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"Rebuilding Jewish Life in Judea, Israel"
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JUDEA ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE Vol.11, No.1 Shvat/Adar-I 5763/Jan-Feb 2003
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Website: http://www.womeningreen.org/judea OUR 11TH YEAR!
Contents:
* The Murder of Netanel Ozeri
* Safeguarding the Jewish Towns in Judea and Samaria
* Jewish Population in Yesha Up Nearly 6% in 2002
* Jewish Towns Grown in the Face of Violence
* Sharon's Reply to a Settlement Freeze
* Jewish Families Move into Muslim Quarter of Old City
* Settling in for the Duration
* The Arabs Built 261 Settlements Since 1967
* Diplomatic and Legal Aspects of the Settlement Issue
* Does the Koran Mention Jerusalem Even Once?
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THE MURDER OF NETANEL OZERI
Netanel [Nati] Ozeri and his family, including five children, and
their two guests, were enjoying a Sabbath meal on Friday night in their
home on Hilltop 26 outside Kiryat Arba. According to Kiryat Arba Mayor
Tzvi Katzover:
"The terrorist knocked on the door and called out with a French
accent, leading everyone in the house to think that it was the security
coordinator of Kiryat Arba [who hails from France]. Despite this, Nati
was suspicious; he told his two guests to get their guns ready, and he
himself drew his gun as he went to the door - but the French accent
apparently fooled him, and he opened the door without asking again who
it was. The terrorists shot and killed him on the spot."
Medic Uri Karzen of Hevron, who was alerted to the incident - his
fourth such Friday night call in the past six weeks - said the two
guests showed incredible bravery: "The mother took her five children
into a side room, while one of the two guests - they had come around
from the back - jumped on the two terrorists. One of the terrorists was
holding an M-16 rifle, and the other was holding a pistol and an axe.
Yechezkel [one of the guests] managed to pin down one terrorist, who was
shot and killed by the other guest, Elchanan. The second terrorist fired
off a few shots, then ran and hid behind a car, and Elchanan fired
through the car, and apparently wounded the terrorist, but he ran away.
Yechezkel took three bullets in his leg." Security forces later found
and killed the second terrorist.
The terrorists' victim, Nati Ozeri, was a leader in the Hevron
community in terms of both settlement and Torah study/teaching. He moved
out of Kiryat Arba a number of years ago to settle the hills around the
city. He is survived by his wife Livnat and five children, ranging in
age from 1.5 to 11.
(Arutz Sheva News Service, 19 Jan 03, http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com)
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SAFEGUARDING THE JEWISH TOWNS IN JUDEA AND SAMARIA
Amnon Lord
A new approach to the defense requirements of Jewish towns in Judea
and Samaria has been adopted by the IDF, involving a broad security
concept that sees the "security envelope" of the town as beginning at
the last house of the neighboring village, rather than from the fence
inward toward the village, as it had been viewed previously.
The new security approach includes units of on-duty IDF soldiers who
are local residents, 10-15 in number, who are trained in anti-terror
warfare, and are ready to operate around the clock. The force is
intended for quick reaction as well as for operating beyond the town's
borders.
A pilot project has begun in 10 towns. Given that there are 200 or
250 Jewish towns, inside a year or two the IDF is to train 2,000-2,500
soldiers for all the towns in Yesha. This would be a real revolution
that would save the country many days of reserve duty. At the same time,
the towns in Yesha will provide the IDF with a force greater than two
battalions of high-level soldiers.
(_Makor Rishon_ Yoman, 3 Jan 03, p. 2)
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JEWISH POPULATION IN YESHA UP NEARLY 6% IN 2002
The number of Jews living in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza district
increased by 5.8% in 2002, despite more than two years of Palestinian
attacks. The Council of Settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (Yesha)
said 226,028 Jews were living in these areas at the end of 2002,
compared to 213,672 a year earlier. The increase over the past two years
is 11.3%.
(_Associated Press/Ha'aretz_, 4 Feb 03)
* * *
JEWISH TOWNS GROW IN THE FACE OF VIOLENCE
Nadav Shragai
During a post-election meeting with Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna,
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recalled the name of Tuvia Miller, a Jewish
orchard owner who bought 260 dunams (65 acres) of swampland in the Dir
al-Balah region of the Gaza district about 100 years ago. Miller dug a
well, planted an orchard, and wove dreams about a project of Jewish
farms, but during the pogroms of 1936-39 everything was destroyed and he
sold all his land to the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
In October 1946, the Jewish leadership in Israel at the time
initiated the establishment of 11 new communities, and the founding
fathers of Kfar Darom, members of the Hapoel Mizrahi movement, came to
settle Miller's lands. In the 1948 War of Independence, Kfar Darom
recorded one of the most heroic stories in the defense of the fledgling
state, bravely fending off the Egyptian forces that had invaded the
country.
