Fwd: Maariv: The women ( WIG) behind the initiative to annex Judea & Samaria, Sovereignty Campaign and recent vote in Likud Central.

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From: <womeningreen@womeningreen.org>
Date: Jan 3, 2018 2:29 AM
Subject: Maariv: The women behind the initiative to annex Judea & Samaria
To: <womeningreen@womeningreen.org>

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Maariv Newspaper:

Marking out the Territory: The Women behind the Initiative to Annex
Judea and Samaria

Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar are used to the Right perceiving them
as delusional, but with the vote in Likud Central, they now see their
efforts of many years bearing fruit: "It was a breakthrough"

Karni Eldad, Maariv January 2, 2018

http://www.maariv.co.il/news/israel/Article-616236

Translated into English by Sally Zahav

The day after the vote in Likud Central Committee, where there was a
unanimous resolution in favor of the application of sovereignty "over
all the liberated areas of settlement in Judea and Samaria", Yehudit
Katsover and Nadia Matar are celebrating this achievement. "The most
moving thing was that there was no cynicism at all in the Committee",
Matar says. "We met people that had not come to the Likud Central
Committee for years, but this time they left their homes, all over the
country, just to vote on this matter. It's true that it took 50 years,
but this is a huge step. Natan Englesman, Shevah Weiss and Shai
Merling and the Land of Israel people in the Likud deserve the credit
for this step; working methodically and tenaciously, they collected
900 signatures and brought the Committee to a meeting".

"Last Sunday was a breakthrough at Likud Central", Katsover adds. "It
was extraordinarily moving. We saw how people simply love the Land of
Israel. We saw that deep down, people want to connect with the ideal".

For years, Katsover (70), a resident of Hevron, Director of the
College of Education in Kiryat Arba, wife of Tzvi Katsover, mother of
five and grandmother to 16, and Matar (51), resident of Efrat, mother
of six and grandmother to two, have dedicated themselves to advancing
the idea of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, as the heads of Women in
Green. On Monday, as I spoke with them, they were on their way to the
Cave of the Patriarch in Hevron driving in Matar's battered Jeep. "We
need to go thank our mothers and fathers", they said, half-jokingly,
"to tell them that it's good they bought the Cave of the Patriarchs at
full price, but they left us with a lot of work to do".

The Right-wing movement Women in Green was founded by Michael and Ruth
Matar in 1993, following the signing of the Oslo Accords, taking its
name from their campaign against a return to the Green Line in the
90s, when its members wore green hats. The movement's activities over
the years have included protest demonstrations against the Oslo
Accords, the signing of a petition against the establishment of a
Palestinian State and other events. During Operation Defensive Shield,
Women in Green's members defended the IDF soldiers against Machsom
Watch. In 2010, Matar and Katsover established the Sovereignty
Movement as an NGO (non-governmental organization) working toward the
application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. Since 2013,
the movement has been publishing the Sovereignty Journal, dealing with
the issue of Israeli sovereignty in the territories of Judea and
Samaria.

The same excuses

1,500 members of the Likud Central Committee, who gathered on Sunday
in Airport City, voted for a binding resolution of the party's support
of the application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea, Samaria and the
Jordan Valley.  Almost all ministers of the Likud were present except
for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the vote was taken with his
knowledge. The Likud Central Committee calls on Likud officials to act
toward allowing unconstrained building and to apply Israeli law and
sovereignty over the communities of Judea and Samaria. While it is
true that Likud Central cannot enforce the law, it serves as an
ideological example among Likud members.

The idea of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria began with the liberation
of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in the
Six Day War, but got a strong boost in recent years under the aegis of
Women in Green. If not for the  activities of Matar and Katsover, it
is almost certain that the vote that took place in Likud Central on
Sunday would not have happened, or would have happened only years
later.

Katsover and Matar have long since become used to being considered
"delusional", even by the mainstream Right. In 2005, when they saw
that the struggle against the disengagement plan was not succeeding
and that the communities and their residents were expelled, they made
an essential change in their activities, which had included up until
then, demonstrations and protests. They referred to maps and decided
to stop the Palestinian encroachment to Area C, which was under full
Israeli control according to the Oslo Accords, and began the battle
for strategic points, both in the communities and with plantings. "We
would plant, and the Palestinians would uproot them", says Katsover.
"Until we finally won. And then my husband told us that we are 'trying
to empty the ocean with a teaspoon'. We understood that the struggle
cannot be limited to specific points".

From Katsover and Matar's point of view, sovereignty is necessary for
the half million Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria, who, according
to them, have the obligations of Israeli law on one hand, but do not
enjoy the rights, and even for the simplest of procedures they must
apply to the Civil Administration, the thinly-manned military body
that is responsible for the lives of the residents of Judea and
Samaria. So, for example, they cannot own the land on which their
houses are built, unless they buy it from a Palestinian, and every
alteration requires the permission of a military person. Sovereignty,
at least in Area C, will change this situation.

