The building freeze under American pressure is not a new invention. Yisrael Harel recalls the first freeze and an emotionally charged meeting that produced a revolution.
With the approach of the day when we commemorate the liberation of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan, we conducted discussions with a number of key figures in the settlement enterprise, we aroused memories from the first days and were amazed at how much the vision of sovereignty occupied the pioneers of Judea and Samaria in those days, days of the first steps of the settlement enterprise.
Yisrael Harel
Publicist and commentator Yisrael Harel, head and founder of the Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) Council, “Nekuda” and the Institute for Zionist Strategy, recalls a supposedly “minor”, but dramatic and stormy event that occurred in 1980 behind closed doors in a government meeting room.
Two years had passed since the revolution of 77 (in which Menahem Begin came ro power) and the hopes of many people - who were involved in the settlement enterprise and as well as some who were not involved, and believed in Prime Minister Menahem Begin’s promises to establish “many more like Elon Moreh” - were disappointed. “Unfortunately, there were not many more and not even a few”, recalls Harel and mentions that the building freeze as a result of American pressure did not begin in the era of Barack Obama. Even then, American President Jimmy Carter (Harel: “the most hostile toward Israel of all presidents of the United States” ) put pressure on Menahem Begin demanding a freeze on building in Judea and Samaria, pressure that began immediately, at their first meeting.
“In response to that freeze the newly established Yesha Council began a campaign of pressure on the government, but to no avail. Finally, the council leadership (which numbered four members at the time) and I decided to begin a hunger strike in front of the Prime Minister’s Office. To our surprise, the strike attracted thousands of people who identified with us from throughout the country, especially the residents of Jerusalem. Entire communities went to Givat Havradim (the Rose Garden) and joined the hunger strike.
The leading communities were Elkana and Alon Shvut, but many other communities (of the few that then existed) also joined. Every few days we held demonstrations and there were a few where thousands of people participated. The hunger strike and the demonstrations, in which Likud people also joined, pained Begin very much. He sent Yitzak Shamir, then foreign minister, to us, to urge us to stop the strike, and every few days we were called to come to a discussion with him where he claimed that he wanted, no less than we, to expand the settlement, but under the circumstances that Israel was faced with, during that time, it was not possible. ‘Trust me’, he requested, and pleaded with us to stop the hunger strike”.
“We were very stubborn and did not respond. During one of the discussions, when we were already famished with hunger, he spread his hands, opened his heart and admitted: “I promised President Carter not to establish new communities. Believe me, there were good reasons to agree to the promise”.
On hearing these words, Harel struck the table with his fist and cried: “Mr. Prime Minister, you also made a promise to the People of Israel; you promised ‘many more like Elon Moreh’!”. During those few moments, Harel recalls, everyone, even he himself, was filled with emotion, perhaps even amazed, at his audacity. “We were shocked and he was too. He rose, pale faced and said ‘I cannot continue in this vein’ and left the governmental meeting room. Yehiel Kadisha, his legendary secretary, followed after him, returned after a few moments, turned to me and said ‘apologize and then the meeting will continue’. I said that I would not apologize because what I said was the absolute truth. I was standing about two meters from him in Kedumim when he promised the People of Israel to build many more communities like Elon Moreh”.
“A few of my friends asked me to accept Kadisha’s request. Begin, despite our being disappointed in him, was an authority in our eyes and we felt somewhat distant from him. Even Elyakim Haetzni, who was the paragon of the right in the Yesha Council, a sort of guardian of the wall who assured that we would not behave like the members of the MAFDAL (National Religious Party), asked me to apologize. I told them that if we ask forgiveness for what was said here, we would be betraying our mission and our obligations”.
