'The day will come when all the world will say: This is Israel’s land –Israel’s!'
For more about Jewish Home see Refusenik new leading light of the right
This posting has 5 items:
1) JPost Likud politicians call on Israel to annex Area C;
2) Jewish Press: Drive to Annex Judea and Samaria Full Steam Ahead;
3) WIG: Welcome to the renewed Women For Israel’s Tomorrow;
4) IMEMC: Likud Officials Call On Government To “Annex C Area”;
5) Guardian: Likud members call for Israeli annexation of West Bank;
Women in Green conference, January 2013; lots of men, no green and standing room only to hear Likud politicians who think sovereignty over West Bank should simply be applied. Photo by Shlomi Shalmoni
Likud politicians call on Israel to annex Area C
By Tovah Lazaroff, JPost
January 01, 2013
Israeli annexation of the West Bank’s Area C – where all settlements are located – received public support from two high-ranking Likud politicians on Tuesday evening, Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein and MK Ze’ev Elkin.
“Lack of Israeli sovereignty over Area C means the continuation of the status quo,” said Edelstein, as he spoke about an area of the country that is now under Israeli military control. “It strengthens the international community’s demand for a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.”
But Edelstein and Elkin cautioned that annexation was a process that should happen slowly, not immediately.
The two men were among a line-up of speakers at a Jerusalem conference organized by Women in Green, on the “Application of Israeli Sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.” It is the group’s third annual conference on this topic.
Support for annexation has increased in the aftermath of the UN’s General Assembly decision in November to upgrade the Palestinian status to that of non-member observer state.
Former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker warned the conference that annexation was an abrogation of the 1993 Oslo Accords, in which Israel and the Palestinians committed to resolve their dispute through negotiations, rather than unilateral measures.
“Israel recognized its right to annex Area C, but has chosen not to do so for diplomatic reasons,” said Baker, who explained that he did not support such a move because of its diplomatic implications. “We have committed ourselves to negotiations in the Oslo Accord, which is still in effect, whether we like it or not.”
As one of the three legal experts who penned the Levy Report, which stated that Israel has a legal right under international law to settle Area C of the West Bank, he said he believed that the government should focus on strengthening the Jewish right to build over the pre-1967 lines, adding that it should “stop apologizing all the time.”
Baker explained that “no one can deny the Jewish people its place as an indigenous people” on both sides of the pre-1967 lines. But he noted that international opinion increasingly refused to recognize this “historical fact.”
European politicians, he said, have shifted their language with regard to the West Bank from “disputed territories” to “occupied Palestinian territories.”
But Elkin said he disagreed with Baker. If the Palestinians do not have to adhere to the Oslo Accords, than neither do Israelis, he said.
MK Yariv Levin (Likud) said he supported annexation but did not believe it was that feasible. Instead, he urged politicians to focus on applying individual Israeli laws to West Bank settlements and its residents, rather than tackling the issue on a global scale. The same building laws should apply equally to Tel Aviv and to settlements in Judea andSamaria, he said.
Edelstein said, however, that it must be clear that Israel is moving toward annexation, or it weakens any argument it makes about Israel’s right to Judea and Samaria.
He noted that such a step would not end the international debate over Area C, as evidenced by the storm of controversy that continues to rage over Israeli sovereignty in east Jerusalem.
“Application of sovereignty does not automatically resolve the issue of disputed territories, as we say in the international legal language, but it is an important step that expresses our approach,” he said.
Failure to make such a strong statement, Edelstein added, “is like saying [Judea andSamaria] is not the legal wife, but a mistress.”
Drive to Annex Judea and Samaria Full Steam Ahead
Talk of a two-state solution, while widely prevalent, is largely irrelevant.
By Hillel Fendel, Jewish Press
January 03, 2013
As of this week, it’s no longer just another fringe campaign: the drive to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria – all or parts thereof – is now a bona-fide, full-blown national drive, with the support of government ministers, Knesset Members and candidates, academics, and members of the media. This became abundantly clear on Tuesday night inJerusalem, when more than 1000 people crowded into a 900-seat Jerusalem hall – after the original location was abruptly changed – for the Third Annual Conference on the Application of Israeli Sovereignty over Judea andSamaria(Yesha).
