Israel has agreed, in writing, to hand over 6,250 square kilometers of land – the equivalent of its entire biblical and strategic heartland - to an Arab terror state. So reports Dr. Guy Bechor, a leading expert on Arab affairs, who also supplies some of the details of the negotiations.

Bechor reports, based on "leaks from the Palestinian side," that Israel has, in the past few days, presented Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas at least one draft of an "agreement of principles."

• The agreement calls for a state named Palestine to be established alongside Israel, and have a territory of 6,250 square kilometers: the equivalent of all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
• "Palestine" will be demilitarized.
• Most of the Jewish communities built in Judea and Samaria over the past 40 years are to demolished and their inhabitants expelled, according to the plan. The remaining communities are to be concentrated in small salients
  Most of the Jewish communities built in Judea and Samaria over the past 40 years are to demolished and their inhabitants expelled.
  for which the Arab state will be compensated with additional territory elsewhere in present-day Israel. 
• A passage of some sort will connect Gaza and Judea and Samaria. It will be under Jewish sovereignty and Palestinian administration.
• Israel agrees to redivide Jerusalem. Arab neighborhoods will be under Arab sovereignty and Jewish ones under Jewish sovereignty. Mention is made of "religious areas," but further details are not known as of yet. Each side will recognize the other's spiritual needs.
• The "refugee" question is not mentioned at all, and Bechor reports that this is the main sticking point. Abbas is insisting that Arabs descended from those who fled Israel in 1948 be allowed to return to Israel, at least in principle.

Bechor says that Abbas and his men have gone over the draft and are not pleased; they know how to negotiate, he notes. In a recent interview with PA TV, Abbas said that "declarations of principles are a waste of time" and "useless." What the PA wants, he said, is a clear timetable for establishing Palestine, as well as an Israeli pullback, demolition of Jewish communities and "return of refugees" (i.e., the flooding of Israel with Arab citizens).

The Arabs are hoping Israel will become more pliable in November, when an international diplomatic conference, sponsored by the US, is to be held in an attempt to hammer out an accord.

An official close to Mahmoud Abbas, Mustafa Bargouti, said that the idea of a conference is "an Israeli trap" and that nothing will come of it.

Top Israeli archaeologists held an emergency press conference on Thursday, warning that a Second Temple courtyard wall is in danger of being destroyed by the Arab excavations there.

Members of the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities warned that other artifacts could also be endangered by the unsupervised dig.

Click to view video

"No other country in the world would allow such grave damage to its most precious archaeological treasures"

Click here for a bird's-eye view of the Temple Mount.

Dr. Eilat Mazar, who has long been involved in the fight to preserve the Temple Mount from unsupervised digging, said she saw Israeli policemen observing but taking no action against the dig.  "Irreversible destruction is going on there," she said.

The Committee has demanded that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (fax: 02-670-5475, or 9722-670-5475 from abroad), Jerusalem Affairs Minister Rafi Eitan (Pensioners), and the Antiquities Authority order the work stopped immediately.  In addition, they demand that tractors not be allowed to work on the Mount at all, nor may any digging take place without appropriate archaeological supervision.

"The archaeological damage is many times worse," Mazar said, "in light of the fact that the ground level is only slightly above the original Temple Mount platform.  And in fact, the bedrock has been uncovered in some places - meaning that earth that has been in place for many centuries, even possibly since the First Temple, has been removed."

"No other country in the world would allow such grave damage to its most precious archaeological treasures," Mazar said.

The Committee is planning to file a complaint with the police, and is considering submitting an appeal to the Supreme Court.

After years of work by activists and the local municipality, eastern Gush Etzion will now be reconnected directly to Jerusalem.

The new road, which was opened Friday morning, will make the drive from eastern Gush Etzion to Jerusalem less than ten minutes. Residents now travel upwards of 45 minutes, much of it in the wrong direction, to reach the capital.