The group returned to the Rose Garden to continue the hunger strike that had already lasted forty days. The strike began before Purim and continued during Seder night and ended close to Independence Day. On Seder night, the strikers ate matza crumbs”. The news that the hunger strike was continuing during Pesach caused more unrest. Rabbis came to urge them to stop the hunger strike. “We did not agree, and even added more strikers and increased the demonstrations in front of Begin’s office. After Pesach they called us again to his office. Kadishay took me aside and suggested that I apologize. It would have a good effect on the atmosphere of the meeting. I thanked him politely”.
“Yitzhak Shamir started the meeting and said that he and the prime minister discussed the options for solving the crisis, and the main point: finding a way to continue developing the settlement in YESHA ( acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza). Since this was the direction, Shamir continued, stop the hunger strike and trust us. We insisted on hearing what were the “options” that appeared now, and were not options until now. Shamir hesitated for a moment and then asked that they remain confidential. One of them, which we ultimately accepted, was to establish a committee under Minister Yitzhak Moda’i that would perform an extensive survey of all the land in Judea and Samaria to locate state land, and there is where new communities would be built, at a later time. For us, this was a good sign because Moda’i was independent in his opinions and his actions, and was considered to be close to us in his opinions. And indeed, the committee was established under his aegis, and Atty. Plia Albeck, obm, head of the civil division in the Ministry of Justice, was its professional coordinator. She and various representatives of government offices, the IDF and the Civil Administration (at that time it was still called a military government) set out, under her lead with great momentum, to carry out the survey. Arik Sharon, then still in his own period of building, followed the committee very closely”.
Albeck, “an exemplary woman and courageous jurist”, as Harel defines her, began the work energetically of mapping and deep research of the status of lands in Judea and Samaria, and all, as mentioned, together with Ariel Sharon. The committee under her direction located state lands in anticipation of the future boom in settlement.
Jimmy Carter lost the election, Ronald Reagan was elected, and some time afterward he offered Begin a policy plan, whose main point was Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria in exchange for peace. But Begin gathered his courage and told the White House that Israel is not Czechoslovakia (to whom conditions were dictated on the eve of the Second World War) and he had no intention of accepting their dictates. And Ariel Sharon, then minister of agriculture, placed himself at the forefront of the settlement enterprise in those days”.
In the second part of our discussion with Harel, we asked how much the vision of sovereignty engaged the leaders and founders of the settlement movement in its first years. His response is resolute and incisive:
“Our great failure in the settlement movement is that we did not think in terms of sovereignty. We aspired to it in an abstract way, but sovereignty is achieved through diplomacy, and the diplomacy was not led by Gush Emunim and the Yesha Council. I regret to say that even the leadership that brought about this movement, a movement that was unique in Israel (the other movements were established abroad. Gush Emunim is actually the first practical movement that arose in the Land of Israel, besides Mahane Haolim, which was not as strong as Gush Emunim), did not sufficiently gauge political thoughts and actions. The thought was that settlement was enough to bring about sovereignty. We learned the hard way, in Sinai and in Gush Katif especially, that settlement does not assure sovereignty”.
“The sovereignty movement must today fight a battle that should have begun 45 years ago, when Gush Emunim was established. Ideologically, everyone agreed with the vision of sovereignty, but practically, we were to some extent searching for how to implement this vision; we were fairly uninvolved with it. In our time, we did not even speak about it and we did not have conferences on it, and the frustration is that it would have been possible at that time. Forty five years ago there was still enough shock from the Six Day War and there were no large leftist forces arrayed against us. If there had been governments in Israel with enough strength, they could have done anything, including annexation of Sinai, which was given to Egypt in 1918 as “prostitute’s” fee.
And of course, Judea and Samaria. All of the statesmen here and abroad knew that besides England and Pakistan, the world did not recognize Jordan’s annexation of Judea and Samaria, and therefore if we had brought it up then and claimed sovereignty, as we demanded settlement, it would have been possible. Until today, I ask why we did not demand sovereignty, and not only that the promise of ‘more communities like Elon Moreh’ be fulfilled. It was not too grandiose a demand”.