Jewish settlers dream of new life in US |
| Posted by: MrJukoVette | |
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From Kadim to the Bronx: Jewish settlers dream of new life in US
Sun Apr 3, 5:35 PM ET
KADIM SETTLEMENT, West Bank (AFP) - "Israel is finished! Long live America!" Set to be evacuated from the tiny Jewish outpost of Kadim in the northern West Bank, Motti Elgarissi has only one dream: to emigrate.
"I can't go on any longer. (Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon wants to uproot us? Very well then, I can't stand this country any longer," said Elgarissi.
The postage-stamp sized, putrid-smelling Kadim with its overgrown grass and decrepit alleys is perched above the Palestinian city of Jenin, itself a veritable bastion of resistance to the Israeli occupation.
Now in his 50s, Elgarissi earns a living by operating a mobile restaurant out of the back end of a bus. But he is not the only one to profess his disgust at the seeming inevitability of Israel's evacuation of settlers from 21 outposts in occupied Gaza and another four, including Kadim, in the West Bank.
The last political obstacle to the pullout was overcome late Tuesday when parliament passed the 2005 state budget, averting a government crisis that could otherwise have forced early elections and delayed the withdrawal.
Martine Achgari, originally from near Paris, has been living in Kadim for almost 20 years. "Here we are waiting for death. I would also happily leave for America or Paris," said the petite brunette.
Her 22-year-old daughter Karen finished military service two years ago and has been unemployed ever since.
"No one has hired me. All the employers are in the town and they worry I'll be late because of all the army checkpoints in the area," she said.
"We have become outcasts," Karen added. "And it was the government who encouraged us to move here".
One of a dozen families left in Kadim out of the 42 who lived there before the Palestinian uprising broke out in September 2000, Achgari chose Kadim for its peace and greenery.
Encouraged by successive leftist and right-wing governments since the late 1980s, Elgarissi and Achgari used to think their presence in Kadim, within shooting distance of Jenin, was "vital to Israeli security".
"We've been had. Security is a lie," said Elgarissi's wife Dvora. "Sharon, who swears only by security, lied to us. Otherwise, you would let us live here," she added directing her anger at the prime minister.
Like her husband of 32 years, she also dreams of living in New York. "Over there, I could open a restaurant and sell my pizzas. Here, there's no one left to buy them. I don't have the strength anymore," she said, catching her breath.
"No more strength for this country that has betrayed us," she added.
For the settlers, most of them secular, their main preoccupation is uncertainty over indemnities promised by the Sharon administration to recompense their forced expulsion.
"There are rumours going around about the amount of money... If they turn out to be true, it would mean the government is spitting on us," said Elgarissi.
When he moved in Kadim in 1987, his red-roofed house and small garden cost him the equivalent of 5,000 dollars today.
Israeli government officials have already told settlers that they can expect compensation of up to 100,000 dollars, the equivalent cost of an average three-room apartment in Israel.
"The disgrace!" deplored the Elgarissi couple. |
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| Posted by: rowdyrjp | | As many have pointed out, these "settlers" have been just as guilty as the "terrorists" in maintaining and instigating Israelie-Palestinian violence.
They are as committed to taking and holding as much land from Palestinians as Hamas is to taking land from Israel.
With elements on both sides fanatically motivated.. what hope do moderates have? | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Merkava | |
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rowdyrjp said this in post #2 :
As many have pointed out, these "settlers" have been just as guilty as the "terrorists" in maintaining and instigating Israelie-Palestinian violence.
They are as committed to taking and holding as much land from Palestinians as Hamas is to taking land from Israel.
With elements on both sides fanatically motivated.. what hope do moderates have? |
Hamas doesn't take land from Israel, they take life from Israel. Last time I checked, settlers weren't blowing up Palestinian children.
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| Posted by: rowdyrjp | | Sure they do .. when the children are some of those that are trying to take back the "settlements"... they shoot and kill them under the guise of defense???? How can you claim defense in the name of something you ILLEGALLY stole?
Let's be honest, the "settlements" are one of if not the biggest obstacles to peace! These armed incursions into Palestinian territory are a thinl veiled military occupation { by fanatic militants instead of sanctioned Israelie Army .. nudge nudge wink wink}. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: hazel_dragoneye | |
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Merkava said this in post #3 :
Hamas doesn't take land from Israel, they take life from Israel. |
I have to disagree with you Merkava. Hamas are a group of thugs that do kill and rob the Israelis but we must learn the motives behind their actions before we judge.
They simply are suppressed people, The Palestinians. My uncle, who is a doctor for the United Nations in an organization called, 'Doctors with out borders' toke me with him to Israel.
I could not believe the poverty and the moral degradgation of the citizens in the Gaza strip and the Golan. The young men aged around 18-33 had revenge on their minds and were willing to destroy the Israelis for the personal freedom of the Palestinians. Their leader (at the time) favored violence and blood for the Palestinians but the younger aged kids have said that Yassir Arafat helped them build confidence in their future nation and their nationality and nothing more.
