Israel's sovereignty initiative in the Jordan Valley and parts of Judea and Samaria shouldn't depend on the Palestinian, Arab, or European response. It needs to derive from a strategic outlook. We must ask ourselves if it will benefit Israel in the long run, rather than focusing on how detractors will respond the day after.
If we wait for consent from the Palestinians, Arab countries, and European countries, it will never happen. Scaremongering that a third intifada could erupt and that our relations with Jordan and the rest of the Arab world will be jeopardized should not weaken our resolve. We are strong enough to handle Palestinian violence, they will lose more than they gain. As for Jordan, the king understands he has much to lose by undermining relations with Israel. For example, water that Israel transfers to Jordan.
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Exactly 53 years later than we should have, after the spectacular victory in the Six-Day War, we must apply sovereignty in the Jordan Valley to display through action that we will never withdraw. Time is on our side, more so than for the Palestinians. We can't afford to squander this opportunity because we might not get it again. After all, without the support of the US administration, it cannot be done and it's entirely uncertain that such a rare confluence of circumstances โ American support for the move together with Arab and European weakness โ will ever repeat itself.
It doesn't matter what Palestinian life in Judea and Samaria will ultimately look like โ a demilitarized state, a quasi-state, autonomous entity, or what have youย โ we need to control the Jordan Valley to defend our eastern border both militarily and demographically. Whoever thinks it's possible to prevent both weapons smuggling into Judea and Samaria and disastrous demographic changes to the country without controlling the Jordan Valley is fooling themselves and living in a fantasy world.
As for applying sovereignty in Judea and Samaria: here too the time has come to decide what we are doing with the settlement enterprise and the half-million Jews who live there, and who were sent there by all previous Israeli governments. This is the land of our forefathers, the land where the people of Israel and its culture were created, therefore we must apply sovereignty there as well, at least in the so-called large settlement blocs. In the same breath, we must declare that this doesn't mean we have ceded, heaven forbid, our rights to the rest of the land. Just as we applied sovereignty over Jerusalem in 1967, we didn't declare giving up all the rest.
David Ben-Gurion's strategy of accepting any proposal giving the Jews sovereignty over parts of Israel, minuscule as they may be (Ben-Gurion even accepted the Peel Commission's recommendation in 1937 that gave the Jews control of a mere 17% of western Israel and just 4% of the territory that the San Remo conference earmarked for the national Jewish homeland), is a strategy that keeps proving itself correct.
We need to apply sovereignty for the future generations of Israel. We don't have the right to drag our feet!
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