Nadia Matar

As subscribers to the Hatzofeh and Mekor Rishon newspapers, we receive the Shabbat issues on Thursday morning. I was quite surprised this Thursday to see the headline in the Shabbat Hatzofeh edition: “Yesha: The Anger at the State Has Been Replaced by Optimism.” This headline left me speechless, and I immediately felt the need to read the entire article. In light of the daily Kassams on Sderot and the vicinity, in light of the news of the summit meetings between Olmert and our enemies, in light of the fact that our POWs and MIAs have still not come home, in light of Shimon Peres’ election as President of Israel, in light of the ghetto wall that is being erected every day before our very eyes … exactly where is there room for optimism, I asked myself. And how is it that I, as a resident of Yesha (Judea, Samaria, and Gaza), did not know that my anger at the state has been replaced by optimism? No one told me! I continued to read.

And the subtitle: “About a year ago, exactly, Yesha inhabitants planned for the evacuation of their homes, as part of the Disengagement Plan, and even began to clarify what is coming to them from the state, but then the Second Lebanon War erupted and everything changed. In the past year optimism returned to the settlements, and the building there continues in full force. Only the skeptics warn: ‘Be warned against complacency.’”

I want to warn: such headlines are extremely dangerous. Anyone who then reads the entire article understands that there is hardly any connection between the main headline and the subtitle and the content of the article. Although the article begins on a cautiously optimistic note, with the reporter Navah Stoller noting that the settlement population in the regions of Yesha rose by some 3.4 percent in the second half of 2006, as opposed to the first half of that year, with the despair and depression that resulted from the expulsion from Gush Katif and northern Samaria. True, this is a positive trend.

But the newspaper delivers an incorrect message when it emphasizes the statement by one of the settlement leaders who said: “Many feel now that the government does not intend to, or is incapable of, continuing with the evacuation of the territories, and no one is talking any more about the Disengagement Plan. These moods lead, inter alia, to massive construction in the region.”

The Hatzofeh newspaper chose to emphasize these statements, of all things. This is very, very dangerous, because they are not reflective of the article as a whole, and especially, they do not reflect the reality on the ground.

The reality on the ground is that there has not been any new Jewish construction in the entire Judea and Samaria region for years. The Arabs on the other hand, freely build houses everywhere without having the need to ask for permits; they illegally take over land that belongs to the State of Israel, turn them into fields or vineyards or farms- expand their villages- all illegally…but nobody stops them. For the Jews it is an entirely different story: Very few people know that what is happening in Judea and Samaria is based on a document that, unfortunately, has not received sufficient exposure and thought. This is the Weisglass document. In 2003 the Head of the Prime Minister’s Bureau at the time, Dov Weisglass, authored a document to Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. National Security Advisor, that began as follows: “In the name of the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, I wish to reconfirm the understandings that were reached between us.” Weisglass then lists the understandings between them on various subjects. Concerning construction in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, Weisglass sent a letter to Eliakim Rubinstein in which he summarized what he had promised to the American administration:

Re: The construction freeze in the areas of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District:

Further to our conversation, the following are the understandings reached between Israel and the United States concerning Israeli settlement in the areas of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District:

1) The State of Israel will not finance from public budgets an increase in the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria.

2) New settlements will not be built, and construction in the existing settlements will be frozen, except for construction within the existing building lines (in contrast with the boundary of municipal jurisdiction).

3) New lands will not be expropriated or taken for settlement needs in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District.

In other words, the Sharon government had already committed itself in 2003 not to allow the Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to expand at all. Only natural increase within the bounds of the settlement (such as adding a pergola, or building a second story over the ground floor) would still be permitted.

In January 2007, a new freeze decree against the Jews of Judea and Samaria was added. The GOC Central Command at the time, Yair Naveh, signed a number of orders and regulations that changed the legal situation in the region concerning planning and building. This is not the place to list all the new regulations. To understand the severity of the orders, it suffices to quote from the letter by Yesha leader Bentzi Lieberman from February 2007 to different public figures requesting that they take action to forestall the new orders:

“The new orders create an intolerable situation […] It should be stressed that these legislative amendments come as the continuation of the policy conducted by the Defense Minister that, in practice, froze all settlement in Judea and Samaria […] the meaning of these legislative amendments is the lethal disruption of the possibility of maintaining reasonable and elementary life in the settlements of Judea and Samaria, while severely damaging the ability of Israeli citizens, men, women, and children, who live in Judea and Samaria to conduct a normal way of life […] As a result of these amendments, in settlements that have been in existence for more than 25 years, and similarly in places in which the houses were built and marketed by the Housing Ministry, it will not be possible to extend a porch, to erect a pergola, to build classrooms, a kindergarten, and/or clinic, and so on and so forth.”

In other words: the Israeli government is doing everything to strangle and dry up the Jews of Judea and Samaria. And therefore, anyone who spreads disinformation to our newspapers to the effect that there is massive construction now in Judea and Samaria, and optimism, as if our future here is assured forever, has an agenda. His agenda is to spread complacency within our camp; to foster in it the illusion as if everything is fine, when the opposite is the case. This person knows that if the public were to learn just how difficult the situation is - it might begin to organize, to act, to rebel, and so it is then advantageous to spread false reports.

At this juncture, we should recall: we lost Gush Katif and northern Samaria mainly because our leaders put us to sleep. “Everything is fine,” they told us. “Continue the routine,” they asked of us. “We will already take care of everything,” they soothed us. But, as it turned out, routine and expulsion are intertwined, not only in the root letters of the Hebrew words (shigrah and gerush), but in the reality, too. What is necessary now, more than anything, is to leave the routine and to act. To fight and oppose every decree.

Don’t understand me the wrong way. I am actually very optimistic. An optimist is a person who understands that the situation is at the very worst, but believes in his ability, with divine help, to change what has been decreed. Accordingly, let us sum up: the Olmert government, for considerations of political survival, is doing everything to bring about the establishment of a PLO state in Judea and Samaria. The establishment of a state of terrorists in Judea and Samaria will mean, Heaven forbid, Israel’s demise. At present, thank God, there still is no possibility of establishing a state of terrorists in Judea and Samaria, thanks to the Jewish settlement there. The “White Book” decrees against the Jews of Judea and Samaria mentioned above are an attempt to strangle and dry us up, with the aim of making life intolerable, with the hope that in this manner we will leave of our free will. Now is not the time to fall asleep and live in illusions. Now is the time to act! If we want to assure that a Palestinian state will not arise in Judea and Samaria, and thereby save Israel from its leaders, now is the time to awaken and really struggle for every place in Eretz Israel.

Two major actions are planned for this summer: the return to Homesh, and the renewal of settlement momentum throughout Judea and Samaria by the establishment of a number of settlements, first on the Eitam Hill, in Efrat. The more people that will join these actions, the more chance we have to avert those decrees, the more the level of people’s optimism will rise. “Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it, for we shall surely overcome it” (Numbers 13:30)!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 and is filed under opinion. You can leave a response.