US government offers tax breaks for Jewish settlers

Thursday August 28, 2008 09:50 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

While US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been pressuring Israel to stop the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements, built illegally on Palestinian land, the US government has, at the same time, been offering tax breaks to US-based organizations which engage in illegal Israeli settlement expansion.

This news comes from a report produced by Reuters news agency, which conducted an investigation of the tax records of 13 US-based non-profit organizations whose stated goal is to expand Israeli settlements built illegally on Palestinian land. The news agency found that these organizations have raised more than $35 million in the last five years alone.

When Reuters asked a State Department spokesman about the inconsistency, he stated that the tax breaks were in a different government department, and thus were not the concern of the Department of State. The spokesman added, "Regarding U.S. policy on settlements, it's clear, it's the right policy to try to help bring about a political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians."

As for the 'charities', they say their focus is on humanitarian concerns. But the money raised in the U.S. by the groups all goes to the development and expansion of the illegal  Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land in the West Bank, which Palestinians say are crippling every aspect of their lives.

Israel has never defined its borders since the state was created on historic Palestine in 1948, and Israeli immigrants have continually expanded the territory of the state with settlements built illegally on Palestinian lands, further encroaching onto what is left of Palestine, particularly in the 15 years since the Oslo Accords.

One of the groups, known as 'The Hebron Fund', encouraged donations to renovate a building in Hebron, in the southern West Bank, which was illegally occupied by illegal Israeli Jewish settlers last year. The Fund advertised on their website, "Dozens of new families can now come live in Hebron -- only if we renovate this building quickly!"

The head of the Hebron Fund did acknowledge that this is in contradiction to current US policy in the region, but stated, “The U.S. government has no right to use political considerations when judging humanitarian and non-profit needs.” But while settler groups in the US contend that their mission is somehow humanitarian, Palestinians describe the horrors of living under a military occupation that is in place to protect and expand these illegal Israeli settlements, and say these US groups, and the US government, are complicit in their oppression.

Illegal Israeli settlers set fire to workshop under construction in Nablus

[ 28/08/2008 - 12:36 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)--

Palestinian eyewitnesses reported that Israeli settlers stormed Thursday morning the Burin town, south of Nablus, and set fire to lumber used in the construction of a workshop which led to the burning of all pieces of wood.

The eyewitnesses added that the settlers cut the workshop's water pipe before their withdrawal, but the Nablus fire department rushed to the scene and extinguished the fire.

They said that those Israeli assailants might have come from the nearby settlements of Bracha or Yitzhar whose settlers are notorious for waging attacks on Arab villages.

Meanwhile, an Israeli special force boarding civilian cars stormed Thursday the Faisal street, downtown Nablus, and kidnapped one of the Fatah-affiliated Al-Aqsa Brigades' activists called Adham Labada from his workplace at a shop.

Labada is one of Al-Aqsa Brigades' activists who have been granted an amnesty by Israel in exchange for renouncing resistance activities against the occupation.

A large number of IOF troops invaded at night Wednesday amid intensive gunfire the Makhfia area and the Tal street, west of Nablus, and kidnapped five young men after breaking into and ransacking houses in the area.

Clashes took place between the citizens and the invading troops in the stormed areas, according to eyewitnesses.

The Hebrew radio quoted an Israeli military spokesman as saying that the IOF troops kidnapped at dawn Thursday 17 Palestinians, seven of them were rounded up in Nablus and the rest in the West Bank cities of Qalqilya, Tulkarem, Bethlehem and Al-Khalil.

The IOF troops also waged a compaign of widespread raids on houses belonging to Palestinian citizens affiliated with the Hamas Movement in the Kafr Dan town, west of Jenin in the West Bank.