Eastern Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem and straddling the Judea Desert, has been isolated from the capital ever since the start of the Oslo War in 2000, when the road connecting it to Jerusalem was deemed too dangerous to drive on.

Even before that, residents faced intermittent attacks following the deployment of armed PLO forces in nearby Bethlehem in accordance with the Oslo Accords.  In the mid-90s, when about 90 percent of the residents of Judea and Samaria benefited from the Rabin government’s construction of bypass roads around areas handed over to the PLO, eastern Gush Etzion was not included.

Protests in Recent Years
Several grassroots protests aimed to pressure the government to open the road, which lay nearly finished for over a year. Local residents of Tekoa, Nokdim, Maaleh Rechavam, Meitzad, Pnei Kedem and Maaleh Amos stood to benefit most from the road’s opening, but residents of western Gush Etzion towns like Efrat also sought the opening of the road as an alternative route when traffic tie-ups or accidents block off the main Tunnels Road on the Jerusalem-Hevron Highway.

Marches were held and activists tried to traverse the remaining unpaved segment of the road. Last December, MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) said at one of the protests: “It is Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Chief of Police Moshe Karadi who are preventing the opening of this road. They are doing so for political reasons alone.”

Now, with Peretz out of the picture after losing Labor Party elections and Karadi forcibly retired due to police corruption, the road has now finally opened.

The Announcement
Last week, Gush Etzion’s municipality sent out a message announcing the road’s opening. “After many years of anticipation, and countless efforts with government offices we are happy to finally announce the opening of the new Jerusalem – Gush Herodion Highway (or Zaatra bypass road). The name Gush Herodion Highway comes from the fact that the road runs just below the flat-topped Herodion fortress constructed by King Herod." The King’s tomb was recently uncovered at the site as well.

The highway opened at 6 AM, with a festive ceremony at the Mizmoria Junction at the Jerusalem side of the highway.  A convoy left from the Herodion at 7:30 AM.

“In the first stage, the highway will be open daily from 6am-6pm only,” the municipality wrote to residents. “We are continuing to work together with the IDF to extend the hours.”

Activists Happy, Apprehensive
Anita Finkelstein, who heads Tekoa’s grassroots Action Committee, says she has been waiting for the construction of the bypass road since it was mentioned to her upon her moving to Tekoa 21 years ago.

She and her neighbors are still apprehensive. They have been informed before of the opening of the road, and are waiting until they see it up and running before they believe it. They are reluctant to take the opening of the road as a sign that they will now be included "inside" the route of the Partition Wall - which they are now set to be excluded from.

Overall, however, local activists are pleased that one of their goals has been reached. “All of us feel that everything we did was important to bringing this day,” Finkelstein says. “We hope and pray that it will encourage tourism in the region and that more and more people will decide to live here.”

For the fifth consecutive year, on August 31, the Association for the Advancement of Being Nice - known in English as the Society for a Friendlier World (SFW) - is running its "Be Nice" Day in Israel. 

Booths have been set up at shopping malls around the country, mainly in central Israel, for the dissemination of literature explaining the importance of being nice. "This is our annual opportunity to bring the subject of 'being friendly' to public awareness," SFW volunteers say.

As the largest-scale expression of this initiative, dozens of cars set out for Sderot today, to do their shopping - and smiling - in the rocket-besieged Negev city. 

The focus this year is on people one may usually regard as "transparent."  The SFW recommends "surprising yourselves and those around you by relating to someone you are not generally accustomed to relating to.  This can be done by saying Shalom [Hello], smiling, showing interest, engaging in a short conversation, giving a flower or a cup of cold water, or offering a ride."

Last year's focus was on being nice to relatives and friends, "on whom we sometimes take out our frustrations more than on others."

The Tel Aviv-based SFW has been in operation since 1999, and has made it its goal to promote niceness as a way of improving interpersonal communications both in Israel and around the world.  "Our goal is to make humanity more pleasant," its mission statement reads. "We believe that the way to achieve this goal is raise the level of friendliness. Friendliness is a way of life, and as human beings who live in this hectic day and age, we often forget how easy it is to be friendly."
 
