Hezbollah recruits Palestinians to attack Israel

“Sixty-eight percent of the Palestinians killed during the current intifada [uprising] were killed by Israeli soldiers at checkpoints throughout the occupied West Bank”, the Al-Quds Center for Israeli and Palestinian Studies reported.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday he was “deeply concerned” about Israel’s appropriation of some 150 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank.

Security forces detained the Palestinian in a nearby village after two days of extensive searches.

The worldwide community considers the settlements, built on lands Israel captured in a 1967 war and claimed by the Palestinians, to be illegal or illegitimate.

The policy of the current Israeli government is to covertly establish so-called “facts on the ground” meant to frustrate the intention of the United Nations and the global community including the European Union and the U.K., for an independent state for over 5 million indigenous Palestinian Arabs.

The resolution seeks to define the parameters for a two-state solution and a timeline for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Israel says 101 of the Palestinian dead were attackers; the others were killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

The U.S. ambassador to Israel criticized Israel’s West Bank settlement policies at a high-profile security conference Monday, a rare public rebuke from Israel’s top ally that drew an angry response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Today, a pregnant Israeli woman, Michal Froman, was stabbed in the West Bank”.

A Palestinian attacker stabbed and wounded a pregnant Israeli woman in the West Bank before being shot, Israeli…

According to the report, which cites examples of foreign firms linked to settlements, including cement and real estate companies, “Israel’s privileged treatment of settlers extends to virtually every aspect of life in the West Bank”.

Netanyahu last Thursday called the statements “foolish” and “immoral”, and a day earlier Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) announced that Swedish officials are no longer welcome to visit Israel.

As for the Palestinians, there are around 20,000 who are now employed in the settlements.

Such moves erode the territory Palestinians see as part of their future state, further complicating peace efforts.

In 2012, a Palestinian Authority resolution calling to condemn Israeli settlements failed to gain approval in the Security Council after the United States opposed the motion.

COGAT, an Israeli defence body, said on Wednesday the land decision was made by senior Israeli leaders and is in the final stages of implementation. After viewing a clip of Shapiro’s comments during a debate on Channel 2, Bushinsky said: “To put it bluntly, it was a statement typical of a little Jew boy”, he said, using the derogatory Yiddish term “yehudoni” to describe the ambassador, who is in his mid-40s.