"A small Hebrew settlement nestled between large Arab villages, to the east and north and south; its homes in one place and its fields elsewhere, separated by Arab fields, and the ownership of the lands is complicated," that is how First Aliyah-era Zionist leader and author Moshe Smilansky described the early days of Petach Tikva, one of the first Jewish communities to be established in the land of Israel in the days of the Ottoman Empire.
Smilansky may as well had written these words about the Samaria settlements of Ofra, Beit El and Givat Asaf, which share the same complexities in terms of the security challenges and land ownership disputes they face but are still far better off than Petach Tikva was back in 1878.
Smilansky and his First Aliyah counterparts did not ponder the question of whether Petach Tikva contributed to the security of the budding settlement enterprise. Decades later, Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion did not ponder that either when he insisted on maintaining remote settlements on the Jerusalem mountains, Negev and Western Galilee.
Later still, the existence of Gush Etzion in Judea and Kibbutz Yehiam in northern Israel also defied pure defense logic, yet Zionism fought for their existence, as their value was measured through a broader prism that includes national and Zionist values, the Jewish spirit and the question of borders.
Today, this is known as the "national security doctrine," which is based on more than defense and security considerations, and that is the framework in which the modern settlement enterprise should be debated.
Those who measure the value of terror-stricken settlements solely through the security prism, and tries to incite the public against them on the grounds that the price of protecting them is too high, are, in fact, party to the kind of deception that indirectly aids terrorism.
The left knows very well that Ofra, Beit El and Elon Moreh, just like Avivim, Metula and Kiryat Shmona, cannot physically stop enemy tanks and missiles, and yet, the state "wastes" resources by deploying military forces to protect them because the very principle of Jewish existence in Israel is existence itself. Security is an instrument designed to serve Jewish existence, and settlements – in all sectors – is its glorious expression.
According to pure – and skewed – defense logic, the entire population of Israel could, theoretically, be concentrated in Jerusalem, Haifa and the Greater Tel Aviv area. After all, the north, south and east of the country do not actually defend its heart, as that is the IDF's job.
But this is a distorted viewpoint that ignores the fact that the settlement enterprise is at the very core of Zionism, and that while peace and security are important national goals, they are also a means to achieving the ultimate objective: the resettlement of the Jewish people in the land of Israel.
The settlement enterprise has in many cases – like in Gush Etzion – contributed to national security, but that is not its stated purpose. That would be realizing the Jewish existence in Israel and shaping the country's borders. This has been the case in the Galilee, in the Negev, in the Jordan Valley and in Judea and Samaria.
The settlement map Labor touted in the mid-1970s included dozens of Jewish settlements, among them Kedumim, Ofra, Karnei Shomron, Elkana and Maaleh Adumim. They – and those that were built during Likud governments – were established for what famed Israeli general Yigal Allon once called "the transfer of vital points in different parts of the country from foreign ownership to Jewish ownership."
"The broader the settlement enterprise has been able to stretch the borders, the broader the economic and social basis, defensive capabilities and national foundation supporting the people returning to Zion have become," Allon explained.
These simple, archaic words are so precise: The farmer and his plow were the tools in the struggle for the realization of sovereignty, both in the demilitarized zone near the Syrian border before the 1967 Six-Day War and in the vineyards and olive groves in Judea and Samaria. Jerusalem's neighborhoods rose to reunite the capital and terrorists set out to kill Jews everywhere in an attempt to eradicate the settlement enterprise, meaning Jewish existence.
Today, Judea and Samaria settlements help maintain the IDF's routine security operations and give our presence there a permanent civilian dimension, rather than a vulnerable transience appearance that invite terrorism.
Not only are the hundreds of thousands of settlers in Judea and Samaria not pose a burden on the IDF, if they were not there, the military would have to exercise much greater force to prevent the establishment of a terrorist Hamas state overlooking central Israel.
Add to this the fact that these communities have sustained multiple waves of terrorism over the years, thus preventing them from crashing into population centers on the coastal plain, and you will understand why their very existence contributes to national security, despite the fact they were formed for a far humbler reason – because the land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel.
