Secret Israeli Defence Millitary database shows full extent of illegal settlements

In late January, WikiLeaks released a 186 page secret Israeli Ministry of Defense database, which showed the full extent of illegal Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. A version of the document had first been obtained by the well regarded Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The leak made headlines, but its global political impact was limited by its presentation in Hebrew.

Subsequently the United States commissioned the Central Intelligence Agency's Open Source Center to translate the leak to English. The translation was not released by the CIA, but a copy was obtained by Stephen Aftergood, editor of the US based Federation of American Scientist's Secrecy News and is presented here.

According to Haaretz, "An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements - about 75 percent - construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued,", and "The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents."

Here is the link to the report in pdf. version -
88.80.16.63...

If this is true which undoubtly it is, then Israel knowingly is constructing illegal settlements breaking it's own and above all International laws. That would explain a piece of puzzle why US President Obama earlier this year sternly asked Israel to halt all settlement activities.

The extent of main stream media biasness is vivid example in this case which failed to report such a leakage. It posts more questions than answers, who is controlling the MSM? The answer is upto you...

There seems to be an issue with your link

Originally posted by December_Rain
An analysis of the data reveals that, in the vast majority of the settlements - about 75 percent - construction, sometimes on a large scale, has been carried out without the appropriate permits or contrary to the permits that were issued,", and "The database also shows that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure (roads, schools, synagogues, yeshivas and even police stations) has been carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinian West Bank residents."

Here's the problem: private lands belonging to Palestinian residents....

That right there is the debate. I am not defending Israel -- I'm just saying that the above is the very essence of the problem.

Obama called for a halt on settlement development in order to proceed with a clear division of land and a possible two-state solution. The path to peace if you will.

As for Israel, they are pretty much operating by two rules:
It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission and possession is 9/10s of the law.

Again, I always have problems with all of these "secret leaked documents" because frankly I think that if they didn't want the general public to know it -- it would never get leaked. They are probably very few actual accidents in politics.

Originally posted by tristar
There seems to be an issue with your link

Hi, I checked the links are perfectly fine. The website was overloaded. I just went there and got this message:

"WikiLeaks is overloaded by global interest"

You can try again after sometime, the link to report is the direct link.