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Settling the Land

Netanyahu: I'll let the 'settlements' grow


By Stan Goodenough
October 03, 2008

If Israelis go to early elections and vote Benjamin Netanyahu back in as prime minister, he will encourage and facilitate the growth of Jewish communities in the land the world insists Israel must give away.

"Bibi," as the official opposition Likud Party leader is popularly known, made this pledge in a pre-Rosh Hashanah interview to an Israel news portal Sunday.

His words contrasted powerfully with the defeatist statements made simultaneously by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who for the first time said publicly what his spokesman said he has been assuring the terrorist PLO's leadership of for months: that Israel is ready to surrender the entire cradle of Jewish civilization, and divide Jerusalem, in exchange for its enemies' promises of peace.

Blasting the world's prejudiced support for increasing "Palestinian" populations in Samaria and Judea, Netanyahu said he does not "understand why there can be natural growth in Arab neighborhoods, but not in Jewish neighborhoods.

"There is a difference between the plans of a family that has more children and wants to close off its balcony, and the building of additional neighborhoods," he said, in an apparent appeal for reasonableness from an international audience vociferously opposed to any continued Jewish presence in these lands.

"There is no reason why there shouldn't be development of existing [Jewish] neighborhoods."

Concerning Israel's capital, Netanyahu was even more direct:

According to The Jerusalem Post, he proudly referred to construction in Jerusalem during his tenure as prime minister, which he said substantially outstripped that under Olmert.

"In Jerusalem, which is now being treated like a settlement, I built Har Homa, which protects Jerusalem from the south, and in addition, I also built the Ma'aleh Hazeitim neighborhood," he said, referring to a still small but determined enclave of Jewish homes surrounded by Arab neighborhoods on the city's Mount of Olives.

Netanyahu's relatively strong statements on the volatile question of Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) will appeal to the more strongly Zionist Israelis, encouraging them to vote for him. They will also cost him among the so-called centrist voters, those who - out of a desperate yearning for an end to the conflict - remain still somewhat open to the totally discredited land-for-peace concept.

Israel is not yet on course for early elections. Foreign Minister and newly-elected Kadima Party chairman Tzipi Livni has another six weeks or so to try and forge a new coalition over which - if she succeeds - she would be made prime minister.

It is widely believed that Livni, who is referred to as "Olmert-in-a-skirt" (politically, not criminally), will take the "peace process" ball from the disgraced premier's hands and run with it - to the great detriment of Israel's security and future.

Livni has spent many hours in close talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the "need' to urgently implement an irreversible first step towards the realization of President George W. Bush's "two state solution" before the end of this year.

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