Catholics for Settlements

"Palestinian settlements", that is.

I caught this:

On the hills of the West Bank, building the good life for Palestinians

Published: May 30, 2013

RAWABI, West Bank (CNS) -- About 20 minutes from the Palestinian economic hub of Ramallah, the new city of Rawabi is sprouting on a rocky hillside. Visitors sense pride as young professionals work on the first Palestinian city built with a master plan and the first new Palestinian city to rise up among the scattered Israeli settlements in the West Bank. "When people come here they are astonished," said Ghadeer Khoury, 28, a young Catholic civil engineer from Ramallah who has been working as part of the Rawabi team since its inception in 2008. "It is something (different). They are not used to seeing something like this ... for us. We know there is a good life, but we don't know that it can be for us also, with everything organized and in the right place. But we can still have something good like this, despite the (Israeli) occupation." Many of her young Christian contemporaries are coming to buy apartments here, said Khoury, who is in the process of choosing an apartment for herself. Co-worker Jack Nasser, 28, a Catholic who lives in Ramallah and works as office manager on the project, has already bought an apartment here and convinced his brother and one sister to buy here as well. What was envisioned as a neighborhood has transformed into an entire planned city.

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Do you think they are trying to tell us something?

At least Jesus was Jewish.

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Ra-Ra-Rawabi

I could not believe my eyes.

At first, that is.

 

 

But there it was: settlement.

 

 

In a headline.  In a mainstream media outlet.

 

 

But not a Jewish settlement.

 

 

A Palestinian settlement.

 

 

And it got better.

 

 

Here:

 

 

A $1 billion bet on peace: Qatar funds huge Palestinian settlement in West Bank NBC News, RAWABI, West Bank — As gambles go, it hardly gets bigger: A $1 billion dollar bet on peace — or at least a measure of calm — in the West Bank. Even the founder of Rawabi, the biggest construction project in the history of the Palestinian people, says nobody in his right mind would invest here. Standing on a wind-swept hilltop overlooking the biblical hills of Judea, a half-hour drive from Ramallah, Bashar Al-Masri points to the Palestinian flags flying atop the giant cranes that are building, with phenomenal speed, the first modern Palestinian town.

 

 

Not only “Arab settlement” but “Judea” as well.

 

 

Now we have to push to have all Arab residency locations termed “settlements” and the semantic war becomes a lot easier.

 

 

Do we ask that Arab cities, towns and villages in Israel also be termed “settlements”?  A sort of language eqivalency requirement for proper style in reporting?

 

 

Ra-Ra-Rawabi, the "settlement".

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So, There Really Are "Arab Settlements"

I have been suggesting that just as there exist, at least as a political semantic term, "Jewish settlements" although I reject the term "settlements" and prefer "communities", in any case, there certainly then are "Arab communities".

Well, listen to Nabil al-Shaath and his concern for 1.5 million "Palestinians" in Israel in this clip below:

I guess, then, that there really are "Palestinian settlements".

Will they have to be dismantled and their residents expelled for peace, just like Abbas says* as regards Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria?

*

Abbas Tells US Lawmakers he wants State Empty of Settlements

RAMALLAH, August 11, 2011 (WAFA) - President Mahmoud Abbas Thursday told a delegation from the United States Senate and House of Representatives that he is seeking a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem as its capital, empty of settlements. The delegation, led by Senator Steny Hoyer, is on an official visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territory. Abbas...stressed that the Palestinians’ first, second and third choice is to establish the Palestinian state through negotiations, stressing that settlements contradict with the peace process...

Well, do they?

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