It was Hanukkah, 1993, the eve of the implementation of the Gaza/Jericho agreement, and high on the public agenda was a big question: which "settlements" will be removed and surrounded by the Palestinian entity?
Twenty years later, the same question remains high on the public agenda.
In 1994, the communities under discussion were Na’ama and Beit Ha’arava in the Jordan Valley.
Today it is a cluster of outposts in the Shomron (Samaria) and the Jewish communities “five minutes from Kfar Sava”.
The ideological abyss is growing between the religious nationalist Jews who migrated eastwards and the dovish secularists who veered westwards.Every commentator and politician has now his own magic formula for the“separation”.
But the whole debate between those who seek to separate Israel from the "territories" and those desiring to maintain Israeli control is constructed without considering the facts on the ground.
In the mid-1980s "settlement" foe, Meron Benvenisti posited that, at some stage, Jewish settlement would be “irreversible”. He was right.
The Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria arealready an integral part the Israeli national fabric. The enterprise today includes four cities, six regional councils, 140 communities, 12,000 acres under agricultural development, 20 national parks visited by 1,000,000 persons annually and 45 religious sites of sacred importance.
Demographically, these communities are growing at twice than the national level (3.8 children per family against 1.7). The Jewish population beyond the Green Line will comprise soon 750,000 people (the same number of Jews in Israel when the State was proclaimed in 1948).
Investments of countless billions have flowed into the houses, the dazzling public institutions, and roadways.
The land God promised the Jews may have been flowing with milk and honey, but it has no water. That is why Palestinian control of the Shomron water sources would be more dangerous than Katyusha rockets fired over the northern border, as even coastal plain residents would be at the mercy of the Arab autocracy of the highlands.
Although advocates of withdrawal have long been trying to diminish the importance of this concern, Israel’s most important aquifer knows no Green Line.
By 2020, 60 percent of Israelis will not be serving in the military, as the IDF Manpower Directorate warned last November. The "settlements" will furnish most of the IDF’s combat units. The people who now serve in the IDF élite units range from former secular nationalists in Ariel, religious-nationalists in Kedumim and ultra-orthodox Jews in Immanuel.
The Jewish communities' control of the area is vital too for Israel’s military security.
It’s not only the strategic asset of Sha’arei Tikva, for example, a community two kilometers down the Trans-Samaria (Shomron) Highway, in a beautiful location on hills overlooking the Coastal Plain.
It’s not only these “Green Line settlements” which, in fact, are suburban towns within half an hour’s drive of Tel Aviv and the main centers of employment in the country.
These communities were planned by the Labor government in the 1970s - though they were actually set up during the Likud-led government of the early 1980s - to widen Israel’s waist at its narrowest point and gain control over the approaches to Ben-Gurion Airport.
It’s the final line of defense before the Coastal Plain against a hostile Iranian proxy state seated high on the hills only 12 miles from Tel Aviv and just three miles from Israel's only international airport.
Even the “mitzpim” (hilltop outposts) were constructed at dangerous junctions where terror attacks had occurred. That’s why no secret deals were part of the outposts’ construction and banks easily loaned mortgages, citizens paid taxes and services were quickly provided.
Most of the outposts were built under Leftist governments. When the settlers’ debate first broke into the fore - with the establishment of the most ideological of communities, Ofra - it pitted then-defense minister, Shimon Peres, against prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, in a kind of intra-Labor dispute.
From the Bruchin outpost, established under Ehud Barak’s 2000 government, you can see the Azrieli towers in Tel Aviv. On the right, the chimneys of Hadera. On the left, the port of Ashdod. The outpost holds half of the Israeli coast in the palm of its hand. Down below you have Ramat Aviv, a prosperous neighborhood suburb, where there are many supporters of the Left.
The Migron outpost, now threatened for destruction, was built with military assistance because of its strategic location overlooking a main road near Ramallah. Its strategic position can becompared to Nahariya, one of Israel’s most northern cities, located just 9.5 kilometers from the Lebanese frontier and founded by a group of Jewish immigrants who fled Nazi Germany.
Nobody likes to say it, but Migron saved the IDF from having to be deployed there. Migron’s residents rightly believe that clinging to the land today will ensure the area will stay within the borders of the homeland tomorrow.
Their determined hold on Kedumim is like the determined stance of their Zionist forebears in Tel Hai or Hanita, Negba or Deganya, that determined Israel’s borders 70 years ago.
Jerusalem’s post-1967 “settlements” (Neveh Yaakov, Ramot Eshkol, Ramot, French Hill, Pisgat Ze’ev or East Talpiot and Gilo) protect Israel’s capital. The Jordan Valley‘s "settlements" (Ma’aleh Efraim, Kochav Hashahar, Rimonim, Ma’aleh Michmas and Mechola) were conceived in the aftermath of the Six Day War as the eastern security boundary of the state.
Israeli businesses in Judea and Samaria, centered in Barkan (near Ariel), Mishor Adumim (east of Jerusalem), Atarot (northern Jerusalem) and Ma’aleh Efraim (Jordan Valley), are also a vital part of the Israeli economy. For a long time, the more than 100 businesses located in Barkan didn’t want to advertise the fact that they are located some17 kilometers over the Green Line. When Arab-American groups threatened to boycott Burger King because the U.S. fast-food chain opened a franchise in Maaleh Adumim, the Miami-based company withdrew.
Now, the Barkan industrial park,which would be evacuated in case of a “two states solution” along the 1967’s border, is Israel’s second largest. Barkan is fully integrated with the Gush Dan economy, employing thousands of Israelis who live in Petah Tikva and Herzliya and providing jobs for several thousand Arabs.
Territorial continuity, military security, Jewish sovereignity, Biblical memory, natural resources and a deeply rooted legitimacy that doesn’t come from a UN resolution but from an ancient history, are the major pillars on which the "settling" enterprise began. It is now flourishing. Whether you will it or not, this is Israel’s involuntary miracle. It’s the new Green Line. It’s Tel Aviv’s balcony. It’s Israel’s gateway to the future.