Yesha (Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria) Council Chairman Ḥananel Durani asked Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee on Wednesday to seek permission from United States President Donald Trump for more Jewish building in the West Bank.
The Yesha Council and Huckabee were celebrating a bricklaying ceremony in Efrat, marking the construction of 900 new Jewish homes.
Durani recalled how far the Jewish communities in Israel’s disputed heartland have come since former US President Barack Obama forced Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) to ban Jewish construction in the West Bank.
“We see now that under the Trump administration the atmosphere is changing,” Durani said.
Since the start of Trump’s term, the president’s stance on the West Bank has remained ambiguous, although rumors have circulated that Trump plans to impose Washington’s traditional two-state policy on Israelis and Palestinians.
Durani called on Huckabee to request from Trump permission for further development in existing Jewish West Bank communities.
“Unfortunately there are still restrictions and we have not been allowed to build thousands of residential units,” he said.
The fact that the Yesha council chairman actually sought permission from American leaders to build in Israel’s heartland already speaks to the mental slavery of even nationalist leaders.
While it’s true that Netanyahu isn’t likely to permit Jewish West Bank construction without American approval, shamelessly circumventing Israeli officials and directly requesting a green light from Washington only exposes the contempt we have for our own political independence.
We shouldn’t be seeking a more favorable emperor to rule us from afar but actual self-determination so we can decide our own fate untangled by Washington’s imperialist interests in the Middle East.
This humiliating behavior isn’t new. Under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Mapai), Israel decided on a policy of attaching our fate to the regional agenda of a superpower.
Whereas most peoples first decide their interests and only then make alliances with other nations whose interests overlap, Israel’s might be the only government to first decide who it wishes to be allied to and only then decides its interests based on how to maintain and strengthen that alliance.
It’s time Israeli society engaged in two very crucial conversations, one about our national interests and the other about our independence. Actually defining our short term and long term national objectives will give Israeli society some much needed direction while freedom from America might very well be first on the list of goals setting that direction.
