It appears that this new 'Sovereignty' movement in Israel is going to render 'redundant' years of dialogue and discussion relating to a 'Two State Solution' in Israel. MK Tzipi Hotovely raising her voice said: "Friends, everybody here today knows that there is a solution -- applying sovereignty [over the West Bank]. One state for the Jewish people with an Arab minority, lest any right-winger say there's no solution!"
One state for the Jewish people with an Arab minority
Over recent months Kingscalendar.com and Magic City Morning Star News have published numerous articles forwarded to us by Israel's Women in Green Movement. Some of those articles had already been published in Israel. Today we present another article related to the recently held 'Sovereignty Conference'. It appears that this new movement in Israel is going to render 'redundant' years of dialogue and discussion relating to a 'Two State Solution' in Israel.
Links to the most recent articles relating to the Sovereignty Conference are provided at the end of this article although in context one might wish to view this short article first: Can a tree be more than a tree? Yes! When it is Jewish!
R.P. BenDedek
Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com
The newly confident Israeli proponents of a one-state solution
By Raphael Ahren
First Published in 'Times of Israel .com' July 16, 2012
MK Tzipi Hotovely knew her audience well. The last of nearly a dozen speakers at a conference advocating Israel's annexation of the West Bank and the end of the two-state solution, the young Likud lawmaker described for the crowd a scenario very familiar to right-wing pundits in Israel: being challenged by the media about their views on the Israeli-Palestinian impasse.
"After having proven with signs and miracles that a Palestinian state would be a catastrophe and would just increase terrorism, the question that scares right-wingers interviewed by the media the most is this -- the ultimate left-wing question: 'So what is your solution? What's your plan?'" Hotovely said. Raising her voice, she continued: "Friends, everybody here today knows that there is a solution -- applying sovereignty [over the West Bank]. One state for the Jewish people with an Arab minority, lest any right-winger say there's no solution!"
To the raucous applause of more than 500 conference-goers squeezed into the visitors' center of the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Thursday, Hotovely warned against advocating merely the annexation of the West Bank's Area C, which is under Israeli control and where most settlers live, an idea recently spread by some on the right. "We need to demand sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, and nothing less than that," she declared.
There's nothing new about far-right groups holding events in which speakers fantasize about "Greater Israel." But Thursday's conference was different: It indicated that the idea of the one-state solution has become respectable within a larger segment of society, including the ranks of Israel's ruling party.
Hotovely was right: For years, moderate right-wingers tiptoed around the question of what they envision for the future of the territories Israel captured in 1967. Only hardliners openly admitted what perhaps many others secretly desired, but knew to be politically too incorrect to openly demand.
"We're all here to say one thing: the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. Why? Because!" co-organizer Yehudit Katsover proclaimed in her opening statement to the conference, which she organized with right-wing activist Nadia Matar.
Katsover and Matar did a smooth job with the logistics of the conference, making sure every participant had a bottle of water next to his or her seat and that enough sandwiches were distributed during the break, and even arranging for a mobile air conditioning unit to cool the over-crowded venue. They invited a broad range of speakers who lectured on different aspects of applying Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank, but all had one thing in common: stressing the necessity of that step, backed by the conviction that Israel's inherent right to Judea and Samaria -- whether derived from the Bible or international law -- is nonnegotiable.
If only all Israelis believed that God gave the Land of Israel to the Jews as an eternal inheritance, Minister Daniel Hershkowitz, the head of the Jewish Home faction (the new National Religious Party), said wistfully. He quoted a famous Torah commentary that says that the Biblical narrative starts with Creation to demonstrate that the earth belongs to God and that it is his right to bestow the Holy Land on his Chosen People. If only the Israelis truly felt the land belonged to them, the entire world would feel the same, he asserted.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on record saying that he does not want to rule over the Palestinians and is ready to accept a Palestinian state. But that no longer prevents some members of his party from openly demanding a one-state solution. MK Miri Regev, speaking on a recorded video clip, boasted that she recently founded the Knesset Lobby for the Application of Israeli Sovereignty over Judean and Samarian Communities. The Likud constitution requires the application of sovereignty over the settlements, she said.
