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| Week ending Shabbat, January 13, 2007 |
23 Tevet, 5767 |
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Kid's Strike Worked!
A one-day strike of the religious-Zionist high schools two weeks ago appears to have worked to their advantage. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has approved a sixty million shekel budget allocation [about fifteen million dollars] for the institutions. Now that Israel's national budget has been approved for 2007, final alterations and improvements can be added without fear of upsetting the coalition partners. Specifically, Prime Minister Olmert has agreed to restore the forty-seven million shekels that were cut from the religious-Zionist schools and yeshivot last year, and add another thirteen million as well. Olmert is directly involved in the budgeting of the boys' yeshivot and girls' ulpanot because the Prime Minister's Office has taken over many of the projects previously run by the now-defunct Ministry of Religious Affairs. The budget breakthrough occurred at the funeral of former Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek last week. A senior official in the religious-Zionist education network says that Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon and Olmert's aide Oved Yechezkel asked to speak with the official at the funeral. Evidently, Prime Minister Olmert had become very upset when he learned that over 100,000 students had remained home this past December 24 in protest of the fiscal threat hanging over their schools. Olmert rebuked his aides.
Many heads of yeshivot and ulpanot said that at the current rate of government budgeting, their schools would not be able to continue operating and would have to fold. The final agreement was signed on Monday, between the Prime Minister's Office and the Religious-Zionist Education Administration.
Olmert Beginning To See The Obvious
In a recent interview, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that unilateral withdrawal has proven to be a failed policy. Unfortunately, he continued to express his willingness to negotiate a withdrawal from most of Judea and Samaria, but Olmert said that it would only be done in the framework of bilateral negotiations with the "Palestinian" Authority [PA]. This is an improvement in that it is in contradiction to the terms of a unilateral withdrawal plan, dubbed "convergence", which Olmert was promoting as late as this past summer. In spring of 2006, Olmert set a deadline for PA leaders to come to the negotiating table to discuss permanent borders with Israel. If the PA leadership did not manage to make it to the table by the end of the year, he warned, Israel would get the job anyway - alone. At the time, the Prime Minister said he was convinced that unilateral withdrawal was the only way to ensure a Jewish majority in the Jewish State and to provide effective security for Israeli citizens. Olmert explained his new position by reference the Israeli withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005, both of which, he said, encouraged terrorism and increased the likelihood of war. "A year ago, I believed that we would be able to do this unilaterally," he told reporters, "However, it should be said that our experience in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip is not encouraging. We pulled out of Lebanon unilaterally, and see what happened. We pulled out of the Gaza Strip completely, to the international border, and every day they are firing Kassam rockets at Israelis. Under the existing circumstances, it would be more practical to achieve a two-state solution through negotiations rather than [unilateral] withdrawal."
Under the unilateral Disengagement Plan, Israel withdrew military personnel and uprooted entire civilian Jewish communities - constituting 9,000 people - from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria areas. With his latest statements, the prime minister is joining other political leaders in retroactive criticism of Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal policy, which Olmert supported and defended vigorously at the time.
Israel Soon to Launch New Anti-Missile Drone
The drone, designed to identify, intercept, and destroy ballistic missiles as they are launched from the ground, has been produced by the Israel Aircraft Industries. It is the largest unmanned aircraft in the world, and will soon make its debut. It is a huge aircraft, almost the same size as a Boeing 737 with a wing span of 110 feet (35 meters), as identified by a security official. The aircraft is designed to fly at high altitudes and is equipped with cameras which identify the missiles as they are launched. It is also armed with missiles, which are used to intercept and destroy those which are fired by the enemy. It has been named the "Eitan," and will be used for long-range operations. The development of the new anti-missile system comes as the Jewish State heavily considers the increasing threat to its existence by calls from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to "wipe Israel off the map."
Hizbullah terrorists in southern Lebanon fired Iranian-made long-range missiles at Israel during the war last summer, hitting an Israeli naval vessel in Mediterranean waters and killing four sailors. Syria and Iran have also broadened military cooperation in recent months. Iran agreed last June to sell missiles and establish weapons production plants in Syria. Defense ministers of the two Muslim countries said the agreement was intended as a move against Israel and the United States.
Earlier in the year, Iran conducted a successful test launch of its Shehab-3 surface-to-air [SAM] ballistic missile. The weapon is designed to carry a non-conventional weapon, such as an atomic warhead. Russia has also been arming the Islamic Republic. Iran received the first of 29 surface-to- air missile systems from Russia in November. Iranian crews were trained by Russia to man the weapons.
Judea & Samaria Jewish Population is Growing
The Jewish population in Judea and Samaria increased by nearly six percent in 2006, four times the rate of increase a year earlier. According to figures released by the Interior Ministry, there were 268,379 Israelis living in the 126 Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria at the end of 2006, compared with 253,748 in 2005. This represents a 5.8 percent increase. In 2005, there was a growth of less than two percent over 2004. These statistics did not indicate, however, how many of the additional residents were children born in the communities and how many had moved there from other places. The population growth in Judea and Samaria is often greater than around the country. In 2001-2003, for instance, the population in Yesha increased by sixteen percent - a rate that was three times higher than that of the Negev and Galilee. A small part of the latest increase may be attributed to families from Jewish communities that were uprooted from Gush Katif [summer of 2005] moving to Judea and Samaria. However, spokespersons for the Jewish Communities Council of Judea, Samaria and Gaza note that most of the nearly 9,000 Jews pulled out of the Gaza Strip have moved into temporary or permanent homes in southern, pre-1967 Israel.
Another factor that may play a minor role in the population increase is the immigration statistics from the English-speaking West. More than 3,000 immigrants from the United States, Canada and Britain made Aliyah in 2006 with the assistance of the Nefesh B'Nefesh organization. A total of 10,000 Jews immigrated with the organization's help in recent years. Many Western immigrants are known to have familial or religious connections to communities in Judea and Samaria. In addition, Israel has seen a rise in immigration from France, but the impact of that community on the population of Judea and Samaria is undocumented.
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