US Politician urges Americans to move to settlements in violation of international law

Wednesday November 18, 2009 07:08 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

A Democratic State Assemblyman from New York is leading a mission of 50 US citizens through illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, encouraging the US citizens to move to the illegal settlements in violation of international law.

Dov Hikind, who represents the 48th District of Brooklyn, told Israeli media, "Our goal is to send a clear message to Washington and President Obama that Jews will continue to live in Judea and Samaria (the ethnocentric Israeli name of the Palestinian territory of the West Bank of the River Jordan) and the ultimate commitment American Jews can make is to actually come and buy property in these areas as this will ensure these communities' security and growth."

He added, "For now, if a Jew wants to buy something in the Land of Israel there shouldn't be anything that says you can't buy in a particular area because Jews should not live there because that area has to be segregated." But he failed to mention that Israel has created the segregation system, in which over 50 laws discriminate openly against non-Jews, and Palestinians indigenous to the land are prevented from living in 78% of what was once their own land.

Hikind also failed to mention where the 'land of Israel' to which he refers begins and ends, a trait which is common among right-wing Israeli settlers who hope to continue the expansion of the 'land of Israel' by never openly defining the borders of the state. Since its creation in 1948, Israel has refused to define its own borders, instead continually expanding further and further onto Palestinian loand in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and international law.

The New York Congressman said that he himself plans to buy a house in a new settlement called Nof Zion, where he plans to participate in a 'cornerstone-laying ceremony' on Wednesday. According to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, the 44 dunams of land where Nof Zion is situated are owned by Palestinian families, but were confiscated by occupying troops in 1967. In 2005 the families submitted an appeal to the Israeli high court of justice to prevent construction on their land, but it was rejected.

Hikind said that the idea of a settlement freeze as a precondition for peace talks is "ridiculous and outrageous", and criticized the idea that US President Barack Obama had taken such a position, even for a short while, earlier this year.

But the indigenous Palestinians whose land has been seized for the construction of these settlements say that there is no way to negotiate when the occupying army has complete control over every aspect of their lives, including control over Palestinian air, land and sea borders, internal control over their travel, vehicles, IDs, birth and death records, and land. Palestinians whose land is seized have no recourse in the Israeli court system, which does not recognize their right to the land as the indigenous inhabitants, even when the Palestinian owners present titles and deeds to the land in question.

Rejecting Obama, U.S. Jews push West Bank settlement

Tuesday, 17 Nov 2009 02:53pm EST 

By Tom Perry

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -

President Barack Obama may be telling Israelis that building settlements round Jerusalem risks dangerously fuelling Palestinian anger, but some of his fellow Democrats brought the opposite message to the city on Wednesday.

Dov Hikind, a member of New York state's assembly, looked out over Jerusalem's Old City and dismissed the "extreme" view on the matter taken by his party's president.

He urged fellow American Jews to buy homes on occupied land rather than in traditional U.S. vacation spots.

"I'm trying to get a whole bunch of my friends to actually buy," said Hikind during a tour of settlement housing projects for several dozen potential U.S. investors.

"Rather than buying second homes in Florida, we want people to buy in Israel," he said, having watched a foundation stone laid for an extension to the Nof Zion, or Zion View, settlement (which is built illegally on Palestinian lands).

Palestinians, whose leaders declared this week's Israeli government approval for more settlement building near Jerusalem a killer blow to peace, reject Hikind's description of Nof Zion as "Israel," as it lies on occupied land they want for a state.

But his views, shared by significant numbers of American Jews, many of them Democrat voters, are an indication of Obama's difficulties in holding to his demands that Israel halt its expansion of settlements in the interests of a peace agreement.

Hikind's active participation in the settlement policy that has seen Israel move close to a tenth of its Jewish population onto land captured from the Arabs in the 1967 war is not very common among Jews in the United States. But financial support from Americans, some benefiting from U.S. tax relief on charity, is a significant source of funding for West Bank settlements.

A small group of Israeli peace activists staged a protest against Hikind's tour on Wednesday. Israeli left-wingers echo Obama's line that expanding settlement for ideological and religious reasons is jeopardizing Israel's security.

Settlements, home to significant numbers of immigrants from the United States, also benefit from support from fundamentalist American Christians -- like Republican former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

"The thing that prompted me to organize this group is being so angry at the Obama administration," said Hikind.

"I WANT TO LIVE HERE"

As he looked out across the valley toward the Old City, where the gilded Dome of the Rock marks out the Muslim holy site that Jews rever as the site of their ancient Temple, he said:

"I don't want to displace anyone. I don't want to kick anyone out of their homes. I have no hate, no malice in my heart. I want to live here and I am trying to work that out."

(But Palestinians are not allowed to live wherever they want in Israel. Further, Muslims from around the world would love to come to the US to live there. Is Hikind willing to allow them to do so?).

Yet Palestinians in the city feel that is exactly what Israel and its international supporters are trying to do, displacing today's inhabitants with foreign-born Jews who claim an ancestral and religious right to land going back 2,000 years.

  (Cana'anite Arabs were in the Holy Land before the arrival of Abraham, about 4,500 years ago).