Word: bankes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Israeli settlers are a tough bunch and not easily deterred by a bit of cold weather - or, for that matter, by a partial government freeze on construction in the occupied West Bank. Despite the blustery December chill in the air in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, about 10,000 demonstrators, mostly settlers, gathered near the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to demand their right to build at will. "Bibi, you can't freeze our spirit!" shouted the lead speaker, using Netanyahu's nickname. "We'll continue to build the land of Israel, with or without you!" (See pictures of heartbreak...
...Tension between the government and West Bank settlers has been rising since November, when Netanyahu's cabinet called for a 10-month pause in construction, in response to pressure from the U.S. and Europe to stop expanding its grip on territories captured in the war of 1967. Obama had hoped a settlement freeze would enable a resumption of peace talks, because the West Bank and East Jerusalem (together with Gaza) are seen by the Palestinians as the basis of a future state. But the settlers' concept of Israel's boundaries derives from the Bible, and they fear that the government...
...sure construction has halted, some merely by sending schoolgirls out to blockade the main gates. "We'll keep building day or night," an official at the Kedumim settlement told TIME last week. And even Netanyahu has said that when the freeze is over, construction can resume in the West Bank, where construction permits are granted at a higher rate than inside Israel, the Israeli activist group Peace Now reported on Wednesday...
...Having deflected international pressure on the Palestinian front, Netanyahu hopes to focus U.S. attention on dealing with what he believes is the real threat to Israeli security: Iran. He cites Iran's support of Hamas as reason to avoid relinquishing Israeli control over the West Bank, whose hilltops are well within rocket range of Israel's main cities. Israeli officials are hinting that if President Obama doesn't demonstrate rapid progress in his diplomatic efforts to shut down Tehran's nuclear program, he should step aside and let Israel's air force...
...state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. Frustrations are running high among Palestinians, who have watched two decades of negotiation with the Israelis bring them no closer to statehood. A latticework of Israeli security zones and settlements makes nonsense of the territorial integrity of the West Bank, while a ring of Israeli-controlled space is forming around East Jerusalem, without control of which no Palestinian or Arab leader will be able to accept any peace agreement. Not surprisingly, then, Palestinian moderates like Abbas are on the wane, militants are on the rise, and the whispers already talk...