“The Land is ours by right, and we will not guarantee our existence with apologies and weakness,” says Knesset Speaker Rivlin in Hevron.
Rivlin, a Likud MK serving his second term as Speaker of the Knesset, was the keynote speaker at a memorial ceremony on Monday marking the 80th anniversary of the Arab slaughter of 69 Jews in Hevron. He did not mince words, as he related to the intention of the government led by his party to freeze Jewish construction throughout Judea and Samaria.
“The lesson we have learned from Hevron is this," Rivlin said. "The Land of Israel is acquired by rights, and not by drying it up or freezing it. We will not strike roots here by imposing decree after decree, and we will not continue to hold onto it with weakness and soft-heartedness. We won’t be able to guarantee our existence by asking forgiveness for living or by bowing our head.”
Pressure Has Limits, Too
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other government officials have said that no matter how much they give in to American pressure, Jerusalem will never be a matter for negotiations. Rivlin related to this as well:
“Whoever thinks that by destroying Hevron, Jerusalem will be established – has not learned a thing. Whoever thinks that by drying up Ariel and Maaleh Adumim, we will thus build Tel Aviv and environs, or truly believes that the death of the settlement enterprise in Samaria we will gain international recognition of our territorial rights – is bound to trip, Heaven forbid, just as others have tripped.”
“Whoever thinks that in this way we will save ourselves from another Holocaust, is deluded by vain hopes.”
Rivlin has not personally attacked Netanyahu, and seems to feel – as do some other Likud leaders – that the Prime Minister is making a major effort to balance between his own principles and beliefs and the tremendous American pressure. In this context, Rivlin said in his address, “Our friends in the international arena should know that not everything is permitted in diplomacy. Even the wisdom of diplomacy has red lines that are gravely forbidden to cross.”
In his inimitably dramatic and poetic style, Rivlin listed some of the victims and the brutal manner in which they were “treacherously and murderously set upon by Ishmaelites whom these innocents had viewed as friends and brothers.” Among the victims were his mother’s cousins.
Not Only a Gravesite, But a House of Life Forever
“Hevron lies on the main road as you approach Jerusalem – and one cannot exist without the other. Hevron, and its field, and cave, and the trees all around it [a paraphrase of Genesis 23,17, which describes the Patriarch Abraham’s purchase of the property –ed.], will belong to us, the children of Abraham’s son Isaac, not only for a gravesite, as Abraham purchased it, but for a house of life and an inheritance for generations.”