The Associated Press and North Jersey Media Group carried this story, which I found on the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD) site dated Sunday, February 25, 2007.
http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=413
Also,
http://1010wins.com/pages/264891.php?contentType=4&contentId=347676
The New Jersey Record, whose reporters were on the scene, probably supplied the best perspective on the sale and the opposition protest it inspired.
This diary was put together from these sources.
NEWARK — An event at a Teaneck, New Jersey synagogue offering information on buying homes on Israel’s West Bank is drawing opposition from an Israeli group, as well as pro-Palestinian organizations, who say such efforts undermine international peace efforts.
The event was held Sunday February 25, 2007 at Congregation B’nai Yeshurun, an Orthodox temple and was sponsored by the Amana Settlement Movement, a group based in Israel. In promotional material, Amana said, “Come learn how you, a group of friends, or even a community can own a home and strengthen the Zionist dream.”
The investment ranges from $93,000 for a duplex to $165,000 for a single-family home. Monthly rent would range from $250 to $400. In exchange for the investment, Amana would build, rent and manage the property.
Steven Pruzansky, the rabbinical leader of B’nai Yeshurun, sponsored the sale in his synagogue in Teaneck. He represents a conservative Orthodox Jewish community that opposes a Palestinian state. It holds that Jews have a right, indeed, a responsibility, to settle in the territories that are part of the biblical lands of Israel. Rabbi Pruzansky, who calls the territories by their biblical names of Judea and Samaria, even stated that the meeting would be held in the sanctuary of his synagogue rather than in its conference room in order to underscore the notion of religious duty.
“Its not occupied land. It’s disputed, unallocated land,” he said. The notion that the West Bank is disputed land rather than occupied land suggests that Rabbi Pruzansky is familiar with Frank Luntz’s propaganda tips to the Israel Project, a right wing Israeli PR organization, for whom he provided consultation in 2004. Frank Luntz, as every Democrat is aware, is a pollster and consultant for the Republican party. The notion of disputed land is of course contrary to UN Resolution 224/338, which has the force of international law, and which Israel in 1967 and then again in 1978 during the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, signed on to.
Rabbi Pruzansky blames the Mideast conflict on Arabs who will not recognize Israel. “I don’t think there is much hope for peace in my lifetime, unless the Messiah comes,” he said. “Too many people are not reconciled to Israel’s existence.”
Another aspect of this project to seek American investment reflects the worries of some settlers about whether their numbers will continue to grow. Amana’s letter to American Jews notes that the Israeli government has stopped subsidizing new homes. “Almost all communities in [the West Bank] are full, with no possibility of accepting new young couples or families,” the letter says. “If we don’t find a solution now, we will create our own population freeze, which may, in turn, begin a phenomenon …of families leaving in communities.”
About 250,000 Jews, including many from New York and New Jersey, live in the West Bank. Although the actual settlement towns constitute a tiny fraction of the land, settlers control more than 40 percent of the land in the West Bank, according to statistics compiled by Peace Now, Israel’s largest peace group.
A study by B’Tselem, an Israeli peace activist group, also revealed that 40% of the actual land on which Israel settlements are constructed is privately owned Palestinian land. By contrast, Israeli courts consider the remaining land “state land,” which it apparently considers is up for grabs in spite of international law that regards the West Bank as occupied territory.
In spite of these legal arguments as to who owns occupied West Bank land, what this publicly advertised sale of West Bank land in Teaneck, New Jersey revealed was the extent to which American Jews are divided concerning the nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the appropriate avenue to resolution.
Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), a strong supporter of the settlements, said the program is “a statement that Jews from America, Europe and anywhere else have a sacred right to live on this land.” ZOA advocates the position of the Israeli Likud party, which does not support a Palestinian state in the West Bank. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) also supports this religious/historical position. As far as can be determined from their political platforms, the Israeli Kadima and Labor parties both support a bantustan state internal to a Greater Israel entity rather than a sovereign Palestinian state.
