Visiting politicians highlight Jewish ties to Jordan Valley
Israeli politicians visited the Palestinian city of Jericho on Sunday and blew a shofar to stake the country’s claim to the Jordan Valley, just prior to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting on Monday with US President Donald Trump in New York.
“Jericho is the first place that the people of Israel entered [their land],” Bayit Yehudi MK Shuli Moalem-Refaeli said. “This is where we became a people.”
Moalem-Refaeli was one of six members of the Knesset’s Land of Israel Caucus who made the group’s first ever-visit to an ancient synagogue, located next to a mosque and a Palestinian flag-pole, in the desert city of palm trees that is under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.
The politicians entered with three buses of activists from the Likud and Bayit Yehudi – including a shofar blower – to visit the Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue that stands on the spot where ancient lore has it that Joshua met an angel of God before conquering the city of Jericho with ram horns.
As the sound of the shofar briefly resounded, sunbeams streamed through the small windows into the dim room and onto the faded mosaic floor of the 6th-century synagogue built in the Byzantine era, when the city was in Christian hands.
The politicians spoke of a historic as well as a present need to expand the small isolated settlements in the Jordan Valley, which aside from Jericho, is under Israeli military and civil control.
“The settlements in the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria connect the Jewish people to their roots,” Likud MK Amir Ohana said, referring to the Jewish communities in the West Bank, which is under Israeli military and civil control.
During the US-led round of peace talks in 2013 and 2014, the US pushed for Israel to agree to withdraw the settlers from the Jordan Valley and pressured the Palestinians to allow the IDF to maintain a military presence there.
On Sunday night, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman visited the Vered Yeriho settlement, which overlooks Jericho, and said the settlements in the Jordan Valley were strategically important for Israel.
“We must make it clear that settlements are not an obstacle to peace – they are the only way to achieve peace in our region,” Ohana said.
The politicians visiting in the area noted that it was especially important to make a statement about the Jordan Valley because Jericho, along with Gaza, were the first two Palestinian cities Israel handed to the PA, a year after the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Under that agreement, Israelis were to have access to the Shalom Al Yisrael synagogue, the remains of which were first uncovered by a British archeologist in 1936. It is one of two known ancient synagogues in the city.
Palestinians burned the structure at the start of the Second Intifada in 2000 and the building was not renovated until 2009.
Sunday’s politicians and activists brought prayer books with them and chanted “we have sinned before you,” along with a number of prayers from the New Year liturgy asking for forgiveness.
“God of Abraham respond [to our prayers],” they chanted.
They also called on the government to restore regular visits to the synagogue such as those that took place in the 1990s.
Moalem-Refaeli suggested that there should at least be monthly visits to the site such as those currently allowed with Joseph’s Tomb, referencing the site located in the Palestinian city of Nablus, which is located on the site of the biblical city of Shechem.
“That is our dream – to live here peacefully with Jews and the Arabs that are living beside us,” Likud MK Yehudah Glick said.
“We are here to say that we are here for good, we are not going anywhere, and all the settlements in the Jordanian Valley will grow and flourish with life,” he said.
Caucus co-chairman Bezalel Smotrich from Bayit Yehudi said: “We are lovers of the Land of Israel who have come here to feel history with our feet and to declare that we have not lost hope that we will return to all parts of our homeland.”