A silent war is being waged, and being won.
And not by us.
Behind the clamour generated around Covid-19 (a very real illness inflicting very real pain on individuals, communities and nations), around the US elections and transition to the Biden administration (for which there is plenty of evidence pointing to corruption and fraud); behind this curtain of smoke, fog and fear, the battle of all battles that has been raging for over a century on the most critical battlefield of all – is near to being lost.
By Israel, and by us.
Palestine is being born. This demonically conceived, illegitimate alien is nearly on the delivery table. The labour has been underway for years. Some of us watched it, from close up, for the longest time – notifying, alerting, warning and appealing. For awhile we seemed obsessed – especially when buses were blowing up, Jews were being killed by the hundreds across the land, Israeli families were being evicted by the thousands from their homes, and an American president was machinating mischief to Israel’s detriment for eight, long years.
But our attention has been drawn away. Today this war is the last thing on our minds. Understandably, perhaps, given the reality our world slid into just under one year ago.
Tragically, nonetheless.
In exactly one month from today, Israel will hold its fourth election in two years.
The following article appeared this past Shabbat in Hebrew in the Besheva paper, and was translated into English by the Sovereignty Movement.
“The elections will determine whether Israel will surrender in the silent war” – by former Member of Knesset Orit Struck
The battle for Area C (the remnant of Judea and Samaria left to Israel by the accursed Oslo Accords) is being conducted, oddly, by only one side: The Palestinian Authority is conducting it against us directly from their Prime Minister’s office, lavishly funded, under an international budget and political umbrella, with hundreds of thousands of jobs, with dedicated legal support for every village, house and terrace and especially with a strategic, orderly and official plan, overt on one hand and covert on the other.
Israel is engaged in this entire battle without any direction from the top, no strategy, with almost zero personnel, like a policeman on the beat by a cap gun trying to prevent the mafia from operating. As if it was not a battle for our Land, for our security, as if it is not clear that the border passes – as the Trump plan also defined it – along the line of plowing.
It is not for nothing that this battle has lately been named: The Silent War. A war whose goal and purpose is the conquest of territory and change of borders. It is very quiet on the Palestinian Authority’s side, who conducts it without a single shot. It is even more quiet on Israel’s side, since she is not engaged in it at all.
About a year and a half ago, at the end of July, 2019, when Bezalel Smotrich was a member of the Policy-Security Cabinet, we won the right – for the first time after 10 years – for a discussion on a subject in the cabinet, to present the threat and its implications, to begin to formulate a strategic policy and even a preliminary cabinet decision. The cabinet was forced to enter into this discussion as a result of the excellent cooperation between Ministers Smotrich and Elkin, along with other ministers from the Likud who joined the process. The decision that the cabinet made at the time determined that the Minister of Defense would submit to the cabinet a working plan designed to stop the Palestinian takeover and assure that the territory would remain in Israel’s hands, but to date, this plan has not been submitted. To the credit of Naftali Bennet, should be noted that as Defense Minister, he understood the magnitude of the threat and the failure as well as the importance of the mission, and planned to name a special project manager to conduct the battle for Area C, but then the Corona virus arrived, upsetting all the plans.
Since then, there has been almost no progress. Correction: The Palestinian Authority is progressing by giant steps, with building, planting, paving roads and laying infrastructure, registering lands, and other activities of governance in the territory where the civil authorities are supposed to be – according to the agreement – exclusively in Israeli hands. Israel has not moved at all. Correction: Israel withdraws all the time. Even worse: Very recently, Defense Minister Gantz acted contrary to the cabinet decision, when he normalized illegal Palestinian building on state lands (and in parallel, froze the normalization of the young settlement enterprise). From this it can be concluded: It is no longer a war with only one side, the Israeli side actually serves as an accomplice to the Palestinian Authority: they build, we normalize.
The Silent War cannot wait until the end of the Corona crisis, because with every week that passes, we lose more and more parts of our Land, the Palestinians continue to tighten the noose around our towns, create more and more Palestinian connections and contiguity and in so doing, advance the de facto Palestinian state without any need for official agreements or resolutions. The government that will be formed after the elections must, immediately after its formation, take a resolution to establish an authority for the preservation of Area C. A governmental resolution is already prepared and written – we submitted it as part of coalition negotiations almost two years ago, and it will be a prerequisite for us now, as well. The work plans are also complete, and we will insist that they be adopted and promoted. In order to implement them, it will be necessary to confront the Palestinian Authority, the European Union, the UN Human Rights Commission, the ICC and apparently, the new president of the U.S. as well. We will have to fight: in the field, in the courts, in the international arena. A government that includes the Left will not do it – it would follow Benny Gantz’s way: submission without battle.
For your attention in the moment of truth on the tenth of the month of Nisan (March 23, election day).
Former Mk Orit Struck, who founded and directs the Land of Israel Lobby in the Knesset, is nr 5 on the list of Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party