Israel prevailed in the 1967 war, returning to places such as East Jerusalem, Hebron, Shilo and all of Judea and Samaria

Israel prevailed in the 1967 war, returning to places such as East Jerusalem, Hebron, Shilo and all of Judea and Samaria. For 2,000 uninterrupted years, Jews had lived in the ancient Jewish quarter of Hebron, near the Tomb of the Patriarchs where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are buried. Only in 1929, when local Arabs massacred them, was the Jewish community forced to flee the city. What could be more historically just than to rebuild the Jewish presence there?

Jews have a moral, legal, historical and Biblical right to settle their ancestral land-territories. And despite the threat posed by Arab-Palestinian terrorism, that is precisely what they continue to do. The number of Jews living in Judea, Samaria has more than doubled in the past decade, with more than 500,000 people now living in some  250 communities. They work and play and hope and dream just like the rest of us.

Israel's rebuilding its settlements matter, then, because they are at the forefront of righting a historical wrong, one in which Jews were previously barred from living in their ancestral homeland due to Arab rejectionism and hatred. But as the American people so bravely demonstrated in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the best response to one's mortal foes is to go right on living. And building. And that is what the Jews of Israel will must continue to do as well. 

Any terrorist act against Israel must have an additional response, the authorization to build another 50,000 housing units in the 1967 liberated territories.