Public figures and people of action appeared before dozens of members of the Sovereignty Youth, who had gathered for a unique two-day seminar to listen, discuss, argue and work in the field. Sovereignty is on its way.
At the Oz veGaon preserve, the Sovereignty Movement held another seminar for dozens of young men and women from all parts of the Land, entitled “Sovereignty – Learn and Teach”, with the goal being to train the members of Sovereignty Youth to become advocates and ambassadors for the vision.
The event was opened by the head of the hosting Gush Etzion Council, Shlomo Ne’eman, who praised the Sovereignty Movement and its co-chairwomen, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, for the significant change in consciousness that has occurred during the years of the movement’s activity. He also expressed praise for the young people’s involvement in the vision and its implementation and described to the attendees the difficulties of administering a local or regional council in the absence of sovereignty, where military officers are the ones who make important decisions touching on everyday life in the communities and the councils.
Afterward, a surprising guest at the two-day seminar, journalist Shalom Yerushalmi, spoke at length, expressing the Left’s position, which views sovereignty as the end of the Zionist dream.
Yerushalmi presented his opinion, according to which, the sovereignty that was applied in Jerusalem brought about a demographic collapse in the city and this is the model that those who are demanding sovereignty wish to bring to the entire country. He went on to describe the price to the economy and security that Israel would have to pay for holding full sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.
However, he stated that in his opinion it is no longer possible to implement the Left’s dream of separation because the Right has determined facts on the ground with communities located throughout Judea and Samaria. “You won”, he said, stating that he hopes that this victory will not become a Pyrrhic victory.
It should be noted that Yerushalmi expressed much appreciation for the youths who chose to devote part of their vacation to promoting the idealistic vision that they believe in, and that he hopes that in the Left as well, there are those who would exhibit such faithfulness.
In a counterpoint to Yerushalmi’s words Prof. Aryeh Eldad spoke, stating that since transfer cannot be considered, not because it would be unethical or unjust, sovereignty is what is required in order to realize the Zionist vision.
Regarding the question of the status of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, he claimed that it is possible and proper to return to the idea that the UN recommended to Britain before the end of the Mandate, which is the status of residence for the Arabs of Israel in the Jewish state along with the status of citizenship that they would receive from the Arab state, since there already is an Arab state situated on the major part of the Land of Israel, which is the Jordanian State.
Publicist Sarah Haetzni-Cohen, director of the Yisrael Sheli Movement, who is leading the Land-of-Israel struggle on social networks, commented on the significant change that has occurred in recent years on the matter of policy, but also warned against Israeli lack of clarity regarding a policy alternative to the idea of two states.
Haetzni-Cohen summarized the purpose of her organization for the dozens of youths attending the seminar, which has set for itself the goal of promoting an alternative political discourse and she described the changes that have occurred since the days of Oslo when “a Palestinian state was just beyond the horizon and it was stopped by our own bodies and our own blood, by demonstrations that we held, sometimes attended by a few and sometimes by masses”, until today, when the discourse investigating alternatives to two states has reached even the Israeli Left.
“We prevented a Palestinian state with our bodies. Today we are in the situation where the pendulum has moved from a heroic battle to stop the process with our bodies to a period of initiative”, stated Haetzni-Cohen, and called for taking advantage of the historic window of opportunity while Donald Trump is in the White House, to encourage the decision makers, ministers and members of Knesset to promote the vision of sovereignty both practically and politically.
Later in the first day of the seminar an alarming picture was presented concerning the situation occurring in Judea and Samaria while the discourse of sovereignty is just taking its initial steps in hasbara. The survey was presented to the dozens of youths by Shay Hemo, Judea and Samaria Coordinator for Regavim.
Hemo emphasized the steps that the Palestinians are taking, under European patronage, to determine facts on the ground, specifically in Area C, which is defined in the Oslo Accords as subject to Israeli civil and security control. “In 2009 PA Prime Minister, Salam Fiyyad, came to the conclusion that there was no chance to achieve two states after the Intifada, so he planned the de facto, unilateral establishment of the Palestinian state”, began Hemo, showing the front page of a Palestinian document that Fiyyad produced in 2009 entitled “The End of the Occupation and the Establishment of the State”.
During his lecture, Hemo presented alarming data on the PA’s massive takeover of Area C, with the highlight being thousands of acres that were pilfered by agricultural work, but also by paving roads, refurbishing villages that did not exist before and more, with European economic and moral support backing it all.
Journalist Yair Sharki spoke to the attendees to the seminar about his personal story as a journalist and about the world of Israeli media in general. Sharki emphasized coping with the various media and the right and effective way to interest the news reporters and the media in activities and events with an understanding of the professional constraints on journalistic work in the various systems for this era, where the competition between various media has a depressing effect on journalistic discourse.
