Mr. Trump: Let's Start with Canceling the Personal Sanctions, and Continue From There

by Shai Alon, Beit El Mayor, translated by Hillel Fendel.

Donald Trump's historic victory in the US elections opens the door for immediate and welcome changes for the half-million-plus Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (Yesha). Israel must utilize the circumstances and work for complete Israeli sovereignty in Yesha – and for the removal of the baseless personal sanctions the State Department has imposed upon individual Jews there.

Trump's win received two extra underscores with the Republican victory in the Senate, and what appears to be the same in the House of Representatives. For at least the next two years, therefore, until the mid-term House elections, the situation appears very promising.

In his first term, as is known, Trump displayed very strong support for Israel and its interests. He took a series of measures that greatly upgraded Israel's status in its own land and around the world. His recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, changed the very ground rules. And the historic Abraham Accords between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain opened the gates for a promising and stable future in the Middle East.

These were not merely symbolic gestures, but full-throated shows of practical support for Israel, in deeds and not only words, that until then had been practically unthinkable.

Unfortunately, Trump was replaced by an outwardly friendly Biden Administration, but which continued, even after Oct. 7^th, to work tirelessly for a two-state solution with our neighbors, Hamas/Fatah, as if nothing had happened.

Now, with Trump's return to the White House for his last four years as President, it is incumbent upon us to know how to open this window of opportunity, for the benefit of the settlement enterprise in Yesha and to strengthen Israel's hold over the entire Land of Israel.

As mentioned, the recent months and years under Biden were not at all simple for Israel. His administration's approach was close to a direct continuation of the confrontational line taken by the Obama regime before Trump's first victory. It will be recalled that Biden was Obama's VP then, and it is a fairly open secret that Obama played a large, behind-the-scenes role in the Biden-Harris administration as well.

The now-outgoing US government's conception of what the Middle East must look like stood many times in stark contrast to Israel's view, interests, and core values – and even many times to the United States' core values. We found ourselves having to deal with foreign pressures not only preventing us from decisively defeating Hamas, but also forcing us to restrict Jewish construction – enacting almost a de facto freeze – in Judea and Samaria.

Sanctions
The Biden Administration even went so far as to impose personal sanctions against individuals and organizations active in Yesha on behalf of the Jewish People. This is a disrespectful and even dictatorial move that represents a blatantly brazen intervention in Israel's internal policies. The sanctions were not even only economic. Their objective was rather to restrict the growth of the Jewish communities and signal the essential American opposition to the existence of more than a half-million Jews in these areas.

The severity of these sanctions is such that the routine lives of the affected Jews became intolerable. The incoming Administration must nullify these sanctions on Day One, in order to assure Israel's sovereignty as an independent country, and to enable the residents of Yesha to continue to build their lives in freedom.

We recall Trump's “Middle East Peace Plan,” also known as the “peace plan of the century,” which was unveiled in early 2020 (just around when the Coronavirus was beginning to make its infamous mark around the world). Now, after what happened outside Gaza on Simchat Torah last year, its vision of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is no longer relevant. Between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea there must be only one sovereign state: the State of Israel!

What we must do now, therefore, is to push full steam ahead to promote and advance the establishment of Israel's sovereignty over every Jewish-populated area in Yesha. After 57 years of living here, it is inconceivable that the Jews are still subservient to military orders issued by the official governor, namely, the IDF Central Command. The IDF's civil administration over Yesha must be abolished, and the Jewish populace here must be a totally integral part of the State of Israel under the law.

With President Trump in office, the matter of security in Yesha can also face historical changes. We cannot overlook the fact of the PA military mechanisms that possess huge amounts of armored vehicles and weapons, which in an instant can turn into a threatening scenario against Israel, as happened in the second intifada - and as we are witnessing these very days in the shooting incidents by PA police officers.

The sense of security here, and the very lives of the residents of Yesha, are in constant danger, and this situation cannot continue. The military bodies of Fatah and of the other terrorist organizations must be disarmed, and the area must be completely cleansed of the many illegal weapons that abound. Only Israeli forces may possess weapons and have security authority in the area.