According to Katsover and Matar, the residents crave normalcy. They
say that one of the difficulties that the two women encountered during
this struggle was the way the authorities related to the Jews in Judea
and Samaria. "The Civil Administration and judicial system viewed us,
the Jews in Judea and Samaria, as temporary residents, while they
viewed the Palestinians as the proprietors, as the indigenous people",
says Matar. "When we brought a tractor to a plot – the whole world was
up in arms. When an Arab did it – it was natural to them. The
authorities wondered why in the world they had to protect these Jews,
although what these crazy women say is correct. We understood that we
have to get to the root of the problem. We understood that if we apply
sovereignty in the area – the problem will be solved", says Matar.

They say that about 250 people came to Women in Green's first
conference in Hevron in 2011, and "a few courageous speakers", as they
defined it, including Tzipi Hotovely and Uri Ariel. "Everyone thought
it was delusional", they claim.

"Yehudit decided, and rightly so, that we first need to convince our
own camp about the need for sovereignty", Matar says. "Until that
time, the agenda was only for settlement and building. We felt that if
there was no sovereignty, we would not be able to defend the
communities. When we set out with the first conference, people from
our own camp asked us: 'why are you doing this just now' and 'why rock
the boat'. All the excuses that that the spies used when they came to
tour the Land were still being used".

More than twice as many supporters of the idea came to Women in
Green's second conference a year later. Between the conferences, the
two women held personal meetings with ministers, members of Knesset
and other public figures, trying to inculcate the idea within them.
For the third conference, they rented a huge hall and broadcast the
speakers outside the hall, "and it still was not enough", says
Katsover. "We understood that we were still emptying the ocean with a
teaspoon. And then we decided to publish the Sovereignty Journal and
distribute it in two hundred thousand copies in English and Hebrew".

Katsover and Matar are also critical of their own camp, of the YESHA
Council, who, they say, despite the evacuations of Migron, Ofrah and
Emuna, still did not understand what had to be done. "A year ago we
raised the subject in a meeting of the YESHA Council, says Katsover.
"Meanwhile, there were evacuations that we did not manage to prevent.
Since Gush Katif, we always respond in the same way. We didn't change
our pattern of behavior; just lobbying and more lobbying, everyone
made promises and nothing helped, and in the best case, they would
keep their promises after a decade had passed. We have to explain that
the Land is ours, and this must be enshrined in legislation". *

"We are not the first ones to deal with sovereignty", adds Katsover.
"Aryeh Eldad, Uri Elitzur, obm, Rav Beni Elon obm and Caroline Glick
came before us. But we turned it into a campaign. We don't take the
credit, only the credit for being persistent".

Because of Hope

Over the years, the Sovereignty magazine, created by Katsover and
Matar, has interviewed members of Knesset, ministers and many public
figures, and each had his own way of defining Israeli sovereignty in
Judea and Samaria, which is the unilateral annexation of the
territory, regardless of whether the Palestinians or the rest of the
world agrees to it.

Katsover and Matar are not indifferent to the matter of the
Palestinians who live in Area C, who, are estimated to number in the
tens of thousands. There are those who believe that they should be
transferred to Area A or B; there are those who claim that they should
be given the status of permanent residency, like the residents of
eastern Jerusalem and there are those who want to give them full
citizenship. "The Left keeps inflating the number of Palestinians in
Judea and Samaria by another million. They say that the number has
reached five million people", says Katsover. "Recently, there finally
was clarification regarding the number of refugees in Lebanon, and it
turns out that although they thought that they numbered about a half
million people, there are only about 150 thousand. There is always a
huge gap between what they say and the truth".

"According to demographer Yoram Ettinger, there are about 1.6 million
Palestinians in Judea and Samaria", adds Matar. "We are not ignoring
this problem. We are for annexing the territory (Women in Green
relates to the entire territory, including Areas A and B –K.E.);
giving them rights of residency like the residents of Jerusalem have,
but never national rights. As Tzvi Katsover, Yehudit's husband, says,
it's not despair that drives their terror, but hope. The hope that
they can take our Land from us. The application of Israeli law will
uproot that hope. They can integrate themselves here as residents with
the condition that they behave lawfully. There will not be a situation
where they can slap a soldier or touch a soldier. This will not be".

Matar complains about the supporters of "two states for two peoples".
"Anyone who thinks that we can solve a demographic problem by
establishing a state for them does not understand that masses of
Palestinians will enter by way of the border with Jordan", she says.
"This is the real threat to the Jewish majority west of the Jordan,
not sovereignty. Nobody is saying this".

Meanwhile, Katsover and Matar do not rest for a moment and are
continually working to secure the committee's decision by legislation.
At the same time, they discovered that there is no National Master
Plan that includes Judea and Samaria, so they are working toward
formulating such a plan with an expert from Ariel University. They
intend to propose the plan to the relevant ministers. "The mountain
thoroughfare should be the key thoroughfare of Israel and the mountain
ridge should become an area with a Jewish majority", says Matar. "We
are suffocating. Minister Yoav Galant also understands that we need to
turn eastward from Gush Dan, and he is consolidating such a plan, but
it is not enough for us – we need sovereignty over everything".

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Correction to the article:

It is important for us to clarify that in the paragraph about the
Yesha council a sentence is missing. It has to be added that the Yesha
Council has joined the Sovereignty campaign and led the campaign for
'Sovereignty in Maaleh Adumim first'. The Yesha Council is also a
partner in research done about Sovereignty.

Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar

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