores Israeli West Bank Settlement Expansion
Call Readers' Representative at Kansas City Star
 

• Americans are being asked to foot the $2 billion bill for the pullout, which was done unilaterally instead of following the president's peace plan. Why should Americans pay this? For that matter, why should they pay the $3 billion annually given to Israel each year? Americans should stop funding the conflict in Palestine.
• Sharon has never been enthusiastic about the roadmap and only accepted it conditionally with 14 reservations that essentially gutted its substance.
• The Gaza pullout is to be welcomed but is part of an Israeli effort to cement its hold over the West Bank. Sharon has said four West Bank outposts will be closed but Israeli will not give up six major settlement blocks in the West Bank.

• New settlement construction on the West Bank continues in violation of the roadmap. According to Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! program yesterday (Monday, August 15) 6,400 units are being built on the West Bank.

• Israel's pullout from Gaza is prompted by economics and demographics more than Sharon's love of the roadmap. Protecting 8,500 settlers is expensive and unpopular. A growing Palestinian population makes is unfeasible in the long run.

• In Gaza and in the West Bank, Israel has been constructing an apartheid state. Conditions are particularly harsh in Gaza where for years residents have been prohibited from either leaving or entering and where 81 percent of the people are living in poverty.

• Settlements are against international law and provoke violence. In addition, settlers will be compensated up to $300 000 for the loss of their home. Yet when the Israeli army demolishes Palestinian homes or uproots olive groves and diverts water supplies, Palestinians receive nothing and become homeless.
• As unarmed soldiers undertake "Operation Brotherly Hand," they have received additional training in how to sensitively evict families. They are helping them to pack and move boxes.
  The daily demolition of Palestinian houses and destruction of Palestinian property is undertaken at gunpoint by a heavily armed military, and any resistance such as stone throwing is crushed with tear gas stun grenades and and live ammunition rounds.
• It must also be remembered that the disengagement of the illegal settlements in Gaza — along with four small colonies in the West Bank — will leave a further 120 settlements in the West Bank, which will remain under Israeli military control. These settlements are to expanded further to more than make up for the lack of settlements in Gaza. As about 8,000 settlers leave Gaza, a settlement of 30 000 settlers has already been created in East Jerusalem. This would appear to challenge the viability of any future Palestinian state.