Israel Matzav

Police raid headquarters of Israel-secession group

JERUSALEM – A Jewish group's headquarters were raided today by hundreds of security officials just days before the movement, led by residents of Judea and Samaria, was to present a plan calling for Jews of the area to secede from Israel and create their own autonomous Jewish entity.

The massive police raid came after a WorldNetDaily article this weekend broke the story regarding the Judea Initiative, which is seeking to gather signatures from Judea and Samaria's nearly 200,000 Jews for a manifesto declaring the creation of a sovereign Jewish authority that would govern itself independently according to Jewish law and would provide its own security.

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At the order of the Israeli Defense Forces, a joint taskforce consisting of 200-300 officers from the Israeli Police Authority and Shin Bet security services swooped down on the Kfar Tapuach settlement in northern Samaria and raided the offices of the initiative's leader, northern Samaria resident Yekutel Ben Yaacov. Computers and documents were confiscated and a kennel started by Ben Yaacov several years ago to train dogs to protect area settlements was closed down.

Simultaneously, Jerusalem police and Shin Bet agents raided a Jerusalem Internet café and a nearby apartment owned by Ben Yaacov. Four computers and stacks of documents were confiscated and four café employees were taken in for questioning.

Ben Yaacov was not arrested in the raid.

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The initiative states there are three primary reasons to form a Jewish authority in Judea and Samaria:

* "The new Jewish authority will protect Israel from terror and enhance Israeli security. It is more advantageous to have Jewish autonomy in Judea and Samaria in place of complete Palestinian autonomy, which will give the Palestinian terrorist groups more land from which to fire Qassams and launch attacks. The Jews who remain in the area will be accepting a certain level of self-sacrifice by putting themselves in harms way."

* "The creation of a Jewish authority will relieve tension and prevent bloodshed between Jew and fellow Jew by halting an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in the area, some of whom may use violent resistance in the face of any withdrawal. It will also alleviate some of the tension and rifts that would be created in Israeli society by any withdrawal."

* "The new Jewish authority will offer appropriate self-determination to fulfil the national aspirations of many religious Jews in Israel. The area will be ruled by Torah law as opposed to the current anti-religious government."

Ben Yaacov's Judea Initiative is not the first major push for Jews to secede from Israel. In 1989, the late author and Knesset member Rabbi Meir Kahane, a mentor of Ben Yaacov, attempted to found the State of Judea, a Jewish state in Judea and Samaria. That effort eventually fell through.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:11 AM