Building Housing Units In Samaria Today

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

                                 How the Palestinian Arabs see Judea and Samaria

Israel won the Six Day War in 1967 and by doing so, received Judea and Samaria in the process.  Yes, it is historically accurate that Israel gained control of the West Bank (which it refers to by the biblical names Judea and Samaria) during the Six-Day War in 1967. That is the Jewish homeland that they were led to by Mosesand Joshua.  Their Jewish history tells all about it in the Bible, from Genesis onward.  Some call this the "Old Testament;  weJews call it the Torah, and Tanakh.  

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s inner circle debated new steps to apply sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria.

Bezalel Yoel Smotrich (Hebrew: בְּצַלְאֵל יוֹאֵל סְמוֹטְרִיץ׳; born 27 February 1980) is a 45 year old Israeli politician and lawyer who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. The leader of the National Religious Party–Religious Zionism, he previously served as a Knesset member for the Jewish Home and Yamina, leaving in 2023 after resigning under the Norwegian Law, allowing him to remain a minister in the government while his seat in the Knesset could be taken by another candidate from his party.   

Smotrich lives in the Israeli-Judea Samaria, living in the town of Kedumim, which is illegal under international-UN law. Israel disputes this.  His residence was also built illegally outside the town proper.  Kedumim (Hebrew: קְדוּמִים, romanized: Kdumim), is an Israeli town in the northern Samaria. Founded on Hanukkah 1975;50 years ago,  by members of the Gush Emunim settlement movement, it later became a local council. In 2023 it had a population of 4,539. 

   Beit El is located next door to the end of Ilit, above Ramallah

Smotrich was born in Haspin, a religious Israeli settlement in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and grew up in the Beit El settlement, deemed illegal under international law, but not to Israel law.  Beit El or Beth El (Hebrew: בֵּית אֵל) is an Israeli settlement and local council located in the Binyamin Region of the West Bank. The Orthodox Jewish town was settled in 1977–78 by the ultranationalist group Gush Emunim. It is located in the hills north of Jerusalem (Samaria), east of the Palestinian city of al-Bireh, adjacent to Ramallah, a Palestinian town. In September 1997, Beit El was awarded local council status. The head of the local council is Shai Alon. In 2023 its population was 6,040.

Finance Minister Smotrich advanced the controversial E1 settlement plan, authorizing 3,401 housing units in Ma’ale Adumim, declaring it “the final nail in the coffin of the Palestinian state idea.” That must be because it's a city, not a town or village, and it is populated by Jews of Israel. 

Construction in E1 is controversial.When the Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved the construction plans in for the 3400-home settlement August 2025, he clarified that the move is designed to "bury the idea of Palestinian state". Specifically, the plan aims at preventing any possible expansion of East Jerusalem by creating a physical link between Ma'ale Adumim and Jerusalem, and that it would effectively complete a crescent of Israeli settlements around East Jerusalem dividing it from the rest of the West Bank and its Palestinian population centers, and create a continuous Jewish population between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim. It would also nearly bisect Judea-Samaria (the West Bank), jeopardizing the prospects of a contiguous Palestinian state. 

Palestinians describe the E1 plan as an effort to Judaize Jerusalem.

That is such a statement!  Jerusalem is Jewish!  It was built by David who was king of Israel in 1010 BCE.  It became the capital of united Israel.  He had  taken over the Jebusites and dealt leniently with them.  

Ma'ale Adumim (Hebrew: מַעֲלֵה אֲדֻמִּים;  is an urban Israeli city organized as a city council in Judea-Samaria ( the West Bank), seven kilometers (4.3 miles) east of Jerusalem.  Ma'ale Adumim achieved city status in 1991. In 2015, its population was 36,680. It is located along Highway 1, which connects it to Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area. The international community considers Israeli villages, towns, cities in Judea-Samaria illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.

Judea and Samaria's land was divided into areas A,B, and C during the Oslo Accords.  "Yes, the Oslo II Accord of 1995 divided the occupied West Bank into three administrative areas: Area A, under full Palestinian Authority (PA) control for civilian and security matters; Area B, under PA civilian control but with shared Israeli military control; and Area C, remaining under full Israeli civil and military administration. These divisions were intended as part of an interim period before final status negotiations on issues like borders, settlements, and Palestinian statehood were to take place."  That was 30 years ago.  During this time, the Arabs havenot followed the rules and reports of them building in thewrong sections are many.  

