[R-G] Mapping Israeli Settlements on the West Bank

[Sid Shniad]

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/mapping-israeli-settlements-on-the-west-bank/?ref=opinion 





  

The New York Times                                                                February 4, 2009 





  

The Opinionator 





  

Mapping Israeli Settlements on the West Bank 





  

By Eric Etheridge 





  

Last Friday, Haaretz broke the news that for the last four years, the Israeli government has been compiling a database on Jewish settlements on the West Bank . The paper reports that the information — known as the Spiegel report, after the name of the Israeli general who led the effort — was gathered to enable the government “to contend with legal actions brought by Palestinian residents, human rights organizations and leftist movements challenging the legality of construction in the settlements and the use of private lands to establish or expand them.” 





  

According to the paper’s analysis of the Spiegel report: 





[I]n the vast majority of the settlements — about 75 percent — construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued. The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents. 





  

Haaretz also published the report online, and a reader of the blog Mondoweiss has begun taking information from the database and mapping the settlements onto a Google map, reproduced below. Click on any blue marker on the map (or view a larger map ) to see the information about each settlement from the Spiegel report. 





  

View Larger Map 





  

Writing at MondoWeiss, Adam Horowitz says the primary takeaway from the report is this: 





  

[W]henever you read or see a story where the Israeli government is presented as a counter balance to the “radical settler movement” you now know this is false. The Israeli government has been supporting and expanding the settlement project in the occupied territories all along, and it is now documented. The settlements have long been viewed as an exception, out of the government’s control, an issue that will be dealt with later. They should now be viewed as the rule.