Jewish Home party chairman, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, said Sunday that Yesh Atid head MK Yair Lapid had joined the ranks of the Left when he voiced support for the so-called Saudi Initiative, or Saudi Peace Plan.
“Yair Lapid, my friend, congratulations for having discovered the Saudi Initiative,” wrote Bennett on Facebook. “Really, I think it’s beautiful.
“But just a few small questions:
“Does this mean you are willing to cede Jerusalem? Are you willing to hand over security control over Judea and Samaria? Are you willing to let Hamas turn Ramallah into Gaza? Do you support expelling hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes? Do you want to evict Maaleh Adumim and the residents of the Jordan Valley, and go back to the [pre-]1967 lines? Because that is what the Saudi Initiative means.”
Bennett went on, explaining: “But even if we ignore the huge security risk that the Saudi Initiative poses (in short: an ISIS regime in Judea and Samaria, refugees hitchhiking on Highway 6), there is another very small and truly insignificant problem with this initiative: the Palestinians don’t accept it, and won’t do so in the future.”
The religious-Zionist leader reminded Lapid of MK Jamal Zahalka’s recent tirade, in which he said that the Left was worse than the Right, and that he wants to return not just to Judea and Samaria but also to Ramat Aviv and Haifa. Unlike Lapid, Bennett said, he listens to voices like Zahalka’s and Mahmoud Abbas’s – and believes what they say.
“That is why I will never let anyone raise their hand to evict Jews from their homes. That is why I will never let anyone take from us the city to which Jews have prayed for thousands of years. Jerusalem. That is why I will never allow terror organizations rule the West Bank and threaten all of Israel’s citizens.
“I will never allow the establishment of a Palestinian terror state, even if I remain the last person who believes in this,” he vowed, noting that the Saudi initiative even called for the “right of Return” for Palestinian Arabs.