Israel's new master plan

Quietly, Israel is preparing the biggest illegal land grab in recent memory, all on Obama's watch, writes Khaled Amayreh in Jerusalem

A few days before his scheduled visit to Washington on 7 July, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu appears as deliberately thwarting American efforts to push forward indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

This week, an Israeli government body was set to approve "an unprecedented master plan" for an all-out expansion of Jewish settlements that would effectively -- using the words of one Palestinian official -- "decapitate" East Jerusalem's Arab identity.

The plan would see the building of tens of thousands of Jewish-only apartments in East Jerusalem to be constructed on Arab owned land.

The Jerusalem Municipal Council, controlled by fanatical Jewish radicals advocating ethnic cleansing of non-Jews in the city, is trying to enforce the plan with a discernible green light from the government.

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