As I wait to board my flight to Israel, I’m reading an article from yesterday’s Jewish Week about the resettlement of some of the families who were forcibly evicted from the Gaza Strip, as a result of the “disengagement” which began under Israel’s former Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. These settlers are making their new homes at Maskiyot, a former Israeli air-force base, in the West Bank, at which the Defense Ministry just approved the building of 20 permanent houses.
This move has been criticized as the establishment of a new settlement in the West Bank, the first in ten years. According to the Jewish Week story, it has been protested by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and has caused “unease” among members of the international “Quartet of Middle East peace negotiators”.
The settlement raises questions related to the religious-secular divide in Israel, as many of the settlers evicted from the Gaza Strip were “Orthodox nationalists” who believe they are commanded by the Bible not to give up any land under the State of Israel’s control. According to the Jewish Week, most of the existing Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley are secular Jews, who moved there to bolster the country’s eastern border with Jordan, as proposed by Yigal Allon in 1967.
Will the new settlers be allowed to remain if an agreement is someday reached with the Palestinians? Will the land where they are about to begin rebuilding their lives be traded away in return for promises of peace and security? While I think that such an agreement will be a long time in coming, I can understand the concern of families who have been uprooted once already by a political strategy.
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1 comment:
shalom from malkiya
it was wonderfull to read it..eitan
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