The first day ended with a discussion with Rav David Nativ, a senior Bible lecturer, who presented the comprehensive concept of the idea of sovereignty in the Bible, the obligation to conquer the Land and the various aspects of its governability.
The second day of the seminar began with the youths doing agricultural work at Oz veGaon. Later, they met with Talia and Gil Bar Lev, who were among the residents evacuated from Nativ Ha’avot, where the youths heard about the struggle, the crisis and the pain and then the subsequent growth.
The group then turned north to the community of Ofrah in Binyamin, where it met with the Rav of the community, Rav Avi Gisser, who outlined his vision of sovereignty, including an emphasis on immigration and the ingathering of the exiles, in the context of granting equal civil rights to the Arab residents of Judea and Samaria, as part of the responsibility entailed in having Israeli sovereignty over the area.
The youths also met Esther Brot, from the families that were uprooted in the destruction of the nine houses in the heart of Ofrah. Esther told of how hard it was to see how, because of a puzzling legal process, land that was located in the heart of a flourishing community was seen fit to destroy.
Later in the second day, the seminar participants met the head of Binyamin Council, Yisrael Gantz in the new community of Amihai, which is in Gush Shiloh. Gantz spoke about how he copes, as council head, with the lack of basic normality in the lives of the residents of the area where Israeli sovereignty has not been applied.
Among the series of failures that the council under his authority copes with, he described the lack of planning for water, classrooms and even sidewalks, the lack of which poses danger to the lives of the children in the communities. On all of this, Gantz emphasizes that even if it was possible to solve local crises in some indirect way, it would only prove the lack of normalcy, “this is not normal life and we need to have a normal life. This is our demand, to be equal in rights and obligations, no more and no less”.
“It is not normal that funds to pave the roads come from coalition monies. It cannot be that the start of the school year depends on the commanding general. When a person lives under the rule of the state he wants the prime minister as his legislator. This has a price, but this is normalcy and this is why sovereignty is basic. It is the government of Israel that must take decisions. It makes no sense that in order to plan a road, the minister of transportation sends me to the minister of defense, who is coping with the Iranians and with terror and must also deal with roads, water and sewage”.
Above all, Gantz emphasized to the youths the basic fact that here, in Judea and Samaria, is Jewish history, a fact that speaks to and excites tourists from totally different backgrounds, but at sites such as ancient Shiloh the connection is especially clear to them without any question.
Regarding the chances for the vision of sovereignty, Gantz states: “In this world there are no walls. We must decide that there is no wall and the wall will disappear. The sin of the spies began with the sense that “we were grasshoppers in our own eyes”. If you feel like a grasshopper, you are a grasshopper, but if you stand erect it builds another story for us and the strength to stand up for what is ours”.
Atty. Avihai Boaron, who led the battle against the destruction of Amona, spoke with the youths about the power of revolution, about the obligation to present a clear dream and from that dream, things will happen in the practical level of details. “The ability to believe in the vision is very strong. When we speak of sovereignty, that which motivates Yehudit and Nadia is the vision that joins us together. And a vision is something that you live, that we can describe how it looks in actuality”.
Boaron mentioned an example of the ramifications of sovereignty from the experience of the battle for Amona: “If there had been sovereignty, they would not have evacuated Amona, because then the Israeli law would have applied in Judea and Samaria and this means that even an illegal community would become regulated by law as the community in Beit She’an Valley was regulated ten years after it was established, because Israeli law exists there, which is not the case in Judea and Samaria”.
He also cited the words of former Minister of Transportation Israel Katz to one of the settlement leaders when he stated that roads were not developed in Judea and Samaria because the area was on the negotiating table. “He is not connected to the vision, so everything he says is weak”, says Boaron.
Boaron also spoke of the ideal of self-sacrifice, of the need for maximal professionalism, “Idealists have a tendency to think that it is possible to be sloppy professionally” he commented, noting the obligation to know how to take advantage of the historic windows of opportunity such as the period of Trump’s administration, a period, in his opinion, when it is possible and fitting to see fifty settlement nuclei setting out. All of this, he noted, is happening during the widening of the circle supporting the vision and the idea, and with this, Boaron sent the seminar participants back to their cities and communities throughout the Land with the mission of hasbara as ambassadors of sovereignty.
The seminar concluded with the distribution of roles among the youths for the continuation of hasbara and practical activities of the Sovereignty Youth in the field.
The co-chairwomen of the Sovereignty Movement, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, summarized the event with praise for the youths, who exhibited responsibility for the future of the State of Israel and the fate of the Land of Israel. “Youth such as this fills our hearts with confidence and faith that the Zionist torch continues on, passing safely to the next generation. The future leaders of the State of Israel will develop from this youth, who will carry the banner of Zionist activism with pride facing the challenges of the day after the application of sovereignty”.