These are absolutely necessary moves that can only be implemented when President Trump assumes his old-new office. We wish him the best of success!

Stop the Iranian Arms Smuggling from Jordan into Israel!

by Shai Alon, Mayor of Beit El, translated by Hillel Fendel.

These past two weeks provided several close-up opportunities for us to learn about a matter that has been of great concern for many years. It is something that the mayors of municipal councils and towns in Yosh (Judea and Samaria) have long been loudly warning about. I'm referring to the smuggling of large amounts of weapons, from Iran and elsewhere, into Judea and Samaria – for use against local pioneering Jews, and also in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

We saw in recent days and weeks a failed suicide terrorist in Tel Aviv; the elimination of Asin al Makdah in Lebanon, who together with his brother ran an arms smuggling operation into Yosh; and clear indications of anti-personnel mines among PA elements in Yosh. 

This is not a new phenomenon that we never knew about. It is rather something that has simply been not attended to sufficiently. Old Israel – i.e., Israel before Oct. 7th – acted in a tactical, local, and insufficient manner against the well-planned Iranian strategy that is gradually headed towards massive arming of the Arabs of Yosh and the terror organizations there. 

Old Israel, which carried out the successful Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, followed it by entering a phase of relative passivity vis-à-vis the terrorists. It thus bought a measure of quiet in Yosh, at the price of the continued entry of weapons and armed terrorists into the region. These policies of the past 20 years have brought us to a situation in which the IDF is unable to enter the PA villages without facing concrete threats to the lives of our soldiers. 

All these years, Israel preferred to avoid friction, and what we received was a threat many times larger than what we would have faced had we acted as we should have against the Iran/Jordan/PA smugglings into Judea and Samaria. 

Some ten days ago, the miraculous failure of a terrorist to detonate a suitcase full of explosives inside a packed Tel Aviv synagogue is an example of the sad reality in Yosh: Hamas and Islamic Jihad are recruiting more and more terrorists to their ranks in Judea and Samaria, as opposed to in Gaza, and are using advanced weaponry to carry out major attacks on civilian targets. 

The failed attack in Tel Aviv is actually a success from their standpoint, because of the fact that the terrorist was able to penetrate so deeply into "little Israel" with a large amount of explosives without being detected. The calamity that was avoided thanks to Divine Providence attests, more than ever, to the danger that our security forces face in Judea and Samaria. This was not an unusual incident, but rather a dangerous precedent. 

It is now the turn of "new Israel," the post-Oct. 7th Israel, to act differently and to take the bull by the horns. This could be the great opportunity of the still-new IDF Central Commander, Gen. Avi Blut, to take charge of our eastern border, through which many weapons have been smuggled, and make an essential change. True, we're engaged in a war already. But the State of Israel, and particularly its security establishment, may not allow themselves to take its eyes off this major strategic threat. 

The Arabs of Yosh's Jordan Valley, on the Jordanian border, have the will, intention, and ability to supply terrorists with many weapons and powerful charges. It is incumbent upon the security forces in the area to step up their offensives against the terrorist bodies that are increasingly establishing themselves as a leading arena in Judea and Samaria. The IDF must encircle the city centers, go from house to house, and simply clean them out of all weapons. The terrorists in Yosh must not be allowed to feel safe in their homes or in their market places. We must strengthen and reinforce the eastern border, and we must establish systems for identification, monitoring and warning, even as our ongoing security activities continue alongside it.

The current reality leaves us no choice. Israel must carry out a wide-ranging operation, as we have been calling for even before the current war began, and as is just as applicable and relevant even now. 

If not, the calamity that was averted in Tel Aviv will return to plague us in a different locale, but with horrific consequences, Heaven forbid. In order for this not to happen, we must truly internalize how explosive the situation is at present, take strong action against the smuggling, and search for and collect all the smuggled-in, dangerous weapons in Judea and Samaria.  

The recent successful liquidation of a smuggler in Lebanon must be the opening shot for "new Israel" and new, take-the-initiative policies to effectively answer our security needs.