ZOA Alarmed By Reported Creation Of New C.I.A. Unit To Act Against Jews In Judea-Samaria

NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed its strong concern over reports that the Bush administration has established a new unit within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to facilitate restrictions on Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria and to impose the administration’s “Road Map” to create a Palestinian Arab state along Israel’s pre-1967 border.

According to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz (March 24, 2003) the new CIA unit will:

* “be responsible for implementing the road map”

—which calls for the creation of a Palestinian Arab state later this year;

* “reorganize the Palestinian security services”

—which in the past has involved the CIA training the PA security forces in sniper skills and other techniques that the PA has been using in its terrorism against Israel;

* serve as the American component of a team including Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations, that will “deal with the settlement freeze”

—which, according to the State Department, means preventing the natural growth of the Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria. This is frighteningly reminiscent of the policies used in Medieval Europe to prevent Jewish families and communities from growing.

* help facilitate “the reopening of Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem”

—institutions that were shut down because both Israeli law and the Oslo accords forbid them from operating in Jerusalem.

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said:
“President Bush repeatedly pledged not to impose a solution on Israel—yet now he has reportedly established a special CIA unit to impose the “road map” to the creation of a Palestinian Arab state, which would be a mini-Iraq along Israel’s indefensible nine-miles-wide pre-1967 border. The last thing the world needs now is another Saddam Hussein-style regime.

“Furthermore, the new CIA unit apparently has been entrusted with the task of taking action against Jewish “settlement construction” in the territories—yet it is not taking action against Arab settlement construction, which is proceeding at ten times the rate of Jewish construction. Why the double standard?”