The vision, which even right-wing people once considered delusional and detached from reality, is being transformed into political reality. Government Minister Elkin, who sowed the seeds of sovereignty in the Knesset 16 years ago, believes the time has come to reap the harvest.
The interview first appeared in Issue 19 of Ribonut (Sovereignty).
In 2009, Ze'ev Elkin, then a Knesset member and today a minister in the Treasury, together with Prof. Aryeh Eldad, also a Knesset member then, established the lobby for the Land of Israel and together began to gradually introduce the idea of sovereignty into the parliament. Around them, even staunch right-wingers considered this a vision detached from reality, vis-à-vis notions of partitioning the Land and establishment of a Palestinian state that had been vigorously promoted since the second quarter of the nineties.
”Even then I believed one must raise this banner and turn it into reality,” Minister Elkin tells ‘Sovereignty.’ Now, he is convinced, Israel faces a rare political and diplomatic window of opportunity that “must not be wasted,” he says, elaborating:
“Israel today has a staunch right-wing government, all of whose component parties support promoting sovereignty. This is a reality that didn't exist in the past. At the same time, in the United States there is an administration which does not consider the idea of sovereignty foreign, and to some extent, sought to promote it in President Trump’s previous term,” says Elkin, recalling the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and moving the embassy to Jerusalem as steps already taken by Trump in the direction of sovereignty.
In addition to these, Minister Elkin points to European steps toward unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. “Precisely when they come to curse us, perhaps they will end up blessing us. The steps by these countries in recent months clarify to us why we must promote sovereignty.”
Elkin sharpens and clarifies that in his view, sovereignty should be advanced regardless of actions taken by the world and steps taken by the Palestinians, “but if we are already in a situation where we are paying a price in any case, in the wake of the anti-Israeli wave and the war, let us at least pay this price in exchange for a significant achievement that will remain here for future generations, and sovereignty is certainly an Israeli objective of that kind.”
They will not threaten twice with the same threat
Regarding the political price Israel is expected to pay, the minister estimates that most of the world will not recognize a sovereignty declaration just as it didn't recognize sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. “This pattern of behavior is familiar and not new for us. We know how to address it. They might also seek to pass a resolution against us in the UN Security Council, but if we execute the moves in coordination with the Americans, we will receive a protective umbrella in the Security Council. I assume that those who are now threatening to recognize a Palestinian state will again threaten with that recognition, but you cannot threaten with the same threat twice. However, I am not deluding myself and take into account that there could be additional consequences and additional steps taken by European countries or the European Union, but this was also the case regarding sovereignty over the Golan Heights.”
Contrary to what was previously characterized as the threat of a political tsunami, Minister Elkin reminds that unlike in the past, today Israel has a friendly administration at its side, one whose senior officials, headed by Ambassador Mike Huckabee “a true friend of the settlement enterprise for years,” come to visit Judea and Samaria and deliver speeches about the rights of the Jewish people in these areas. “It would be proper to coordinate the moves with the administration and not surprise it,” Elkin notes.
Talk of the rights of the Jewish people to their land, says Elkin, does not remain only within the confines of the White House and the American administration. Approximately a decade ago, Elkin served as deputy foreign minister without a minister over him, which occasioned quite a few meetings with foreign ministers and diplomats from around the world. They knew that the deputy minister with whom they were meeting was a Gush Etzion resident and they would often ask me why I live in a place whose status is questionable and that has security risks. I would answer them simply. I said to them that when I go hiking in the hills near my home, I find pottery shards that my forefathers left there two thousand years ago. This is the heart of the Jewish state and the root of our return here. In the First Temple and Second Temple eras, Jews resided primarily here, in Jerusalem and in the hills of Judea, Benjamin and Samaria. This answer would come at them from an unexpected direction and with a different approach relative to their view of us as occupiers.
Minister Elkin considers the demographic challenge involved in applying sovereignty in different proportions. “There can be various solutions. It is clear that we do not want to enable millions of Palestinians to vote; therefore, there are ways to advance sovereignty in stages. In any case, if we engage only in frightening ourselves, we will not find solutions. If we internalize that this move is necessary, we will also find the solutions, some of which will come only further down the road.”
“In the past,” says Elkin, “we championed the all-or-nothing approach, meaning full and immediate sovereignty over the entire territory, which, indeed, raises the question of the right to vote. Today, proponents of the idea understand that it is sometimes preferable to advance in stages, to begin taking the path forward and not make the Palestinian mistake of “all or nothing.” This conceptual change within the Right is one of the factors that transformed the question of sovereignty from a theoretical question to a practical program.”