Tag Archives: Israel and Palestine

Netanyahu’s Moment of Truth

02 Thursday Jan 2014

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Ari Shavit is among the most intelligent, fair-minded, and visionary of Israeli political commentators, and his piece in Haaretz (“Netanyahu’s Moment of Truth” – January 1, 2014) articulates as well as anyone could the challenge before Israel, before Israel’s Prime Minister, and before the Israeli government as Secretary Kerry presents a document to the Israelis and Palestinians this week that will include the recognition of a “Jewish state” within the 1967 borders with adjustments.

Shavit says that if Netanyanu and Abbas accept the principles of this document, this would be a Zionist victory and it would begin a restoration process that leads hopefully to a final two-states for two peoples end-of-conflict agreement, but also to an unprecedented international acceptance of Israel among the family of nations thus ending its growing pariah status.

The Prime Minister can take enormous credit for making the Iranian nuclear issue, the most important existential challenge to the existence of the state of Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, front and center on the international agenda. His clarity and dogged determination to pressure the United States and the European powers to make Iran’s nuclear weapons program the most important and consequential foreign policy issue in the Middle East (indeed the world) is to be commended. The Jewish people owes him a profound debt of gratitude even before a real deal is signed between the West and Iran.

But, Israel has two central foreign policy challenges – the first is without doubt Iran’s nuclear weapons program; the second is the achievement of a two-state solution – Both will determine the future security, viability and democracy of the Jewish state of Israel.

PM Netanyahu has wanted to be regarded as the Israeli Winston Churchill. This is his opportunity to be so regarded. I pray that he takes it and rises to be the world-class diplomat par excellence that Israel, the Jewish people and the western world badly need him to be.

Read Ari Shavit’s column – http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.566539

Will Benjamin Netanyahu and Machmud Abbas Become Nobel Peace Prize Winners?

08 Sunday Dec 2013

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There is a parallel between Joseph’s life, the life of Nelson Mandela, and that of Bibi Netanyahu and Abu Mazen.

Nelson Mandela began his struggle as a revolutionary advocating violence against the injustice of apartheid. However, he emerged from prison not thirsty for revenge, but as a man of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. He said, “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.”

Joseph too could have acted with vengeance against his brothers when they appeared before him, but he did not do so. Rather, he forgave them and said: “Ani Yosef achichem – I am your brother Joseph…do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me here; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you.” (Genesis 45:4-5)

Joseph’s and his brothers’ reconciliation was a turning point in Jewish history, for had he not turned from vengeance, not forgiven his brothers, and not saved his family from famine, the children of Israel would have perished.

A similar challenge confronts the Palestinians and Israelis. Will the two peoples’ representatives acknowledge the wrongs that each has committed against the other, forgive those wrongs and resolve to end this tragic and bloody conflict in a just and secure peace with two states for two peoples, or will they descend into more war, bloodshed and suffering?

Will Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas be like Joseph in Egypt and Nelson Mandela in South Africa, or will they join so many leaders before them who failed to effectively wage peace?

Joseph and Nelson Mandela demonstrate that a few inspired and courageous leaders can change history and be lights unto the nations.

I would love nothing more than for Bibi and Abu Mazen to become the next Nobel Peace Prize Winners, along with Secretary of State John Kerry.

May they do what must be done and then may we celebrate them for having done so.

The Mitzvah of Diplomacy and the “2 Campaign of J Street”

24 Sunday Nov 2013

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President Obama and Secretary Kerry are to be congratulated, along with Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany, for this diplomatic success between Iran and the P5+1 on the road to eventually eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons capability in future agreements.

Contrary to naysayers and cynics who say, including Israeli PM Netanyahu, that this is somehow a “bad deal,” one need only read what the agreement actually requires to realize that that this deal effectively stops advancement of Iran’s nuclear progress for six months, leaves most of the sanctions in place pending continued progress, while a stronger agreement is developed.

The President and Secretary of State are also to be congratulated on their diplomatic efforts to rid Syria of chemical weapons.

