'War over Land of Israel is with a cement truck and tractors'

Meir Deutsch, Director General of Ragavim, explains that his organization is continuing its battle against illegal construction on two fronts.

Deutsch tells Israel National News that it’s important to understand that while it’s on two fronts, it’s actually one connected battle with the Bedouin in the Negev and the Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

“If we’re looking at the Land of Israel, the War of Independence has never ended. That’s how we see it. The war over the Land of Israel, where the Jewish State is going to be and where the Arab state is going to be,” he says. “It’s true that the battle is no longer with the weapons, it’s not with tanks or with guns, it’s with a cement truck and a tractors. That’s how the war is happening today and it is true that it’s two different battlefronts but it’s important to understand the bigger picture.”

According to Deutsch, the Palestinian Authority, funded by the European Union and Arab states with billions of dollars, has “very set plans” on how to take over Judea and Samaria.

“We’re talking about a strategy, the Fayyad Plan of 2009 talks about it very clearly. It talks very clearly about Judea and Samaria. The Palestinian Authority is going to create the de facto Palestinian state. It’s going to put facts on the ground and that’s how the Palestinians are going to have a state, that’s exactly how the Jewish State was created. We need to remember that the Jewish State was not established in 1948. 1948 was the Declaration of Independence that means all that was done in the Land of Israel in the 40 years beforehand, of building schools, building communities, planting trees, paving roads, all that in 1948 was the step that was declared that all that is now a state. That’s exactly what the Palestinian Authority has been doing in the past 10 years.”

He adds that the PA has been connecting all this new infrastructure over the last decade to electricity and water. “They are building a state and… once the government of Israel decides to put a stop to the overtaking by the Palestinian Authority it has all the ability to do so and we presented to all the leaders of the different parties a very clear plan of how the State of Israel could do it. No one can stop the establishment of a Palestinian state except for the State of Israel.”

He explains: “We’re talking about a foreign entity, the Palestinian Authority, funded by billions from states, we’re talking about a very strategic plan, the only power that could stop that is the State of Israel but in order to do that the State of Israel has to make a decision that it wants to do that.”

Ragavim revealed this week that one of the terrorists that fled from the shooting attack in the Jordan Valley was actually someone they are familiar with in the field of taking over land in the Jordan Valley, including illegal building and stealing water supplies and creating illegal electricity infrastructure for the PA.

Deutsch says that the terrorist is known for stealing water from wells and he used that same pump that he placed on his car to attempt to splash gasoline on the bus to ignite it in the attack. But they were stopped when something went wrong with his pump.

“So it’s using the same tool for the overtaking of land in Judea and Samaria, it’s the same tools that are shooting or creating the terrorist attacks against Israel,” he says.

In terms of what is going on in the Negev with illegal building, he comments that in the past year the Bedouins in the Negev have felt an increase in “boldness” to do whatever they want.

“In terms of attacking women in the streets in Be’er Sheva, in terms of the illegal building, in the past year we see that increase – they feel that they can do whatever they want. We see it on the main roads in the Negev, we see it in the Jewish towns, all the weapons. We knew for many years that the they're shooting at each other inside the Bedouin towns. In the past year these weapons are aimed towards Jews in the Negev, something that we we knew was going to happen. We told all the people that were supposed to deal with it and sadly it wasn't taken care of.”

He adds that the problem is with the illegal construction and could be solved by building officially recognized communities for the Bedouin in order to bring law an order.

“The problem of the Negev is the lawlessness. In order to solve the problem we need to create law and order. In order to do that the people in the Negev need to live in legal towns.”