As party leaders struggle to form a government following elections, the Yesha Council met with nationalist Knesset factions on Wednesday to ensure that the issues most important to Jewish residents of the West Bank be prioritized during coalition negotiations.
Yesha is a Hebrew acronym for Yehuda, Shomron, Azza (Judea, Samaria, Gaza) and is the name of the council established in the 1970s as an umbrella organization for the municipal councils of various Jewish communities in the West Bank and Gaza region.
Although United States President George W. Bush forced Prime Minister Ariel Sharona to destroy all of Gaza’s Jewish towns and villages in 2005, the council continues to include Azza in its name as both a remembrance of what Israel lost and as a commitment to ultimately return.
Ḥananel Dorani, who heads the council, said the goal of Wednesday’s meeting was to prevent a situation in which the next Knesset is less friendly than the previous one to Jewish interests in the territories. He expressed concern that if Binyamin Netanyahu (Likud) forms a “unity government” together with Benny Gantz (Blue & White), Jewish construction in the Samaria and Judea regions could be frozen.
“I am concerned for two reasons,” Dorani told journalists on Wednesday prior to the meeting. “A unity government could mean a frozen government. Perhaps not like it was in the past, but without the ability to move forward.”
“I’m also worried that we’re going to create all sorts of limitations for ourselves, despite the fact that from the Americans’ perspective, these don’t exist. And obviously, above everything, there is the [Trump] plan, and we have no idea what it will include.”
“If the White House does not create obstacles, then we certainly don’t have to place them ourselves. And if the White House policy changes, we are here to fight to ensure there will be no obstacles.”
Dorani has been entrusted to represent the interests of Jews living in the West Bank, who are indisputably the Israelis most driven by a deep sense of Jewish history. His commitment to resisting any US plan that calls for the surrender of Israel’s heartland is admirable but his implied acceptance of a reality in which Washington dictates Israeli policies is concerning because a leader in his position should recognize that the fundamental conflict of interests between Israel and the United States goes way beyond any one administration or policy.
The United States is for better or worse the current recognized leader of Western civilization, which is largely based on the moral and ideological foundations of ancient Rome and the Christian Church. For centuries, the Church had pointed to the exile and subjugation of the Jewish people as proof for the validity of their faith. The State of Israel’s establishment in 1948 threatened not only the foundations of Christian dogma but also the very underpinnings of Western civilization. But the Vatican overcame its theological crisis by denying the historical significance of Israel’s rebirth.
It wasn’t only the Vatican that denied the meaning of the Jewish return to the world stage but also the US government. Any major disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem since 1948 is symptomatic of a deep friction surrounding the question of whether or not Israel’s return to political independence in the ancient Jewish homeland carries meaning.
During the 1967 Six-Day War, the world experienced a Biblical-style miracle according to the Jewish interpretation of Scripture, essentially debunking Christian dogma and the Western understanding of history. Since then, the US and its allies have been determined to not only force Israel from the territories liberated in that war but also to suppress the political and ideological influence of those Jews who see deep historic significance and purpose in modern political events – essentially those Jews driven to populate the territories returned to Israel during that war.
Ḥananel Dorani and the Yesha Council leadership must therefore understand that the only way to truly fight for the Jewish communities in Israel’s disputed heartland is to fight for full Israeli independence from the United States. So long as Israel receives money and weapons from Washington each year, foreign leaders will be able to influence Israeli policies, especially when it comes to the construction and destruction of Jewish communities in the West Bank.
The problem with Dorani is that he, like most political leaders representing Israel’s national camp, isn’t sufficiently knowledgeable in regards to how US aid actually works – how it’s actually an American government subsidy to its own arms industry and how it stifles the economic growth and independence of recipient nations.
Since the early 1970s, every US administration has placed heavy pressure on Israel’s political leadership to comply with Washington’s agenda for the Middle East, which demands a halt to Jewish building in the West Bank and the eventual reversal of Israel’s 1967 gains through the division of the country into two separate states.
Using the aid as a means of neo-imperialist leverage, US officials have succeeded in removing a number of Israeli leaders from office and forcing others to comply with Washington’s demands.
Israel’s already tenuous situation became worse when former US President Barack Obama deepened Jerusalem’s dependency on Washington with a ten year $38 billion memorandum of understanding during the final year of his administration. This new MOU allocates to Israel $3.3 billion in military financing and $500 million in missile defense each year while altering the terms of the aid package.
Until Obama’s MOU, roughly a quarter of the money could be spent on local Israeli products while slightly over 75% had to be spent on US-made weapons and equipment often more expensive and qualitatively inferior to Israeli versions of the same products.
According to the new MOU, however, 100% of the military aid must now be spent on American products, resulting in further losses for Israeli defense companies that have long ago lost their own country’s military as a client and have, as a result, resorted to betraying Jewish values by arming human rights violators in various countries.
Throughout the world, economic aid is used by the the forces of empire as a means of controlling nations viewed as strategically important to American interests while at the same time funneling most of the money back to US companies (arms, oil, construction, etc.).
Once dependent on the money, these nations come under US hegemony and are forced to comply with Washington’s foreign policy agenda, which in Israel’s case includes a “two-state solution” and surrendering the cradle of Jewish civilization.
So if Dorani and the Yesha Council are serious about protecting Israel against attempts to uproot Jewish life from Samaria and Judea, they would attack the threat at the root level rather than the branches.
In addition to safeguarding West Bank Jewish communities and spreading the ideology of those leading efforts to populate Judea and Samaria, a public campaign by the Yesha Council promoting Israeli independence from Washington would also show the council taking the lead on an important national issue, thereby stifling attempts by Israel’s westernized ruling class and media to ahistorically portray them as merely fighting for the private interests of only one sector of society.