Organized by Women in Green, and co-sponsored by the Jewish Press (JewishPress.com), the conference dealt with specific and practical methods by which to actually get the sovereignty ball moving and thus prevent the formation of a Palestinian state.
Talk of a two-state solution, while widely prevalent, is largely irrelevant. It was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech atBarIlanUniversityin 2009 that gave the concept new life, and it specifically emphasized thatIsraelwould agree only to a demilitarized Arab state in parts of Judea andSamaria. This being an arrangement that both Fatah and Hamas have categorically turned down, an agreed-upon two-state solution can basically be dismissed.
What will take its place?
What will ensure that active and passive preparations on the ground for such an eventuality do not continue? The answer, according to an increasing portion of the Israeli public, is Israeli sovereignty — at least in part of the areas in question. At the conference, Women in Green co-chair Yehudit Katzover presented the results of a new survey, in which 73.2% of right-wing voters (some 56% of the population)–-not including residents of Yesha or hareidim–support sovereignty. The conference speakers essentially addressed three major issues: 1) How to bring about the desired sovereignty; 2) what will be the status of the Arabs living in Judea and Samaria; and 3) whether to push for full sovereignty over all of Yesha or to work gradually.
The Slow but Sure Approach
Three Likud members – Cabinet Minister Yuli Edelstein, MK Ze’ev Elkin, who is widely expected to be named a Cabinet minister following the upcoming elections, and MK Yariv Levine – supported what Elkin called the “salami approach.” We must learn from the Palestinians, he said, “take what we can now, and discuss the rest later.”
He said that we are “hopefully” now entering a new era in terms of Judea andSamaria: “For the first 25 years after the Six Day War, the ‘status quo approach’ reigned; beautiful Jewish communities were built, but the status of the areas did not change. Since 1993, we began a period of withdrawals – Oslo, then the Disengagement, etc. – and it is now clear to most that this has brought us less security, and increased demands from the PA… We must now begin to take proactive steps to improve our situation, and begin to apply sovereignty, or aspects thereof, on whatever areas we can at any given moment. It will not be easy, but it is necessary.”
The “This Is our Land” Approach
Others demanded full sovereignty now; coincidentally or not, they are not currently in the governing coalition. MK Aryeh Eldad said that Israeli law must be immediately imposed on all of Yesha, and Likud Knesset candidate Moshe Feiglin called upon the Israeli public to internalize the idea that “This Is our Land” – the name of the grass-roots movement he founded 20 years ago – and that sovereignty is the only solution. Popular thinker Caroline Glick echoed her position of the last conference, saying then that sovereignty, whether complete or partial, will cost us the same in terms of international opposition, “so why pay full price for half a job?”
Former MK Elyakim HaEtzni added that Arab autonomy leading to statehood is catastrophic, but that autonomy under the framework of full Israeli sovereignty in Yesha is the desirable way to go.
Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, running for Knesset on the Jewish Home ticket, quoted the Y’hi khvod paragraph in the Morning Prayers, in which the verse citing God’s choice of the Land of Israel precedes His choice of the people of Israel. And regarding the Arab minority living in our midst, he said that Yehoshua Bin Nun dealt with the same issue by simply insisting that they rid themselves of idol-worship and recognize Jewish control over the land. “This must be our clear red line,” Rabbi Ben-Dahan emphasized: “the recognition that there can be no foreign rule in Eretz Yisrael.”
Caroline Glick also cited Yehoshua Bin Nun, and said that his demand to forego all idol-worship has a parallel today: “They must agree to stop all terrorism.”
Citizenship – or Expulsion?
The issue of Yesha Arabs under Israeli sovereignty was thoroughly explored in an hour-long panel discussion concluding the conference. Glick took the most extreme approach: “All of them should be offered the right to apply to the Interior Ministry for citizenship. Based on past experience in Jerusalem and the Golan [which have both been annexed – HF], we know that most of the Arabs will not apply. And even if they would all become citizens, the Jewish population in Israel would still retain a two-third majority, buttressed by growing birth and Aliyah rates. Nothing is simple, but we need not fear taking the bold steps that are necessary; we have come to inherit our land!”
