While Israeli, Palestinian, and U.S. leaders debated the status of settlement expansion in New York, Palestinian workers carried on building the fenced-off red-roofed suburban enclaves in the West Bank.
With the settlement issue continuing to heat up the discussions, we sent our correspondents to a settlement construction site to see it for ourselves.
Beitar Illit is one of the newer settlements located south of Jerusalem. It was named after the ancient city of Beitar, the last standing Jewish fortress in the Bar Kokhba revolt against the Romans in the 2nd century.
Do the workers believe a settlement freeze is possible?
“The Jews will never leave the settlements,” one Palestinian labourer told Reuters. “This is a false dream. What was taken by force will only be won back by force.”
Click below to see our visit to Beitar Illit on September 23, 2009, the day after the trilateral summit:
(PHOTO: Palestinian labourers work at a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Beitar Illit, near Jerusalem September 23, 2009. REUTERS/Baz Ratner.)
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It is very easy, when you lose your country, to substitute other things for It. It is also very easy, when you recover It, to use any means to defend it.
- Posted by oscar canosa