Each of these successes, despite them being imperfect, is a mitzvah because each pursues and effects the fulfillment of our duty to save lives (pikuach nefesh).

President Obama and Secretary Kerry are also to be congratulated for devoting enormous time and political capital in bringing the Palestinians and Israel to the negotiating table with the goal of peacefully and diplomatically bringing about a two states for two people’s resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Their initial efforts are only a beginning. The road will be very tough because a viable and fair peace agreement will require Israel and the Palestinians to make difficult concessions and compromises on all the core issues of borders, settlements, land swaps, Jerusalem, water, and refugees.

The alternative to an agreement, however, for the Jewish people is unthinkable – namely, the end of the Zionist dream and the erosion of the Jewish democratic state of Israel.

J Street, a pro-Israel pro-peace political organization in Washington, D.C. that supports a two-states for two-peoples agreement, has answered Secretary Kerry’s challenge to America and to America’s Jews to be part of the “great constituency for peace.” J Street’s response is “The 2 Campaign”:

The 2 Campaign answers Secretary of State John Kerry’s challenge to rally a “great constituency for peace” behind the administration’s initiative to achieve a two-state solution.

In particular, Kerry turned to the Jewish community to enlist our support, because he recognizes “no one has a stronger voice” when it comes to Israel. Most in the organized Jewish community are now on record supporting a two-state solution and have applauded Secretary Kerry’s efforts. However, too many are then quick to list the reasons why an agreement isn’t possible.

The 2 Campaign is a concerted effort across the country to convey to Secretary Kerry that he has the support of the American Jewish community and beyond in pushing negotiations forward, especially in the most difficult moments. Achieving a two-state solution is in the American, Israeli and Palestinian national interest.

Together, we will demonstrate the resolve of pro-Israel Americans to see a two-state solution reached. We will show policymakers and political leaders that we support US leadership in helping the parties make the difficult, but necessary choices with regard to Jerusalem, borders, refugees and security.

The 2 Campaign will consist of a major multimedia effort that will unfold as the negotiations progress, a national petition, educational outreach across the country and major events in key American cities. Join Us!

Become part of the solution – sign the 2 Campaign petition here http://www.jstreetu.org/latest/2campaign

Note that I am a national co-chair of the 700 member J Street Rabbinic Cabinet.

Israel’s Chief Negotiator Slam’s Naftali Bennett as a Radical Minority on Settlements – Israel Journal Part XIII

21 Thursday Nov 2013

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Chief Israeli negotiator in the Israel-Palestinian talks, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, posted the following extraordinary statement about the settler movement and their representatives (Naftali Bennet’s Bayit Hayehudi party and the right wing of Likud) for trying to determine for the minority of the Israeli population what the majority of Israelis want, a two-states for two-peoples solution.

More and more former Israeli right-wing politicians (e.g. Tzipi Livni, Tzachi Hanegbi whose mother Geula Cohen founded the “Greater Israel Movement”, former Likud leader Meir Shitreet, and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, as well as all six living former heads of Israel’s security service, Shin Bet, as documented in the film “The Gatekeepers”) have come to the position that there is NO alternative to a two-state solution – NONE! A one-state solution is unsustainable and would end Israel’s democracy and Jewish character.

Minister Tzipi Livni wrote:

“Those who decide for the majority are in fact a radical minority which has taken control of our lives. …They call us ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, but the truth of the matter is that they don’t care about their ‘family’, they are motivated by narrow interest at the expense of our children’s future – with more and more announcements of settlement construction they attempt to prevent us from reaching an agreement which will secure the existence of a strong, Jewish and democratic Zionist state….Let’s stop for a moment and ask the people right now whether they are willing to pay the price for construction that might or might not happen, for building in places like Eli, we should ask whether we are ready to pay the price of serious damage to our strategic relations with the US, Israel’s isolation in the world, severe damage to our economy, a worsening boycott against us, ongoing damage to the legitimacy of the IDF to act, and the freedom of our soldiers to travel the world without fear of being arrested, and most importantly – the cost of losing our identity as a Jewish and democratic state….This is a direct, genuine question which is not related to whether we have a partner or not. What the impact is on security is a question that is related only to us: In what kind of country do we want to live, and what country do we want to leave our children.” I also want to make another thing clear: Violence will not bring political achievement. And we will fight against terrorism and extremists firmly and without compromise.”

