Buy West Bank Real Estate from New Jersey!
A friend’s email today eventually led me to this Jerusalem Post story about a company offering homes in the West Bank hills to wannabe American Jewish landlords. As the Post explains:
On February 25 settlers will be in Teaneck, New Jersey hoping to entice ideological Americans to buy homes in places like Karnei Shomron, Eli, Otniel, Kiryat Arba and Shiloh. “Almost all communities in Yesha (Judea and Samaria) are full, with no possibility of accepting new young couples or families,” said the Amana Settlement Movement in a letter to potential American buyers.
American buyers wouldn’t actually have to move into the homes they build in the middle of Occupied Palestine:
The idea is that Americans would purchase the homes and rent them out to settlers, without having to deal with the hassles that accompany rental properties. Everything from property management to rent collection and transfer will be handled by Binyanei Bar Amana, a subsidiary housing organization of the Amana organization.
…Houses will be sold starting at $93,000 and will be rented out at a minimum of $250 per month, though prices will vary. Amana has agreed to arrange financing, and provide guided tours of the communities in question….
The hope is to kill two birds with one stone: Americans who ideologically support the settlements can secure land in the territories by building more houses, and at the same time ensure that young families can continue to repopulate the settlements. In Karnei Shomron for example, said Amrusi, 100 couples married last year. In her home settlement of Talmon one third of the residents live in caravans or rented basements because there is no housing.
Although all Jewish settlement in the West Bank is illegal under international law, Israel says it intends to keep large settlement blocs like Ariel, Maalei Adumim, and Gush Etzion. But despite the website’s claim that “your investment is insured, protected, and 100% legal,” this sale goes even outside those unilaterally declared boundaries:
While Amana welcomes American buyers in all legal West Bank settlements, in a move that highlights the ideological aspect of the campaign, Amana has promoted 10 small and mid-size settlements of which at least seven are outside the boundaries of the security fence. They are also outside of the settlement blocs which Israel assumes it will retain in a final-status agreement.
The Amana website describes the ten settlements they’re pushing, scattered from up near Ariel to down to Hebron. Several are near Ramallah, and looking at the map I see I passed by a couple while I was there. Some are tiny, plunked down on hilltops Palestinians see only from below.
The descriptions contain the usual real estate jargon about beautiful views, great climate, and convenient travel to Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Swimming pools, schools, grocery stores, and clinics. Everything invading suburbanites need.
My friend’s email includes this:
In addition to violating international law, this fair probably violates any number of domestic anti-discrimination laws, as it is a fair assumption that if any of Teaneck’s Arab or other non-Jewish citizens were to show up at this exclusive real estate fair they would be denied the right to make a purchase.
That sounds accurate to me. Maybe a group should try to buy a place and test this. A group with money, I guess, though from here near Boston $93,000 sounds like a bargain.
Might be better to do as my friend says: Help shut this fair down. He suggests the following:
Contact Teaneck, NJ mayor Elie Katz at 201-715-5179, email help@katz07666.com
Contact Congressman Steve Rothman’s District Director Michael Soliman 201-646-0808.
(Rothman is unavailable at the present time as he is in Iraq.)Contact Senator Frank Lautenberg http://lautenberg.senate.gov/contact
Contact Senator Robert Menendez http://menendez.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm
Contact the State Department International Law Section 1-202-776-8342
March 1st, 2007 at 2:28 am
While the legalities of selling foreign property to American citizens are apparently unclear to you, surely freedom of expression and the right to assemble are concepts with which you are familiar. While you are guaranteed the right to “try to shut the (Yesha Housing) fair down”, the thousands of enthusiastic potential purchasers of property across North America are also guaranteed the right to assemble and hear about such an option.
March 7th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
[…] article in Haaretz describes that New Jersey real estate sale of West Bank settler homes I described a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the article, there was this: American embassy officials had no information about the […]
March 27th, 2007 at 11:27 am
[…] Original post by dennisfox […]