Why We Keep On Building

Here is a picture of Ariel, the 4th largest Jewish city in Judea with over 16,000.
It is 25 miles from Tel Aviv.

by Nadene Goldfoot

A half million Israelis live in Judea-Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem. This had been the heartland of Ancient Israel. It was regained after the War of 1967 when Israel was attacked from all sides. The Arabs had thought that surely they would win being Israel was so outnumbered.


By winning, Israel gained back this land. They started to populate it more. At the time, there was no consideration of Palestinians declaring their own state and wanting this piece of land as they had been offered land way back in the beginning in 1948 and had refused it. They were not desperate like Jews were to have their own state. They did not need their own state. Now that they see that they have not wiped out Israel, they are making out that they need the land for their statehood. In reality they just don't want Israel to be there. This is another form of warfare against Israel.


Israel has given in everytime a chance has come up to trade in land for peace. They even had a moratorium on building in Judea-Samaria for 10 months, giving the Palestinians time to recognize and come to terms with Israel, possibly even leading to changing their charter of wiping out Israel. The Palestinians let the time lapse. Now that they see that Israel is not upset by it and has started to build without extending anymore time, the Arabs are pouting, and have given the United States a month in order to get Israel into a discussion about peace terms. Of course the peace terms I can imagine will be all about what the Palestinians are steering towards, the destruction of Israel, where we ask for recognition.


Israel is not as naive anymore. It's in the state of living and developing. Their best soldiers happen to come from the Judea-Samaria area nowdays. 40% of IDF combat officers are religious zionists. That means that they understand the relevance of Judea and Samaria to Israel. This is why losing this area is traumatic.


Israel is not a state that just happened to be settled by Jews because it was just an empty swampy ugly piece of available arid land. It was the spot that our religion centered on in that we were given the land by G-d and were meant to be there. I don't know of any other place on this planet that has such a history. You have to recognize the meaning of Israel to Jews. Evangelical Christians certainly do. Places such as Europe have become unattached to religion lately and seem to have forgotten this history and why Israel means so much to us. After bouncing around from country to country looking for acceptance for 2,000 years, we realized that we needed to be back in our homeland. We could contribute to the world our creations and ideas better that way. Strangely, our land had laid fallow for the whole time we had been gone. No one really wanted it. It had become a mess, but it was our land.


Israel was very fair in giving Abbas time to come around and do the right thing in recognizing the state that he intends to live next door to. Would you want to move into a house that sits next door to your hated enemy? If he wants that house bad enough he's going to have to get along with the neighbor that's already there somehow. Good parental psychology says that you don't keep making threats to your children and then not abide by the rules that you have set. Netanyahu has done the same thing. Now he has every right to keep on building, and the plan right now is in East Jerusalem. Jerusalem, after all, is Israel's capital. If people don't remember, it was the capital of ancient Israel, also. It's more than special to us.


We've been at odds ever since the days of Abraham. It was a disappointment to us then and still is. When the day comes that the Arabs want to be friends, well, that will be the day. I guess, from the looks of this past 63 year history, it just may take the Messiah to bring it about. Something great has to touch their hearts and bring about a change in attitude.



http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/?p=5948 from Wall Street Journal by Yossi Klein Halevi Why Israel Won't Abandon the Settlers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101016/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_israel_palestinians