It's still not too late. When the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided on a unilateral withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip and four settlements in Samaria, I had a long conversation with him. At the time, I was head of the Meretz party, and I had major reservations about the unilateral move, which ignored the then-new president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, who demanded that his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, do everything to end the Second Intifada. He wasn't willing. His response was that he didn't trust Arabs, and saw no difference between Fatah and Hamas.
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During the conversation, I asked him what the legal status of the territory in Samaria would be after the settlements Homesh, Sa-Nur, Kadim, and Ganim were evacuated. Sharon looked as his political advisor, Shalom Turgeman, and asked him. Turgeman said he would check, and after a few minutes went out and left the two of us on our own.
We move on to another matter, and then the secretary came in and handed Sharon a note. It was Turgeman's answer. The settlements would be evacuated, and Israelis would not be allowed to enter them. But what would happen to the land on which the settlements stood, I kept asking. It was an area twice as large as the Gaza Strip. Again, I suggested that Sharon consider an agreement with Mahmoud Abbas to transfer the evacuated territory to the Palestinian Authority as part of Israel's commitment to the autonomy agreement. Sharon didn't respond.
The settlers were indeed evacuated and compensated, and the army closed off the area. The Palestinian owners of the land (like Homesh, which had been built on privately owned land through a seizure order), weren't allowed into the zone. Groups of settlers who were ignoring the law returned, and built a yeshiva there, and not because it was the best place for religious studies. The murder of yeshiva student Yehuda Dimantman strengthened the settlers' demand to reestablish the settlements that had been evacuated in 2005.
Terrorism, obviously, must be fought fiercely, but it's a war conducted by discovering cells, catching terrorists, and putting them on trial, not by violating international and Israeli law. Sharon's foolishness in evacuating Israeli territory but not handing it over to the Palestinian Authority caused it to become an area that attracted people who were not particularly concerned with the law. But it's not too late, and nothing would be more sensible than to talk with the Palestinian leadership and hand over the territory as part of the Israeli commitment that was never implemented.
In the meantime, the government is with the Golan Heights. On June 16, 2019, the cabinet, under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Golan Heights to declare the establishment of a new community there, Trump Heights. The event was very thrilling, and a decision was made to allocate 10 million shekels ($3.2 million) to rebuild a community on the site of the abandoned Bruchim. The initiative saw limited success, and currently there are 10 caravans at the site.
This Sunday, the cabinet, this time under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, went up to the Golan. At the celebratory meeting, a decision was made to invest a billion shekels into the area and build two new communities, Asif and Matar, set up a center for renewable energy, build infrastructure and improve medical services. There was a thrilling consensus. Everyone supported the idea, and only Regional Cooperation Minister Esawi Frej didn't take part in the farce.
Everyone wants to help Bennett shore up his base. Everyone understands that when there are 116 available plots on the Golan Heights and no one wants to buy them, the idea of new communities seems like something from an Ephraim Kishon sketch. Everyone knows that at the moment, it is impossible to make peace with Syria, which is under the leadership of Bashar Assad. Everyone knows that if his successor wants peace with Israel and is able to extract himself from Iran's bear hug, the Israeli leader will realize that it's a huge opportunity for a change of strategy, and be willing to withdraw from the Golan, like most of his predecessors. For now, the government is with the Golan.
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