Moving to Israel

Being a proud American by birth and spending much of my adult life trying to get people to move to Israel, I find nothing more frustrating than when my native home seems to attempt to thwart my efforts of encouraging Jews to return home.  Unfortunately, this seems to happen all too frequently and this week was another example of this as United States envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell arrived in the region this week in efforts to further press the Jewish state into relinquishing territory to the American-backed Palestinian Authority.

I say this discourages people from moving to Israel due to the fact that this move by Mitchell is clearly not in the best interest of the Jewish State and will therefore make Jews think twice about coming. According to sources Mitchell is unveiling a five-point plan that will force local parties back to the negotiating table and press Israel to retreat back to the Armistice Line that existed between the Jewish state and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between the years 1949 and 1967. This would seem to signal an acceptance of the 2002 Arab Initiative, which calls for a complete Israeli surrender from all lands won in the 1967 Six-Day War and the establishment of a new Arab state in these lands.

While this is reason enough that Israel proponents should be weary of this plan (an “agreement” which calls for a complete Israeli surrender from all lands won in a defensive war which almost led to her, G-d forbid, destruction???), one should also be skeptical just by who is calling for this idea. Mitchell has seemingly been hostile and one sided against Israel since he first stepped into the Middle East picture. He clearly does not have Israel’s best interest at heart and, while I truly love America and value its relationship with Israel, I’ve unfortunately learned from the past that when Mitchell is involved it is usually best to root against whatever he is proposing regarding Israel’s “well being.”

Ari

As many of the audience of this moving to Israel blog is from North America, I thought it would be interesting to point out the investigative report released this week by the Center for Near East Policy Research (NEPR) that U.S. assistance to the fledgling Palestinian Authority military puts Israel in a precarious position despite congressional limits on aid to the PA. The Congress had intended the limits to prevent the aid from undermining Israel’s security.

Journalist David Bedein, head of the Jerusalem branch of the NEPR, reports that the U.S. gives Fatah-affiliated PA forces training and military equipment, while at the same time the Fatah-led PA attempts to reconcile with Hamas, which the U.S. recognizes as a terrorist organization.

One risk of America’s heavy involvement in building up PA troops is that the situation could lead to an open attempt to limit Israel’s counterterror options, Bedein said. “Let’s say that Israel wants to go after [Fatah] terrorists – there will be a sort of American veto, because the terrorists are affiliated with the Americans… This has extremely serious implications.”

This should be very disturbing to all of us, particularly we American born Israelis who have a vested interest in all the joint ventures of the U.S. and Israel.

The full NEPR report will be available to the general public on the Israel Behind the News website on Wednesday so everyone is urged to check it out.

Ari