Unsettling Statistics for Israeli Economy

Peace Now, the grassroots organization, has long maintained that settlements and the occupation are both a moral and economic blight on Israel. Here are the statistics to prove it, from a business study by the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development) :

"The inclusion of the settlements and east Jerusalem adds about 4% to Israel's gross domestic product, but reduces the GDP per capita by a significant rate of 6.5% a year"

When east Jerusalem, West Bank settlements and Golan Heights are figured in with Israel's overall economic statistics, per capita income is reduced while inequality is increased. With the settlement population growing nearly one hundred percent between 1997 and 2009 (most recent population figures), this does not bode well for the future of the country and the street protestors griping about prices and opportunities. Sever Plocker analyses the stats in Ynet news. One wag says "gross domestic product" is a good caption for the photo above!

Settlement spook 'outed' in US Newspaper

Hagit Ofran documents Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank with a pocket-sized camera and a deep sense of mission, often making news well beyond Israel.Her grandfather, the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibovich, taught her that Israelis deserved the oxymoronic epithet 'Judeo-Nazis' if they continued encroaching and settling. Ben Lynfield follows the sleuth.

Hagit Ofran's official title is director of the Settlement Watch Team of the dovish Peace Now organization. In practice, she is a spy operating in hostile territory, snooping, sniffing, and piecing together bits of intelligence to gauge how much illicit building is going on.

On a recent scouting trip, Ofran spotted four new trailers spread like matchboxes on a hillside of the Alon settlement northeast of Jerusalem.

The prefabricated buildings are in effect helping to fragment the heartland of a future Palestine. ''It's not that one caravan will change the chances of Middle East peace,'' says Ofran. ''But another and another and another will determine whether we can have a two-state solution to the conflict or not.''
Fluent in Arabic – and well-versed in sleuthing

Israel's conservative government now faces a crucial decision over whether or not to extend a 10-month partial freeze on settlement building that expires in September. The Obama administration is pressing for the freeze to remain in place, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition partners want it scrapped to enable a wave of new building.

''If it is not extended then the freeze may have delayed a few hundred sites for months, but it will not have caused a real change,'' Ofran says.''If work is restarted it might mean that the chances of peace are doomed, at least with this government.''

A fluent Arabic speaker, Ofran sometimes is tipped off by Palestinians about new settler building. She pores over aerial photos commissioned by Peace Now, whose settlement watch unit is funded partly by the governments of Britain and Norway, and garners information from planning meetings and official documents.

In March, Ofran learned from the Jerusalem municipality's website that officials had given permits for settler building at the Shepherds Hotel site in East Jerusalem, which is predominantly Arab. She did not keep the information to herself – though she's tight-lipped about her exact role...Settlements, though
government-sponsored, lacks transparency. Much of its activity is illegal even according to Israeli law and settler leaders prefer to avoid public debate over it. Construction also violates the Geneva Convention and runs counter to international commitments Israel made to halt settlement building, for example in the 2003 international peace blueprint known as the road map. Tellingly, there is no distinct budget for building at settlements.

Professor Zeev Sternhell not silenced by doorstep bomb

Despite a recent attempt by a suspected neo-facist backlash hoping to silence professor Zeev Sternhell, Peace Now activist, by putting a pipe bomb on his front stoop, the man is still talking to the press. (One of his bookjackets is pictured above.) The London Independent published an in-depth interview in which the scholar expounds on his position to correspondent Don Macintyre "What I want to do is change the situation," he says and outlines some ways to go about it.
"I personally have reached the conclusion we cannot do it on our own, due to the weaknesses of the Israeli democracy, the weakness of the Palestinian Authority." It's worth clicking here to read more from the Israeli scholar. Some highlights:

On Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy on behalf of the US, the EU, the UN and Russia, the so-called Quartet:

"Tony Blair is transforming himself from a ten-year successful Prime Minister into a ridiculous figure, a clown. He is now in charge of negotiations, so what is he doing exactly. Where is he?"

On Ehud Olmert, outgoing Prime Minister of Israel and a recent convert to the idea of handing back "almost all" of the West Bank:

"He's just 30 years late. It's unbelievable. This is what [we on the left] have been saying for 30 years."

On Ehud Barak, Israeli Defence Minister:

"It's funny – well, not funny buttragic – to see a man like Ehud Barak, a real war hero, someone who was scared of nothing, who didn't know what it meant to be scared. [Yet] politically, a confrontation with the settlers is beyond his capacity. It's very sad."