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Friday, October 3, 2014

A Threat of a New Neighborhood for Jews and Arabs Stirring Up USA and France

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

Listen to this one.  Israel has been planning for several years to build 2,610 homes, probably apartments,  in east Jerusalem in the Givat  Hamatos neighborhood.  It is a piece of land that is 170 dunams in size, which means a dunam  is 10,764 square feet or 1,000 square meters.  This is to house Jews AND Arabs.  The USA and France are going crazy about this building saying it is the big threat to the 2 state solution.  France, you should talk?  You've had so much anti-Semitism going on in France that has not been stopped that many Jewish Frenchmen have already emigrated to Israel now, and they need homes to live in.
                                                                       
           Israel's defense system, about to hit an incoming missile from Hamas Palestinians

Now hold your horses, my USA which is my native home. Building homes is not a threat.  It's for life; for the living right now.   I'd say that bombing Israel incessantly since 2001 is more of a threat to the 2 state solution.  I'd also say that Hamas's charter is a huge threat to this 2 state solution far from more than building nice homes for Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem.  What you have done is side with the Palestinians and you want to squeeze all the land you can out of Israel's rightful inheritance from the League of Nations and the 1967 Six Day War whereby ALL of Jerusalem came back into Israel's hands.

This is a first for Jews and Arabs to live in a neighborhood together.  Who has been here before them?  It has been the neighborhood of Ethiopian  and Russian Jewish immigrants.  They've been living in caravans built there on a hill in 1991.  These Ethiopians were in dire straits and were airlifted to Israel. " This was simply an empty hillside, cold and windswept in the winter,"  and located south of the municipal area.  It was close to Bethlehem and Beit Jallah and included a minefield left over from a previous war.  Homeless Israeli families were moved to Givat HaMatos until alternate housing could be found.

It wasn't until 2005 that Israel developed a 4-stage development project for the neighborhood including a panoramic promenade, hotels, cafes, office buildings and commercial space.  Considering how the war went, it was on hold.

In 2007, dozens of immigrant families were still living there in caravans.  Families that had not been successfully absorbed into Israeli society were being helped by many aid organization that were working to alleviate their financial distress.  So, in December 2012, the plan to build 2,610 housing units here was in the first stage and was announced to the world.  This seems silly since Portland, Oregon doesn't have to announce to the world that they are building past 82nd or any other avenue.  However, Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, called the development "unprecedented" and "extremely troubling."   Whatever did she say about Hamas bombing Israel all these years?  Did she think that's okay for a soon to be neighbor to do that to their future neighbor?  

The full plan included about 800 units for Palestinians living in nearby Beit Safafa.  Half of the construction in Gavat Hamatos was for these very Arabs.

The problem belongs to the international community, not Israel.  The international community refuses to recognize Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem and  by taking this stand, they now have the platform to oppose any Israeli construction there.  They are zeroing in on Givat Hamatos more than other places like Ramat Shlomo, a place planned for orthodox Jews.
                                                                           
It  boils down to this;  any natural needed measure like building Israel takes is a "threat to the 2 state solution" but any contentious aggressive act like bombing southern Israel like the Arabs do  to Israel is ignored.  All of Jerusalem is one city.  It is the capital of Jerusalem as far as Israelis are concerned.  How dare the international community deplore and think they can take away the right of Jews to have ALL of Jerusalem as their very own city that was created by their King David.

This young international community does not bother to read up on Israel's history.  All of Palestine was to become the Jewish Homeland at the end of WWI.  England didn't follow the mandate they were handed to fulfill, though, and made their own decisions to placate the Arabs by giving Transjordan to the Arabs which was 80% of the Jewish Homeland.  Since then you've been trying to steal away what's left for Israel, and then after successive wars, 1967's war happened which gave Israel back Jerusalem.  There it will stay, in Israel.

 A far older and wiser city it is than all of yours, oh international community.  It is back where it belongs and you are going to see that Israel does the right thing by the people who live peacefully within its borders.  So go spin your wheels amid the Palestinian Arabs and teach them how to live without bombing neighbors.  That's how to get rid of threats.  What you have been doing is feeding into their hostility.

Resource: http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/22447/netanyahu-tells-white-house-get-facts-straight/?utm_source=Breaking+Israel+News&utm_campaign=c99343614b-BIN+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b6d3627f72-c99343614b-83518689#Xo0ZhGFVJhcCxm2E.97
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Givat_HaMatos
http://www.timesofisrael.com/awkwardly-timed-settlement-announcement-part-two/
magazine from Israel: The Jerusalem Report, October 6, 2014, p 8-13 on Gvaot
Update: 10/7/14  http://honestreporting.com/how-to-create-a-settlement-crisis/

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