The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is urging the Israeli government not to extend the 10-month freeze on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria which ended on September 26.  The ZOA is urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to accede to international and U.S. pressure, now that the issue is being discussed by his Cabinet.  The ZOA has been in contact with the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office as well as members of the Israeli Cabinet and Knesset.

As outlined in previous weeks, the ZOA is opposed to 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, “As we have argued previously numerous times, we believe 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, Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) has done nothing since the construction freeze was instituted to justify any Israeli concession.”

“We therefore 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, when he stated, ‘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, they 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.’”