"Everyone knows what friendliness is," SFW posits, "but in general, we define it as 'giving other people the feeling you're happy they are around.'  This, regardless of any conflicts that exist anywhere where people come in contact.  This idea may seem obvious, yet we feel that people, in general, are not behaving in a friendly-enough manner, and our goal is to make more and more people adopt the Friendliness philosophy."

"Being friendly does not mean giving up your rights," the statement concludes. "On the contrary: it strengthens you, and asserts that being friendly is being happy."

The Hevron Jewish Community has released a sharp, detailed report accusing the Israeli Government of breach of trust, abuse, and hostility towards the Jewish owners of Arab-stolen property in the City of the Patriarchs. 

Entitled "The State of Israel's Management of the Stolen Jewish Property in Hevron," the report was issued this month in honor of the 78th anniversary of the Hevron massacre.  In August 1929, Arabs brutally murdered 67 of their Jewish neighbors in their homes and in the local yeshiva.  The Jewish survivors were then removed from Hevron, leaving behind their homes and land to be stolen by the Arabs.  Only after the 1967 Six Day War did Jews return permanently to reclaim their homes and property.  They soon found, however, that doing so under Israeli rule was not to be as easy as they thought.
...a major failure of legal, historic and moral significance

The report begins by terming itself a "grave indictment" against those in the government who, "for decades have been exploiting their standing and have tried to apply their full influence to prevent the return of the Jewish properties to their owners, and to prevent the correction of the historic injustice of the 1929 pogroms."

The report aims to "detail how, for a generation, the State of Israel has been betraying its mission as the representative of the Jewish Nation in the City of its Forefathers, with disdain, disregard and even hostility vis-a-vis its historic mission of rehabilitating the ancient Hevron community that was destroyed by Arab rioters..."

In short, the report presents what it calls "a major failure of legal, historic and moral significance."

• bulldoze the Jewish quarter's houses, stationing an outdoor market there;
• destroy and desecrate the Avraham Avinu synagogue, building atop it a sheep sty, garbage dump, and public restroom;
• and destroy and vandalize the ancient Jewish cemetery, using the gravestones for local construction.

Parts of the property were rented out by the Jordanian Trustee to local Arabs, while other parts were ignored by the Trustee, and were simply taken over by private or public elements without being registered.  "There is actually no proper and full registration anywhere of the stolen Jewish property in Hevron, because of faulty management by both the Jordanian conquerors and the Israel Trustee," the report states.

Israel Takes Over From Jordan
The Israeli Trustee received control of the property in 1967 following the liberation of the Biblical homeland areas of Jerusalem, Judea (including Hevron), Samaria, and more.  "It now had a historic Jewish-moral opportunity to correct the injustice and restore Jewish life to Hevron - but it did so only partially, despite repeated requests by both the original owners and the Jewish Community of Hevron that had received power of attorney to settle most of the properties."

The function of the Trustee is to act in the best interests of those he is representing, the report states, and to ensure that the property does not remain desolate. "Yet Israel constantly and systematically did the opposite...  For instance, regarding Hevron property that had been consecrated to a Jewish religious trust, the Supreme Court ruled that Israel could manage it as though it owned it.  At the same time, regarding the Moslem Waqf properties in Judea and Samaria, the State does not intervene at all - even when the Waqf works in tandem with terror organizations."

The report says that by allowing many of the properties to remain vacant and desolate, it is abrogating its basic obligations as a Trustee: "The Trustee/State absurdly overlooks the Arab renters' obligations, while at the same time making extra sure their rights are not harmed... thus ignoring its obligations towards both the property (by leaving it vacant and desolate) and the owners (by not letting them move in)."

