Now is the time to unpack the arsenal of arguments we had less need of in the Trump era and refresh the discourse about our rights to Jerusalem and to Judea and Samaria, which are currently home to half a million Jews. This became necessary the moment US President Joe Biden – a sworn opponent of settlements and settling east Jerusalem – was sworn in, and figures like former US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power were appointed.
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Israel is already in low-level contact with the new administration about the Iranian nuclear issue. Israel has also made it clear that it is determined to prevent, through military force if needed, the entrenchment of Iranian satellites on our northern border. But there is a notable lack of determination on the issue of settlements. Less construction is taking place there, and the annual population growth rate there is shrinking. What's more, given the concerns about the position of the new administration in Washington, in recent months Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refrained from regulation the status of dozens of young settlements that are under threat of destruction, construction freezes, evacuation, and even being declared illegal. Netanyahu also stopped plans to build in Atarot, a large Jewish neighborhood in north Jerusalem.
Remember: under former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "not a single brick" policy, Israel froze construction in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. We must not go back to that time. We need to be careful not to fall into the trap of "construction according to natural population grown," or petty accounting over increasing the density of the built-on parts of the settlements (which comprises only 1.7% of the entire area of Judea and Samaria), and of course, not be satisfied with restricting construction to the settlement "blocs."
Even now, the Biden administration must hear a clear statement from us: Judea and Samaria are not "occupied territory." The settlements are not illegal. As Simon the Hasmonean says in I Maccabees: "It is not a foreign land that we have taken, nor have we set our rule over the property of strangers. This is the inheritance of our forefathers."
We are not occupiers in our land. We are linked to it by ties of love, the Bible, heritage, nature, landscape, religion, history, and holiness. We need to use the Balfour Declaration when dealing with the new administration in Washington, as well as the San Remo Resolution, the UN Declaration, the League of Nations' British Mandate; and every else relevant to our historic rights in Judea and Samaria.
Counterintuitively, what we did not dare to do when our friend Trump was in office, we might do when our opponent Biden is: build in Atarot, build in E1 – connecting Maaleh Adumim to Jerusalem – build the Givat Hamatos neighborhood in Jerusalem, which makes so much sense, and release diplomatic limitations that restrict construction in all of Judea and Samaria, and of course, regulate the young settlements.
If we conduct ourselves this way, in deed as well as message, it will make it clear to the new administration – but primarily to ourselves, that the Obama administration's final stance on the settlements, in the form of UN Resolution 2334 of December 2016, which defined Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria, and united Jerusalem as violations of "international law," is a non-starter. We aren't in that position any longer.
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