Dr. Martin Sherman, founder of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, formerTelAvivUniversitylecturer, and former ministerial adviser to Yitzhak Shamir’s government – said there is no choice but to compensate the Arab residents and have them take up residence elsewhere. “Ultimately, there can be only one sovereignty between the Jordan and the Mediterranean– and we’d better make sure it’s ours, not theirs.” Dr. Sherman elaborated that Arab self-rule won’t work, because they have no loyalty to the Israeli government overseeing the autonomy, and that granting full rights would also fail because “two peoples who do not share basic nationalist cultures can simply not live together over time.” Therefore, he concluded, “the only option that remains is compensation/evacuation,” a solution first proposed by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose name was not mentioned at the conference.
Wanted: Israeli TV
Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar Ilan University, who was asked to speak on the expected Arab reaction to Israeli sovereignty, said, “They haven’t accepted the results of the War of Independence, do we expect them to accept the results of the Six Day War?” Both the Arab world and the international community, Dr. Kedar predicted, can be expected to react moderately to strongly to a declaration of Israeli sovereignty. Part of the solution, he suggested, lies in launching an Israeli satellite TV channel for the general worldwide public. “It would not cost more than $15 million a year,” he assessed.
Co-chairs Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katzover, as well as other speakers, emphasized that the recent report submitted by the Justice Edmond Levy committee, outlining the legal foundation for Jewish settlement in Yesha, must be adopted: “It must take its proper place in open governmental discourse, and action must be taken in accordance with it.” MK Eldad, in a not-subtle dig at the Jewish Home party, demanded that all future coalition partners resign from the next Netanyahu government if the Levi Report is not legislated into law within three months.
The Day Will Come!
All the speakers agreed on two things: a Palestinian state would be catastrophic for the State of Israel and must be avoided at all costs, and the very fact of the conference and its success is a great step forward towards applying Jewish sovereignty over all of Israel. In the inspiring words of an unusually uplifting Latma musical skit produced especially for the Conference, “The day will come – it must come – when only truth will be spoken, and all the world will say, without apology: This is Israel’s land –Israel’s!
Welcome to the renewed Women For Israel’s Tomorrow- Women in Green website.
From Women in Green website. Click headline above for more information.
Women forIsrael’s Tomorrow-Women in Green, founded in 1993 by Ruth and Michael Matar, is a grassroots movement of women and men, young and old, secular and religious, all bound together by a shared concern, love, devotion and loyalty to the Land of Israel. We are a registered non-profit organization with friends and supporters inIsraeland abroad.
Our movement is dedicated to safeguarding our G-d given Biblical Homeland. We are popularly known as “the Women in Green” because of the green hats we sometimes wear to show our opposition to the abandonment of parts of our homeland and to the return of Israel to the “Green Line”, the pre-1967 borders.
“Eretz Israel Le’Am Yisrael”- “The Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel” has been our motto since the beginning of our movement.
We act out of our firm belief in the central role of Eretz Israel for the future of the Jewish People. Today, more than ever, we must actualize our possession of our land. In addition to our usual activities of education and hasbara as to the right of the Jewish people to its Biblical Homeland, Women in Green is also behind the struggle for a Jewish Shdema and the Yibaneh fund for building and planting in the hills of Judea. One of the places where Women in Green plant trees to safeguard Israel’s Statelands, is Netzer; in the heart of Gush Etzion, between Elazar and Alon Shvut.
Women in Green’s new logo
As you can see, Women in Green has a new logo. The Magen David represents the Jewish Zionist ideal; the blue and brown furrows of plowed land represent what we stand for: cultivating and safeguarding the Land of Israel.
Be a partner! Join us!
With the blessing of “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it”
Likud Officials Call On Government To “Annex C Area” In West Bank
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies
January 03, 2013
Israeli sources reported that two senior officials of the Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called on the government to “officially annex C area” of the occupied West Bank, where Israel’s major illegal settlement blocks and settlements are located, in order to officially regard the area as part of the state of Israel.
Israeli daily, Maariv, reported that Israeli Information and Diaspora Minister, Yuli Edelstein, and Member of Knesset (MK) Zeev Elkin, said that Israel must enforce its sovereignty over the occupied West Bank, stating that “Judea and Samaria must be in the hands of Israel forever”, according to the two officials.
They said that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank must be annexed as part of Israel, but added that Israel should conduct this move “slowly and carefully, not immediately”, in order to avoid massive international condemnation.