Tel Romeida, For Example
Two Jewish-owned plots of land (Bloc 34416, plots 52 and 53) at the heights of the Tel Romeida neighborhood stand adjacent to an IDF base and Jewish homes in the neighborhood - yet the government bans Jews from setting foot there.  The land had been rented to an Arab, but the contract was stopped by the Civil Administration in 2000.

The Jewish Community of Hevron, granted power of attorney by the owners, has asked several times to be allowed to rent the land.  In 2003, the IDF Central Region Commander agreed - but to this day nothing has been done to allow the Jews to move in, and it remains desolate.  At the same time, the State/Trustee also does very little to stop Arab infiltration and illegal usage of the area - whereas Jews who have tried to enter the plots have been arrested and tried.

This is a perfect example, the report states, of the government's hostile attitude towards the Jews of Hevron: "These plots have all the necessary conditions - land owned by Jews who have given official power of attorney to the Jewish Community, no Arab 'third party,' security permits, and the submission of proper requests throughout the years - and yet despite all, the property remains desolate, in clear violation of the owners' will."

Moving into the Market
The area now known as the Marketplace - the part of the Avraham Avinu neighborhood that the Jordanians turned into an outdoor market - is undisputedly Jewish-owned.  After the IDF closed down the Jordanian market because of the security dangers it presented, and after it stood desolate for seven years, and immediately after the murder of the infant Shalhevet Pass by an Arab sniper terrorist, several Jewish families moved into the storefronts and turned them into their homes.
The Jews fulfilled their end of the bargain - but Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said the State need not fulfill its side

This led to a drawn-out legal battle in which the State demanded to expel the Jews.  The State's main claim was that families who moved in illegally should not be rewarded.  The report notes the absurdity: "In the [State's] eyes, the 'sinners' who must not be rewarded are the Jews who acted in accordance with the owners' wishes and by their request - and not the Arabs who murdered and threw out the Jews in 1929!"

Ultimately, at the end of 2005, an agreement was worked out according to which the Jewish occupants would leave, to be replaced shortly afterwards by other Jewish families who would rent the buildings.  The Jews fulfilled their end of the bargain - but Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said the State need not fulfill its side, because of "legal and political considerations."

After having been thus betrayed, two families moved back in to adjacent buildings - and were brutally and violently removed by army and police forces earlier this month.  This expulsion, the report states, is a "mocking symbol of the hostility and disdain that the State of Israel has for the stolen Jewish property," from several aspects:

• The eviction was not necessary, as the Supreme Court had ruled it permissible, not obligatory;
• it was meant only to impart a lesson that 'sinners should not be rewarded' - when in fact it was clear to all that their requests to move in had been ignored for years, leaving Jewish-owned property vacant and desolate;
• it was done against two families that had left peaceably on their own in the past, based on a government promise that was not fulfilled;
• it was tremendously violent and destructive. The properties were turned into ruins - in opposition to the Trustee's obligation to preserve the property, and as an indication that the government meant to ensure that no Jews ever live there.  It was the first time since 1929 that a synagogue had been destroyed in Hevron - and the destroyers were Israeli soldiers and policemen.

Extra-Harsh
The report also notes the State's extra-harsh approach towards Jews who wish to actualize their rights to the Jewish property - especially in comparison with the forgiving approach towards Arabs who infiltrate into these areas.  For instance, a Jewish teenager was caught sleeping in one of the refurbished apartments in the market area.  The police arrested him and demanded that he be distanced from the area for 60 days, claiming, "The State affirms the existence of a policy, approved by the Justice Ministry, calling for extra precautions to ensure that the Hevron market area remains empty."

The judge asked the State representative about the closure order placed upon the apartments for "security reasons":  "Why do these security reasons necessitate only the closing of the apartments, yet allow people to walk by there?  Is it more dangerous for people to enter the apartments than to merely walk by?"

The State's representative answered, "This is the judgment of the Central Commander..."  However, he did not add that the order was issued by the Central Commander at the behest of the Deputy Attorney General, Shai Nitzan, for the purpose of preventing Jewish entry into the storefronts.

