"Another unnecessary settlement" - this is what was written over the pages of "The Marker" (01.02.2022) against the establishment of a new settlement, Nitzanit, on the Egyptian border, near the Nitzana youth village once founded by Aryeh Luba Eliav, when the labor movement still knew who it was.
"Foolishness", "economic damage" - this is what reporter Yael Darel spoke to the green organizations and the Ministry of Finance in their opposition to Jewish settlement throughout the country, and not only in Eviatar in Samaria, on an important route on the way to the Jordan Valley.
There are alternating excuses for the suffocation of settlement - the wording of the British White Paper - dictated here in the alliance between the treasury, the environmentalists and short-sighted planners, who took over the planning institutions.
Once the values of nature are flaunted - and others will settle, in violation of the law.
For example, Bedouin tribes will be deployed in "natural" tins, because they are allowed, their Negev;
Another time they claim hypocrisy for the existing localities.
Allegedly, the establishment of Bat Yam affected Tel Aviv, and Kfar Giladi in Metula.
It is a thought of unimaginative people, incapable of seeing how large and small localities form a single fabric.
Are Yeruham, Merhavam, Midreshet Ben-Gurion and Mitzpe Ramon competing localities?
The seminary and Yeruham are now thriving together.
Strings and blades interfere with Be'er Sheva?
Only in the imaginations of people of little faith.
Complaining that it is crowded and that we need to keep spaces open, and in the same breath want to keep crowding us all in a small strip on the beach.
Maybe to make it easier for someone to get us out of here.
All of these "arguments" hold no water. The population of Israel has grown more than any other developed society, thank God and the Israeli birth (which, of course, is also being attacked by "those who demand our good"). All its parts are growing, not just the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs, as those who want to quarrel between us say. There is room for hope that immigration will increase in the coming years, and that immigrants will come to their country, by virtue of their right. This whole population needs to be settled. Here is the only corner of the Jews. They will not go anywhere, nor will they shrink in their population according to the instructions of social, political or environmental engineers. We grow, and we must grow, in order to survive. If we do not grow, we will not be able to maintain what we have achieved.
Settlement suffocation means a population explosion at current concentrations.
We must develop additional metropolitan areas, and next to, or at some distance from, a system of localities.
These or other natural values can be debated, but the sweeping ban imposed by planning institutions on the establishment of new settlements, with the exception of exceptions, must be stopped.
The Be'er Sheva metropolitan area, which includes Yeruham, Dimona, Arad, Ofakim, Netivot and Sderot, and all the localities between them, needs to be developed.
Such a volume needs a distant periphery of its own - for example, at the entrance to Nitzana or in Halutza Sands, where there are also "plots" to establish new settlements.
It is a false opposition to place Be'er Sheva in a zero-sum game with its near and far periphery.
Tel Aviv would not be what it is without its peripheries.
Jerusalem suffered greatly when it was a border city isolated from its surroundings.
Existing localities need to be thickened, but that will not be enough.
New localities will help, and will not interfere with existing localities.
This is the only way to open up population centers in the Galilee and the Golan Heights, the Jordan Valley and Samaria, Judea and the Negev.
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