NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed its strong concern over reports that the Bush administration has established a new unit within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to facilitate restrictions on Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria and to impose the administration’s “Road Map” to create a Palestinian Arab state along Israel’s pre-1967 border.

According to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz (March 24, 2003) the new CIA unit will:

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said:
“President Bush repeatedly pledged not to impose a solution on Israel—yet now he has reportedly established a special CIA unit to impose the “road map” to the creation of a Palestinian Arab state, which would be a mini-Iraq along Israel’s indefensible nine-miles-wide pre-1967 border. The last thing the world needs now is another Saddam Hussein-style regime.

“Furthermore, the new CIA unit apparently has been entrusted with the task of taking action against Jewish “settlement construction” in the territories—yet it is not taking action against Arab settlement construction, which is proceeding at ten times the rate of Jewish construction. Why the double standard?”

The Zionist Organization of America, founded in 1897, is the oldest pro-Israel organization in the United States. The ZOA works to strengthen U.S.-Israel relations, educates the American public and Congress about the dangers that Israel faces, and combats anti-Israel bias in the media and on college campuses. Its past presidents have included Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Rabbi Dr. Abba Hillel Silver.