Last week ("Israel this week", 22.07.22) Amnon Lord claimed that it was inconceivable that I, "the farmer from the Bekaa", opposed the application of Israeli sovereignty over the territories of the West Bank and the North of the Bekaa, while rejecting, according to him, the historic opportunity to establish defensible borders to the State of Israel.
This is an inaccurate description, to say the least.
Since the beginning of Israeli settlement in the Jordan Valley and in the territories of Judea and Samaria, we have been wishing and working non-stop for the application of Israeli sovereignty over these precious homelands.
I personally say, I said, I acted and I will act as long as I can, so that sovereignty will be extended.
Moreover, since Benjamin Netanyahu only said and did not do, I left my political home, the Likud movement.
I remember very well the euphoria and excitement that gripped us before the presentation of President Trump's plan, and the feeling that the sovereignty that we had been complaining about for years was just around the corner, reach out and touch it.
A real feeling of Messiah times, no less.
But Elia and Kotz Ba: When I was in Washington in the days before the presentation of the plan, I understood what many of my friends on the right refused to understand and see: that the true meaning of the plan is the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state on 70% of the territories of the Palestinian Territories and also on 10% of the territories of the State of Israel in the Negev and the Fatah Arad area. When I discovered this, I was alarmed. As someone for whom the Jewish settlement in the Jordan Valley is his life's work, as someone who holds the settlement in Yosh dear and close to his heart, as someone who understood that the future and security of Israel and the Jewish people is in existential danger, I refused to support the plan.
In a step of national responsibility I said that if the price of applying sovereignty is the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state in the heart of the country, then thank you, but at the moment no thank you.
I announced that I would never give up sovereignty, but not at an irresponsible price.
David Friedman, who was the US ambassador to Israel at the time, said that Netanyahu's acceptance of the Trump plan is the first time that an Israeli government draws the future borders of the Palestinian state. Also, in an interview King Abdullah of Jordan gave to French television a few days before the presentation of the plan, he He said that he is looking at the plan as half-full, which is, as mentioned, the establishment of a Palestinian state.
More than the sum of all the borders of the State of Israel today.
I am proud that I strongly opposed the fact that the price of applying sovereignty would be the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state that would pose a serious security threat to all the cities in the coastal plain and to 16 enclaves of Israeli settlements that were supposed, according to the Trump plan, to remain in the territories of the Palestinian state.
I won't lie, it wasn't easy.
Many of my friends told me then that we should behave like David Ben-Gurion in his time, who supported the partition plan and took what they gave him.
I told them then and I repeat today: when the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state is on the agenda, this is not the time to play simulation games.
I stood by the security principles that are important to all of us even at the price of temporarily giving up sovereignty in the Jordan Valley.
Unfortunately, there are those on the right who are still willing to accept sovereignty in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state.
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