Minister Gamliel: After fifty years of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria and a half million Jewish residents living there, the time has come to realize and implement Israeli sovereignty in these parts of the Land.
Minister for Social Equality Gila Gamliel declared (Jan.23, 2019) in a meeting with activists that the time has come to apply sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. "After the elections, the Likud must strive to apply sovereignty in Judea and Samaria", said Gamliel at the conference.
According to her, "after fifty years of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria and with a half million Jews living there, the time has come to do it". Relating to the vision of two states, she explained that "we must free ourselves from this obsolete paradigm and search for new alternatives, and in my view, the only one is the application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. There is room for only one state between the Jordan and the sea, the State of Israel. There is no room for another dictatorship in the Middle East".
Gamliel's words were consistent with other things that she has said in the same spirit, in an interview for Arutz 7, where she was asked how Israel should prepare itself for the day when U.S. President Donald Trump presents his political plan, assuming that the Americans will present such a plan immediately after elections.
In this interview as well, Gamliel said that "We must present the Americans with the fact that we are here in the Land because we were given the right to return to it. As people of faith, they accept this right. We must strive for the application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. There is no room for another dictatorial state in the Middle East".
The Minister of Social Equality continued, surmising that some American figures related to the issue, from figures in Congress to Ambassador David Friedman, would be open for a plan in this spirit to be promoted and for thinking out of the "two-states idea" box. She also commented that the situation in the Gaza Strip reinforces the Israeli claim that there is no choice but to promote a plan for sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.
"It is in Israeli interest to do as much as possible during the Trump administration, to get significant achievements that the U.S. administration supports", says Gamliel, who believes that there are currently partners in the White House to hear and promote alternative plans such as the plan of familial cantons in Judea and Samaria, the idea to establish an island off the Gaza coast and the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in northern Sinai while helping to strengthen Egypt's economy and other ideas whose basic principle is that Israel will not lose its historic, moral and ideological right to the territory.
Gamliel went on, noting that in light of the political and diplomatic ties that Prime Minister Netanyahu is conducting with various Arab states, it will be possible to create a broad axis of states that support a general process of regional humanization without relating to the problem of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria as a focused and exclusive problem. Such an outlook, Gamliel believes, will provide a comprehensive political answer to the principle of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.
We must speak without stammering and express ourselves clearly with a broad outlook and without justifying ourselves. To see the overall problem and not be focused just on Palestinians", says Gamliel, and when she is asked why the sovereignty plan has not been promoted during the years of Likud rule until now, she notes the difficult of functioning during the Obama era and the desire to act together with the Trump administration and his leadership: "It was difficult to survive politically during the Obama era. In the past two years Trump wanted to lead the process and I thank him for that. Now, we must present an organized plan that will speak without stammering, that will be correct and will include an overall, regional outlook and then create something new and more correct here, that suits our interests, our ideology and our principles".
The Sovereignty Movement responds to Minister Gamliel's words with gratitude and appreciation and notes that her words match the spirit of the Likud movement as it was expressed by the unanimous decision of the party's central committee, which is that the party's political vision is the application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria and that the leaders of the party must strive toward the implementation of this vision. "Minister Gamliel has been consistently and ideologically presenting her clear and principled position on the matter of sovereignty for quite a long time, and for this we thank her and praise her".
"The People has internalized the vision of sovereignty as the only possible political plan, and it wants to see its leaders pass in the next term from the phase of declarations to the phase of practicality. Minister Gamliel's appropriate words match this vital aspiration. We will continue to strengthen and support any step promoted by the minister and other ministers in the spirit of implementing the vision of Israeli sovereignty in the cradle of our People's birthplace, Judea and Samaria", say the co-chairwomen of the Sovereignty Movement, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar.