One by one, the finance minister has removed the bottlenecks that held back settlement in Judea and Samaria for decades. David Elhayani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, is astounded by the revolution and explains how it all happened.
David Elhayani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, is rarely at a loss for words. Usually articulate, incisive, and precise in his speech, he finds himself unable to describe the current reality in the Jordan Valley. As he puts it, he “can’t find the right word.” “Perhaps it’s a revolution, a formative period, a dramatic period,” he says, searching for the most accurate term, before declaring that “the Jordan Valley has never experienced anything like this.”
Elyahani begins by pointing to the government’s decision to establish fifteen new communities and a Haredi city in the Jordan Valley. Four have already been established, another is expected to be established in October, and five more are planned for next year. Within two years of the decision, all fifteen communities are due to be established, creating territorial continuity along the Alon Road corridor and Highway 90.
Elhayani adds to this the thirty-two farms established in the Jordan Valley. “These farms hold grazing permits covering nearly 400,000 dunams, almost half the jurisdictional area of the Jordan Valley Regional Council. That is an astonishing figure. These are grazing permits for areas where there are no Arabs. In effect, we have gone from being the ones threatened by the Fayyad Plan, which sought to create Arab territorial continuity at our expense, to taking the reins ourselves. We are shaping the reality on the ground.”
Asked what it took to bring about this transformation, Elhayani points to one person, and one person alone. “There is one modest, unassuming, quiet man who made this happen without grandiose declarations and without rushing to the media. I'm referring to Bezalel Smotrich and his team. They did it intelligently and strategically, at politically opportune moments. Of course, they did not operate in a vacuum, and it would not have happened without the backing of the Minister of Defense and the Prime Minister. But Smotrich was the driv.ing force, and he knew how to do it properly and quietly, while the spotlight was directed elsewhere.”
One Approval Instead of an Arduous Journey Through Committees
Elhayani offers several examples, among many, of measures Minister Smotrich has advanced behind the scenes. “As a head of a local authority, I know how to appreciate and assess what he has done. Let me give you an example. Government Resolution 150, adopted by the Netanyahu government, has been in effect since December 1996. It has far-reaching implications for planning procedures, stipulating that approval from the political leadership is required at every stage of planning a new neighborhood or expanding an outline plan, and certainly when establishing a new community.
“This means that if I want to expand the community of Petzael, I first need preliminary approval from the political leadership, followed by further approvals at each stage: before planning begins, before the plan is deposited, before it is published, before it is granted statutory validity, before it is published again, and before the land is marketed. I have to go to the political leadership for approval six times, even though we know that the process can be affected by a visit from the U.S. president, a visit by the secretary of state, the prime minister’s trip to a foreign capital, and so on. There is always some diplomatic or security pretext for delaying the process.”
Smotrich changed this situation by stipulating that a single approval from the political echelon would suffice for all these stages, allowing the procedures to proceed thereafter on a professional basis.
Elhayani recalls the days when the media would report on every meeting of the Higher Planning Council (HPC), which convenes to approve housing construction. During Trump’s first term, the government reached an understanding with the Americans that the HPC would convene once every quarter. This arrangement continued under Biden, but today its meetings no longer make the news, because the HPC meets every two weeks and goes about its work quietly.
“This is what has made it possible for me, as head of a regional council, to expand the outline plan in almost every community under the council’s jurisdiction. It is a planning opportunity that I don’t know whether we will ever see again.”
When Inexperienced Officers Decide Whether a Neighborhood Can Be Built or a Kindergarten Can Open
Elhayani goes on to describe the dramatic changes in the Civil Administration, where Minister Smotrich ensured that military legal counsel was separated from civilian legal counsel. As he explains: “In the past, twenty- and twenty-one-year-olds were the ones deciding whether to approve or reject things, without understanding anything about running a local authority. When the minister took office, he quietly set about separating military legal counsel from civilian legal counsel. He established a legal advisory unit within his office at the Ministry of Defense, staffed by professionals who know how to provide answers and solutions.
“As long as the people there were only soldiers, they had no interest in advancing settlement. They did not understand its importance, and sometimes they even came with an opposing agenda. Smotrich appointed a deputy head of the Civil Administration with full authority. This is an action whose significance people do not know how to appreciate, but it is a dramatic change with far-reaching implications for settlement.”
The surge of settlement in the Jordan Valley has also brought together people who usually stand on opposite sides of the political divide. Until recently, the only organizations still active in establishing new communities were Amana and Hashomer Hechadash. But when it came to establishing the new communities in the Jordan Valley, the Kibbutz Movement also sought to join the effort. Indeed, for the first time in decades, a new kibbutz is being established in Israel as part of this chain of new communities.
Elhayani sees the Kibbutz Movement’s return to the settlement enterprise as a significant added value, given the tasks that still lie ahead for Israel, not only in the Jordan Valley but also in the Negev and the Galilee.
“After seventeen years as head of the council, and having spent years in the Jordan Valley before that, I can say that there has never been such momentum here in growth, prosperity, absorption, construction, and agriculture,” Elhayani says. He also points to the Ministry of Defense’s investment in constructing the security barrier along Israel’s border with Jordan and establishing a new army division specifically for this area, describing these as significant changes that have strengthened residents’ awareness of and sense of security.
Elhayani adds that, in his view and assessment, the real and far greater threat to Israel does not come from its eastern border, but from the possibility that the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria could turn its guns against Israel.
Despite the dramatic transformation in the Jordan Valley, Elhayani maintains that almost everything that has been achieved could be reversed if people with the opposite agenda were to take up positions in the corridors of government power.
“I don’t know whether we will ever see this kind of reality again. If Israel wants to ensure its survival, sovereignty must be applied here. Another government could uproot fifty or a hundred thousand residents and dismantle almost everything that has been accomplished. But applying sovereignty would put an end to the Arabs’ delusional idea of establishing a state between the River Jordan and the sea.”
This article was originally published in Sovereignty Journal, Issue No. 20 (October 2026). 📖 "Click here to read the full issue