The former Minister of Justice, MK Ayelet Shaked, attended the Sovereignty Youth Seminar held at Oz ve Gaon and in her remarks addressed the vision of sovereignty in the political aspect, but also issues concerning the Israeli legal system.

 

She first mentioned the revolution that has occurred in the past decade since the idea of sovereignty was thought of as delusional, until today, when the idea enjoys a broad consensus: “When Bennett was Head of the Yesha Council and I was head of Yisrael Sheli, we began to talk about the topic of sovereignty. Bennett published a plan for the application of sovereignty in Area C. When we were elected to the Knesset, they told us that we are delusional, along with the two other delusional women, Yehudit and Nadia, but today there is already a majority in the Knesset for sovereignty, after Yehudit and Nadia’s hard work and after we joined and now the idea has permeated large sections of the Likud and has reached the White House”.
 

“We hoped, for a year or two, that Netanyahu would apply sovereignty during the Trump era but unfortunately, this did not happen. However, we cannot ignore that the discourse of sovereignty is now in the center of the stage. Once, when we spoke of sovereignty they thought that we were delusional and today it is within a kind of consensus, and it is, in large part, because of Yehudit and Nadia’s faith and hard work and because we took their ideology and translated it into practical work in the Knesset. The very fact that the American administration understands that this is the direction is very important”.

 

Later in her remarks, Mk Shaked focused on the matter of the State of Israel’s unique democracy as a Jewish state. “The Left cries about the end of democracy, but this is nonsense. We have a strong legal system and just because we want to make changes does not mean that the legal system is not independent and strong”, stated Shaked, describing how the court took authorities that it didn’t have in the past, in the spirit of Aharon Barak:

 

“In the past thirty years the court took upon itself increasingly more power, at the expense of the legislative and executive authorities and this is something that must be balanced, but as a democracy, we are a strong democracy. Aharon Barak took three steps that weakened the authority of the Knesset and the cabinet. The first step was to broaden the right of standing, which allowed any person to appeal to the court, even if he did not experience any harm. This step made our entire lives justiciable. The second step is that the court took upon itself the authority to nullify laws, and the third step is the ‘cause of reasonableness‘, when the court took upon itself the authority to interfere with every administrative and governmental decision according to what it defined as unreasonable in its eyes, and this is very amorphic”.

 

“During my period as Justice Minister, I tried to balance this by choosing conservative and nationalist judges, and we can see the difference in rulings, as each judge brings into the rulings his own identity and world-view”, said Shaked, who also rejected the claim that by imposing Corona restrictions the government has severely harmed the democratic character of Israel. “During the Corona period, for the first time, in the past decades, the government has violated fundamental, basic rights – freedom of movement, employment, freedom of association, but the fact that the government did this does not mean that we are a weak democracy or less democratic than we in the past. Many mistakes were indeed made by the government during this crisis, but although the government is harming our fundamental rights, it is not endangering Israel as a democracy, but is  only harming our rights in a focused way, in order to fight the pandemic”.

 

Later during her remarks, MK Shaked held an open discussion with the youths, who wanted her opinion on various matters. To the question of whether her party has removed the matter of sovereignty because of the battle with Corona, she responded that “The subject of sovereignty is very, very important to us, but in the coming months, we are in a severe health crisis and it is very important to focus on the economy, but this does not mean that we are neglecting the matter of sovereignty and are not acting to promote it”.

 

In her remarks, she highlighted the young settlement as a practical expression of the current spirit of pioneering, as she defined it. On the status of the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, after the application of sovereignty, she stated that there would be equal civil rights for all, but “In the national aspect, the State of Israel is the nation-state exclusively of the Jewish People. When we speak of sovereignty in Area C, we are saying that the Arabs who live there will have the same rights as the Israeli Arabs, except for citizenship”.

 

Shaked is asked about the youths’ influence on the public political system and she emphasized the importance of the youths’ extra-parliamentary activities, including youth movements that influence public opinion and public discourse as well as politicians. “As a member of Knesset, I am influenced by you. You are the voting public and it is important to me to know what you think and it is very important to me to know what is important to my public”.

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When she is asked about the prospect of promoting the vision of sovereignty while the Trump administration is still in the White House, she expressed significant doubt, in light of the fact that the government has not taken a much simpler step, the step of regulating the young settlement. “We are simply asking for a decision of the government to regulate the young settlement. This is settlement that already exists, but the government will not do it. This is a more realistic decision than whether it will apply sovereignty within the next month. Now, as the Sovereignty Movement, your role is to keep the banner of Sovereignty waving always”.

In his lecture to the participants of the seminar, Middle East expert Dr. Moti Kedar laid out his concept of the correct way to relate to the Jewish-Arab conflict from the comprehensive historical aspect, stating that the tragedy of the modern Middle East states that were founded by British, French and Italian colonialism, is that they are states that were built according to European concepts and not from understanding of the internal clan affiliation of the area’s Arabs.

Later in his remarks, he presented his position on the tribal-clan structure of the Middle East and on the political ramifications of this structure in regard to a possible solution to the Israel-Arab conflict.

In the second part of the seminar, the youths lectured to their friends in the style of short TED lectures on various matters relating to the application of the vision of sovereignty and disseminating the idea among Israeli society.

The co-chairwomen of the movement, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, sum up the event with great satisfaction, in light of the involvement of the youth in producing the event and their participation in uploading its contents. “With encounters of this sort, we see our idealistic youth at its best. The youth asks questions, delves into the material and wants to know how to lead the vision of sovereignty to realization. The youth is causing a real revolution and we are proud to be partners to this. This seminar is in memory of our dear friend Helen Freedman , chairwoman of AFSI, whose entire life was devoted to the Land of Israel. Helen supported our Sovereignty Movement from day one, when we started in 2011 and was a full partner in all our activities.