Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Biodun Iginla, BBC News
Showing posts with label two-state solution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label two-state solution. Show all posts

Sunday, September 16, 2018

BREAKING: Israel to deport French-US professor arrested at demo


by Jenny Feder and Biodun Iginla, France24, Jerusalem. Disclosure: Jenny Feder and Biodun Iginla had a romantic relationship when she was based in New York.


    © AFP/Archives | Palestinian protesters wave national flags in front of Israeli troops during a protest on September 14th, 2018. Protesters protested against Israel's plans to demolish the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, in the occupied West Bank

    JÉRUSALEM  - 
    An American-French law professor arrested by Israel while protesting against the demolition of a Palestinian village in the West Bank is to be deported, his lawyer said Sunday.
    US-born Frank Romano, who teaches law at the Paris Nanterre University, was detained on Friday while taking part in a demonstration at the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, east of Jerusalem.
    "There is an administrative decision to deport him," lawyer Gaby Lansky told reporters.
    A spokeswoman for the Israeli interior ministry could not immediately confirm such a decision.
    The village of roughly 200 people in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is at risk of being demolished at any time, despite fierce criticism from key European nations.
    On September 5, Israel's supreme court upheld an order to raze it on grounds it was built without the proper permits.
    It is extremely rare for Palestinians to be given Israeli permits to build in Area C of the West Bank, where Khan al-Ahmar is situated.
    The village is located in a strategic spot near Israeli settlements and along a road leading to the Dead Sea.
    There have been warnings that continued settlement construction in the area could eventually divide the West Bank in two and cut it off from Jerusalem, dealing a death blow to any remaining hopes of a two-state solution.
    Anti-demolition activists said Romano was arrested along with two Palestinian protesters when they tried to block bulldozers sent in by Israeli authorities to seal off an access road to the village.
    Pictures on social media show him being led from the scene by Israeli riot police.

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    Sunday, December 31, 2017

    BREAKING: Israel ruling party votes for push to annex West Bank


    by Jenny Feder and Biodun Iginla, France24, Jerusalem


      © AFP/File | An Israeli soldier looks towards Palestinian protestors during clashes in the West Bank village of Madama December 28, 2017, just days before the central committee of Israel's Likud Party voted for a resolution in favor of annexing the West Bank

      JERUSALEM - 
      The central committee of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party on Sunday voted for a resolution urging Likud parliamentarians to push to annex the occupied West Bank.
      The non-binding vote by the party's decision-making committee called on its MPs "to spread Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria (the West Bank)".
      Netanyahu, who is a member of the central committee, was not present for the vote.
      The prime minister says he still supports a two-state solution with the Palestinians, although he has also pushed for Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation for 50 years.
      In October, Netanyahu decided to postpone a vote on a controversial bill that critics say would amount to the de facto annexation of Israeli settlements surrounding Jerusalem.
      The bill had been expected to be voted on by a ministerial committee in a move that would fast-track its progress through parliament.
      Israel occupied the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, in the Six-Day War of 1967. It later annexed east Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community.
      It sees the entire city as its indivisible capital, while the Palestinians want the eastern sector as the capital of their future state.
      Israeli settlements are deemed illegal under international law and widely seen as the main obstacle to peace.
      More than 600,000 Jewish settlers live in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem among 2.9 million Palestinians, with frequent outbreaks of violence.
      Likud's central committee counts around 3,700 members, and according to Israeli media some 1,500 were present for Sunday's vote.

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