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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. T. who wrote (187878)	5/5/2004 4:02:10 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573930

"Israel is not refusing the Palestinian's statehood because of PA corruption. I suspect that's the least of Israel's concerns." It's a major impediment when there is no one that will negotiate in good faith. Part of the Oslo peace plan involved improving PA infrastructure... how does it further peace and good will if the money donated or provide for that aim is pocketed by corrupt leaders. Tens of millions of dollars (if not hundreds of millions) have been donated to improving the plight of people living in refugee camps in the middle east, yet only pennies reaches its intended target. One more time.......are the Israelis negotiating in good faith when the numbers of settlers in the occupied territories have increased by nearly 200k in the past ten years? Please do not evade the question.

To: E. T. who wrote (187878)	5/5/2004 10:13:31 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573930

Illegal outposts got Israeli funds Elissa Gootman NYT Thursday, May 6, 2004 JERUSALEM Israel's Housing Ministry acted inappropriately by funneling $6.5 million to construction projects in the West Bank in recent years, the state comptroller said Wednesday, with much of the money going to outposts that Israel never authorized and that it has since agreed to dismantle. . In a report, the comptroller, Eliezer Goldberg, found that from January 2000 to June 2003, Israel's Housing and Construction Ministry approved 77 contracts for projects in 33 West Bank areas without receiving the required approvals from the cabinet and Defense Ministry. . The report found that 18 of those contracts, worth about $4 million, were for outposts that the government never approved. The report, which referred to the West Bank by the Biblical names of Judea and Samaria, found that: "While one arm of authority, the Ministry of Housing, has been investing its resources in development and building projects in Judea and Samaria locations without legal construction permits, a second arm of authority, the Civil Administration, has been investing its resources in order to track illegal building and have it demolished." . Jewish settlers have established dozens of unauthorized outposts in the West Bank in recent years, most of them consisting of just a few mobile homes placed on barren hilltops. Many of them were a short distance from formal settlements approved by the government. Last June, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to the new Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, which called for Israel to take down all settlement outposts that cropped up after March 2001, when Sharon came to power. . It also called for Israel to freeze building at the formal settlements. The report does not suggest that Israel violated the terms of the road map, because the time period the report covers concludes last June, when the road map was formally introduced. Nonetheless, critics of the settlement movement seized upon Goldberg's findings, saying the report showed what they have long claimed: that even though settlers may establish the outposts on their own, the government subsequently helps them by providing services like electricity, water and telephone lines. . "The government says all the time that the outposts are the business of the settlers and the Israeli government tries to prevent it," said Yariv Oppenheimer, director-general of Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlements. "What this actually proves is that the Housing Ministry gave a lot of money to the illegal outposts." Shaul Goldstein, deputy chairman of the Yesha Council, the main group representing settlers, said the problems described in the report were technicalities and he believed the settlers had been unfairly singled out for scrutiny. "Those who disagree with settlers, they will find anything, any process, anything under the law to say we disobeyed the rules and we are criminals and must be evacuated," Goldstein said. iht.com