Operation 1000 for the Settlement of Jewish-American Immigrants in the Occupied Territories

The article examines the unknown settlement program Mivza Ha-Elef [Operation 1000], a partnership between the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), the World Zionist Organization (WZO), Gush Emunim [Bloc of the Faithful], Hadassah, and the American-Jewish religious denominations that aimed to attract Jewish-Americans to live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between 1980 and 1985. Through an examination of archival documents, periodical press, film, and other existing media never before brought to light, I reconstruct this unique initiative and its discourses for the first time in the scholarly literature. This study is based in historical methodology, but draws upon an interdisciplinary framework of inquiry. While the program itself bore mixed results, its discussion adds an important dimension to our understanding of the participation of Jewish-American immigrants within the Israeli settlement enterprise as well as new theoretical alternatives offered by considering this case-study within the framework of ethnic return migration.