Once again, members of the Sovereignty Movement set out to see the loss of sovereignty and governance that is occurring in the field, in light of Arab illegal expansion of building, well-planned to create a stranglehold east of Israel’s capital
Several dozen members from the Sovereignty Movement held a special tour (Wednesday, January 11, 2023) in the area of Khan al-Ahmar in the effort to learn about the harsh reality of loss of governance and sovereignty east of Jerusalem.
Khan al-Ahmar is the most widely known and famous illegal Arab outpost, but it is an example of many other such outposts spread throughout the area, which actually constitute a stranglehold preventing the expansion of Israel’s capital to the east.
The tour was led by Naomi Kahan of the Regavim movement and included Lt. Col. (res.) Moshe Peled, one of the liberators of Jerusalem and a member of the Sovereignty Movement’s Director's Board, who spoke of his personal experiences from the Mount Scopus observation point.
The participants of the tour were exposed to the struggles over land, which have become increasingly intense in recent years in light of the efforts, well-funded and orchestrated by the PA and European countries, to create an Arab territorial contiguity that would prepare the ground for the establishment of a Palestinian state stretching from the area of Jenin in the north to South Hevron Hills, by well-orchestrated illegal Arab building in area E1, between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim.
In this context, the Sovereignty Movement emphasizes the importance of promoting and implementing the Greater Jerusalem plan, which will expand the municipal border of Jerusalem to the east toward Ma’ale Adumim, thus blocking the Arab trend, along with freeing land for building more Jewish neighborhoods in Israel’s capital.
The co-chairwomen of the Sovereignty Movement, Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, noted the commitment made by the movement to give full public backing to any act that the Israeli government undertakes to realize the will of the people to expand Jerusalem and turn it into a metropolis, which will also resolve the demographic crisis that exists today.
At another observation point near the town of Adam, the tour’s participants were exposed to the PA’s method of creating a so-called humanitarian struggle by illegally building schools and educational institutions. These institutions, which are built at important strategic points, are portrayed by the global media as the most innocent expression of a basic, civil, humanitarian need. As such, there is great difficulty, from a hasbara point of view, to uproot them, but they constitute a base for broad Arab settlement around them. The location of these educational institutions plays a significant role in the implementation of the Fiyyad plan to establish a de facto Palestinian state without the need for international approval and agreements.
The tour concluded with the participants’ difficult sense of the reality reflected in the field. It is clear to members of the movement that the urgently required response is to take significant steps to apply Israeli sovereignty over the entire area, and the first and most correct step is to apply sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, a large area with extremely sparse Arab presence, and which determines Israel’s eastern border, abolishing any possibility of establishing a Palestinian state in the future.
This approach enjoys a broad consensus among Israeli society.
Photography: Meir Elipur