When I asked a Palestinian tell him his opinion of the Israeli occupation, he refused because there was an Israeli soldier standing nearby. Their anger in the occupation and the lust for a Palestinian state created these "terrorist" groups that planned their attacks under ground. Also college students in the area were planning their vision for a 'New Palestine' where the citizens would be completely Muslim and speak only Arabic. Scholarly students had these secret societies that were aimed at Palestinian independence. The major secret socieities make the headlines for their violence.
When I was there in 1994, the Palestinians caught this disease that spread throughout the villages and towns. It was called, 'The measles'. I remember watching my uncle climb the dilapidated tenement stairs and visiting these sickly people. Most of the cases were elderly adults that had no immunity towards the sickness, but my uncle eased their pain by giving them anti-viral medication and injecting their babies with a Mumps, Measleas and Rubella shot (MMR).
It eased their pain for awhile but the adult patients died more frequently than the younger children. I cried mournfully when I heard this sickly woman saying that she wasn't even lamentable that she was dying. All she wanted was for her daughter to grow up in a state where there was peace and stability.
'Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.'-- H.G. Wells
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| Posted by: jeff54 | |
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hazel_dragoneye said this in post #5 :
I have to disagree with you Merkava. Hamas are a group of thugs that do kill and rob the Israelis but we must learn the motives behind their actions before we judge.
They simply are suppressed people, |
Hazel I think you have to look at the reasons that they became suppressed and who suppressed them before you judge Israel. It wasn't Israel who kept them in refugee camps. It was the rest of the Arab world who would not allow them to leave the camps and caused the squalor they live in.
On the contrary Israel after the '67 war did multiple things to improve the lives of the Palestinians. Here are some facts :
"Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent. Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.
In the economic sphere, most of this progress was the result of access to the far larger and more advanced Israeli economy: the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to 66,000 in 1975 and 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.
During the 1970's, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world-ahead of such "wonders" as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan's $1,050, Egypt's $600, Turkey's $1,630, and Tunisia's $1,440). By 1999, Palestinian per-capita income was nearly double Syria's, more than four times Yemen's, and 10 percent higher than Jordan's (one of the betteroff Arab states). Only the oil-rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.
Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000 (in Iraq the rate is 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases like polio, whooping cough, tetanus, and measles were eradicated.
No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians' standard of living. By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967; 83.5 percent had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4 percent in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions, and cars.
Finally, and perhaps most strikingly, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980's, the number of schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102 percent, and the number of classes by 99 percent, though the population itself had grown by only 28 percent. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the time of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990's, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.
ALL THIS, as I have noted, took place against the backdrop of Israel's hands-off policy in the political and administrative spheres. Indeed, even as the PLO (until 1982 headquartered in Lebanon and thereafter in Tunisia) proclaimed its ongoing commitment to the destruction of the Jewish state, the Israelis did surprisingly little to limit its political influence in the territories. The publication of proPLO editorials was permitted in the local press, and anti-Israel activities by PLO supporters were tolerated so long as they did not involve overt incitements to violence. Israel also allowed the free flow of PLO-controlled funds, a policy justified by Minister of Defense Ezer Weizmann in 1978 in these (deluded) words: "It does not matter that they get money from the PLO, as long as they don't build arms factories with it." Nor, with very few exceptions, did Israel encourage the formation of Palestinian political institutions that might serve as a counterweight to the PLO. As a result, the PLO gradually established itself as the predominant force in the territories, relegating the pragmatic traditional leadership to the fringes of the political system."
I recommend to everyone reading the entire article.
What Occupation
Another interesting read is the Hamas Covenent if you are interested in reading in their own words what the goals of Hamas are.
Here is a small exerpt.
Hamas Covenent
Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers? "But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah." (The Cow - verse 120).
There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with. As in said in the honourable Hadith: Hamas Covenent
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| Posted by: MrJukoVette | | Good post jeff, people seem to forget (or ignore) this information. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: h@ts | | I've asked a similar question before and it wasn't really cleared up then, but I'll ask it again:
Palastine, in whatever state, existed in the area now know as Israel. Both Jews and Palastinians lived there, the vast majority being Palastinian. There was a mass immigration into the area after WWII and the Nazi holocaust and the Jews, with help from the British, said they wanted their own country. Within a few years the Jews ruled their own country, Isreal, and the Palastinians ruled nothing and had no country of their own.
Is this the crux of the problem in the Middle East? | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: nikiTa | |
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h@ts said this in post #8 :
I've asked a similar question before and it wasn't really cleared up then, but I'll ask it again:
Palastine, in whatever state, existed in the area now know as Israel. Both Jews and Palastinians lived there, the vast majority being Palastinian. There was a mass immigration into the area after WWII and the Nazi holocaust and the Jews, with help from the British, said they wanted their own country. Within a few years the Jews ruled their own country, Isreal, and the Palastinians ruled nothing and had no country of their own.
Is this the crux of the problem in the Middle East? |
No, this is:
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| By this time, Israel was a country of 2 or 3 million surrounded by declared enemies whose combined populations numbered over 100 million. Geographically Israel was so small that at one point it was less than ten miles across. No responsible Israeli government could relinquish a territorial buffer while its hostile neighbors were still formally at war. This is the reality that frames the Middle East conflict. |
Behind it all is who, the Jews or Islam, occupies and controls Jerusalem. That is the bottom line.