The primary leaders who met during the Oslo II Accord in 1995 were Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, with U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian representatives also present to witness the signing in Taba, Egypt. The leaders from the original 1993 Oslo Accord, which laid the groundwork for the 1995 agreement, were Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, and Bill Clinton. 

Ron Dermer, though born in Miami, Florida, is Israel's (Hebrew: רון דרמר‎; born April 16, 1971)54 year old politician and diplomat serving as the Minister of Strategic Affairs since 2022 and as head of the negotiations for hostages' release since February 2025. He served as the Israeli Ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021.He was only 42 then as a new ambassador.  

Strategic Affairs Minister, Ron Dermer,  supported sovereignty, saying “there will be sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” while Foreign Minister Sa’ar and others warned unilateral annexation could trigger major European backlash. 

The UK has summoned Israel’s ambassador to protest the plan, and 21 countries have issued a joint statement condemning the move.  

Considering that about all of the UN members are going to accept "Palestine" as a state in the next vote in October due to the false accusations that are using photos to prove their case, that Israel is starving children, it's no wonder that the UK and 21 countries all condemn this move.  It's timing is not good!                                             

I might add that when King Solomon died, his son, Jeroboam took the throne and the northern states divided themselves from Judah over a dispute about taxes to pay for the Temple and the labor of workers lack of pay.  10 northern tribes were attacked by Assyria.  What was left was Judea/Samaria with Samaria being the outer land of Jerusalem.  

     Area spoken of as the Jewish National Home by Britain and the Jewish spokesmen in 1920.  This became the Jewish Expectation but Britain saw more in it for themselves by giving the land to Abdullah, Prince of Arabia instead;  Jews got 10% of the promised land only.  Judea and Samaria were part of the 10%. Israel got the southern desert area more than anything.

While Britain's 1917 Balfour Declaration promised to establish a "national home for the Jewish people in Palestine," Judea and Samaria were not designated part of a Jewish state due to the area's overwhelming Arab population. This reality shaped the numerous and ultimately unsuccessful partition proposals put forward by the British and the United Nations.  What most people don't realize is that Britain did keep Jewsout while letting Arabs in the land.  They were not so innocent intheir deception.  The Peel Commission of 1937 (well into Germany's attacks on Jews already)  tells us "

• Context: Escalating Arab-Jewish violence in the 1930s prompted the British to establish a Royal Commission, led by Lord Peel, to investigate the causes and propose a solution.
• Proposal: The commission recommended partitioning Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. Judea and Samaria were allocated to the Arab state, along with most of the Negev and the Gaza Strip. A small, internationally controlled zone was proposed for Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and a corridor to the coast.     
• Following the 1948 war, the territory of Judea and Samaria was not included within the newly formed State of Israel. Instead, it was captured and annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. This arrangement held until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the territory from Jordan.
• Since when has international or UN law been fair in dealing with Israel?                            

Resource:

israelAM

https://www.anera.org/what-are-area-a-area-b-and-area-c-in-the-west-bank/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Dermer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezalel_Smotrich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedumim

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_El

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27ale_Adumim

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E1_(West_Bank)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-peel-commission#:~:text=At%20the%20height%20of%20the,one%20area%20to%20the%20other.

  

English As a 2nd Language Gets Muddled By Bezalel Smotrich When Talking About A Palestine

 Nadene Goldfoot                                         

Bezalel talking to David Friedman, US Ambassador to Israel in Sderot, the closest town to Gaza in 2017.  Bezalel Smotrich was born in Haspin, a religious Israeli community in the Golan Heights, and grew up in the Beit El community, deemed illegal under international law, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. His last name is derived from the Ukrainian town of Smotrych, where  his ancestors lived. His grandfather Yaakov immigrated to Mandatory Palestine before World War II and he subsequently lost his parents, who drowned on an Aliyah Bet ship trying to reach Palestine, while his grandmother Bruria survived the Holocaust before immigrating to Israel. His grandfather Shimon was a 13th generation native of Jerusalem and his grandmother Sara was born in Metula to a family of Zionist pioneers.   He's invested in Israel.  He's a Sabra, hard on the outside, butsoft on the inside, but I'm waiting to see the softness (heart).  

