How Can You Tell...UPDATE

when Israel's government is making a g00d decision? When the White House, the PA, and Tzipi Livni are pissed. The reaction to Bibi's decision to approve new construction projects in Yesha is making Marack mad...really REALLY mad.

Sweeeet.

Palpatating Piglet Wingnut Robert Gibbs said:

"We regret the reports of Israel's plans to approve additional settlement construction. As the president has said before, the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop."

[The plan] "is inconsistent with Israel's commitment under the road map."

Here's a news flash dummy.

1. It is the White House, not the United States, that does not accept the legitimacy of settlement expansion. Contrary to what your Dear Leader believes in that massive fascist ego of his, he is not a monarch. HE IS NOT THE STATE.
2. Holding a conference in which Fatah/PLO vowed to destroy Israel is not consistent with the PA's commitment to the roadmap....(oh wait...the PA is only committed to holding Israel to the Highway to Hell, not any of its own obligations under it...that would be the reason why "peace' isn't breaking out and we don't have a PLOistan in Judea and Samaria at the moment...OOOPS! But since the administration's policy is blatantly based on racism against Jews the phrase, "continued Arab incitement against Jews and calls for Israel's destruction are inconsistent with their commitment under the road map," is not something that is going to come out of the mouths of anyone in the White House, including the Jew Hating Racist White House Resident.

Here's another tip for the orally flatulent Gibbsian Pig Boy Cry Baby: The Highway To Hell is not binding international law. It was a suggested framework to which no agreement was signed, and since the Arabs have not lived up to one obligation principled in this suggested framework it is a dead horse that only racist Jew haters seem to be interested in resurrecting.

Bibi's number two in Likud, Gideon Sa'ar, is jumping up and down saying that Bibi's approval of new construction in Yesha, and Mahmoud Abbas' apoplectic fits over it, proves that Bibi is protecting Israel's nation interests. With all due respect to the Education Minister, all it proves is that Bibi is attempting to juggle Marack's demands and the growing movement among his MKs to resist his moves toward a settlement freeze.

Even if construction continues on approved housing throughout the "freeze" period, just accepting the freeze is a statement by Netanyahu that there is some legitimacy to the PLO claim on Jewish land in Judea and Samaria, which there is not.

Since the Arabs rejected partition in 1947, and the prior international agreement reached by the League of Nations acknowledged that all lands west of the Jordan were Jewish lands, and Jordan invaded and illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, never forming an Arab state there, or recognizing the legitimacy of an independent state there, and that there was never at any point in history a Palestinian country, government, or nationality (the latter not coming into existence until it was invented by Yassir Arafat and the Arab League), the only legitimate national, historical, and ancestral claim to these lands belongs to the Jewish nation. Yet another reality that will never be acknowledged by the Jew Hating Racist White House Resident, who thinks Israel is the Jewish people's prize for surviving the Holocaust, not the land that we have continuously inhabited and recognized as our national home for more than 3000 years. And it would be very nice to have a Prime Minister who not only said this, but would behave like someone who believed it by rejecting freezes, negotiations, and any other dialogue with the PLO over this. The PLO claims that Jordan is Palestinian land that must be liberated. Why don't you guys go over there and do just that.

"Have fun storming the castle!"

So while I'm glad that Bibi will approve this new housing, I would be more inclined to agree with Sa'ar if Bibi had been granting permits for new housing since he came into office, and had done what his party was elected to do: reject the creation of a Falacstinian state west of the Jordan River, and build in Yehuda and Shomron. No freezes. No negotiations with genocidal terrorists. There are members of Likud who feel this way. Bibi has been showing that he is not one of them.

UPDATE: On Saturday night, in response to the announcement that Bibi Netanyahu was going to approve new construction in Yehuda and Shomron, the head of the Yesha Council, Danny Dayan, said that any construction freeze would likely be permanent, not temporary, in spite of the PM's assurances, and that Yesha supporters should not be fooled by this ploy.

"If we cannot stand up to the Americans today, how will we be able to do so in a year? By that time, we will be deep into the negotiations on dividing Judea and Samaria. Any freeze will have an important impact on negotiations.

"We must not allow ourselves to be tempted. After the trumpets announcing the building, we will have a complete freeze, courtesy of a right wing government. At best, each yishuv will have three or four apartments authorized. The damage of the freeze will be far greater than the benefit of the authorizations."

It will be interesting to see how Likud MKs react to the permit announcement. Will they stick to their guns, or be swayed by the deal?

Stay tuned.