-Chief Negotiator, Tzipi Livni on Settlement Building and Naftali Bennett’s Party Bayit Hayehudi, Ynet News, November 13, 2013 from Livni’s Facebook Page.

The leader of Meretz, Zahava Gal-on, said at the national conference of J Street in Washington D.C. at the end of September, “Bibi tells the world one thing and his policies are entirely different.”

I wrote about East Jerusalem settlements in former blogs, and the following article published by Al-Monitor, confirms those blogs and Geveret Gal-on’s observation of the discrepancy of rhetoric and actions of the Prime Minister and the government of Israel.

Netanyahu government ‘Israelizes’ east Jerusalem Al-Monitor – http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/11/jerusalem-two-state-solution-building-plans-netanyahu.html

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert – The Search for Peace and the Arab Spring

18 Monday Nov 2013

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I took the time to listen to all 90 minutes of Former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert’s speech about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Arab Spring, and American-Israel relations, and it was well worth my time – every minute of it! I recommend that you do the same (see link below).

Olmert met with Palestinian President Machmud Abbas 36 times to negotiate a peace deal, but had to resign before they could finalize an agreement. Olmert is clear thinking and direct, at times blunt in this talk! He admits, despite the complexity of the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to being “an optimist” and says that nothing ever improves unless “optimists” are behind it and who refuse to take “No” for an answer.

He believes “without a doubt in my mind” that the possibility for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is possible, but that it will take “leadership” to make it happen. To date, he says, Israel has demonstrated a lack of leadership.

The following introductory comment to Olmert’s talk was posted by Bernard Avishai on his blog, where I first learned of this speech.

Bernie Avishai is Adjunct Professor of Business at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Visiting Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, where Olmert spoke on November 12, 2013.

Avishai wrote:

“It’s hard to remember a blunter defense of John Kerry’s peace process, or statement of impatience with the Netanyahu government, than Olmert’s talk, …. [He] reiterated to me that he is determined to challenge Netanyahu the next time around; he is waiting for the Israeli courts to clear him of charges in outstanding cases against him. … Olmert listed, in private, an impressive array of people who’d be with him if things do fall into place. So if you’ve been skeptical of him in the past–and who hasn’t?–this lecture will be of particular interest.” 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqHFRxL6bb0

 

 

East Jerusalem Jewish Settlement and “National Parks” Make a Two-State Solution Impossible – Israel Report XI

13 Wednesday Nov 2013

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My synagogue group stood on a hill near the Mount Scopus Campus of the Hebrew University looking east towards the Dead Sea. To the far right, about 7 km away, stood the Jewish settlement-city of Ma’ale Adumim (population, 40,000 Jews). To the north and adjacent to it was the last open area in the circular ring around Jerusalem called E-1 (about 12 square km – 4.6 square miles) that falls between Jerusalem and Jericho.

Beneath us down the hill and towards the two East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhoods of Isawiyya and A-Tur is another open area that Jewish settler organizations are working to declare “Mount Scopus Slopes National Park.”

Whenever the Israeli government has designated an area as a National Park, there is usually some archeological, historical or nature significance to it. This area, however, has no significance in any of these ways.

Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann explained that the primary goal in designating this area a national park is

“…to link between the inner encirclement of the Old City and its visual basin, as designated by the governmental Old City Basin Project, and the outer encirclement in Greater Jerusalem, as disclosed by the E-1 plan between Ma’ale Adumim and East Jerusalem. The new national park will be a bridge, creating [and] forging a geographical link between the Old City basin and E-1.”

