Mrs Genud, 28, pregnant with her first child, points out that Migron has parks, children’s playgrounds, a kindergarten, a daycare centre and a synagogue, all paid for by the government

August 27, 2008 Settlers No Comments

Jonathan Cook: Israeli Outposts Seal Death of Palestinian State, Counterpunch, August 25, 2008

Migron, West Bank

Yehudit Genud hardly feels she is on the frontier of Israel’s settlement project, although the huddle of mobile homes on a wind-swept West Bank hilltop she calls home is controversial even by Israeli standards.

Despite the size and isolation of Migron, a settlement of about 45 religious families on a ridge next to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Mrs Genud’s job as a social worker in West Jerusalem is a 25-minute drive away on a well-paved road.

Mrs Genud, 28, pregnant with her first child, points out that Migron has parks, children’s playgrounds, a kindergarten, a daycare centre and a synagogue, all paid for by the government — even if the buildings are enclosed by a razor-wire fence, and her husband, Roni, has to put in overtime as the settlement’s security guard.

From her trailer, she also has panoramic views not only of Ramallah but of the many communities hugging the slopes that gently fall away to the Jordan Valley.

Long-established Palestinian villages are instantly identifiable by their homes’ flat roofs and the prominence of the tall minarets of the local mosques. Interspersed among them, however, are a growing number of much newer, fortified communities of luxury villas topped by distinctive red-tiled roofs.

These are the Jewish settlements that now form an almost complete ring around Palestinian East Jerusalem, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank and destroying any hope that the city will one day become the capital of a Palestinian state.

“These settlements are supposed to be the nail in the coffin of any future peace agreement with the Palestinians,” said Dror Etkes, a veteran observer of the settlements who works for the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din. “Their purpose is to make a Palestinian state unviable.”