Conclusion: End the Israeli Trusteeship!
Israel's hostile approach cannot be due to its opposition to Jewish presence in Hevron, the report states: "The government of Israel has recognized, ever since a Cabinet decision in 1980, the legitimacy of Jewish habitation in Hevron - and even anchored this right in an international agreement, the Hevron Accord of 1997."

"However," the report continues, "as the Trustee of the property, Israel relates to the Jewish owners as an enemy.  This is an absurd and intolerable situation for anyone who sees Israel as the country of the Jewish Nation."

The writers of the report therefore call upon the State of Israel to end its trusteeship immediately, "especially given the fact that in 1995, a peace treaty was signed with Jordan - ending the state of war between the two countries, ending Israel's status as an 'enemy' vis-a-vis Jordan, and ending the need for Israel to fill the shoes of Jordan's Trustee of Enemy Zionist Property..."

"Alternatively," the report concludes, "Israel's policy makers must instruct all the government echelons to immediately stop the systematic harassment and discrimination of the owners of the stolen Jewish property...  The State must first repair the damage it did in the market property, and then begin corrective reverse discrimination, leading to the restoration of dynamic Jewish life in Hevron as it was before the pogrom of 1929."

Amidst pushing and shoving, followed by a measure of police intervention, Kiryat Arba/Hevron residents prevented leftists and Arabs from disrupting a ceremony honoring a soldier who refused to take part in evicting Jewish families.

The ceremony was held Friday morning, when residents of Kiryat Arba and Hevron gathered at the Hazon David synagogue, just outside Kiryat Arba.  The synagogue was originally established six years ago following the terrorist murders of David Cohen and Chezi Mualem nearby, and has been destroyed by army forces and rebuilt by locals several times since then.

The purpose of today's gathering was to honor IDF soldier David Sayad of Kiryat Arba, who refused earlier this month to expel Jews from their homes in Hevron.  A soldier in the Duchifat combat brigade, he and several others refused to take part in what turned out to be a very violent eviction of two families from Jewish-owned property in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood.  He was sentenced to 28 days in army prison for his stance.

An email address has been set up for well-wishers to congratulate the soldiers who refused to evict Jews; see below.

A Welcome Phenomenon
Some 100 people attended the ceremony, and were addressed by Kiryat Arba's Mayor Tzvi Katzover, Hevron spokesman Noam Arnon, and Tzafrir Ronen of the not-religious Nahalal Forum in northern Israel.  Katzover said, "I have been hearing from more and more youths of late that they plan to enlist in the IDF, but are declaring in advance that they will not take part in any expulsion of Jews.  This is a growing, welcome phenomenon, and it is our chance to save Yesha [Judea and Samaria] and the entire State of Israel..."

Noam Arnon lauded the "great heroism of these soldiers who, on the one hand, are willing to give their lives to defend the country, but are also willing to stand up for their right to be free Jews and not take part in the crime of expulsion.  These soldiers deserve our great admiration, and should serve as an example to all soldiers, showing that they can and must maintain their Jewish ideals even in the army."

Tzafrir Ronen said, "The present struggle is for the identity of the Land of Israel.  Our enemy wants to change its name to Palestine, and Olmert is going along with it... If Olmert's plan is actualized, it means that the curse of Hadrian - the Roman emperor who was the first to change the name of the Land of Israel, calling it Palestine - will come true once again."

Nadia Matar, leader of the Women in Green grassroots organization, was also present.  Commenting on the use of police force against the Jewish residents, she told Arutz-7's Oranit Atzar, "We must fight both the internal enemy and the external one, everywhere and all the time, without compromise."