   The question of the Palestinian people being a valid title was brought up today by  Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich who  denied the existence of a Palestinian people or nationhood over the weekend, prompting a rebuke from the United States just weeks after calling for a Palestinian town to be “erased.”  I'm sorry to see that the United States is not mindful of Israeli history.

   Not the town, G-d forbid, but the name of being a Palestinian town, for now, the land is all Israel, except for Judea and Samaria, which ironically was the original Israel. So it could be called a Judean town or a Samarian town or an Israeli town but NOT a Palestinian town. It was Jordan who called Judea and Samaria "West Bank" which means the west side of the Jordan River.

They, like the Romans, wanted to erase the memory of Israel which had included Judea and Samaria.  Name change results in mind-altering, and they win without a fight.  It's a brain-washing technique. 

It should be referred to as an Israeli town if its in the parameters.                    

Palestinians started as a Roman term for the people living in Judea-Samaria when Bar Kokhba, the Israelite general, fought against the Romans and took back Jerusalem from 132 to 135 CE.  The Romans hadn't ever lost a battle before and were so furious that they renamed the land for the Philistines, the Israelites fiercest enemy.   From then on, both Arabs and Jews were called Palestinians because the Romans had named the land, Palestine.  

Even in the 1920s at the end of World War I, both people were Palestinians.  However, there had been no government over the land except the Ottoman Empire who lost it all by the end of the war because their side, including Germany, had lost.  They were the losers. If anything, the workers or soldiers of the Ottoman Empire were called Turks, because Turkey was the center of the Ottoman Empire.  

There was no capital of any Palestine, government of a Palestine with a king or a president or a Sultan, nothing.  Nothing except the British who were given the 30 year mandate to keep the peace in the land.  

Jews who have come far and wide to live there.  .                    

Bezalel Smotrich's father is an Orthodox rabbi, and Smotrich received a religious education, attending Mercaz HaRav Kook, Yashlatz, and Yeshivat Kedumim. During his short service in the Israel Defense Forces, he served as a secretary in the Operations Division of the General Staff. He earned a BA in law from Ono Academic College, and began a master's degree in public and international law from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, though he did not complete it. He is licensed as a lawyer.

 Thought of by a few as one of the most brilliant and influential members of the house, he is proud to be the Knesset’s right-wing bellwether, and is perceived as radical even within the national-religious milieu from which he emerged – the settlement movement. In the brief year and a half since he was sworn in, Smotrich has succeeded in guiding the direction of his party (through his leadership of the struggle to prevent the dismantling of the Amona outpost in the West Bank, which needs a lot of explanation.  .  

                          Kedumim, homes that the world has not accepted as being "kosher" who considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank (Judea/Samaria)  illegal under international law. According to the BBC, as of 2008 "every government in the world, except Israel, considered the settlements to be illegal". The Israeli government, dispute this. 

The Palestinians kept Israel away for a long time by notmeeting them for peace talks.  After so many years, this becomes ridiculous.  They went ahead and moved there. 

It's typical of the international world to deny Jews their origin.

 This was  messed up by the British originally, and accepted bythe Jewish delegation who considered the deal "better thannothing" while the Arabs had rejected ittotally.  Today we are left with the anti-Semitic denial of Jewish-origin land to Jews who have come far and wide to live there. 

 Smotrich is an Orthodox Jew, and is married to Revital, with whom he has seven children. The family lives outside the Kedumim settlement in Judea/Samaria.  To me, he is way too narrow-minded to be in government, period.  His style of being Jewish does not go along with the norm, but is fanatical.  Narrow minded people do not see the whole pictures, only their narrow alley of it.  They do not consider consequences that can take lives.  I'm disgusted. 

Law professor Eugene Kontorovich joined Michelle Makori to lay out the legal case for Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2018:, and I hope to one day see what he thinks about Smotrich's views.  

When the Israelites returned to Canaan they found it already populated after their 400 year Slavery in Egypt.  When Jews fled back to Palestine before WWI to be met by their fellow mishpuka who hadn't left, and then right after WWI, they found Arabs living in the land.  Both times, it's been the challenge to oblige G-ds command as to where Jews were to live.  These so-called cousins have been enemies ever since bible days with Isaac and Esau, non-fraternal twins, both trying to get the upper hand.   

