The recent violence at the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles stemmed from a decades-long international battle over the expansion of Jewish settlements on land Israel seized and occupied during its 1967 Six-Day War with Arab states.
The latest skirmish in that battle — which has been at the heart of animosities between Israelis and Palestinians — erupted on June 23, when pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrating against a real estate promotion event in which at least one company was offering property for sale in the occupied West Bank clashed with pro-Israeli counterprotesters.
Building settlements on confiscated Palestinian land is a violation of international law and threatens the prospects of Palestinians one day having an independent country as part of a two-state solution. But the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently resisted US and international pressure to stop settlement construction. The government is reportedly considering legalising five more settlements in the West Bank.
The conflict over the fate of Palestinian land escalated in October when Hamas militants attacked Israel, sparking the war in Gaza. The future of the West Bank, where Jews have acquired property for decades, quickly became embroiled in the conflict as leading figures in Israel’s right-wing government called for protecting Israel by expanding settlements in the biblical territory that Jews call Judea and Samaria.
Palestinians inspect the destruction after an Israeli operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the West Bank town of Tulkarm on June 30.
(Majdi Mohammed / Associated Press)
Netanyahu's strategy, embraced with fervour by nationalists and ultra-conservative Jews, is to create a patchwork of Israeli settlements to block the formation of a contiguous Palestinian state.
In late June, a real estate company called My Home In Israel advertised homes for sale at the Adas Torah event. An archive of My Home In Israel’s website showed properties for sale for as much as $4.1 million in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and in the West Bank settlements of Ariel and Efrat, which were established in the 1980s and have stone houses and the feel of a Southern California neighborhood.
My Home In Israel could not be reached for comment. Other companies, including Home In Israel, which has a similar name and is run by Julian Shapiro, do not sell property in the West Bank, Shapiro said. Since Hamas attacked Israel, there has been a “big, big increase” in interest from American Jews to invest in the country, he said. Much of that, according to real estate developers, is due to Jews wanting to show solidarity with Israelis, rising anti-Semitism and opportunities for those seeking long-term investments.
“The United States is our biggest market right now,” said Shapiro, who has been brokering property in Israel from his base outside Tel Aviv for clients around the world for 24 years. “We would never sell property in the West Bank. We don’t think it’s the right thing to do.” He said he closely follows the protests and political sensitivities in the United States around the occupied territories, suggesting he doesn’t want to be unfairly targeted by protesters: “We don’t want to get publicity because it causes all kinds of havoc.”
This year, Israeli Real Estate Event marketing programs in Canada and the United States have sparked protests from pro-Palestinian demonstrators. A promotion at a New York synagogue was canceled over fears of riots. Most of the properties offered in the promotions, which connected potential buyers with mortgage brokers, lawyers and builders, were within Israel’s legal borders. The West Bank settlements of Efrat, Neve Daniel and Maale Adumim were also advertised, according to a flyer cited by the Times of Israel.
An announcement for the event, organized by Gidon Katz, a global real estate developer in Israel, said: “In a world where uncertainty lurks and anti-Semitism rears its ugly head more boldly than ever, the decision to invest in a home in Israel is not only wise, it is inspiring!”
Tensions over the West Bank lands are unlikely to ease. Politicians and Jewish community groups condemned the violence at Adas Torah as an act of anti-Semitism. Both groups criticized police tactics and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said his office would investigate the case.
The West Bank, about the size of Delaware, was captured from Jordan in the Six-Day War. An estimated 500,000 Israelis (up from 300,000 in 2010) live in enclaves among some 2.7 million Palestinians. About 40% of the West Bank is administered by the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority, which receives much of its funding from Israel.
The territory has become increasingly violent and international officials fear that further Israeli settlement expansion could open a second front in the Gaza war.
“Settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached alarming levels and threaten to eliminate any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement in March. At least 500 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces – and some by settlers – since October, according to the PA Ministry of Health.
Israelis march down Al-Shuhada Street, known as King David Street by Israeli settlers, in a parade on the Jewish holiday of Purim in the West Bank city of Hebron on March 24.
(Marcus Yam/Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
The Hamas-led attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people, shook Israel's sense of security. Israel responded with a war in Gaza that has killed at least 37,900 Palestinians, according to the territory's health ministry, and devastated the enclave.
That has emboldened right-wing nationalists to push for a more aggressive occupation of the West Bank, including ragtag outposts flying torn flags and dotting the hilltops around Palestinian orchards and grazing land.
Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said: “To expand and consolidate control over the lands it occupied, Israel has applied countless military, civil, legal and administrative measures through which it has shattered Palestinian space, divided the Palestinian population into dozens of disconnected enclaves and unraveled their social, cultural and economic fabric.”
In 1967, more than 250,000 Palestinians were displaced from Gaza and the West Bank. Despite years of global condemnation, Israel denies that West Bank settlements are illegal and has adopted a tougher stance that threatens to spark a wider Middle East conflict.
Ultraconservatives in Netanyahu’s government claim that the PA can no longer be trusted to run its part of the West Bank: The PA has “joined Hamas in its attempt to harm Israel in Israel and in the world, and we will fight against it,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in a statement published in the Jerusalem Post. “For those who needed proof, we got it on October 7. A Palestinian state in the heart of Israel is an existential danger; I will not allow such a disaster to befall the State of Israel.”
