Word: levitin
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...Levitin maintains that land in Jabal Abu Ghaneim (Har Homa's local, Arab name) has been allocated according to the Arab/Jewish population ratio in Jerusalem. He scoffs at notions of an attempt to "Judaize" (Levitin's term) the city. This is to ignore the fact that the current population ratio in Jerusalem is itself the result of a campaign of ethnically selective development, of which Jabal Abu Ghaneim is merely one of the latest fronts...
This is just the attempt to "Judaize" Jerusalem that Levitin derides. Elsewhere he is eminently clear on the fact, explaining that Har Homa is the final stage of an attempt to surround the city "with a ring of primarily Jewish neighborhoods." This cutting off of Jerusalem from surrounding Palestinian areas is precisely the kind of attempt to pre-empt the status of the city that the Oslo accords were framed to avoid. The status of the city is to be decided. Israel has already made its decision...
...from the territories it annexed in 1967 in view of the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." Despite Israel's obfuscatory claims that this does not mean all the territories, the absolute nature of the resolution is clear. International law denounces the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem. Levitin's claim that it sanctions the building in Har Homa is simply bizarre...
Underpinning Levitin's piece is the extraordinary notion that the U.S. has turned on Israel. The mild concern Clinton expressed about Jabal Abu Ghaneim was belied by the U.S. veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution censuring Israel. U.S. support is as strong as ever. There is no mention of the billions of dollars in aid (more than five billion annually since the late 1980s) that fashion Israel into a regional superpower waning either...
Arafat's regime is, indeed, as Levitin points out, a "murderous dictatorship." It is one of the tragedies of the Palestinian people that their aspirations for free self-determination are now being crushed by their erstwhile, trusted leader. However, Levitin's touting of Israeli democracy is more problematical. Israel has historically been vastly more "murderous" than the Palestinians, in terms of numbers of civilians killed. These killings continue, as the families of the 200 Palestinian civilians killed since the Oslo agreement will attest. And democracy? Vast tracts of "public" land in Israel are owned by the Jewish National Fund, whose...