PEACE NOW LACKS CREDIBILITY

Credibility Still for Peace Now? (CAMERA)
Dror Etkes, one of Peace Now's "settlement experts," doesn't have a good track record when it comes to the facts. In February, he falsely claimed that illegal Palestinian construction "is undertaken by private individuals in all cases;" that illegal Palestinian building merely serves families in need and serves no political purpose; that "Most of the Palestinian illegal construction is undertaken on their own private land," and that the Arab population in eastern Jerusalem has no right to vote in municipal elections. (This last claim is contradicted by Peace Now's own documents.)

And in October 2006, Etkes' Peace Now falsely reported that 86.4 percent of Ma'aleh Adumim land is privately owned by Palestinians -- an error of 15,900 percent!

All of which makes us scratch our head in response to the New York Times latest report yesterday on Peace Now's "findings." Just how many lies to you have to tell in order for the Times to no longer consider you a credible source worthy of coverage? Saeb Erekat, care to take a shot at that one?

HERE'S YESTERDAY'S NYT ARTICLE:

Israeli Settlements Found to Grow Past Boundaries
JERUSALEM, July 6 — Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank use only 12 percent of the land allocated to them, but one-third of the territory they do use lies outside of their official jurisdictions, according to a new report released on Friday by Peace Now, an advocacy group.

According to the report, based on official data released by the Israeli government after a court order, 90 percent of the settlements sprawl beyond their official boundaries despite the large amount of unused land already allocated to them.

More than 10 percent of the land included within the official jurisdiction of the settlements is owned privately by Palestinians, as is 70 percent of the land the settlements control outside of their official boundaries, said the report, whose findings were published in Haaretz newspaper on Friday. Peace Now opposes the settlements and tracks them.