Even before implementing sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, it is both possible and advisable to respond to the tsunami of recognition by numerous countries of a Palestinian state with a settlement tsunami of our own. Many have not noticed that the UN General Assembly resolution from two weeks ago also includes recognition of the "right of return" that Palestinians claim for themselves – a return into the boundaries of pre-1967 Israel, within the Green Line.
The strategic settlement response
The appropriate response is a Jewish return – strategic, goal-oriented, with the declared purpose of disrupting the feasibility of establishing a Palestinian state, which represents the ultimate threat: damaging our rights, our security, and rewarding the Hamas Palestinian-Nazis and terrorism.
Israel possesses a rich toolbox for on-the-ground action to thwart a Palestinian state. The first settlement plan in line is E-1, the connection plan between Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim, which previous US administrations blocked to prevent Israel from severing the building continuity Palestinians seek between northern Judea and Samaria (Ramallah area) and southern Judea and Samaria (Hebron area), and to prevent Israel from creating its own settlement continuity from Jerusalem eastward toward the Dead Sea.
Critical urban development projects
Second in line is the construction of the Jewish neighborhood on Jewish-owned land in Atarot in northern Jerusalem. This construction will determine whether Jerusalem's "northern finger," which Levi Eshkol and his colleagues annexed in 1967, will remain part of the Israeli-Jewish settlement fabric, or whether Palestinians will take control of it and even sovereignly disconnect it from Jerusalem, as they aspire, for their Palestinian state dream.
But this is insufficient. There are additional plans in the pipeline that must be implemented immediately. Declarations won't suffice. The Jordan Valley Regional Council has plans to establish Date Palm City, a large Haredi urban settlement near Jericho, as well as a settlement in the northern valley connecting Shadmot Mehola and Bekaot to Argaman. Currently, the vast area between these settlements is empty of Jewish settlement.
Strategic settlement positioning
Rehavam, scheduled according to the recent Jerusalem Day government decision to be established in the Shilo bloc, is a strategic settlement that will deepen Israeli presence near Route 505, in the section between Kfar Tapuach and Migdalim in Samaria. The same applies to Ma'alot Halchul, also known as Givat Asher, near the Al-Aroub bypass road, where initial settlers have already arrived, but which needs to be established, strengthened, and expanded to become a significant settlement point between Kiryat Arba and Gush Etzion.
Investment in this point, and in similar additional points whose role is to create Jewish settlement continuities in places currently lacking such continuity, will have no less benefit – perhaps even greater – than sovereignty declarations.
A clear message to the world
Unlike in the past, this strategic settlement should not be carried out in the dark or underground. Quite the opposite: Let the world see, understand, and know that the people of Israel have returned to their land, to their ancient homeland; that this homeland is not political currency for trade, and that beyond our security concerns (which are obviously very important), we have an interest in fulfilling the return to Zion, the return to Zion itself. And what is more Zion than Jerusalem and its surroundings, the ancient homeland regions and biblical landscapes of Judea and Samaria?