"It's time to change the discourse in the State of Israel about Judea and Samaria," said MK Ze'ev Elkin, the chairman of the coalition, also in a prerecorded statement. "For 20 years, we talked about what to give and why. Now the time has come for an entirely different discourse. This is our land, and it's our right to apply sovereignty over it. Regardless of the world's opposition, it's time to do in Judea and Samaria what we did in [East] Jerusalem and the Golan. It's time to end this system in which the Palestinians take and take and we give and give."
Most speakers focused on Israel's right to The Land -- all of it -- and tried to reassure the audience that they need not fear the so-called demographic threat. Israel would not lose its Jewish majority if it annexed the West Bank and granted citizenship to the Arabs living there, nearly all the speakers promised.
Estimates of how many Jews and Arabs live in the West Bank vary. Right-wingers claim that fewer than two million Palestinians and about 350,000 Jews make their homes in the area. Others reckon the number of Palestinians in the West Bank to be around 2.4 million, compared to 310,000 settlers.
Former Israeli ambassador Yoram Ettinger used his 15 minutes -- the organizers strictly enforced every speaker's time limit -- for a slideshow in which he presented a lot of data ostensibly proving that there are a million fewer Palestinians in the West Bank than generally assumed. How come? Because the Palestinian officials dealing with statistics are either incompetent or lying, he said.
Ettinger's graphs made it easier for subsequent speakers to dismiss the demographic argument against a one-state solution as left-wing demagoguery. Gershon Mesika, the head of the Samaria Regional Council, for instance, called the demographic threat a "big bluff." Even most Arabs don't believe the idea of two states for two people would work, he added.
And so the evening went by, with speaker after speaker preaching to the choir, rarely challenging the audience with provocative questions about, for example, Palestinian national aspirations. "This is not Arab land. This is the holy land of God," said Hebron Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf, adding that it was "absolutely forbidden" by Jewish law to retreat from any centimeter of the Promised Land.
Lawyer Yitzhak Bam said Israel's extension of legal authority to the Golan Heights was probably illegal under international law, as there was a previous sovereign before Israel conquered the area. On the other hand, there was "a legal vacuum" in the West Bank before Israel captured it, since the Jordanians had renounced their claims. But since the international community didn't intervene in Israel's takeover of the Golan Heights, surely there shouldn't be a problem with Israel annexing Judea and Samaria, Bam argued.
At the end of the lengthy conference, as the crowds streamed towards the chartered buses -- equipped with bulletproof windows -- back to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Matar and Katsover grabbed the microphone one last time to reiterate their commitment to the one-state solution. They were "greatly moved," they said, that so many people came out "to say that the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel, and to hear another plan, one that is a breath of fresh air in our political reality."
It remains unlikely that any Israeli prime minister in the foreseeable future would move to unilaterally annex all or part of the West Bank. But Thursday's conference was a clear indication of a political trend that is becoming more visible every day: the annexationists are growing in confidence, demanding in outspoken fashion what they always dreamed of but have never dared to say quite so publicly.
For over four centuries after the Caliph Omar conquered the land of Israel in 633-4 CE, a synagogue and Jewish house of study operated on the Temple Mount and Jews were able to pray there freely. Among others, this is attested to by Rabbi Abraham bar Chiya HaNassi, a leading Spanish rabbinical authority of the 12th century, who wrote in his book Megilat Megaleh that, "at the beginning, after the Romans destroyed the Temple, Israel was not prevented from coming and praying there, and similarly the kings of Ishmael enacted a beneficent custom and allowed Israel to come to the Temple Mount and build a house of prayer and study." Furthermore, he notes, "all the exiles of Israel who lived near the Temple Mount would ascend on festivals and holidays and pray there."