More and more Israeli officials, MK’s and ministers, members of the Israeli right-wing and far right fundamentalist parties, have recently voiced similar calls as an act of revenge against the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank especially after its garnered an overwhelming support in obtaining non-member observer state status at the United Nations General Assembly.
Israel claims it has the right to build and expand Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank, including in and around occupied East Jerusalem, as it considers these settlements to be “housing projects built on state land”.
But International Law, and the Fourth Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory, consider settlements built in the occupied territory to be illegal as they are built on occupied lands, and most of them are actually built on privately-owned Palestinian lands.
Israel’s Annexation Wall in the West Bank is also illegal and is largely designed for more illegal annexation of Palestinian lands and orchards besides the fact that it is preventing thousands of villagers from accessing their lands and orchards.
Israel never defined its border with the West Bank and is using the Wall, that extends around Palestinian lands, and encircling entire villages, as the de facto border with the Palestinian territories.
The Wall is also designed in a way that enables the expansion of existing settlements on the expense of Palestinian lands and property.
Likud members call for Israeli annexation of West Bank territories
Prominent members of ruling party urge annexation of ‘Area C’ as battle for rightwing votes intensifies before general election
Harriet Sherwood, guardian.co.uk,
January 03, 2013
JERUSALEM — Prominent members of Israel’s ruling Likud party have proposed the annexation of part of the West Bank as the battle for right-wing votes intensifies before the general election in less than three weeks.
Government minister Yuli Edelstein told a conference in Jerusalem that the lack of Israeli sovereignty over Area C – the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli military control in which all settlements are situated – “strengthens the international community’s demand for a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines”.
Ze’ev Elkin, the chairman of the governing coalition, said Israel should adopt a “salami” approach to annexation: “We will try to apply sovereignty over as much as we can at any given moment.”
A third Likud member, extreme rightwing settler Moshe Feiglin, proposed that the state of Israel should pay Palestinian families to leave the West Bank, using funds earmarked for security measures. “We can give every family in Judea and Samaria [the biblical term for theWest Bank] $500,000 [£300,000] to encourage [them] to emigrate … This is the perfect solution for us,” he said.
The comments, delivered at a conference organised by a radical settlers’ organisation, “removed the masks” of the Likud-Beiteinu electoral alliance, said Tzipi Livni, former foreign minister and leader of a new centrist party, Hatnua. “Likud-Beiteinu is extreme right wing, and will lead to the destruction of Zionism and the establishment of a binational state,” she said. The right “will makeIsraelinto a boycotted, isolated and ostracised state”.
The Likud-Beiteinu alliance, led by the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and Avigdor Lieberman, who recently resigned as foreign minister prior to a trial on fraud and breach-of-trust charges, is facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Jewish Home, a party further to the right led by Netanyahu’s former chief of staff Naftali Bennett.
A series of polls over recent weeks has indicated that Jewish Home is gaining votes at the expense of Likud-Beiteinu. The latest survey, published in Haaretz on Wednesday, gave the alliance 34 out of 120 parliamentary seats, compared with 42 currently held by its two constituent parties. Jewish Home, whose policy is to annex Area C of theWest Bank, is predicted to take 14 seats, and could overtake Labor to become the second-biggest party.
Despite Likud-Beiteinu’s drop in the polls, Netanyahu is still on course to form the next coalition government, but the strength of Jewish Home’s vote is likely to give it leverage in the coalition horse-trading after the election on 22 January.
Many observers believe a string of recent announcements by Netanyahu about an expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is an attempt to contain the loss of votes to Jewish Home.
Following the comments on annexation of theWest Bank, Likud sources told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth: “These extreme statements are actually good for Netanyahu, electorally. They serve him in the battle for the rightwing votes that have shifted from the Likud to Jewish Home.”
Bennett, 40, who served in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the Israeli military and is still a reservist, recently said he would go to jail rather than obey orders to evacuate settlements or outposts in the West Bank.
“If I receive an order to evict a Jew from his house and expel him, personally my conscience wouldn’t allow it,” he said. “Expelling people from this land is a terrible thing. I will work with all my soul and all my might not to let this happen.”
However, he stopped short of encouraging soldiers to disobey orders.
According to the Haaretz poll, the rightwing bloc of parties is likely to win 67 seats in the election, while the centre-left bloc, including Israeli-Arab parties, is on course to take 53 seats.