ZOA opposes freeze extension
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is asking Members of Congress to urge the Obama Administration and the State Department to stop pressuring Israel to extend the 10-month freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria which is due to end on September 26. The ZOA is also continuing to urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to accede to international and U.S. pressure for a continuation of the freeze which the Netanyahu government imposed in November 2009. The ZOA has been in contact with the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, Members of the Israeli Cabinet and Knesset, as well as the Obama White House and the State Department, while also urging Members of Congress in Washington, D.C. to exert their influence on the Obama Administration and Hillary Clinton’s State Department not to pressure Israel to extend the freeze on Jewish construction.
The ZOA last week provided a number of detailed arguments for opposing any extension of the discriminatory freeze on construction by Jews and only Jews in eastern Jerusalem on moral, legal, historical and strategic grounds.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We continue to argue that even if there were a sound moral or strategic reason for Israel to bar Jews, and only Jews, from building homes within the defined borders of already established communities in Judea and Samaria, the biblical, legal and historic heartland of the Jewish people, the PA has done nothing since the construction freeze was instituted to justify any Israeli concession.”
“It is quite clear from the tenor of daily news reports that great pressure is being exerted upon Israel to extend the unprecedented 10-month freeze on Jewish construction that the Netanyahu government imposed under tremendous pressure from the Obama Administration.
“We urge Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government not to accede to whatever pressure might be placed upon them now to extend the freeze which, if they did so, would be but another unilateral, one-sided Israeli concession. We urge Prime Minister Netanyahu to abide by the promise he gave on November 30, 2009, Netanyahu said, ‘This is a one-time decision and it is temporary. The Jews of Judea and Samaria are an integral part of our people. They donate, the serve, they volunteer, they are our brothers and sisters, so I would like to tell them as well as all citizens of Israel and our Palestinian neighbors that this decision is temporary, just as it says in the Cabinet decision and as I have personally stressed in both closed and open forums. We will go back to building at the end of the freeze.’”