The case of Orient House is very simple, it is illegal. The Oslo Accords required the PA to refrain from carrying out any governmental activities outside the areas under its control, Arafat blithely ignored his commitments in this regard, seeking to gain a foothold in Jerusalem. Orient House spearheaded such efforts, serving as host to a range of activities such as intelligence-gathering, diplomatic meetings, and political sessions. Why is it that when Israel tries to get the PA to fulfill it's obligations under the Oslo accords it is provocative?

What you and most everyone else miss is the fact that many of the settlements did not just sprout up in 1967, but were long standing Jewish settlements. By the 19th century many non-Jewish travelers, from Mark Twain to British and French envoys documented the largely empty land of Palestine, empty except for long-established Jewish populations in Jerusalem, Safed, Nablus, Jericho, Hebron, and others. Jews lived in Hebron throughout the generations. The Arabs chased them out in 1929 after massacring most of them. The media constantly talks about traditionally Arab East Jerusalem (Jerusalem then consisted of only what is now known as East Jerusalem) yet in one of the 1914 issues of National Geographic the population of Jerusalem is given as 40,000 Jews, 13,000 Christians (half of whom were Europeans), and only 7,000 Muslim. The Etzion Bloc was settled by Jews on purchased land, they were massacred in 1948.

No, those people are dead because the Arabs refused to let Jews live in Hebron from 1929-1967 almost 40 years. My point is that these settlements did not just spring out of thin air, these are places that Jews have lived for centuries or longer.

Hebron is one of the holiest cities in Judaism. This is the land that Abraham bought as a burial ground, Abraham and Sara, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacab and Leah are all buried there. How can we just abandon it?

Let us look at how the international community treats Israel. In Lebanon what exactly has UNIFIL done? At best, they watched Hizbullah kidnap 3 Israeli soldiers (in reality they may have actually helped Hizbullah), took a video of it and denied for months that such a video existed, and then refused to show Israel an unedited copy of the video. Have they stopped a single Hizbullah cross border attack? If this is the case what on earth will international observers do here?
There is going to be a conference on Racism in Durban South Africa, the main issue to be discussed is Israel and Zionism. Whatever you think of Israel, is it really the main human rights and racism problem in the world today? What about the Taliban who destroyed ancient Buddhist artifacts, are making non-Muslims wear badges on their clothes, about to execute Christians for trying to convert Moslems, etc.? How about the Sudan where slavery still exists? How about China? What about Muammar Gaddafi of Libya who among other terrorist attacks, ordered the bombing of Pan Am 103? What about Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe who is allowing the killing of white farmers taking their land and giving it to blacks? How about Russia which has killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Chechnya? While Pol Pot was murdering two million of his own people, the international community devoted more time and energy to the status of Palestinian "refugees." Hutus and Tutsis chop one another's heads off with machetes in the tens of thousands with fewer calls for intervention than are heard after the death of one Palestinian in an Israeli retaliatory strike.
The double standards to which Israel is held further hint at the deeper source of the hatred of Israel. The BBC proclaims Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a war criminal, and Belgium would put him on trial for what he should have known about the murderous capabilities of the Christian Phalangists. Yet Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, whose hands are drenched in blood, including 241 Marines killed in a 1983 car bombing of their barracks in Lebanon, is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Arafat fears neither arrest in Belgium nor that the BBC will document his crimes any time soon. Israel is threatened with economic sanctions while China, in which citizens are routinely executed for minor economic "crimes," religion is brutally suppressed, and couples are sterilized after one child, is awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics by the international community. Why is it that some in Norway are threatening to arrest Carmi Gillon the new Israeli ambassador because of actions taken when he was head of the Israeli GSS and no one says a word about Vladimir Putin who was head of the KGB?

Every response by Israel to lethal attacks on its civilians and soldiers is condemned as "excessive force." Compared to what? The 1,000 Panamanian civilians killed by US forces in order to arrest Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega on drug-running charges? The hundreds of Somalian civilians, including many unarmed women and children, killed by US peacekeepers in 1993? Did the US have more important interests in Panama or Somalia than Israel has protecting its citizens from attack in its heartland?

So, I ask you 1 simple question, does Israel have any reason to believe that international observers are going to be impartial?

What did I say that was spin? You didn't answer a single point that I made. What the UN did in Lebanon is fact, they admitted that they covered up the fact that they had a videotape, they imposed conditions etc. How can you explain that there have been more anti-Israel resolutions in the UN then anyone else? The fact is that Israel is at the top of the racism conference not the bottom, tell me why? When you find thos impartial observers let me know, until then Israel can do without them.

That with all these much worse things going on in the world why is Israel being singled out? And based on this why should I believe that international observers will be impartial?