YESHA Council Chief Foreign Envoy Oded Revivi responded to US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman's description of Judea and Samaria.
On Thursday, Friedman said, "The idea was that Israel would be entitled to secure borders. The existing borders, the 1967 borders, were viewed by everybody as not secure, so Israel would retain a meaningful portion of the West Bank, and it would return that which it didn’t need for peace and security."
"There was always supposed to be some notion of expansion into the West Bank, but not necessarily expansion into the entire West Bank. And I think that’s exactly what, you know, Israel has done. I mean, they’re only occupying two percent of the West Bank."
"Ambassador Friedman should be commended for using facts to describe the reality in a Judea and Samaria," Revivi said. "All of the Israeli towns and cities plus all infrastructure, including roads, adds up to less than two percent of what is described as the West Bank."
"For decades the international community has been eating-up Palestinian propaganda without checking the reality on the ground.
"Peace is about two peoples living side-by-side and was never about ethnically cleansing Jews from Judea. This Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), it's time the world atone for their past sins and acknowledge that our communities; where Jews and Palestinians live, drive and work alongside each other, are in fact the key to lasting peace."