Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan left for Washington two weeks ago for a series of meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at pressuring the US administration into abstaining from intervening in Israel's affairs when it comes to construction in the settlements.
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In a meeting with the small delegation led by Dagan, Rep. Brian Babin (TX) said he was disgusted by the pressure the administration was exerting to prevent construction in Judea and Samaria. Reps. Greg Steube (FL) and Ronny Jackson (TX) also spoke out against US pressure on Israel. Jackson, for his part, called on his fellow representatives to help Israel contend with the pressure.
Dagan heads one of the Likud's strongest lobby groups, and as such, also opposes the current government. He sees no dissonance in his rallies calling for the coalition's dissolution in Israel and acting to remove pressure on the government overseas.
"I need to act on all fronts," he says. "My responsibility is not just to cry out about our government but to also act to lower the pressure on Israel, whether it's an administration I vote for or not.
"The issue of construction in Judea and Samaria is a domestic Israeli matter, and the US has no moral right to intervene. I protest my government, and here in Washington, I engage in public diplomacy. Those who expect the US not to condemn it for construction and act in accordance with the American administration's condemnation will never act for the good of Israel's interests," Dagan said.
Regional council heads hope to grow the Israeli population in Judea and Samaria to make it more difficult to evacuate the Jewish communities there in the future.
"If there had been 300,000 people in Gush Katif and northern Samaria during the disengagement [from the Gaza Strip], the communities would have been untouchable," Dagan, whose family was evacuated from the northern Samaria town of Sa-Nur in the 2005 operation, said.
Dagan has met with hundreds of congressional representatives and senators, opinion leaders, and public figures in recent years out of the understanding that the path to construction in Judea and Samaria runs through the US capital. Mateh Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Gantz has also held hundreds of meeting with representatives of Congress over the last year, as have Yesha Council heads.
In these meetings, Dagan also raises the issue of settler violence, which has been the focus of international attention and was mentioned by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Israel in March.
Dagan says he explains to the Americans "that millions of their dollars go toward bizarre, generalizing, and incorrect campaigns. I present the data [and] show them there is no symmetry. That the opposite is true. Because if there is in fact a kid who's confused, who did something, threw rocks, or painted graffiti, we – the police, the courts, the regional councils – take care of it immediately. With the Palestinians, terrorists who harmed Jews get good salaries."
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