|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
By: Josh Hasten
Anglo-Israeli public diplomacy professionals, activists and Israel-U.S. relations experts gathered at the Psagot Winery in Binyamin on Thursday for a half-day conference organized by the Yesha Council, representing the communities of Judea and Samaria, to discuss policy opportunities for the Israel-U.S. relationship in light of the incoming Trump administration.
Speakers at the event, titled “Policy Opportunities for the Israel-U.S. Relationship,” included JNS senior contributing editor Caroline Glick; Professor Eugene Kontorovich, head of the Kohelet Policy Forum’s international law department; and Israel Ganz, chairman of the Yesha Council and head of the Binyamin Regional Council.
In addition, roundtable sessions were held to discuss how Israel, including Judea and Samaria, can preserve its interests within the U.S. legislative, executive and legislative branches under the new administration.
“We have a unique opportunity, with a right-wing government in Israel, and the Republicans in the White House, Senate and House,” Ganz told JNS on the sidelines of the event. “Today is an opportunity to formulate a strategic plan in terms of what will be best for the future of the State of Israel and specifically Judea and Samaria.”
“We believe those gathered today know how to build the right relationships between Israel and the incoming administration in Washington. Today we are building a vision in order to stabilize the situation in Judea and Samaria and deepen our roots here, in the correct manner,” he said.
Ganz said the burden is first and foremost “on the Israeli government and Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu. Yesha will work hard with them to build a vision.”
Israel, he contended, must extend sovereignty to Judea and Samaria.
“Today, whether you are a Jew or an Arab, whether it’s road infrastructure—we all share Route 60 [the main north-south artery in Judea and Samaria]—water resources, electricity, these systems are being neglected as Israel doesn’t have sovereignty,” he said.
In the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, “Everyone understands that we cannot create a P.A. [Palestinian Authority] terrorist state here,” said Ganz. “We don’t want Modi’in to become [Kibbutz] Be’eri, or Tel Aviv to become Ofakim. We must have complete Israeli security over the whole area. I hope the Trump administration would support an Israeli government decision to apply sovereignty,” he added.
Yesha Council CEO Omer Rahamim added, “In the coming days the Yesha Council will continue to hold meetings with top professionals in order to ensure that the future of the Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria is advanced in the best possible way.”
According to Kontorovich, with Trump’s election, “Israel has really dodged a bullet.” The incoming administration, he said, “truly believes in Israel and the importance of the American-Israel relationship.”
By contrast, the Biden administration was on a collision course with the Jewish state, Kontorovich continued.
“The Biden administration was sanctioning Jews for building homes in Judea and Samaria, using the same sanctions they imposed on terrorists and rogue regimes,” he told JNS.
The starting point of any future Democratic administration is likely to be the policies of the anti-Israel congressional “Squad,” he said.
“So, the next four years are crucial toward ensuring that those outcomes, which are essentially the destruction of Israel and the turning into an American protectorate—needing constant protection from external attack—we have four years to avoid that, by creating a new and better reality,” he said.
Ruth Jaffe Lieberman, political adviser to Ganz and the Binyamin Regional Council and one of the organizers of the event, told JNS its aim was for participants to “see how we can combine forces and boost each other in order to move the needle on political issues that impact both Israel and United States.”
The sanctions levied against Judea and Samaria residents and groups by the Biden administration are a “travesty,” she said, and must be reversed. But that, she continued, was just the start. A larger goal is to solidify the U.S. position regarding the legality of Israel’s actions in Judea and Samaria.
“Going to the ICC [International Criminal Court]—no, you can’t take our prime minister to it for war crimes,” she said. “Let’s flip the table, and look at who should be held accountable for war crimes, and what should be done vis-à-vis the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Whose fault is it and how do we change that? This means creating policy that jives with the American interests that will also help Israel in the long run,” she said.
Conference participant Avi Abelow, CEO of the Pulse of Israel, an online platform which uses short videos with VIP personalities that entertain, inspire and educate about Israel, told JNS, “Israeli leaders have to explain to the Trump administration that any deal with Saudi Arabia cannot include the establishment of a Palestinian state, because that would keep the conflict alive, not end it.”
In the first place, led by the “terror supporting” Palestinian Authority, such a state would pose a daily danger to Israel, he said. “It is also dangerous for America and the world, as it keeps the conflict alive, globally,” he added.
“The only way to end the conflict, end the violence that it brings to America and provide more safety in the region, is by ending the possibility of the establishment of a Palestinian state, with Israel finally acting as the sovereign over all of Judea and Samaria, while also following President Trump’s policy lead of deporting all terror supporters,” Abelow told JNS.
Chaim Silberstein, founder and president of the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy, and Rabbi Steven Pruzanksy, the group’s senior research associate, used the event to introduce proposals that they argue can “solidify the advances made in the first Trump administration and further promote peace and security in the region.”
The proposals focus on “securing the future of Jerusalem,” they said, as “it should be lost on no one that Hamas called its invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood,” indicating that Israel’s enemies see the conquest of Jerusalem as their ultimate objective.
The pair are calling for the enforcement of Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem by shuttering (again) the U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs (OPA) in Jerusalem, restoring “Jerusalem, Israel” as an official place of birth on American passports, defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), supporting the construction of Jewish housing within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, and finally, supporting Israel’s “Greater Jerusalem Metropolis Plan,” which would expand the city’s municipal borders and incorporate neighboring cities and communities in Judea and Samaria. The plan would add 200,000 residents to the capital city, securing its Jewish majority.
Eliana Passentin, the Binyamin Regional Council’s international desk director, told JNS, “We have a new opportunity to sit down together to think of a strategy, to build a future for everyone and really make a change.”
One of the main focuses of the event, she said, was “looking inward toward what’s happening in the State of Israel.
“We have to make sure Israelis, especially our prime minister and government officials, understand we have a right to defensible borders, a right to live within Israel, and that if you want to bring peace to the region and peace to the world, Israelis have to live here. So, this is a group of Israelis discussing our future,” Passentin said.
(JNS.org)
