Israeli Sovereignty Over Ma'ale Adumim Won't Solve The Problem

As I've written before, the world -even Israel's most sincere supporters- is totally confused by the mixed signals and distinctions successive Israeli governments and almost all Israeli leaders make about our rights to the Land we liberated in June, 1967.

If only we had fully annexed and declared Israeli sovereignty at the end of the 1967 Six Days War. If we had done that and fully supported Jewish settlement in all the Land and cities, we wouldn't be in this awful mess.  The world would have accepted it, maybe without much enthusiasm, but the obviously miraculous might, totally inexplicable by military experts, had everyone in awe. OK, that is except some Israelis and they were in power.

You know how sometimes you don't see the forest for the trees, or if you're too close you miss the picture. That's what happened in a simplistic sense. The Israelis running the country, the National Unity Government was cosmetic to muzzle Right wing opposition/criticism, believed that their policies and tactics had won the war, not Gd's. They had also spent the previous nineteen 19 years brainwashing the population that the State of Israel was large enough and we should be grateful that the United Nations had allowed us to exist. And for them, the fact that the 1949 ceasefire lines gave us more land than the Partition Plan meant that we didn't need any more, except maybe the Western Wall.

Just like my complaints a few years ago, when residents of Gush Etzion got all upset that the security fence/wall locks them out of Jerusalem because they consider themselves "consensus" as permanently part of the State of Israel, I think this new focus on "sovereignty for Ma'ale Adumim" is problematic.

Education Minister and Jewish Home party leader
Naftali Bennett (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

"Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett on Sunday said he plans to introduce legislation this month that would extend Israeli sovereignty to the Jerusalem-area settlement of Ma’ale Adumim."

Uri Ariel, photo: Eliran Aharon

'The time for sovereignty is now'

Agriculture Minister says the time to extend sovereignty over Ma'ale Adumim is now, and not to wait for new US administration.

If Bennett and Ariel think that dividing up the Land we hold into small pieces to gradually make as part of sovereign Israel, they are very mistaken. Those who oppose our sovereignty will just get stronger and more opposed to it. It's like slowly pulling off a very sticky bandage. The longer you take to "gently" pull it off the more it hurts. If you pull fast and hard in one quick movement, the pain is over much more quickly.

Each time Israel annexes Land and declares sovereignty, our enemies will scream, yell, sanction, condemn, so we're much better off doing it once more over all the Land and forever.