In the summer of 1948, the defenders of Kfar Darom were ordered to
withdraw, and only 22 years later did the third chapter in the
settlement's history begin, when Golda Meir's government decided to set
up an army outpost there. In 1974, civilians moved into the outpost and
some went on to found other settlements in Gush Katif. In 1989, the
national unity government led by the Likud's Yitzhak Shamir and the
Labor Party's Shimon Peres decided to turn Kfar Darom into a permanent
settlement.
Kfar Darom, with all its bereavement and wounded, all of the mortar
shells that have landed there, has grown by 17.4 percent in the past
year, from 288 to 338 residents.
Interior Ministry data shows that Yitzhar in Samaria, which lost
Shlomo Leibman and Harel Ben Nun in terror attacks, added 58 residents
in 2002, a 15.2 percent increase. Peduel, which lost its rabbi,
Elimelech Shapira, grew by 13.3 percent. Karmei Tzur in Judea, which
lost Dr. Shmuel Gillis and Eyal and Yael Shorek, grew by 15.7 percent,
and Otniel, which lost four Hesder yeshiva students, grew by 12.8
percent.
This pattern, apart from a few exceptions, is characteristic of
religious-ideological settlements but not secular and less ideological
settlements or ultra-Orthodox settlements that have suffered equally
tragic losses.
The number of new residents of Yesha grew last year by 12,356.
Nearly 54 percent (6,624) is attributed to natural increase, while about
46 percent (5,731) is attributed to migration.
At the beginning of the current violence, only a few families lived
in Negohot in the South Hebron Hills, whose road was cut off from its
natural neighbors - Kiryat Arba and Hebron. Negohot reoriented itself
toward Kiryat Gat and upped its population by 50 percent in 2001 and by
another 107.3 percent in 2002, when it attracted 44 new residents.
Yesha Council representatives are claiming for the first time that
dozens of small settlements have yet to receive official Interior
Ministry recognition and their residents are not included in the
ministry's population count. Alon, home to dozens of families, is not
included in the ministry's count. Rachelim, which was founded in 1992
and houses 30 families and many children, and the Beit El area's Migron,
with dozens of families, also are not on the list. According to the
Yesha Council, there are 240,000 Jews living in the territories, about
14,000 more than the ministry's figure.
(_Haaretz_, 11 Feb 03)
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SHARON'S REPLY TO A SETTLEMENT FREEZE
Aluf Benn
When Prime Minister Sharon met with the two top Jewish senators on
Capitol Hill, Democrat Joseph Lieberman and Republican Arlen Spector,
both politicians, each in his own way, warned Sharon that the settlement
issue is about to make its way onto the American policy agenda.
Sharon replied to Spector that the settlements are not "military
bases" but communities that are home to 230,000-240,000 residents. "What
is meant by a settlement freeze?" asked the prime minister. "We are not
building new settlements, but there are needs created by natural growth.
Young people from the settlements volunteer to serve in elite units in
the army, and when they are discharged they go home and get married, and
it is not clear where they might live. Should we ban them from returning
home and living on their settlement, because it's forbidden to build on
it?"
(_Haaretz_, 6 Jan 03,
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=248456&contra
ssID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0)
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JEWISH FAMILIES MOVE INTO MUSLIM QUARTER OF OLD CITY
Nadav Shragai
After more than a decade of trying to buy a building near the
Damascus Gate in the Muslim quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, three
Jewish families moved in in January 2003. A Jewish donor bought the
building from the Arab family that previously lived there.
With these three families, the number of Jewish families in the
Muslim quarter climbs to 58. Several hundred yeshiva students also live
in the Muslim quarter.
One of the heads of the Ateret Cohanim yeshiva, Mati Dan, said the
building would be named Beit Baruch after Baruch Lerner, a victim of the
Moment Cafe bombing, who was a security guard in the Old City.
(_Ha'aretz_, 6 Jan 03)
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SETTLING IN FOR THE DURATION
Tracy Wilkinson
Aron Saban, a French Algerian Jew, moved to Ofra about 10 months ago
with his wife and infant daughter, opening up a pizza parlor that does a
brisk business. He is not the only one investing in Ofra's future.
Families continue moving into a line of trailers on the outer ridge of
the settlement. Another synagogue was recently established in a far
corner.
Ofra and other Jewish settlements across the West Bank are expanding
nearly unabated. Much of the growth has occurred since the start of
Israeli-Palestinian fighting in which settlers have been fair game for
Palestinian gunmen. Some of the new neighborhoods are named in honor of
residents killed in Palestinian attacks.
Jewish settlers see the land as their God-given legacy. Every
Israeli government for the past three decades has allowed expansion of
the settlements with few restrictions and often with overt support.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon regards them as a strategic imperative.
