Summary
Ariel, in Lustick’s account one of the two largest West Bank urban centers whose establishment a Labor government decided in 1974-76, and by 1984 a township voting 98 percent for the annexationist parties (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
Details
- In the 1984 elections, according to Benvenisti as quoted by Lustick, support for the annexationist parties in Ariel reached 98 percent (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
- Ariel’s mayor, Ron Nahman, describes the city in his presentations as Israel’s “yuppie” community par excellence, with aerobic exercise classes, fashionably designed homes, high-technology industries and state-of-the-art recreational facilities, and makes no political or ideological appeals; Nahman was in fact active in Gush Emunim circles before the subsidization campaign, and before the 1981 elections proposed that Yesha organize a Knesset list and, when that was not accepted, endorsed creating circumstances in which each party would find enough of its members living in the West Bank and Gaza to force it to support annexation (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
- Yigal Cohen-Orgad, a resident of Ariel who served as finance minister in the second Likud government, published a detailed article in Nekuda in November 1987 defending his record on West Bank settlement against Gush Emunim charges (For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Chapter 6, lines 7678-8236).
Related pages
For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, Maale Adumim, Gush Emunim, West Bank