Counterintuitively, what Israel did not do when Trump was in office we might do now that Biden is: Build in Atarot and E1, and regulate young settlements.
ed note–as we like to say here, ‘chock full o’ goodies’ ladies and Gentile-men.
First and foremost, the obvious, which–as we have pointed out here on a daily basis for 5 years–the Jews opposed Trump from the beginning because of his plans (which they knew he would enforce and from which he absolutely would not back down) for building a cage around the monster and preventing it from gobbling up any more Arab land and thus perpetuating/exacerbating the conflict in that part of the world for a century and which could very well become the ignition point for WWIII.
Please note that our unesteemed Hebrish writer discussing Biden being a ‘sworn opponent’ of settlements means NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY FREAKING NOTHING as far as Israel is concerned. Every spineless POTUS going all the way back to Truman has ‘opposed this and that’ but as far as Israel’s territorial expansion went they DID NOTHING.
DJT on the other hand had the solution, which was to say BASTA as POTUS to any new settlements and to force Judea to adhere to internationally-recognized borders, which was why he simply had to go.
The worst part of all of this is that the signs were there, in plain language, pure and simple, for 5 years, and yet the very people (most notably the Palestinians and their various supporters/support groups) who stood the most to gain from the monster being caged were the loudest in their opposition to DJT and who in their own limited way, did much of the dirty work in scuttling DJT’s plans for rescuing them as a people from the jaws of the Zionist monster that will now have a free hand under the admin of ‘Uncle Joe’ in doing what it has done now for a century–steal/kill/steal/kill.
Please note as well from our deranged Hebrish writer thus-–
‘Even now, the Biden administration must hear a clear statement from us: Judea and Samaria are not “occupied territory.” The settlements are not illegal. As Simon the Hasmonean says in I Maccabees: “It is not a foreign land that we have taken, nor have we set our rule over the property of strangers. This is the inheritance of our forefathers.’
Underscoring yet again for somewhere between the millionth and billionth time that the ‘Judah-ism isn’t Zionism’ argument chirped by many, many ‘experts’ is nothing but baseless, empty-headed garbage with no truth to it at all.
It is the Jewish state because it is the JEWISH state.
Israel Hayom
Now is the time to unpack the arsenal of arguments we shelved during the Trump era and refresh the discourse about our rights to Jerusalem and to Judea and Samaria, which are currently home to half a million Jews.
This became necessary the moment US President Joe Biden – a sworn opponent of settlements and settling east Jerusalem – was sworn in, and figures like former US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power were appointed.
Israel is already in low-level contact with the new administration about the Iranian nuclear issue. Israel has also made it clear that it is determined to prevent, through military force if needed, the entrenchment of Iranian satellites on our northern border.
But there is a notable lack of determination on the issue of settlements. Less construction is taking place there, and the annual population growth rate there is shrinking.
What’s more, given the concerns about the position of the new administration in Washington, in recent months Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refrained from regulating the status of dozens of young settlements that are under threat of destruction, construction freezes, evacuation, and even being declared illegal. Netanyahu also stopped plans to build in Atarot, a large Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem.
Remember: under former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “not a single brick” policy, Israel froze construction in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. We must not go back to that time. We need to be careful not to fall into the trap of “construction according to natural population grown,” or petty accounting over increasing the density of the built-on parts of the settlements (which comprises only 1.7% of the entire area of Judea and Samaria), and of course, not be satisfied with restricting construction to the settlement “blocs.”
Even now, the Biden administration must hear a clear statement from us: Judea and Samaria are not “occupied territory.” The settlements are not illegal. As Simon the Hasmonean says in I Maccabees: “It is not a foreign land that we have taken, nor have we set our rule over the property of strangers. This is the inheritance of our forefathers.”
We are not occupiers in our land. We are linked to it by ties of love, the Bible, heritage, nature, landscape, religion, history, and holiness. We need to use the Balfour Declaration when dealing with the new administration in Washington, as well as the San Remo Resolution, the UN Declaration, the League of Nations’ British Mandate; and every else relevant to our historic rights in Judea and Samaria.
Counterintuitively, what we did not dare do when Trump was in office we might do when Biden is: build in Atarot, build in E1 – connecting Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem – build the Givat Hamatos neighborhood in Jerusalem, which makes so much sense, and release diplomatic limitations that restrict construction in all of Judea and Samaria, and of course, regulate the young settlements.
If we conduct ourselves this way, in deed as well as in message, it will make clear to the new administration – but primarily to ourselves, that the Obama administration’s final stance on the settlements, in the form of UN Resolution 2334 of December 2016, which defined Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria, and united Jerusalem as violations of “international law,” is a non-starter. We aren’t in that position any longer.