Indeed some outrages against plain level-headedness can beggar even the most prolific of imaginations. For instance, presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's reference to Jerusalem as Israel's capital sent shockwaves of horror reverberating around the world. Obama's calculated agenda culminated in two farcical incidents this year. In March, his secretary of state's spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, was adamant that no Israeli capital exists, leastways not one she could name. More recently, White House spokesman Jay Carney stood discomfited on his podium, unable to identify Israel's capital. The best he could muster were stock inanities like: "You know our policy," and, "Our policy hasn't changed." In comparison, Romney comes up trumps. No contest. But that's only for folks whose common sense cannot be twisted with a few syrupy sentences, folks who still know that remembering isn't divisive and racist, that murder isn't loving and unifying. Such an unyielding mind-set is judged untrendy and uncool, much as is Romney's acknowledgment of the ancient ties of the Jewish people to the cradle of their nationhood. In our topsy-turvy existence, he dared to brazenly overstep the enlightened ones' mark.
A few months before the event, the police announced that they forbid the Walk out of fear from confrontation and conflict with the Muslims coming down from the Temple Mount after another day of the Ramadan fast. This decision was canceled two days after the Women in Green organization appealed to the Supreme Court, demanding that the police allow the Walk to be held as usual. Later in his speech he referred to the future of the El Aqsa mosque, located on the Temple Mount, as he sees it, and said that we can learn one thing from Beit El's Ulpana Hill deal, and that is the idea of sawing. "There is one thing we can all learn from one of the most questionable deals we have made lately, and that is what happened at the Ulpana Hill, where they decided to dismantle and relocate the houses, rather than destroy them. At least, when the time comes to reconstruct the Temple, and that time is coming, we will dismantle and relocate the "house" that is currently there. We will cut it up and they can relocate it wherever they want, because that's where the Third Temple belongs", called out Eldad over the applause of the crowd.
This article page provides Links to Youtube videos with English translations of the recent sovereignty conference speakers. If you don't know what this Sovereignty Conference you can read the following links to familiarise yourself. In short, it is the concept that instead of a two state solution, Israel takes control over the Palestinian West Bank
Definition: King's Calendar Chronological Research
The Premise: Between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE (but continuing down to at least 104 BCE), Sectarian redactors transcribed the legitimate 'solar year' chronological records of Israel and Judah, into an artificial form, with listed years as each comprised of 12 months of 4 weeks of 7 days, or 336 days per year, thus creating a 13th artificial year where 12 solar years existed.
When the Synchronous Chronological Data provided in the Books of Kings and Chronicles for the Divided Kingdom Period are measured in years of 336 days, the synchronisms actually align. [Refer to Appendix 5. to see how it synchronises the Divided Kingdom Period]
About the KingsCalendar Publisher
R.P.BenDedek is the owner and Editor of KingsCalendar.com which was originally set up to publicize his research results into the Chronology of Ancient Israel. Those results were published under the title: 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran'.
Whilst there have been many attempts to solve the chronological riddle of the Bible's synchronisms of reigns of the kings of Israel and Judah and their synchronism with other Ancient Near Eastern Nations, no other research is based on a simple mathematical formula which could, if it is incorrect, be disproved easily. To date, no one has been able to dismiss the mathematical results of this research.
Free to air Academic articles set forth Apologetics for and results of his discovery of an "artificial chronological scheme" running through the Bible, Josephus, the Damascus Documents of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Seder Olam Rabbah.
During the current economic downturn, this book has been drastically reduced in price but will eventually rise as the economy improves.
Check the Chapter Precis Page to see details of each chapter and to gain access to the Four Free to Air Chapters
R.P. BenDedek writes social commentaries and photographic 'Stories from China' both at KingsCalendar, and as a contributing columnist at Magic City Morning Star News in Maine USA.
(He has been teaching Conversational English in China since 2003 and currently (2013) is teaching in Suzhou City Jiangsu Province.)
Rules of Evidence Series at Kingscalendar.
Part 1. The Law, Rules of Evidence & Archaeology Part 2. The Law, Rules of Evidence & Archaeology Part 3. The Law, Rules of Evidence & Archaeology Part 4. The Law, Rules of Evidence & Archaeology
