Dora McPhee (VIC) responds to “Israel rejects US demand to halt East Jerusalem project” The Australian 21 July 09 July 21, 2009
The Australian: “Israel rejects US demand to halt East Jerusalem project”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25807757-2703,00.html
In “Israel rejects US demand to halt east Jerusalem project”, we are told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu considers Jerusalem its undivided capital and that Israel’s sovereignty is unquestionable. This flies in the face of international law and UN resolutions that in fact say the contrary. The ICJ ruling on the Wall also clarified this for the world in 2004.
Missing from the report is the fact that the families who are being evicted to make way for this development are refugees from the 1948 war and were given their houses in 1956 by the UN’s refugee agency and the Jordanian government, which controlled the area until 1967. East Jerusalem is still considered occupied territory and all Israel’s laws, town planning and building changes in that area are illegal under international law. Just because Israel considers East Jerusalem to be under its sovereignty does not
make it so. For once its treatment of the occupied Palestinian territories is being called to account. This is not about preventing Jewish citizens from living in East Jerusalem but about illegal Jewish settlers occupying and colonising land outside Israel’s area of sovereignty. Israel was called to end its occupation in the binding and unanimously voted on UNSC resolution 242. It has used it power as the occupying force to subject the Palestinians to a system of apartheid while it continues to colonise their land.
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