Daniel Seidemann is the founder of “Terrestrial Jerusalem,” an Israeli non-governmental organization that works to identify and track the developments in Jerusalem that could impact either the political process or permanent status options, destabilize the city or spark violence, or create humanitarian crises. His organization says that

“Israel has already expropriated more than 35% of the privately owned land of East Jerusalem for the purpose of building settlement neighborhoods (in excess of 50,000 residential units for Israelis). Now, additional lands owned by the residents of Issawiya and A Tur will be, to all intents, expropriated by Israel. While declaring the site a national park does not nullify the owners’ property rights, it inevitably deprives them of the ability to exercise these rights in any meaningful way by denying them the ability to develop or sell their land. The declaration of the park will, in effect empty ownership of virtually all practical significance.”

The larger goal of the settlement groups and the Israeli right-wing is to effectively surround the city of Jerusalem with Jewish settlements and national parks and cut off direct access to the east that would allow contiguity for a future state of Palestine, thus making the achievement of two-states for two-peoples impossible.

The following short video (7 minutes) features Israeli experts in Jerusalem who show exactly how this will occur http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tuGALhavoc.

Polls indicate that the majority of Israelis accept that the city of Jerusalem will have to be shared as the capital for both Israel and Palestine. The Palestinians have stated consistently that there can be no agreement without their capital in Jerusalem. The challenge, of course, will be security, which is what negotiations are for.

Given that the sharing of Jerusalem is among the most important and central issues on the negotiating table, anything that deliberately changes Jerusalem’s status-quo until an agreement can be achieved is ill-advised. Those Israelis, aided and abetted by the settler movement and Israel’s right wing, that insist that Jerusalem cannot and should not be shared are doing everything possible to create facts on the ground that will condemn negotiations to failure and assure continuing violence and war.

See a map of the area: http://www.t-j.org.il/Portals/26/featured_maps_2011/TJ_ScopusPark_B.jpg

East Jerusalem and Sheikh Jarrah – A Study in Bad Policy and Injustice – Israel Report X

11 Monday Nov 2013

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In 1968, then Attorney General Meir Shamgar (who would become President of Israel’s High Court from 1983-1995), determined that the “Absentee Property Law” may not be used in East Jerusalem. All Israeli governments complied, until now.

The “Absentee Property Law,” passed during the fledgling years of Israel (1950), allows the state to seize and assume ownership of lands abandoned by Palestinians after November 29, 1947 who left to live in Arab states, the West Bank or Gaza. In their absence their forfeited property could be taken over by the Absentee Property Custodian and title could be transferred to the State of Israel.

To accommodate East Jerusalem Palestinians after the 1967 War, the Knesset passed a law (1970) excluding them from exposure to the Absentee Property Law. [Note: East Jerusalem Arabs are not “citizens” of the state of Israel, though they are entitled to vote in municipal elections.]

Ir Amim (lit. “City of Peoples/Nations”) is an Israeli non-profit and non-partisan organization that has monitored East Jerusalem neighborhoods since 2004. Its mission is “to … engage in those issues impacting on Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem and on the political future of the city.” Among its chief concerns is the status of East Jerusalem Palestinian land.

My synagogue group toured one of East Jerusalem’s neighborhoods, Sheikh Jarrah, which is wedged between formerly Jordanian held-East Jerusalem and Israeli-held West Jerusalem (1948 to 1967) on the slopes of Mount Scopus very near to the American Colony Hotel and Old City.

After the 1948 war, Jews fled the neighborhood while many Arabs remained. In 1957, the Jordanian government moved 28 Palestinian families to houses in Sheikh Jarrah who had fled their homes in West Jerusalem during the 1948 War.

Founded in 1865, Sheikh Jarrah was once home to Jerusalem’s Muslim elite. At the turn of the 20th century, 30 large homes housed 167 Muslim families (about 1250 people), 97 Jewish families, and six Christian families.

In 1972, the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Yisrael Committee went to court to justify Jewish claims of property ownership in Sheikh Jarrah using documents from the days of the Ottoman Empire. Based on a supportive Israeli court ruling, Palestinian Arab residents could remain as tenants as long as they paid rent to the Jewish community.