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| Posted by: jeff54 | |
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h@ts said this in post #8 :
I've asked a similar question before and it wasn't really cleared up then, but I'll ask it again:
Palastine, in whatever state, existed in the area now know as Israel. Both Jews and Palastinians lived there, the vast majority being Palastinian. There was a mass immigration into the area after WWII and the Nazi holocaust and the Jews, with help from the British, said they wanted their own country. Within a few years the Jews ruled their own country, Isreal, and the Palastinians ruled nothing and had no country of their own.
Is this the crux of the problem in the Middle East? |
Well the British pretty much changed their mind about helping and stopped Jewish emigration into the area. While allowing Arab emigration.
The Palestinians had no country of their own because they turned in down. After about 3/4 of what was the Palestinian mandate was first taken to form Trans-Jordan, the remaining land was partitioned by the UN for a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Israelies accepted this even though they received only a small fraction of what the British promised in the Balfore declaration. The Palestinians turned it down thinking that they along with the other Arab peoples in the area would surely win the war they started instead, and end up with the whole thing. It didn't work out for them.
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| Posted by: h@ts | | I'm still not clear.
The Israeli state did not exist before WWII. Jews were the minority in the area. How did they go from no country, to within just a short time to ruling a country of their own, a Jewish state? There was an Arab majority already living there.
Imagine the trouble this would have caused if it had happened anywhere else in the world? Imagine if Irish New Yorkers had decalred that they wanted New York as their own country, with its own name, New Ireland, a totally seperate nation from the US with it's own government, law, military, seperate from the rest of the US?
Bush is finally talking about a two state solution for the Middle East. The thing is Israel has had a state since the 40's. That means the Palastinians have had no state, no country of their own.
jeff54 -
The Palastinians turned down a country of their own? | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: nikiTa | | h@ts said
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| How did they go from no country, to within just a short time to ruling a country of their own, a Jewish state? |
The UN voted to make Israel a nation in 1948. Now, the UN is doing its best to dismantle their decision. Not surprising since it is made up largely of Arab dictatorships.
And the British, your folk, made a deal with the Arabs to give them a state, under the table so to speak....
Then WWII happened, largely due to decisions made in Versailles in 1919 and the Jews suffered the Holocaust, the world nations voted to make Israel a nation in 1948.
And the Arabs were ticked off, believe it or not. War erupted the day after the UN decision. And the Jews stopped the insurgency and the attacks and have ever since, for the most part. Truly a miracle! | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: MrJukoVette | | Palestinians never had their own state. If i am not mistaken, prior to 1948 they were ruled by Jordan (and/or other arab nations) and had no self-representing government. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: nikiTa | | Juko
If you were replying to my discussion above your post.....
Sorry if I wasn't clear...
the Arabs in and around Jerusalem had a verbal deal with Britain...that never came to fruition because Israel was made a state by the UN in 1948.
This angered the Arabs to the extent of riots and warring against the new Israeli state....and this has never relinquished since then.
This is one of the basis for such angst in the region. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: MrJukoVette | | Sorry, i meant they hever had a state called "Palestine" priot to Britain promising them one, in the first half of the 20th century. From what i have read in 1900s-40s arabs who now live in territories used to be ruled by other arab nations but never had independency. I am not too sure thou, maybe somebody could provide some input on their history before WW2. (or a link) | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: jeff54 | |
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h@ts said this in post #11 :
jeff54 -
The Palastinians turned down a country of their own? |
Yes, the same UN resolution that created Israel provided for a Palestinian state as well. But because the Arabs would not accept any Jewish state at all in the area they rejected the resolution and attacked the new state of Israel.
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| Posted by: nikiTa | | mrjukovette
The name "Palestine" for the area was used by the British hearkening back to the name the Romans gave the land in 125 BC to spite the Jews.
Modern "Palestinians" did not adopt the name until 1967.
Jordanians for instance suddenly were called "Palestinians."
The best book on the subject pre WWII and Post is a book "O Jerusalem" by Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...=books&n=507846
It is unbiased, just gives the facts....and extremely detailed. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: AlexZello | | What do you think of Obadiah Shoher's views on the Middle East conflict? One can argue, of course, that Shoher is ultra-right, but his followers are far from being a marginal group. Also, he rejects Jewish moralistic reasoning - that's alone is highly unusual for the Israeli right. And he is very influential here in Israel. So what do you think? | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: AlexZello | |
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AlexZello said this in post #18 :
What do you think of Obadiah Shoher's views on the Middle East conflict? One can argue, of course, that Shoher is ultra-right, but his followers are far from being a marginal group. Also, he rejects Jewish moralistic reasoning - that's alone is highly unusual for the Israeli right. And he is very influential here in Israel. So what do you think? |
uh, here's the site in question: Middle East conflict
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| Posted by: Dekka00 | | sheesh, that guy's a bit over the top.
I support annexation of West Bank and Gaza, but this dude wants to annex Lebanon and Jordan too. That's out of line. | | Reply To this Message
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Israel & Palestine Forum: Jewish settlers dream of new life in US
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