Minister Akunis (R) opens school year with Yossi Dagan
Minister Akunis (R) opens school year with Yossi DaganRoi Hadi

Regional Cooperation Minister Ofir Akunis opened the school year in Samaria this morning together with Council head Yossi Dagan.

The two opened the year by inaugurating the new Har Bracha high school yeshiva building in Samaria. The Minister arrived to greet the students together with Har Bracha Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, Har Bracha head Yoni Hayisraeli, Council Deputy Head David Ben Tzion, and school principal Rabbi Yogev Cohen.

Akunis stressed that the choice to open the school year in Samaria is not accidental: "We're here and we'll stay here, for future generations. The students of Israel are our future, throughout the length and breadth of the Land of Israel - in its entirety."

Minister Akunis added: "We welcome peace with the United Arab Emirates and continue to uphold our natural and historical rights in the homeland of the Jewish People. I'll never agree to establish a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria and I'll continue to promote sovereignty with all my might, which is an inevitable historical process."

Council head Yossi Dagan greeted the students and said: "We're privileged to open this year in the Samaria Regional Council with 22,000 students. For the sake of the Land of Israel, I call on you, Honorable Minister, from here and through you to the Prime Minister, to demand full sovereignty over all the settlements, not half and not just the settlements that the Left wants.

"We're on our way to a million Jews in Judea and Samaria - you see the rate of growth - and here in Har Bracha, the place closest to Shechem, is leading in rate of growth in the State of Israel. Sovereignty is coming to the Land of Israel. An Israeli government headed by Netanyahu deserves to apply sovereignty in order to reach one million Jews in Samaria. This settlement should be a central city in the State of Israel."

The school year was opened in the Samaria Regional Council with 22,000 students, of whom 1,410 are first-graders. In addition, two new elementary schools were opened this year, in Yitzhar and Alei Zahav, and 10 new kindergartens.

Among the new students is Eitan Levy, who will study this year with Dafna, who was also his mother Shira's teacher, and today Shira teaches alongside Dafna at the Shilat School in Peduel: "We're very excited about the occasion of bringing a child to first grade," says his mother Shira, "and we're even more excited that he's a student of teacher Dafna, who was also my teacher. It's our privilege to have such a wonderful and special teacher, empowering and teaching with joy and creativity."