The Palestinians, however, also produced Ottoman Empire documents showing their ownership. Though the Absentee Property Law superseded Palestinian claims, there were no efforts to evict them from their homes based on Shamgar’s 1968 decision.

Beginning in 2008, Palestinians began receiving eviction notices initiated by Jewish settler groups. In August 2009, an Israeli court evicted two Palestinian families from two homes in Sheikh Jarrah, followed almost immediately by Jewish settler families moving in.

In applying the Absentee Property Law, Palestinians have no rights, no redress, no appeals, and receive no compensation. In contrast, relative to the same contested land, Jews have certain legal rights based on their Israeli citizenship.

In Sheikh Jarrah we met with Sara Beninga, a 30 year-old Israeli Jewish activist, and Salach Diab, a Palestinian resident, who told us the story of this small neighborhood. Sara has been the inspiration of the “Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement” (now called simply “Solidarity”) formed in 2010. She is a bright, principled and passionate Israeli who believes that gross injustice is being done to the Palestinian Arabs living in this neighborhood.

From 2010-2012 every Friday afternoon, hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians gathered on the main street of Sheikh Jarrah to protest the government’s unfair policies and the Jewish settler land grab.

As we arrived, Sara pointed out settlers returning to the house they occupy yards from Salah’s house, and Salah showed us photographs of settler violence against him and his neighbors.

Daniel Seidemann, a founder of Ir Amim and an attorney who has advocated on behalf of the Arab residents of East Jerusalem neighborhoods for the past nine years, explains the nature and importance of this property conflict:

“After 45 years, you now have 2300 Jewish settlers [living] in existing Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, [and while] that’s negligible numerically, symbolically it’s nuclear fusion, because you take the two radioactive subjects of the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict, which are Jerusalem and refugees, and you fuse them…By insisting on a Jewish right of return to Sheikh Jarrah, Israel is opening the 1948 file and strengthening the Palestinian claim of a right of return to Israel.” (Reported by Sarah Wildman, visiting scholar at the International Reporting Project at Johns Hopkins University).

Jewish settlers are clear about their larger goal; to prevent, through the establishment of facts on the ground in East Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement resulting in two states for two peoples with Jerusalem as the shared capital of each state.

I will continue this discussion of East Jerusalem neighborhoods and Israeli land policy in my next blog.

High Holiday Sermons – 2013/5774 – Ayeka? Where are You?

10 Sunday Nov 2013

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This past High Holiday season (2013-5774) I asked myself and my congregation one central question in three different ways: Ayeka? (Lit. – “Where are you?”).

The question, of course, is not about one’s location. Rather, it asks about our identity, how we think and what believe, who we are and what values are central in our lives.

Ayeka is the first question to appear in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 3:9). It was asked by God of the first humans in the Garden of Eden immediately after they ate from the forbidden tree.

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part I – American Jews

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part II – The Jewish People and State of Israel

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part III – God

I include here as well my Yizkor sermon on “The Death of Moses” based on a compilation of midrashim (rabbinic legends and commentaries).

In the context of my synagogue mission’s to Israel and the West Bank in October (2013) about which I am still writing in a series of Reports from Israel, the second sermon, in particular, informs my thinking.  All three sermons, however, ought to be considered together.

The sermons are posted on the Temple Israel of Hollywood web-site at http://www.tioh.org/worship/clergy/clergystudy

 

Not All Israeli Settlements are Alike – Israel Report Part IX

04 Monday Nov 2013

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There are three categories of Israeli settlements: [1] East Jerusalem neighborhoods forming a ring around Jerusalem, [2] large settlement blocs (i.e. small cities with more than 20,000 residents), and [3] small settlements and illegal “outposts” of a few dozen families each built strategically throughout the West Bank. 

The Israeli consensus is that categories #1 and #2 will remain in Israel with land swaps to the future state of Palestine, and Israeli settlements and outposts in category #3 will be evacuated.

