Israel Has a Right to Build in Judea and Samaria

Israel is the owner of Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank, under International Law. Israel tried but did not succeed to give most of it away. Unless Israel does give it away, it has a clear mandate to build as it sees fit. How can Israel make any decision if it allows other governments to sway it's every micro decision.

As I wrote nine years ago, Israel has full rights, but has allowed current residents both Jews and Arabs to define the nature of the land. By only making natural changes based on population growth of Jews and Arabs in these territories, Israel is preserving the status quo. At this stage in history, however, one must ask why keep the status quo of accepting terrorists as pretend diplomats as an equal counterpart to Israeli settlers who have a natural mandate to settle where they wish within context of local property rights. Israel is not administering law and order to these territories. Neither could one in all honesty say that the terroristic Palestinian Authority is either. The Palestinian Authority has guns and Israel stays out of their way. In America we call that a street gang that the police are not cracking down on, not a legal government of a nation with equal rights.

Israel has superior rights to the land of Israel. It would have to give up those rights to mitigate that under International Law. They have not; so the rights to build where they please remain.

A right for Israel to build remains.

The current status quo is inherently laissez-fair where Israel needs to be commanding, weak where Israel needs to be strong, codependent to terror, where Israel needs to bring the Torah of Sinai to bear and not allow murders a city of refuge; rather, give refuge to the innocent and the righteous of Jews and Arabs alike.

The mishandling of the unauthorized settlement of Amona underscores the danger of this status quo. Spiritually speaking, it also creates more unhealthy pressure against the State of Israel. Israel was tacitly allowed to build as they liked in the first week of President Trump's administration. The moment they were cruel to settlers, lo and behold, they are told to limit their building plans in the territories again. No coincidence there.

You only have to go to court if you don't want to compromise. By failing to find a compromise with the residents of Amona, Israel has failed to retain control of their own territory, this time giving over control not to a peace process, but to a court order. If for example any residents that are accused of squatting were allowed to promise to pay double market value to remain on the disputed territory, how many property owners would disagree about compromising? Not enough was done to keep this out of court, and keep it from getting out of control. And now Israel is reliving the nightmare of the Gush Katif evacuation, and suddenly Trump's spokesman sounds not much different than Obama's.

Israel needs to never again evacuate Jewish communities from the land upon which they live.

Never again.

If Amona was such a mistake, how did all those homes and buildings get built in the first place? Laissez-fair where there needs to be control. Cruel where there needs to be mercy. Seeking a deal with nations where there needs to be internal decision making.

We need rulers who do not merely speak politely about sages, but wisely pursue policy like them as well.

If the current government would blame this all on pressure from the Obama Administration. Then from now on, we can expect and rightly demand only wise, merciful and coherent policy from the Netanyahu Administration. If they would show wisdom in their policies, then the time to begin is now.

May the wise soon rule over Israel and the reign of fools come to an end. May it soon be so, by the grace of God.