Akunis and Dagan
Akunis and DaganRoi Hadi

Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis (Likud), who met on Wednesday with the head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, called for the imposition of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria immediately after the elections to the 21st Knesset.

"We must accelerate the pace of construction in Samaria and Judea, first and foremost to ensure our natural right to our land and to prevent the catastrophe, and what I defined in the past as the suicide of the State of Israel, and that would be: The establishment of a Palestinian terror state in this place,” said Akunis.

"We have stopped tunnels from Lebanon to communities in the Galilee Panhandle. Anyone who wants tunnels leading to Kfar Saba, Ra'anana and Herzliya, let them support a Palestinian state," Akunis added. "Since we do not want this, and we do not want to see rockets fired at Israeli communities, we want to see settlement of a much larger scale here."

He called for an increase in the budget of the security forces in the Judea and Samaria region. "Security brings more residents here, construction brings more residents here, and large-scale construction in Judea and Samaria and in this entire area is also a brake on the establishment of a Palestinian terror state in this area,” said Akunis.

"One of the first steps of the 21st Knesset must be the application of Israeli sovereignty over Jewish areas in Judea and Samaria," added the Science and Technology Minister.

Yossi Dagan responded to Akunis and said, "We are looking at this government, and on the one hand we see such good things that it did, but on the other hand we feel there was a big missed opportunity, because we missed out on the issue of construction in Judea and Samaria. We have to demand that the next government build more, stop the artificial restrictions on construction, finally normalize the newer communities, which only requires political signatures, because we cannot build kindergartens and schools.”

"The security components are the right thing to do and we will continue to fight for this. This government is good and it should conduct itself like a good government. This has to be expressed in the field with a real momentum of construction and to truly prevent the Palestinian state, and this requires a change in the mindset," added the head of the Shomron Council.