The recent announcement by PM Netanyahu of construction of 1500 apartments that so infuriated the Palestinians in Ramat Shlomo, a northern Jerusalem neighborhood, concerns building in category #1. Bibi is right, that these will remain Israeli. He made the announcement, most believe, for internal political reasons, to placate right-wing members of his government who were infuriated by the release of 26 Palestinian prisoners convicted of murdering Israelis.

[Note: There is one other sub-category of settlement in East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods that I will address in my next blog.]

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, the General Secretary of the Palestine National Initiative (PNI) and a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, compares the West Bank to a piece of cheese in which one side (Israel) takes bites while the other side (Palestine) is prevented from doing so. He warns that soon there will be no cheese left to share, and “Palestine” will have been eaten-up by Jewish settlements.

Is Dr. Barghouti correct? This is the question we asked of Leor Amichai, the director of “Settlement Watch” for Shalom Achshav, a liberal Israeli advocacy organization, when he took us on a tour of the hills around Ariel and Nablus deep into the West Bank.

Every year Shalom Achshav updates a West Bank map that includes brown and blue circles of different sizes, as well as small red dots. The brown circles are Palestinian cities and villages, the blue are Israeli settlements, and the red dots are Israeli “outposts” (i.e. illegal settlements according to the Israeli government). The size of the brown and blue circles is determined by population, ranging from a few dozen families to 50,000 inhabitants.

There are more than 100 blue circles speckled strategically all over the West Bank, 30 red dots south of Bethlehem, 30 more around Jerusalem, Jericho and Ramallah, 50 around Ariel, Nablus and Qalqiliya, and 6 in the far north, for a grand total of about 120 illegal red-dot-Israeli outposts.

The Israeli government has promised to remove these outposts, but has failed to do so while at the same time looking the other way as regional West Bank settlement councils provide, using Israeli tax money, the necessary infrastructure of water, electricity, gas, and security.

While on Sabbatical leave in Jerusalem two years ago, Leor took me to scout with him new outposts being built near Jerusalem. As I compare the 2011 and 2013 Shalom Achshav maps, there are many more red dots today than there were just two years ago.

Shalom Achshav says that 42% of the West Bank is currently zoned for Jewish settlements, 12% of the total West Bank population are Jewish settlers, 4% of all Israelis are settlers, and in the event of a two-state agreement, 1.8% of all Israelis (i.e. 100,000 Jews) would need to move from category #3 settlements/outposts back onto the Israeli side of the border.

Shalom Achshav and B’tzelem (another leading Israeli human rights organization) claim further that fully 33% of the land on which Israeli settlements are built in the West Bank is on privately owned and deeded Palestinian land.

Whether Israelis have the right to live anywhere they choose in the West Bank is not the issue. I believe they do assuming they accept the sovereignty of the future Palestinian state. The relevant issue today is whether it is politically wise for Israel to build settlements if doing so makes a two-state agreement more difficult to attain?

To this question, it seems to me to indeed be unwise. Category #3 settlements and outposts have become a significant political problem in negotiations, but not as yet an insurmountable one.

Of the 100,000 settlers who will need to evacuate their settlements in a peace agreement (assuming no agreement is made for them to remain under Palestinian sovereignty), 70-80% moved to the West Bank so as to purchase inexpensive homes close to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. They, likely, will move back to Israel without incident with appropriate compensation.

The other 20-30% are ideologically and religiously driven settlers, many of whom are militant. It is unclear whether they will move peacefully or not.

PM Netanyahu’s announcement of new house construction in categories #1 and #2 is, without a doubt, politically provocative to Palestinians. Hopefully, however, this construction will not affect the outcome of negotiations.

And so Dr. Barghouti is both correct and not correct – the piece of cheese is getting smaller, but all hope is not yet lost. The time for an agreement is now!

 

Rawabi’s Success will Signal Success for a Two-State Solution – Israel Journal Part VII

31 Thursday Oct 2013

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A highlight of my synagogue’s mission to Israel and the west bank earlier this month was our visit to Rawabi, a model Palestinian city emerging out of the “hills” (Rawabi means “hills” in Arabic) between Ramallah, Nablus and Tel Aviv.