A spokesman for Americans for Peace Now, the sister organization of Israel’s largest peace group, Peace Now, Ori Nir, disagreed with this position. “As a matter of principle, we think it’s wrong for Americans to be underwriting a politically damaging enterprise,” he said. “We think the whole settlement movement is damaging to Israel in many ways. Every settler who is added to the West Bank makes the realization of President Bush’s vision of a two-state solution more difficult.”
The settlements are also controversial because Israel promised in the early 1990s to freeze settlement construction on the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of the Oslo peace process. The lands were captured in the 1967 Middle East War. In addition, under the 2003 Road Map peace plan, Israel agreed to remove dozens of Jewish outposts from the West Bank. Instead, the building of settlements during the 1990s increased dramatically so that when the Barak government entered peace talks at Camp David in 2000, settlement activity had reached its highest pace ever. Nearly 270,000 Jewish settlers, up 6 percent over the past year, now live in the West Bank among 2.4 million Palestinians. In spite of talk of peace, Israel government actions reveal continuation of right wing efforts to further colonize the West Bank.
Twenty-five to 30 members from opposition groups organized protests outside of the B’nai Yeshurun temple during the Sunday sale. Their statements were recorded by reporters.
Hesham Mahmoud, a board member of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said his community believes any sales would involve land that the settlers have no right to claim. Such land sales would inflame the conflict by bringing more Jewish settlers to the predominantly Palestinian territories.
“Our objection to this happening in Teaneck and America is that it makes us complicit in Israel’s violation of international law,” said Richard Siegel, who is active in the group New Jersey Solidarity. The settlements, built on land that Israeli forces seized in 1967 and continue to occupy, have been condemned as obstacles to peace by the United Nations, U.S. government officials and even many Israelis.
“I’m sure if I attended the meeting and told them I was an American citizen interested in purchasing land that I would be denied,” said Aref Assaf of the American Arab Forum in Paterson. “And yet I was born there.”
Aaron Levitt, a member of Jews Against the Occupation, said the sale was deliberately inflaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “The enemies of the U.S. are able to use the Israeli occupation as a rallying cry,” said the 37-year-old from Queens, N.Y..
Samer Khalaf, another member of the New Jersey Chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee who was also protesting, said his group wants to make sure “discrimination doesn’t rear its ugly head in New Jersey. This country, decades ago, got away from selling land to someone based on their religion, ethnicity or race. That’s essentially what’s going on,” the 39-year-old Paramus attorney said, adding that his group also wants to discount the argument that the land can be sold because it is not occupied.
“This is a great shame on the Jewish people, given what has happened to them,” said protester Yoram Gelman, a member of the Westchester County, N.Y.-based peace group WESPAC, who was born in Haifa, Israel. “They are doing even worse to others.”
Across West Englewood Avenue in the protest pen, all four of Ibtisam Ali’s elementary school-aged boys stood behind a sign that read, “Support Ethnic Cleansing: Buy Stolen Palestinian Land Cheap,” as they waved Palestinian flags. “I get disappointed,” Ali, of Roselle Park, said of events such as this. “I feel like we get close to peace and then we take a step back.”
Palestinians argue that settlements such as these are an illegal seizure of land that belongs to them. “The group is coming [for] land stolen from Palestinian Muslims and Christians,” said Samer Khalaf, still another member of the New Jersey chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Those who attended the Rabbi Pruzansky’s presentation saw things differently. Many reportedly said they would consider the idea of buying in the disputed territories.
“Arabs live in Israel; why can’t Jews live amongst Palestinians?” asked Bernard Kornmehl of Teaneck.
“Remember 9/11!” some shouted, holding signs that said “Go Home — Protest Arab Murder and Terrorism.”
Others who have considered moving to Israel had concerns about living in a disputed territory.
“I’m afraid for my physical safety,” said Teaneck resident Ari Jacobson, who attended the presentation to pick up sales literature for a relative. “Living in New Jersey, you ask, “Do I take the bus or the train to work?’ There, it’s: “Does the bus have bulletproof windows?’ “
So the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues, even here in the USA.