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_for_Palestine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezalel_Smotrich

International Law Argument Against UNSC 2334 and Barack Hussein Obama's Rendition

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                    

Reminder:  Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel and of Judah  from King David's realm of 1010 BCE until 70 CE when Romans burned it all down.  

The title of a book that tells all about how Obama's goal was to get Jerusalem's Western Wall out of the hands of the Israelis was written in 2017. That is pretty shocking to most American Jews. 

The Western Wall is the only place that allows Jews to pray there on the Temple Mount.  There are Muslim prayer policemen from Jordan that watch lips of people who dock a person if caught praying.  That's because Israel's Moshe Dayan to make a deal with Jordan's leader to be in charge of the religious factor with all the mosques on the Temple Mount. 

 It was a good idea at the time, but they have taken advantage of their position immensely to the point of being ridiculous.  To keep this peace, Israel has allowed it since some rabbis are against praying up there anyway.  Our 2nd Temple is supposed to be under the Al Aqsa Mosque and that includes the Holy of Holies area where Jews were not to be in. Their advice is to pray at the Wall.    

 Barack Hussein Obama was president from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017.  Ezequiel Doiny is the author of this book.       

Ezequiel Doiny, author lives in New Jersey 

Obama's assault on Jerusalem's Western Wall: --"Bill Clinton's Parameters (2000): The Temple Mount in Palestine, the Western Wall in Israel." --"Obama's UNSC 2334 : both are in Palestine" Paperback – June 30, 2017

This book reveals Obama's role in the plot to take the Western Wall from Israel-

The newer villages, towns and cities occupied only 1.7% of Judea-Samaria "the West Bank back in 2017-5 years ago." The Obama administration lied about "massive settlement construction". By inventing the fake news of “massive settlement construction”, they created a false sense of urgency to justify the anti-Israel UNSC 2334 resolution. -

Obama's UNSC 2334 ruled that “the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law,” saying that The UNSC 2334 rules that both the Temple Mount and the Western Wall are in “occupied Palestinian territory”-

       Professor Eugene Kontorovitch

This is the complete opposite of what Professor Kontorovitch has said who is an international lawyer. 

 

1. Israel's settlements (word for villages, towns and cities) do not violate international law.

While issues of international law are both complex and fuzzy, suffice it to say that according to international legal expert Eugene Kontorovich, the UNSC cannot make international law. Indeed, Resolution 2334 instead cites as its legal authority the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Simply stated, this convention holds that a country cannot forcibly move its population into another state's conquered territory. Read these words carefully. Since Israel has not forcibly moved any people into Judea-Samaria – all have settled there on their own initiative – Israel does not violate this stricture.

In addition, prior to Israel taking control of Judea and Samaria in 1967, this previously stateless territory was occupied illegally by Jordan, which conquered it temporarily during the 1948 War of Independence. Jordan has since entered into a peace treaty with Israel and given up its claim to all lands in Judea and Samaria, and thus Israel's settlements are in no way occupying the land of another state.   

                                                                                         

In his autobiography Bill Clinton describes his parameters for a final status agreement (2000): Clinton was president from 1993 to 2001.  

“On territory, I recommended 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank for the Palestinians with a land swap from Israel of 1 to 3 %, and an understanding that the land kept by Israel would include 80 percent of the settlers in blocs...

The Al-Aqsa Mosque is the name of the mosque that sits atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. In a narrow view, it refers to just the mosque, but it can also refer to the Dome of the Rock, the Gates of the Temple Mount, and the four minarets. Muslims consider the entire compound to be a holy site.

On Jerusalem, I recommended that the Arab neighborhoods be in Palestine and the Jewish neighborhoods in Israel, and that the Palestinians should have sovereignty over the Temple Mount/Haram and the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall...Obama needed to hear this from Clinton. 

Israel has a very different view of the situation.

Jerusalem is one whole city.  It is not to be divided.  Israel won the 1967 war when they were attacked by all Muslim nations and yet they won.  This remains one of the most dramatic statements in Israel's history. Since the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967, the city has become a haven for coexistence and revitalized religious and cultural expression for all faiths.  Jerusalem was reunified under Israeli rule as a result of the 1967 Six-Day War launched against Israel by the Arab world.

