Happy New Year from Israel...

From today's New york Times:

Israel Plans 25% Expansion of Its Settlements on Golan
By CRAIG S. SMITH

Published: January 1, 2004

JERUSALEM, Dec. 31 ? Israel plans a major expansion of Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights, the government confirmed Wednesday. The announcement angered Syria, from which Israel seized the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The plan, approved two weeks ago, comes just two months after the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, called for renewed peace talks between his country and Israel.

Government officials said the expansion plan had been in the works for months and denied that its approval was intended as a response to Mr. Assad's vague proposal, made during an interview with The New York Times. Mr. Assad said in the interview that he wished to resume talks, broken off nearly three years ago, on returning the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for security guarantees to Israel.

But the Israeli agriculture minister, Yisrael Katz, who heads the government's settlement committee, told Israeli radio and television on Wednesday that the plan was meant to send Mr. Assad the message that "the Golan is an inseparable part of the State of Israel, and we have no intention to give up our hold."

Mr. Katz's spokesman, Benni Romm, said late Wednesday that "the message for the terrorist, Assad," is that there is a cost for "his harboring terrorists." In October Israel attacked what it described as a terrorist training camp in Syria.

The plans would pour about $90 million into existing settlements in the 720-square-mile territory and bring in 900 families over three years. The investment would focus on agriculture and tourism. The new settlers would increase the number of Israelis in the thinly populated highland by about a quarter.

The plan drew a quick and angry response from Damascus, where the official Syrian Arab News Agency quoted a government spokesman as saying the move would "block the way to any inclination or initiative to push matters in the direction of achieving a just and comprehensive peace in the region."

In France, a Foreign Ministry spokesman urged Israel not to implement its plan, saying it could compromise the search for peace.

Revelation of the plan comes when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government is already under pressure to curb Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, two other territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Government figures show that the number of settlers in those regions has continued to grow during the nearly three years that Mr. Sharon has been prime minister.

Mr. Sharon, a longtime advocate of the settlements, has accepted an American-backed peace plan that calls for the removal of unauthorized Jewish outposts in Palestinian territory, but he has been slow to act on that commitment. He has focused instead on failings by the Palestinian leadership to stop attacks on Israel.

Most recently, he has suggested that Israel may seal itself off from the Palestinian territories with a barrier it is building and disengage from the peace process until the Palestinian authorities can exert better control over their people.

Mr. Sharon has responded coolly to Mr. Assad's suggestions about talks, saying only that they would have to begin from scratch rather than picking up where negotiations left off three years ago, as Mr. Assad said he would like. Israeli officials say they suspect Mr. Assad's proposal may be a ploy to gain the favor of the United States, which has threatened Syria with sanctions if it continues supporting terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, which maintains rocket installations along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

The issue of the barrier arose again in Israel on Wednesday, when troops shot and wounded 10 Palestinians and an Israeli who were demonstrating against the concrete and chain-link fence. Last week troops wounded an Israeli protester in an incident that roused a national debate about the military's use of live ammunition against unarmed civilians, an almost daily occurrance against Palestinians.

Israeli military officials have said the army is considering changing its rules of engagement as a result of last week's incident. The army used tear gas and rubber bullets in Wednesday's action.

Also on Wednesday, the army said it had arrested an Israeli soldier in the shooting of an unarmed British peace activist on April 11 in the Gaza Strip. The Briton, Tom Hurndall, was shot in the head when he went to the aid of some Palestinian children. He was pronounced brain dead and is now in a London hospital.

Mr. Hurndall is one of several members of the International Solidarity Movement who have been killed or wounded while trying to protect Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In March, an army bulldozer crushed to death a 23-year-old American member of the group, Rachel Corrie.

The army took no disciplinary action in that case, though, like Mr. Hurndall, Ms. Corrie wore a fluorescent orange vest to identify herself as a member of the group.
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Is this Israel's way of helping to create a peaceful new year?