Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday that the orders to freeze construction in Judea and Samaria “are under the government's sponsorship, they need to be enforced and they will be enforced.” He said the enforcement would be carried out “in a way that is attentive to the nuances of the reality on the ground, but they will be enforced and we will make sure that the State will enforce its mastery over its citizens.”
Barak used the Hebrew word “marut,” which can be translated as "authority" but has overtones of forcefulness and control, and also means “mastery” or “overlordship.” He chose the word over the much more common “samchut,” which means “authority.”
Barak's words were an indirect response to statements by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu who hinted that inspectors had gone too far, told the Knesset that the freeze “has nothing to do with building that has already started” and that “there must be coordination between the decision and its implementation.”
Speaking at the start of a gathering of the Labor Knesset faction, Barak said: "The freeze was carried out in order to exhaust all means of renewing the negotiations in order to kick-start an arrangement with the goal of ending the conflict and a reality of two states for two nations – a Palestinian state that lives beside Israel and whose existence ends the occupation and our control over another nation. This goal is still distant, however, and there are negotiations.”
Eyal Gabbai, Director of the Prime Minister's Office, was also present at the Labor meeting.