CSM: Israel increases rate of home demolitions as peace talks chug along- Human rights activists say home demolitions show that protection for Palestinian human rights is missing from the peace process.

By Ben Lynfield, Correspondent / September 29, 2013

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2013/0929/Israel-increases-rate-of-home-demolitions-as-peace-talks-chug-along

A tractor demolishes a road at the unauthorized Israeli settlement outpost of Amona, east of the Palestinian town of Ramallah, West Bank, Tuesday, July 23, 2013. Sebastian Scheiner/AP

Makhul, West Bank

Burhan Bisharat lost his home last week to an Israeli army bulldozer, but he retains the Palestinian ethos of hospitality, pressing his interviewer to drink more tea as he recounts how he has slept amid the ruins of the dwellings of this tiny village in the occupied West Bank.

''Living on the ground with no cover is hard,'' says the father of eight who, like a dozen other men from Makhul, has been sleeping out in the open because the army blocked them from receiving humanitarian relief tents after the demolition. On a scorching summer day, Makhul's men crowded under the only tree in sight for shade, while a group of Israeli soldiers stood guard nearby to ensure they did not attempt to rebuild shelter.

Israeli defense ministry officials say the demolition of Makhul was a necessary law enforcement measure against unlicensed construction and stress that the Israeli Supreme Court last month rejected a petition against the order.

But human rights groups are condemning the demolition, the latest of operations in which hundreds of residential and other structures were destroyed this year in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They say the Army's handling of Makhul, as well as repeated settler attacks on Palestinian property, highlight that the US-brokered peace process launched earlier this year fails to protect Palestinians from Israeli abuses.

United Nations statistics show that the rate of demolitions rose in the last year, many of them occurring as US Secretary of State John Kerry prodded Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiation table. In August, a month after peace talks resumed, Israel leveled another small Palestinian community in East Jerusalem, Tel al-Adassa, forcing its residents to leave to the West Bank. They lacked Israeli identity papers, but dated their stay in the vicinity to the 1950s.

Three other small Palestinian communities near here – Ras al-Akhmar, Hadidya and Khumsa – now face the imminent threat of being leveled like Makhul.

''There is always talk of a settlement freeze but it is not just building new homes for settlers but destruction of homes for Palestinians that have nowhere else to go that needs to be front and center during peace negotiations,''....READ MORE