Larger Ceremony Postponed
A large-scale ceremony honoring all the IDF soldiers who refused to take part in the destruction of the Hevron Jewish Community’s Shalhevet neighborhood was to have been held Thursday night.  It was postponed, however, so as not to detract from the IDF's simultaneous ceremony awarding medals of bravery to soldiers who fought heroically in the Second Lebanon War last year. 

Send Email Blessings
Another grassroots organization, Cities of Israel (COI), has opened an email account for the public to express its High Holiday new year wishes to the soldiers who refused to take part in the Hevron expulsion.  "Polls show that while 14% of the public supports Olmert, more than twice as much - over 30% - support the 'Hevron refusers,'" says COI's Susie Dym. "We therefore decided to provide the public with a tool by which to communicate with the soldiers and express their support and good wishes."  The email address is "sarvanei.hevron@gmail.com" [sarvanei means 'refusers of']. 

"It is not enough that the soldiers did their duty and refused to take part in an action over which the black flag of illegality flies," Dym says.  "Now the public must respond, and must create a new national reality in honor of the new year, in which the Hevron heroism becomes the ideal, not something to be condemned."

Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen told reporters Friday that the CEO of the Heftziba Building Development & Investments Company, Boaz Yona, and his wife Tamar were nabbed while dining in a small town near Milan in a joint operation by the Israeli and Italian Police forces this week.

Earlier this week, Tamar Yona gave interviews to the Israeli press in which she denied knowing where her husband was and claimed she was now "fighting like a lioness" to raise their children on her own.

Interpol became involved in the international search after Yona was spotted in Rumania by other Israeli business owners.  The Heftziba CEO fled the country and broke off contacts with the company’s creditors three weeks ago after the firm went bankrupt.

 “The arrest brought an end to the long manhunt carried out by the Israel Police National Fraud Unit, with international aid abroad," Cohen said.  "Yonah is currently being investigated and his testimony is being collected. His wife will of course be freed."
 

Israel began preparing the extradition request documents on Friday, in accordance with its joint extradition treaty with Italy.

Thousands of families who had spent their life savings and taken loans to purchase homes that were being built by Heftziba were left with huge debts and no homes. Many of them have taken over their unfinished apartments, connecting water and electricity in pirate manners.  The Supreme Court ruled this week against a Peace Now petition to have them removed.

People who purchased apartments with the failed development firm were told that they could register their purchased property with the Israel Land Registry (Tabu), even without the form known as Form 50 that is normally included in the process.

Form 50 is a mandatory confirmation that documents the builder has fulfilled all its obligations to the Tax Authority. However purchasers of property from a company that has gone bankrupt or is in liquidation proceedings can register their apartment or house in their own names directly with the Land Registry, even without Form 50.

A government committee voted on Wednesday to lift visa requirements for visiting Russian tourists. Full cabinet approval of the decision is contingent upon Russia enacting a reciprocal policy. Minister of Public Security Avi Dichter, who expressed professional reservations, voted in favor of the proposal nonetheless.
Minister of Public Security Avi Dichter... expressed professional reservations.

The ministerial committee authorized Foreign Ministry officials to begin discussions with their Russian counterparts towards an agreement on the visa issue. Government officials estimated that an agreement could be finalized within months, possibly during or shortly after an upcoming visit to Israel by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov. During his visit, scheduled for October, Israeli and Russian leaders will formally review the preliminary results of the negotiations. In Israel, officials representing all relevant ministries have given their approval for lifting the visa requirements for Russian tourists.

Tourism Minister Yitzchak Aharonovitch called the ministerial committee's decision a triumph of "common sense." Minister Aharonovitch, who initiated the current proposal earlier this year, said that canceling the visa requirement would encourage tens of thousands of Russian tourists to visit Israel each year. An increase in tourism, he said, would also create "thousands of jobs."

In discussions about the visa initiative in July, Minister Dichter opposed the idea, saying that it would undermine Israel's fight against trafficking in prostitutes, which has been underway for years. Removing the visa requirement, according to Dichter, would make it easier for pimps and prostitutes to enter from Russia.

