New settlements are a standing insult to dispossessed Palestinians. process'. The official rationale behind this is that the parties will make so much progress on other issues, that they will not let a possible deal flounder at the last hurdle. However, Israel's actions over recent years demonstrate clearly that it always intended this process to be a smokescreen behind which it continued with its dispossession of Palestine. Following earlier disputes over the tunnel under part of the Old City of Jerusalem, and the proposed Jewish settlement on Ras al-Amud, on the Mount of Olives in the heart of East Jerusalem, there can no longer be any doubt that Israel's strategy is to create a Jewish majority not merely in the city of Jerusalem, but in the whole Greater Jerusalem area, which includes 20 per cent of the West Bank. Israel is also expanding the settlement of Ma'ale Edumim, between Jerusalem and Jericho; it is planned that soon 30,000 people - all Jews - will live there, and the borders of Jerusalem will be extended a further 10 miles to the final stage of the so-called 'peace . east to include the settlement within the city. Many roads are planned to link these new suburban settlements; these, LOo, are built on expropriated Palestinian land.
This territorial expansion is linked to a drive to deprive Palestinians of their Jerusalem residency ID cards and thus force them to leave their homes and city. According to figures collated by the BADIL Alternative Centre in Bethlehem, during 1996-7, 1300 families, comprising some 4000 Palestinians, •were thus deprived of their Jerusalem residency.
This represented an increase of 500 per cent over the average from 1968-95; an incréase which cannot be accidental, but reflects a determined strategy of ethnic cleansing.
Palestinians will this month be marking the fiftieth anniversary of the notorious Deir Yassin massacre of 9-10 April 1948, when Zionist terrorists from parties led by ex-PMs Begin and Shamir murdered 250 Palestinian women and children in a previously The Knesset (Israeli Parliament), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the National Museum, and Independence Park are likewise all built on stolen Palestinian villages and fields, some of whose remains can still be seen.
For the past fifty years, Israel has carried out a process of ethnic cleansing; until 1967 only in the western part of Jerusalem, and since then in the entire metropolitan area.
Palestinian resistance is still relatively low-key, but there can be no doubt that Israel's arrogant intransigence will, sooner or later, ignite a new and powerful uprisFor once, we can only welcome Robin Cook's 'ethical foreign policy, and his refusal to bow to Israeli demands that he condone their actions. It is also worth noting that Tony Blair, on his forthcoming visit to the Middle East, has promised to spend a night in Gaza as a sign of Britain's commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state. But, welcome as these gestures are, they are merely a sub-text to the real struggle developing on the ground between the Palestinian people and the Israeli occupier.