Israel, Palestinians agree to demolition
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has secured an agreement from Israel and the Palestinians for settler homes to be razed after the Gaza Strip pullout.
Rice said on Sunday that both sides agreed that the homes occupied by about 8000 illegal Jewish settlers would do little to address the housing needs of the 1.3 million Palestinians living in the occupied territory.
"The view is that there are better land uses for the Palestinians to better address their housing needs," she told a news conference before heading to Jordan on the next leg of her Middle East tour.
"The important thing is that the parties want to work on this issue together."
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the houses could have remained standing. "It was their choice. If they wanted them they could have had them," he said.
There are about 500,000 Jewish settlers living on occupied Arab land in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
This issue shouldn’t be forgotten, its a shame that the western media certainly portrays much of this in favor of Israel when in fact it is often the other way round. This issue needs to be solved without violence – and it must be taken into consideration that Israel is the country which recieves billions of dollars of aid from the U.S. for weapons and whatever whilst Palestine is left defending itself with very little. The ratio of deaths is somthing like 1:3 Isralies to Palestinians.