Despite Israel's appeal to Jordan to stay out of the war, Jordanian forces fired artillery barrages at Israeli cities and also attacked and occupied the UN headquarters in Jerusalem. At first Israel held back but eventually was forced to counterattack and within two days was able to defeat and repulse the Jordanian forces across the West Bank and retake Eastern Jerusalem. On June 7, IDF paratroopers, after fierce fighting with Jordanian soldiers, were able to advance into the Old City and gain control of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.  "The Temple Mount is in our hands" – the report from Paratroop Commander Lt. Motta Gur – remains one of the most dramatic statements in Israel's history.

In July 1980, the Knesset passed the Jerusalem Law as part of the country's Basic Law, which declared Jerusalem the unified capital of Israel.

Clinton continued:  "When Arafat came to see me...he wanted Israel to have the Wailing Wall, because of its religious significance, but asserted that the remaining fifty feet of the Western Wall should go to the Palestinians. I told him he was wrong, that Israel should have the entire wall to protect itself from someone using one entrance of the tunnel that ran beneath the wall from damaging the remains of the temples beneath the Haram". 

The Old City has four quarters: Jewish, Muslim Christian, and Armenian. It was assumed that Palestine would get the Muslim and Christian quarters, with Israel getting the other two.

                                                 

 Arafat argued that he should have a few blocks of the Armenian quarter because of the Christian churches there. I couldn’t believe he was talking to me about this....

I said these parameters were nonnegotiable and were the best I could do...

Arafat’s rejection of my proposal after Barak accepted it was an error of historic proportions...”-Source: Clinton, Bill. “My Life.” Vintage (2005). pp. 936-946.https://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Bill-Clinton/dp/140003003X/ref=pd_sim_b_1http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/president-clinton-reflects-on-2000-camp-david-summit-                              

Jerusalem's Western Wall with Temple Mount in view with Jews at wall: Kotel, Wailing Wall.   

Obama tried to portrait UNSC 2334 as being about settlements but it is actually much more than that. If Obama just wanted to stop settlement growth, as he claims, why did he authorize a resolution that rules that both Jerusalem's Temple Mount and the Western Wall are “occupied Palestinian territory”?   

(While Clinton's parameters were that it is nonnegotiable that the Temple Mount would be in Palestine while the Western Wall would remain in Israel)-A point by point comparison shows that there are major differences between Ytzhak Rabin's view on the Oslo Accords (1993, 1995), 

Bill Clinton's parameters for peace (2000) and 

Obama's UNSC 2334 (2016). 

This book presents a point by point comparison on Territory, Securiy, Jerusalem, Holy Sites, Refugees.-Before UNSC 2334 the territories were "disputed", now they are "illegally occupied". 

Obama's UNSC 2334 turned Israel into a criminal State. Obama's UNSC 2334 has killed the Peace Process, there is nothing left to negotiate. 

The ICC will now impose a timeline for an Israeli withdrawal. The ICC will give Israel a choice: stay in the territories and be marginalized as a criminal State or withdraw from the territories and commit suicide. Obama's UNSC 2334 is a formula for Israel's destruction: If Israel withdraws from all the West Bank's land, Hamas will take over and attack Israel from the West Bank from as it does from Gaza.

Obama was not qualified to make such decisions.  He was not a general, but his original job before going into politics was that of a lawyer, but not international law.  After graduating, he became a civil rights attorney and an academic, teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Turning to elective politics, he represented the 13th district in the Illinois Senate from 1997 until 2004, when he ran for the U.S. Senate.  He knew more than Trump about the constitution, but certainly not more than Kontorovitch on international law.  

When Netanyahu succeeded Olmert, he declared that "all of Jerusalem would always remain under Israeli sovereignty" and that only Israel would "ensure the freedom of religion and freedom of access for the three religions to the holy places".

These statements seem to closely reflect Israeli public opinion. According to a 2012 poll by the right-wing Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 78% of Jewish voters who responded said that they would reconsider voting for any politician that wants to relinquish Israel's control over the Old City and East Jerusalem.

On 17 May 2015, Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated, regarding Jerusalem serving as the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state, "Jerusalem has forever been the capital of only the Jewish people and no other nation."

On 2 January 2018 Israel passed into law new legislation that requires the two-thirds majority support of the Knesset for any section of Jerusalem to be transferred to a foreign government.

On 25 January 2018, Netanyahu repeated the previous government position but seemed to alter it, reportedly saying: "Under any peace agreement the capital of Israel will continue to be in Jerusalem."