Ofra, with 2,254 people, was founded in 1975 and is one of the
oldest settlements on the West Bank. Four of its residents have been
killed in Palestinian attacks since the start of the recent violence,
and ambushes on the roads around it have claimed victims from other
settlements.
But spend some time in Ofra, and it's clear that the people who live
there are determined to hold on to their homes. They are confident they
will be allowed to do so.
People live in a place like Ofra for many reasons. Some like the
fact that housing is cheap and the lifestyle is rural. Some are drawn by
ideology or by religious beliefs.
Settler leaders openly say their plan is to establish a string of
outposts southward along the stony hilltops here that will eventually
link them to settlements ringing northern Jerusalem.
An estimated 40 to 60 outposts have been established throughout the
West Bank since Sharon took office. Sharon is among Israel's biggest
champions of the "settlement enterprise." Settlements often start as
nothing more than a water tower and a trailer. Then an army unit is
dispatched to guard them, and over a period of months permanent housing
replaces temporary shelters.
Yossi Rund, a 51-year-old beekeeper, and his wife, Haya, have lived
in Ofra almost from the start. Their determination was tested on June 6
when their son Erez, 18, was shot dead by Palestinian gunmen as he drove
home from his school in a settlement just north of Ofra.
"This isn't a picnic. It's a war," he said. "The war took my son. When
everyone realizes that this is a war, we will win it." (A couple of
weeks after he was interviewed, he was shot and wounded a short distance
from where his son was killed.)
Ayelet and Netanel Ben Ari, and their two children, are one of two
families and about 15 young adults living in 16 trailers along a ridge
half a mile south of the center of Ofra. Theirs is a new neighborhood,
Ginot Aryeh - or Aryeh's Gardens - named for Ofra resident Aryeh
Hershkowitz, killed on Jan. 29, 2001. (His 30-year-old son Assaf was
killed in almost identical circumstances three months later.)
Azriel Simhone, who has lived in Ofra for 26 years, is one of its
security guards. To Simhone, the West Bank was still in its biblical
state of shepherds, oxen, and goats as recently as the 1960s and 1970s,
when Jewish settlers, reclaiming a legacy two millenniums old, arrived
and brought modernity.
(_Los Angeles Times_, 24 Dec 02,
https://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-
settle24dec24001437,0,2532961.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dworld)
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THE ARABS BUILT 261 SETTLEMENTS SINCE 1967
Joseph Farah
Once again, we're hearing that awful word in the context of the
Middle East debate: "Settlements." That's what the conflict is all
about. That's why the Arabs are mad at the Israelis. That's the root of
the violence, the terrorism, the hatred. What about these "settlements"?
What are they? Why are they bad? Why should they be stopped?
When I began visiting "settlements" in Israel, I discovered they
were not armed camps. They were not frontier outposts in alien
territory. They were not fortresses built to grab more land for Jews.
No. Much to my surprise, I found these "settlements" to be nothing more
than communities - peaceful Jewish communities that don't interfere with
nor abrogate anyone else's rights. They reminded me of suburban
developments in Southern California more than threats to peace.
Who is a "settler" in the Mideast? According to the Arabs, only Jews
are "settlers." Arafat himself was born in Egypt. If, at the moment, he
is living in the West Bank, he is a "settler" there, not a native.
Indeed, most of the Arabs living within the borders of Israel today have
come from some other Arab country at some time in their life. They are
all "settlers."
Since 1967, the Arabs have built 261 settlements in the West Bank,
compared with 144 Jewish settlements. Why is it that only Jewish
construction is destabilizing?
If Israel's policies make life so intolerable for Arabs, why do they
continue to flock to the Jewish state? The truth? There is more freedom
under Israeli rule than there is in any Arab country.
Prior to 1900, the entire region was a barren wasteland with low
populations of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. No one had much interest
in the Holy Land, as Mark Twain pointed out in his own travels to the
area - until the Jews began to return. Then the economic activity began,
jobs were created, opportunities appeared, and then the Arabs came.
Under the Oslo Accords, there are no restrictions whatsoever on
Israeli construction in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. These "settlements"
are perfectly legal. And I, for one, can see no legitimate reason for
them to stop.
(_World Net Daily_, 12 Dec 02,
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=29962)
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DIPLOMATIC AND LEGAL ASPECTS OF THE SETTLEMENT ISSUE
Jeffrey Helmreich
One may legitimately support or challenge Israeli settlements in the
disputed territories, but they are not illegal, and they have neither
the size, the population, nor the placement to seriously impact upon the
future status of the disputed territories and their Palestinian
population centers.
Settlements make up less than 2 percent of the West Bank, according
to Peace Now, which opposes Israeli settlement in the territories.
