Settler leader: No unity government without Jordan Valley annexation
Elhayani, who heads the Jordan Valley Regional Council, is one of four candidates in the running to lead the settlement movement’s political arm, known as the Yesha Council.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFIDF SOLDIERS KEEP guard in the Jordan Valley earlier this year.(photo credit: AMMAR AWAD / REUTERS)
Any unity government must include a commitment to annex the Jordan Valley to Israel, regional council head David Elhayani urged on Wednesday.As political pundits focus on the impossibility of such a government and bemoan a scenario in which Israel heads to a third election, right-wing activists and settler leaders have campaigned to ensure that the Jordan Valley is not forgotten should there be a unity government.Elhayani, who heads the Jordan Valley Regional Council, is one of four candidates in the running to lead the settlement movement’s political arm, known as the Yesha Council.He targeted Blue and White head Benny Gantz in his comments, noting that he had not yet committed to annexation.He urged politicians not to join a unity government unless it “pledges to apply sovereignty to the Jordan Valley.”Activists Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katzover, who head the Sovereignty Movement, wrote letters this week to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Gantz in which they urged the politicians to ensure that the application of sovereignty to the Jordan Valley was part of the basic guideline of a unity government.Netanyahu pledged during his campaign to annex the Jordan Valley should he retain his position as head of the government.In their letter to him, Matar and Katzover told Netanyahu he had sparked a new Zionist fervor the strengthened the spirit of return to the basic value of strengthening the Jewish hold on the Land of Israel.In their letter to Gantz, the two women said that his position already appeared to compliment that of Netanyahu’s, and that if he just went one step further, he could unify the people of Israel during a time of schism and disagreement.The two women were careful to clarify that their end goal is full application of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria. Placing the Jordan Valley within sovereign Israel would the first step in that path, they said. There is an opportunity here, they said, for a “joint and significant” historic step, “even if it is only the beginning of the sovereignty path.”