This city will eventually house 40,000 middle class young Palestinians and families in 6000 condominiums on 1560 acres. There will be banks, shops, offices, eight public and private schools, playgrounds, parks, hiking trails, an arts center, two mosques, a Greek Orthodox Church, a hospital, movie theaters, and a 20,000 seat amphitheater for sporting events and concerts.

The construction is using 10,000 workers, and the builders hope that eventually 3000 to 5000 new jobs will be created in the city.

The man behind this project is Bashir al-Masri, a 52 year old charismatic Nablus born and American educated businessman who raised more than $500 million from the oil-rich nation of Qatar and contributed $300 million from his private conglomerate, Massar International.

Each unit will cost between $60,000 and $200,000.  Mr. al-Masri is promoting what he calls “Islamic financing” in which “service charges” will replace interest payments,  forbidden by Islamic law.

We met for more than an hour with Bashir thanks to Felice Friedson, co-founder and Executive Producer for “The Media Line “ (TML) and her husband, Michael Friedson, co-founder and Executive Editor and Director of Media Services for TML. TML is a well-respected non-profit news organization in the Middle East that feeds stories daily to Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC, Israeli, and American news services.

To a person, our group was impressed not just by the scope of this project (a modern wonder of the world!?), but by Bashir’s staff, organization, expertise, intelligence, optimism, and drive.

Though Mr. al-Masri has met many hurdles along the way since first conceiving this project in 2007 (construction began in 2011), nothing seems to diminish his vision and optimism. Obstacles include a promised $150 million contribution by the Palestinian Authority to build schools and a police station that never materialized, allegedly because the government is broke despite the nearly $4 billion the PA receives from foreign governments and international NGOs each year, and two significant political obstacles presented by the state of Israel.

Though Rawabi is in Area A, controlled by the PA per the Oslo Accords, the west bank is under Israeli military authority. Bashir has had co-operation from Israeli authorities, but Israel approves construction of roads that pass through Area C, which is Israeli controlled. There is an access road for construction equipment, however a road wide enough to accommodate the 40,000 future Rawabi residents has not as yet been approved.

The second obstacle is water. Trucks are bringing water in for construction purposes, but there are no arrangements with Israel as yet to provide water to the city.

Bashir believes that PM Netanyahu is using access roads and water as negotiating chips with the Palestinian Authority in the peace negotiations, thus the delay of arrangements, he told us with bitterness and frustration.

Criticism of the project has come from two quarters. West bank Jewish settlers complain that Palestinians are building new homes by the thousands while the expansion of their settlements (nay – illegal “outposts”) is constrained. Orint Flint, a settler of Ateret (an illegal “outpost” built in defiance of Israeli government policy but with Israel compliance) said “It feels like unfair treatment of Jewish residents.” (The Guardian, August 8, 2013)

There are also Palestinian critics who are part of the BDS campaign (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) who charge that Bashir al-Masri and other Palestinian business people are helping to “whitewash [Israel’s] ongoing occupation, colonization and apartheid against the Palestinian people” by cooperating with Israeli industry and consulting with Israeli architects and engineers. (The Guardian, ibid)

Al-Masri told us that support is coming to him from every quarter, including internationally famous Israeli architect Moshe Safdie who volunteered to help in any way he could because he was moved and impressed by the scope and vision of the project and its importance to the future state of Palestine.

I see no down side for the Palestinians and Israel because Rawabi will be a stabilizing element for a state of Palestine. Bashir said that though he is happy to contribute to Palestinian nation building, he is not motivated here by altruism. He is a business man and out to make a profit.

With so much capital pouring into the west bank from Qatar and elsewhere, the Palestinians will have too much to lose to break cavalierly an agreement with Israel. The PA has shown, in this regard, its ability to coordinate security with Israel, and this is what Bashir is counting on in a two-state agreement.

I pray Rawabi succeeds as its success will be not only a success for Palestine, but for Israel as well!