The Carrot and the Stick in the Vision of Sovereignty 

 

The application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria is the sole and essential solution that will provide security in Israel,

yet obligate Israel to take responsibility for anything that happens. Caroline Glick speaks at Oz veGaon.

Link to the lecture: in Hebrew: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=981DCax36ug

with English simultaneous translation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6CorpBDj_M

Credit for Photographs: Women in Green

In the shadow of the security events and the funeral of those who were murdered in the latest terror attacks, a lecture by the journalist and authoress Caroline Glick was held this past Friday at the Oz veGaon nature preserve, where she called for strengthening the standing of Israeli Arabs who seek to integrate into the State of Israel, while understanding the responsibility arising from the significance of Israeli sovereignty in the Land of Israel.

There were about two hundred people, supporters of the settlement enterprise, who came from all areas of the country, to the lecture that was part of the cultural program that Women in Green hold every week at the Oz veGaon preserve on the hill near Gush Etzion Junction, where Glick stated: “We must understand that the best way to ensure our peace is to be in control and to apply sovereignty, to enforce the law and have a social system where we approach the population and do not flee from it. To make it clear that we are not going anywhere and to give a pragmatic answer from a standpoint of strength and power. There is no shortcut. It is not logical to allow the PLO to guard our security as a contractor”. Glick sharpened her words and clarified that even if it seems at the moment that Hamas is becoming a common enemy to both the PLO and to Israel, the motives are totally different and to strengthen the PLO against Hamas actually strengthens those who seek to destroy Israel.

Glick harshly criticizes those who seek to bring about a separation and withdrawal from territory, and defines separation as a capitulation, which is an Israeli concession, leaving control in the hands of the PLO as if they were the only ones who would be able to enforce order. She mentions that many of the terror operatives also sought to harm the feasibility of living together; thus it was in the slaughter at Har Nof when one of the murderers had been working at a nearby grocery store, that’s how it was with the murder on Thursday in Tel Aviv that was carried out by someone who worked nearby, and that’s how it was with the attempt to assassinate Yehuda Glick when the would-be assassin worked nearby. According to her, beyond the murder of Jews, embedded in this trend is an attempt to plant within the People of Israel despair in the ability to live together.

Contrary to this approach, Glick says, “Only the People of Israel will protect the lives of the People of Israel in the Land of Israel, and the attempts to make us think that we cannot go on, have no chance to succeed”. Glick finds an example of this in the comparison with Qalqilya and Baqa al-Gharbiyye, where, if there is knowledge of the beginning of a terror organization, Israeli law enforcement forces have the ability to cut them off in the early stages. Glick observes that despite Israeli Arabs having been subjected to all the Islamic Movement’s tools of incitement, they do not slaughter masses of Jews like their brothers in Judea and Samaria do, and the reason for this is “because we are in control”.

Glick Presents another example in the turning point in security that was caused by Operation Defensive Shield when the IDF went back to control the Palestinian cities and began preventing terror from leaking out from them. “When we see this we understand that that which secures the safety of the Tel Aviv residents, as well as the residents of Gush Etzion, is control of the territory”.

According to Glick, the State of Israel’s conduct in recent decades has been a causative factor in moving Arab society toward isolation and anti-Semitism instead of strengthening public figures such as Annette Haskia, the Muslim woman who sends her sons to enlist in the Golani IDF unit. This is how, says Glick, Israel has turned Hanin Zoabe into a sort of representative model for the Arabs, while actually, there is a growing and strengthening movement of Arabs who seek to integrate into Israeli society because they understand the advantages that Israel has brought to them. According to her, many of them are internalizing the fact that the establishment of the State of Israel is the best thing that has ever happened to them. “The primary victims of radical Arab leadership like the Islamic Movement and Balad are those Israeli Arabs who wish to belong to Israeli society, but live within a chaotic situation of criminals who travel freely throughout the villages without the law being enforced”. This is without looking at the countries surrounding Israel that are falling apart, although one can travel undisturbed throughout the Golan Heights.

“The more we neglect to impose order on these areas, the more we strengthen the radicals and our greatest enemies. We must act with a carrot and a stick and enforce the law fully when confronted with those who want to harm us. These are humanitarian acts, which express the best qualities of the people of Israel”, Glick declared, and states that “If we want to be a free people in our land we must also be responsible. People will come to us when we begin to be responsible. It will be difficult but it is preferable to the alternative of loss of security and relying on terrorists to defend us”.

Regarding the demand for sovereignty and following the publication of her latest book Annexation Now, Glick explains that sovereignty is actually the simple act of applying Israeli law in Judea and Samaria “as we did in the Golan Heights and Jerusalem”. This is in contrast to the current reality where it is military law, based on Jordanian law, that prevails, and which is a slightly better than the jungle of PA law. But besides the legal, judicial process, says Glick, we must help the government of Israel rule, also vis a vis the rigidity of the High Court and politicians who are afraid to act against it. “A government has been established in which the ministry of justice is held by the party that understands the need for reform in the legal system, but at the same time, there is a member of the coalition by the name of Minister Kahlon, who makes it clear that he will fight any reform to this system. Therefore Shaked and Levin can desire to do so very much, but this will not be possible to realize”. Nevertheless, she added that reigning in the power of the attorney general as well as the legal advisors in the government’s ministries are part of the flow of the great river whose objective is sovereignty, but the goal of sovereignty must be clear in the eyes of the public as well as the leadership.

Regarding the chances of sovereignty, Glick says that she is very optimistic, mainly as a result of a poll by the Jerusalem Post that showed that even before any significant campaign, 35 percent of the public in Israel thinks that Judea and Samaria should be annexed and another 12 percent don’t know. When citizens under the age of 45 were asked this question, 46 percent of them expressed support for the idea of annexation. When these things are said in juxtaposition to the aggressive media stance calling for dividing the land without any significant hasbara process supporting annexation, it teaches us that “we are already in an amazing position”, in her words.

“As long as we say that what we want is another acre and one more building, but cannot make clear the purpose for the building and the broader concept in a way that it will be understood by every person, we will not be able to progress. Until now, we have failed to connect construction in the communities of Judea and Samaria to something broader, to something that belongs to everyone and the fate and path of the People of Israel that must be here in the Land of Israel, in the heart of the Muslim mayhem, and to take responsibility”.

As she continued, Glick returned to the principle according to which we must try to replace the wish to harm us with the wish to integrate into Israeli society. “Logic dictates that you benefit those who wish to live in peace with you and you worsen the situation of those who would harm you. This way, people will want to become connected with you and less of them will want to be your enemy. In the framework of the Oslo Accords, the State of Israel did exactly the opposite – we benefitted our greatest enemy at the expense of those who desired our good. All groups of the Civil Administration warned at the time that all of the Arabs who worked with us would become suspected collaborators with Israel. All at once they became full-time collaborators. They endangered the lives of those who were on our side in exchange for those who wanted to destroy us”.

In answer to a question from the audience, Glick increased the resolution of the vision of sovereignty: “To the best of my understanding we must act here as we acted in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and give the status of permanent resident to the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with the possibility of registering for citizenship if they meet the criteria of the law of citizenship and there will be several rules – anyone who incites against the State of Israel and the Jewish People or is a member of any terror organization cannot be a citizen”. In Glick’s estimation, in this way, the power of those who desire to harm Israel as well as the number of those requesting the status of Israeli citizen will be lessened.

For Details:

Yehudit Katsover  050-7161818   Nadia Matar  050-5500834

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