Once again, Israel’s leaders are turning the Land of Israel into a political bargaining chip—once again, we return to this national disgrace. Time has come to shake off this weakness, awaken, and lift up the dignity of the nation. Apply sovereignty!
Is anyone surprised by the headline of this article? Maybe. But this is exactly the message the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister are currently sending to the world. What the two are essentially saying is: yes, we declare loyalty to the Land of Israel, we speak of Judea and Samaria as the foundation of our historic right to the land, and we promise sovereignty—but if you just drop this whole business of recognizing a Palestinian state at the UN, we promise to find a way to shelve the sovereignty issue.
This message amounts to nothing less than selling out the Land of Israel. Shame and disgrace on Israel’s leadership. For 58 years, the heart of our homeland has been treated as just another pawn on the regional diplomatic chessboard. Once again, instead of making a clear and final decision, declaring to the world that the Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel and no one else, our leaders prefer to use Judea and Samaria as a bargaining chip.
We all remember how, at the end of Trump’s previous term, sovereignty was cast aside in favor of the Abraham Accords. The UAE gained—achieving international status, access to advanced Israeli technology, tourism, foreign capital, Israeli security backing against the Iranian threat, strengthened ties with the U.S., approval to purchase F-35 fighter jets, intelligence-sharing agreements, and more. And in return? We were supposed to get regional legitimacy.
Does anyone look around today and feel Israel has regional legitimacy?
Even after the October 7th massacre, the countries of the region continue to isolate Israel, slander it, fight it, and treat it like a pariah. The UAE and Bahrain, both signatories to the Abraham Accords, go out of their way to avoid publicizing their ties with Israel. While the agreements haven’t been officially canceled, they’ve been put into deep freeze. And as if that weren’t enough, they send us clear threats: if we dare apply sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, the agreements will be voided.
From a prime minister who coined the phrase “If they give, they’ll get. If they don’t, they won’t,” we would expect a completely different diplomatic approach.
The Abraham Accords offered Israel lukewarm and very short-term legitimacy. In contrast, sovereignty grants historic and eternal legitimacy to the Jewish People over the Land of Israel. The advantages of sovereignty are long-term, deep, and profoundly meaningful. Judea and Samaria—the cradle of Jewish civilization—would gain legal status. No longer "disputed territory," and certainly not land designated for a future Palestinian state, God forbid. Judea and Samaria—and yes, Gaza too—would become an inseparable part of the State of Israel. Nearly a million Jews living in Judea and Samaria would gain full civil rights, no longer trapped in a tangled web of Ottoman-British-military-Israeli legal patchwork.
Among the many benefits of sovereignty, we can add the dramatic impact on Israel’s population distribution, the reduction of housing prices in the country’s center due to this expansion—but above all, sovereignty sends a clear, unwavering Zionist message: the continued realization of the Zionist vision and a deepening of the Jewish-national identity of the People of Israel in their land.
By strengthening and implementing sovereignty, Israel will boost its power and status as a leading and central regional power. Only a strong, sovereign Israel will attract neighboring leaders to sign more strategic, security, economic, and scientific agreements—not out of retreats and concessions, but from a place of strength and confidence. True normalization with our neighbors will only come when we are sovereign in our own land.