14 Mar 2013
21 Oct 2012
Liberman slams EU for calling Jerusalem construction plans 'illegal' activity
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday criticized the European Union, Britain, and France for their condemnation of a plan to construct hundreds of additional apartments in a Jerusalem neighborhood situated across the 1967 Green Line. The Interior Ministry on Thursday approved a plan to expand the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo by 797 units. The plan was published for validation in an Israeli newspaper in what was the last phase of the planning process, AFP reported.
“Gilo is an inseparable part of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is an inseparable part of Israel,” Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) said in a statement. ”These automatic condemnations indicate a lack of a basic understanding of the reality in the region. These condemnations contribute nothing to the advancement of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians. They only encourage the Palestinian side to stick to its refusal to negotiate and continue its anti-Israeli activities in the international arena,” Liberman stated. “The EU should focus on the problems that are surfacing between different nations on European soil. After these issues are successfully resolved, we will gladly hear any suggestions,” he said.
27 Dec 2011
Israeli gender segregation
A shy eight-year-old schoolgirl has unwittingly found herself on the front line of Israel's latest religious war.
Naama Margolese is a pale, blue-eyed, ponytailed, bespectacled second-grader who is afraid of walking to her religious Jewish girls' school for fear of ultra-Orthodox men who have spat on her and called her a "whore" for dressing "immodestly".
After media attention to the young girl's plight, thousands are expected to protest at 6pm local time on Tuesday against gender segregation and violence against women at a rally in Beit Shemesh, 30km to the west of Jerusalem.
Mickey Rosenfeld, a police spokesperson, told Al Jazeera that they would deploy a large number of security forces for the march, following attacks on media and police on Sunday and Monday by members of the ultra-Orthodox community.
14 Dec 2011
Palestinian "Freedom Riders"
Six Palestinian activists boarded Israeli busses in an attempt to challenge the system of segregation in the West Bank. They were arrested at Hizmeh checkpoint, interrogated by Israel's internal intelligence agency, the Shabak, and released. In the West Bank, segregation is both visible with the separation wall, fence, and separate cities for Israelis and Palestinians and invisible with separate legal and security systems for the two peoples. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. The Real News' Lia Tarachansky spoke with Fesal Al Hatib, a Palestinian living in Hizmeh, a village divided in half by a road and the Wall.
Egged now also drives in The Netherlands