Settlements simply do not comprise enough land to be serious obstacles
to any political or geographic eventuality.
Settlements do not block the eventual establishment of a contiguous
Palestinian entity. Close to 80 percent of settlers live in communities
such as Elkana, Maale Adumim, Betar, and Gush Etzion, located close to,
if not contiguous with, pre-1967 Israel, and which can be connected
geographically to the "Green Line" without involving Palestinian
population centers.
Most settlements are in areas that, for security reasons, Israel
cannot afford to cede. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin coined the term
"security settlements" to describe those communities. Israel cannot
afford to withdraw from these small but strategic points even if they
were entirely unpopulated.
Settlements are not illegal. The last binding international legal
instrument in the West Bank and Gaza was the League of Nations Mandate,
which explicitly recognized the right of Jewish settlement in all
territory allocated to the Jewish national home in the context of the
British Mandate.
The West Bank and Gaza are disputed, not occupied, with both Israel
and the Palestinians exercising legitimate historical claims. Jews have
a deep historic and emotional attachment to the land and, as their legal
claims are at least equal to those of Palestinians, it is natural for
Jews to build homes in communities in these areas, just as Palestinians
build in theirs.
The territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip was captured by Israel
in a defensive war. The Jordanian occupation of the West Bank from 1947
to 1967, by contrast, had been the result of an offensive war in 1948
and was never recognized by the international community, including the
Arab states.
The official U.S. position has been over the years that settlements
are legal. The Carter administration for a short time held that
settlements were illegal, a position overturned by the Reagan
administration.
The Oslo agreements allow settlement growth as well as the growth -
and creation - of Palestinian communities. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
told the Knesset on October 5, 1995, we "committed ourselves before the
Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the
interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth."
(Institute for Contemporary Affairs/Jerusalem Center for Public
Affairs, 20 Jan 03, http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief2-16.htm)
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DOES THE KORAN MENTION JERUSALEM EVEN ONCE?
Jewish Leadership member Elitzur Segal of Ofra tells the following
story:
Shortly before the death [in May 2001] of Feisal Husseini, who was
appointed by Arafat to be responsible for Jerusalem affairs, Husseini
and Jewish Leadership founder Moshe Feiglin held a debate in the Tzavta
Club in Jerusalem.
When Feiglin's turn to speak came, he pulled out a Koran and asked
Husseini, "Is this your holy book?" When Husseini said yes, Feiglin
pulled out a Tanach (Bible) and said, "And you agree that this is my
holy book, correct?" After that point was agreed as well, Feiglin said,
"In my holy book, Jerusalem is mentioned hundreds of times by name, and
additional hundreds in other references," and he gave several examples
from various verses. After this point was also agreed upon, Feiglin
said, "Now you show me one place where Jerusalem is mentioned in your
holy book!" Husseini almost "swallowed his tongue," Segal reports, and
after a few uncomfortable seconds of silence, a loud wave of applause
swept the room.
Elitzur Segal also tells this story: "When a security road was being
paved for the community of Ofra, a resident named Amram met an Arab who
lived nearby, and the Arab asked him, 'Who gave you permission to pave
this road?'" Amram replied, "Ask your father what it says in the Koran!"
After a few days, they met again. Amram said, "So, did you ask your
father what it says in the Koran?" The Arab said, "My father doesn't
know the Koran, so I asked the village wise man about it. He said that
the Jews are right, and that the Koran says that the Jews will come to
the Land of Israel and it will be theirs. I then asked the wise man, 'If
so, what are we making war for?' And he told me, 'The Jews will in fact
return to the Land of Israel and it will be theirs, but it's our job to
get in their way.'"
(Arutz Sheva News Service, 3 Feb 03, http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com)
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*** BACK ISSUES ***
1993 - Vol. 1: Issues 1.1-1.6 1999 - Vol. 7: Issues 7.1-7.6
1994 - Vol. 2: Issues 2.1-2.6 2000 - Vol. 8: Issues 8.1-8.6
1995 - Vol. 3: Issues 3.1-3.6 2001 - Vol. 9: Issues 9.1-9.6
1996 - Vol. 4: Issues 4.1-4.6 2002 - Vol. 10: Issues 10.1-10.6
1997 - Vol. 5: Issues 5.1-5.6 2003 - Vol. 11: Issue 11.1
1998 - Vol. 6: Issues 6.1-6.6
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To SUBSCRIBE (free), send an e-mail message with "subscribe" as the
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JUDEA Magazine is a bi-monthly electronic magazine produced and
transmitted from Judea, Israel, specializing in stories about the
rebirth of Jewish life in a tiny and unique corner of civilization. Mail
address: Judea Magazine, Yael and Mark Ami-El, Editors; Tekoa; D.N.
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