According to MK Bezalel Smotrich (Yamina), Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi is a dear Jew and an excellent mayor, but he supports a Palestinian state.
“He has said it in a wide variety of interviews,” Smotrich told Kipa on Tuesday. “His understanding is that what’s ours is ours, and what isn’t, what can you do, we must establish a Palestinian state. So let’s put it on the table: the debate is not between supporters of the sovereignty and its opponents, the debate is between supporters of a Palestinian state and opponents of a Palestinian state. We oppose a Palestinian state. Most of the public opposes it. Let’s not establish a Palestinian state and wrap it up in a rightwing campaign and call it sovereignty.”
Truth be told, much like President Donald Trump’s grand gesture of recognizing Jerusalem (only the western parts) as the capital of Israel, and the moving of the US embassy to the eternal city, the promised sovereignty in Trump’s son-in-law’s Deal of the Century also doesn’t introduce any concrete improvement in the lives of rank and file Israelis, especially not if they live in the settlements bloc.
The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) regularly issues its mirror versions of the majority of Knesset legislations, so that there is a de facto sovereignty in 95% of the settlements. Sure, things could be better, more roads could be paved, security could be improved, the cable company could be compelled to eventually supply you with fiber optic internet infrastructure if you live in Efrat or Karnei Shomron – but is that what we mean when we say “sovereignty?”
“It’s an argument about 100 years of Zionism,” Smotrich told Kipa. “We, for sure, start with the ideology, with the fact that the entire Land of Israel belongs to the nation of Israel, with the Biblical decree and the Divine decree.”
“You have to understand, the bluff of a demilitarized Palestinian State will not hold water for too long,” he continued. “Once you give the other side sovereignty, there’s a limit on how long you can control the boundaries of that entity. Maybe in the first stage you will succeed, and then they’ll go to the UN and say, We are an independent state, why does this foreign country control our borders?”
“If a Palestinian state is established,” Smotrich warned, “Beyond the great crime this would be in terms of values, Judaism, Zionism, nationality – with the abandonment of the Land of Israel. But even more so, it would be foolhardy in terms of security and strategy. We have seen what happened in Gaza, and there is no reason to assume that this is not what would happen in Judea and Samaria – only it would be twenty times as ominous, and it would take place in an area that topographically controls the State of Israel.”
Oded Revivi was elected to the post of Head of Efrat Council on November 11, 2008. On October 22, 2013, he was reelected with 63% of the vote. In October 2018, he barely made it into a third term with only a 56% majority, while simultaneously losing his majority in the Efrat council. He is also former Chairman of the Judea and Samaria Council’s Foreign Desk, and in that roll he accompanied Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington in January, to attend the ceremony in the White House when the president announced his peace proposal.