Qatar in Our Backyard

Who is a major funder of Hamas?

Qatar:

Hamas and its backers such as Qatar have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on tunnels and rockets with one goal in mind: killing Israelis.

and

In 2010, Qatar twice offered to restore trade relations with Israel and allow the reinstatement of the Israeli mission in Doha, on condition that Israel allow Qatar to send building materials and money to Gaza to help rehabilitate infrastructure, and that Israel make a public statement expressing appreciation for Qatar's role and acknowledging its standing in the Middle East. Israel refused, on the grounds that Qatari supplies could be used by Hamas to build bunkers and reinforced positions from which to fire rockets at Israeli cities and towns, 

So, what do we make of this

A $1 billion bet on peace: Qatar funds huge Palestinian settlement in West Bank   Sunday Mar 3, 2013 

and this:

Rawabi is the first master-planned city in the heart of Palestine and truly emphasises Qatari Diar’s mission of enriching the quality of people lives. 
...Located 9 km north of Ramallah, 20 km north of Jerusalem and 25 km south of Nablus, Rawabi is being built as a modern, high-tech city with gleaming high-rise buildings, green parks and shopping areas.​​

and even more interestingly:

Qatar currently funds several large economic projects in Gaza, such as the establishment of a large hospital. It also funds the building of new infrastructure and the renovation of existing decrepit infrastructure. This includes Gaza’s crumbling sewer system, which poses a health risk to Gazans (while threatening Israel’s groundwater resources). Qatar also invested tens of millions of dollars to pave Salah al-Din Road connecting the northern Gaza Strip with the south.

Furthermore, Qatari architects, engineers and other professionals, along with some foreign experts representing Qatar, enter Gaza through the Erez Crossing with permits issued by Israel in coordination with Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Economy Ministry.

Additionally, the Qataris have committed to procuring all required raw material from Israel, not only because they have no other choice, but intentionally, out of the belief that this would soften the Israeli position. The purchases are currently valued at tens of millions of dollars, and in the coming years the total investment could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. In other words, Israeli corporations benefit from the existence of projects funded by the Qataris in the Gaza Strip.

Rawabi will overlook Israel's central section.  From there, the view --- and trajectory for rockets --- is excellent.

Think about that.

And think about this:

Israel has blocked Qatari funds, aimed at covering the cost of the salaries of former Hamas employees, from being transferred to the Palestinian Authority (PA)...Qatar pledged to pay $60 million within three months to pay the salaries of the former Hamas-run government in Gaza.

So, why can't it halt the funding of Rawabi which is just as much a threat?  And surely will be.

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The Rawabi Apartheid, Part Two

After The New York Times' "radical sheikh" piece on the stonethrowers, the Los Angeles Times deals with Rawabi.  My Part I is here.

It's asserted that

Rawabi, the first master-planned project for Arabs in the West Bank, is audacious, risky and perhaps still part fantasy.

 

and

Rawabi — which has been frequently held out as a model for future Palestinian independence — will need to overcome cost overruns, construction delays, lackluster government support and disputes with Israel over roads and water that still threaten to delay its opening...said Bashar Masri, chairman of Massar International...the impetus was social and political.  "Every Palestinian has a duty to participate in nation-building," said Masri, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt that attest to his years spent in the U.S. as a chemical engineering student at Virginia Tech....Developers say they drew inspiration from master-planned communities in the U.S., Dubai and — though they don't like to admit it — Israeli settlements built on West Bank territory that Palestinians hope to one day make part of their own state..."But there are no red-tiled roofs and no gates," said Ramzi Jaber, commercial manager of the project, referring to common features of Jewish settlements. "Rawabi will be an open city." Well, mostly open.

I left this comment there:

Briefly:

(a) note this claim, contained at the Rawabi site (here) - "Neighborhood names are ancient Canaanite words, especially significant for Palestinians, who are believed to be the ancestral descendants of Canaanite tribes."  Believed? By whom?  Since we know Arabs conquered and occupied the Land of Israel only in 639 CE, could not they also be, logically, descendents of Jews?  Could it be also a total fabrication, an element of inventivity?

(b) and if visit another page there (here), you can read of apartheid - "The city will also offer 8 schools, green spaces, playgrounds, civic services, church and mosques"  No synagogue?   Ah, no Jews.  Muslims and Christians welcome.  But no Jews.  

(c)  maybe we should be calling the Arab-populated residential locations in Israel as "settlements" to even things out?

___________________

P.S.  I'm going to guess the journalists were taken on a tour.


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Pals. To Uproot Jewish/Zionist Trees

Where is the Green Party when we need them?

Reported:

The developer of Rawabi, a new Palestinian city being built in the West Bank, said he will remove some 3,000 trees donated by the Jewish National Fund and replace them with indigenous olive trees, Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported Tuesday.

Bashar al-Masri said that the city's identity is meant to be Palestinian and that Israeli elements are trying "to manipulate the issue," according to the report.

Masri's move came in response to a scathing op-ed published by Ma'an a day earlier by Jewish Israeli-born convert to Islam and member of Fatah, Uri Davis. In the op-ed, he slammed the decision to accept the trees from an organization whose mission "is the 'redemption' of lands in 'Eretz Israel,' including Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, Gaza and beyond for Jewish settlement."

Davis further criticized the species chosen to be planted by the JNF. Non-indigenous pine trees, he said "add insult to injury." "Rather than plant indigenous" trees, he added, "the tree saplings planted by the JNF in the area designated for the Rawabi projects are typically political-Zionist pinera (conifers)."

Amazing how idiotic, fanatic thinking leads to irrational extremism.

Oh, sorry.  That's the theme of the Arab/Muslim campaign since the mid-1800s.

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