Minister Aharonovitch rejected Dichter’s argument, pointing out that fewer than 200 Russian prostitutes have been arrested in the past three years. He further argued, more broadly, that organized crime could be prevented without a lengthy visa application process. Dichter was also roundly criticized at the time by Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, who saw the Public Security Minister's opposition to the proposal as an expression of bigotry against Russian immigrants. Knesset Minister Zahava Gal'on (Meretz) criticized Dichter as well, accusing him of giving a bad name to Russian immigrants and tourists.

Minister Dichter said Wednesday that, while he voted in favor of the measure, he continues to stand behind his original statements regarding the problems that may be created by the change in entry requirements.

The Globes financial newspaper quoted leading Israeli businessman Lev Levayev, who also heads the Israel-Russia and Israel-Ukraine Chambers of Commerce, as saying that lifting
Tens of thousands of Russian tourists to visit Israel each year.
the visa requirement for Russian visitors "will yield benefits in many economic sectors in Israel as soon as goes it into effect. This is an important move that could double trade between the two countries to more than $1 billion.... I hope that the decision taken by the ministerial committee will also mark a turning point in the attitude of the government and society in Israel towards businesspeople from Russia and the CIS countries, and towards tourists who will now be visiting Israel more frequently and in larger numbers."

Israel is now home to approximately one million immigrants born in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. In 2005, officials of the Immigration Police estimated that another 70,000 relatives of Israeli citizens were living in Israel illegally. The dropping of visa requirements will increase the ease of family visits from the "old country." On the other hand, it will facilitate trips to Russia by those Israeli Jews looking into their family roots in Europe. 

Plans for pop singer Madonna to spend the Rosh HaShanah New Year holiday in the Galilee city of Tzfat are causing a controversy in what is considered by many to be the birthplace of Jewish mysticism.

The singer, sometimes referred to as "The Material Girl" (after a song by the same name), will arrive in the city with her husband, English writer-director Guy Ritchie, and their three children, prior to the start of the holiday. They will be accompanied by several friends, including acting couple Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, as well as top designer Donna Karan. Also arriving with Madonna will be some 3,000 students of the Los Angeles-based Kabalah Center.

The local tourism industry will be boosted beyond measure, say business owners who depend largely on the tourist trade in the small city of 30,000. The northern Israeli city has been struggling economically since last summer’s Second Lebanon War with Hizbullah terrorists, who peppered the north with deadly Katyusha rockets, driving all thoughts of tourism away during the busiest season of the year.

The Florida Jewish Federation has pledged $8 million in contributions for projects to help rejuvenate the region – and that sum includes $100,000 to build a Kabalah Center.

But the ten-day pilgrimage by Madonna and company, which is expected to end with the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, has split the city between those anticipating an economic boom and others worried about the cheapening of the concept of Kabalah. Madonna, a pop culture icon, is notorious for very sexually suggestive stage performances.

“A lot of people are looking for spiritual fulfillment and self-improvement,” contends Laurie Rappaport, a long-time resident of the city nestled in the hills of Galilee. Rappaport, who runs the visitor’s center for Livnot U’Lehibanot (To Build and to be Built), was blunt about the benefits of Madonna’s return to the city she visited in 2004. “From a business point of view, anything that brings people into Tzfat is desirable,” she said.

Not everyone is pleased about the idea of having thousands of wannabe Kabalists flooding the city during one of the holiest times of the Jewish year, however.

"Kabala is too holy to put into the hands of everybody," said Jewish artist Ya'akov Kaszemacher of Tzfat, one Israel's four holy cities along with Jerusalem, Tiberias and Hevron.

Serious Kabala students disapprove of mysticism being adopted by people who know little or nothing about Kabalah's deeply metaphysical concepts and who are only familiar with its very basic, exterior ideas.

Realtors may also benefit in the long run; word has it that Madonna is also planning to buy a house in the Rosh Pina – Tzfat area.