In the heart of the Land of Israel – on the spot of the deadliest shooting attack in Judea and Samaria – an exclusive new housing project is underway. To qualify for this prime location you must have Jewish blood on your hands: Eligibility is for those who have served a minimum five-year sentence in an Israeli security prison.
“The Palestinian Authority has taken its support for terrorism to a whole new level, and put it on public display,” The Regavim organization warned in a statement.
Recently, work began on the new neighborhood of 100 luxury villas in Area B – the portion of Judea and Samaria under Palestinian Authority civil jurisdiction and Israeli security jurisdiction.
The project developer, Ramallah-based “Al Karameh Corporation for Prisoner Housing,” is an association whose members have served sentences of at least five years in Israeli prisons for terror-related convictions.
The governing board of the corporation boasts family members of notorious terrorists, including Ablah Saadat, wife of Ahmad Saadat, Secretary General of the People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Naim Al-Sharif, father of Imad Al-Sharif, a convicted Hamas terrorist.
The exclusive new neighborhood is located in Area B in the center of the triangle formed by the Jewish communities of Ofra, Ateret and Shiloh. It is adjacent to Silwad, a Hamas-controlled terror hub that has been the source of many of the most infamous terror attacks against Israelis.
The new neighborhood has a commanding strategic position overlooking Route 60, the main traffic artery of Judea and Samaria, at one of the most essential junctions in the region, the “British Police Junction.”
This is the very spot from which countless terrorist incidents have been launched over the years, the most infamous of them in 2002 when a Palestinian Arab sniper murdered seven IDF soldiers and three Israeli civilians, and injured six others.
“This proves unequivocally that those calling upon Israel and the world to prop up and even strengthen the Palestinian Authority are completely out of touch with reality,” said Avraham Binyamin, Director of Policy and Parliamentary Affairs at Regavim.
“It is high time that we understand precisely who and what we are dealing with, Binyamin said.
“The Palestinians – both the leadership and the rank and file civilian population – idolize terrorists and consider them freedom fighters and martyrs, while the Israeli government agonizes over the morality of deporting the families of terrorists or of instituting the death penalty.
“While all this hand-wringing and moralizing is going on, terrorism continues to claim the lives of Israelis throughout the Land of Israel, and the bloody tally of Jewish victims continues to swell.
“The fact that this new neighborhood overlooks the Wadi Haramiyeh Junction, the spot where a Palestinian Arab gunman mowed down 10 Jews and wounded six others March 21 years ago, drives home the absurdity of the situation: Rather than planting our flag on the spot and redoubling our efforts in the war against terrorism, we are standing by and watching as a new neighborhood, for terrorists only, takes shape.”
Yisrael Gantz, Governor of the Binyamin Region, added, “Unfortunately, the high-brow vision of the upper echelons of our security community is out of sync with the real threats we are facing.
“The job of fighting terrorism involves much more than chasing down weapons; it requires wielding an iron fist against the fomenters and agents of terrorism in the Palestinian Authority as well. Allowing the agents of terror to build new neighborhoods and to expand their field of operations does precisely the opposite.”
