The purely symbolic resolution by Likud Party members urging the incorporation of some parts of Judea-Samaria into Israel received predictably hysterical front-page coverage by The New York Times. But the otherwise tedious Times report contained one small nugget of extremely important information.
Buried near the very end of the very long article was this half-sentence about heavily Arab areas on the edge of Jerusalem: “Those areas have become boomtowns of unregulated construction by Palestinians seeking affordable housing.”
“Unregulated” is Times-ese for “illegal.” But only when referring to Palestinian Arabs, of course. Jewish construction is illegal, anti-peace, and racist. Not Arab construction! Arab construction is merely “unregulated.”
And besides, the Times insists, the Arab residents there are just “seeking affordable housing.” Who can blame them for that? Jews who decide to live in areas beyond the 1949 armistice line are greedy warmongers; Arabs who do the same are innocent victims of selfish capitalist builders and landlords who make housing elsewhere unaffordable – practically forcing them to engage in “unregulated” construction.
The scourge of illegal Palestinian Arab construction, on the edge of Jerusalem and in many other parts of Judea-Samaria, is a dirty little secret the news media, the United Nations, and J Street never talk about. Do you know why? Because if they ever admitted such construction goes on, they would have to demand an end to it every time they demand an end to Jewish construction.
But demanding an end to both Arab and Jewish construction would mean defying the Palestinian Authority’s line. That’s something the news media and most of the Jewish left just can’t bring themselves to do. So they never talk about illegal Arab construction and just hope that nobody else will, either. Unfortunately for them, The New York Times reporter accidentally let the dirty little secret slip, although you would have to be reading carefully and make it all the way to the end of the article to find it.
Fortunately, there are still a few voices of truth out there. One is the Gatestone Institute, chaired by former U.S. ambassador John Bolton. In a powerful report published by Gatestone last November, veteran Israeli journalist Ruthie Blum documented the constant and massive illegal Arab construction that has been going on throughout the territories, while the international community turns a blind eye.
Blum quoted the Israeli Arab journalists Bassam Tawil and Khaled Abu Toameh describing what they call “massive behind-the-scenes Palestinian construction, the goal of which is to create irreversible facts on the ground and completely encircle Jerusalem…. The Palestinian Authority has been undertaking, with impunity, [this] colossal construction project that is illegal in every respect.”
And who is paying for this Arab attempt to strangle Jerusalem and illegally occupy large parts of the historic Jewish homeland? “It’s funded mainly by the EU and Qatar,” according to Abu Toameh.
That’s right, Qatar. The regime some Jewish leaders have been trying to claim is becoming moderate.
Qatar, which those Jewish leaders recently visited, giving the regime a huge public relations boost.
Qatar, which according to the Jerusalem Post, “is Hamas’s ally and single largest donor, paying out hundreds of millions of dollars so far.”
Qatar, which is harboring Hamas’s top leaders, Khaled Mashaal and the Hitler-praising Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
Qatar, which recently restored full diplomatic relations with the most anti-Israel, terror-sponsoring country on earth, Iran.
Qatar, whose economy minister, Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al-Thani, recently visited Tehran in order to seek a huge expansion of Qatari-Iranian trade.
There are those who have claimed that Qatar’s record on Israel is “complicated.” I don’t think so. In fact, I think it’s pretty clear-cut. It’s a regime that sponsors murderers of Jews and cuddles up to the most anti-Semitic government in the world. And now we know that in addition, Qatar is financing the illegal Palestinian construction that threatens Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria.
There’s nothing complicated about that: it’s yet another part of the war on Israel the Arab world wages by every means available.