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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/11/israel-return-jews-palestinians

"....Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land – a right recognised by UN resolution 194, the Geneva convention, and the universal declaration of human rights. Further, "an occupier may not forcibly deport protected persons... or transfer parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory" (article 49).

The Foreign Office emphasises that the UK's "policy on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is absolutely clear: Israeli settlements activity is not only illegal under international law, it is also in contravention of Israel's obligations under the Road Map to Peace and detrimental to the peace process. The prime minister made this point most recently in a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu of 5 January."

The Israeli government continues to expand these settlements and encourage immigration in order to consolidate its hold on the occupied territories. The new Jewish-only settlement towns being built by the Jewish National Fund within Israel, in the Negev and Galilee, also continue Palestinian dispossession, by displacing Bedouin in "unrecognised villages". While Palestinians are being continuously dispossessed, imprisoned in enclaves, and prevented from building to house their families on their own land, Jewish people from any part of the world can be housed anywhere they choose within Israel and West Bank. Precious water resources are used lavishly in the settlements, while drastically limiting Palestinians' access. Use of the super-highways linking settlements to Israeli cities is denied to Palestinians, and sewage from the settlements is discharged into Palestinian villages and agricultural areas. The settlement freeze is a joke, and is ignored by Israel. It is more a settlement frenzy.

So far, the British government, while issuing protests to the Israeli government, has not taken proper measures, together with the Quartet, that would stop the settlement construction. Arguably, British citizens who settle in Israel may be accessories to a crime if they move to these illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, contravening the 1977 additional protocol and the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which the UK has ratified. Unless Britain acts firmly to end Israel's impunity to international law and agreements, hopes of establishing a lasting and just solution for peace in the Middle East will be indefinitely delayed." Abe Hayeem

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Israel's unfair 'law of return'

While British Jews are offered property in the West Bank, Palestinian refugees are still denied the right to return http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/11/israel-return-jews-palestinians