Former Minister of Religious Services MK Matan Kahana (National Unity) told administration officials in Washington DC that the insubordination threats against the judicial reform by members of elite IDF units set a course whereby attempts by future governments to evacuate settlement from Judea and Samaria to make way for a Palestinian State would be met with similar resistance, Israel Hayom reported Sunday.
Kahana visited Washington two weeks ago and held meetings regarding Israel-US relations, among others with Dennis Ross, who served as Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President Bush I, special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton, and special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (including Iran) to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
OK, so Kahana didn’t meet with A-list administration officials: in addition to Ross, he met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs Andrew Miller, Human Rights Section Chief at the Department of State Emily Katkar, and Senior Advisor to the Presidential Special Envoy for Middle East Peace at Department of State Scott Leith. But they met, and he tried to answer their questions as best he could.
They asked about trends in the religious Zionist camp, because, you know, the Biden administration boycotts Bezalel Smotrich. Kahana, a former fighter pilot, told the three officials that one outcome of the IAF pilots’ declarations of insubordination over the judicial reform would be similar insubordination on the part of religious Zionist IDF soldiers should a future Israeli government attempt to evacuate settlements.
MK Kahana put it bluntly: the possibility of the IDF removing settlements in Judea and Samaria is “no longer relevant.” If the army is given an evacuation directive by the government, each side of the political map would call the other insubordinate. Bottom line, “an event like the disengagement cannot happen again.”
By disengagement, he meant the expulsion of some 8,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip on the whim of a prime minister who was facing the threat of criminal indictments.
