Knesset members and local government chiefs from Judea and Samaria held an emergency gathering in the community of Ofra north of Jerusalem Saturday evening, to discuss ways of resisting the official freeze order on construction by Jews in the Jewish heartland.
The Chairman of the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, Danny Dayan, said outright that “we will disobey the freeze order and we are willing to pay the price in order to break [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu's 'White Paper' policy.” This was a reference to an order issued in 1938 by the British government of Palestine which prevented all but a trickle of Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel despite the lethal persecution of Jews in Europe. The White Paper was only officially rescinded when the State of Israel was established.
"Our struggle is not intended to win concessions that soften the order, but is rather a demand to repeal the order, and only that,” Dayan stressed. “We do not accept a policy that forbids Jews from living in the heart of the land. There is absolutely no logic behind the decision, nor does it comply with any Zionist principle that Netanyahu once stood for.”
Dayan, however, spoke against the initiative by soldiers to suspend reserve duty service for the 10-month period of the construction freeze. “I oppose this completely,” he said. “I am not willing to let them punish us twice – once by freezing our construction and a second time by robbing us of the right to defend our brothers in Sderot, Kiryat Shemona and here in Ofra and the rest of Judea and Samaria.”
The head of the Binyamin Regional Council, Avi Roeh, said at the meeting that “the construction freeze is an anti-Semitic decree because it only pertains to Jews.”
MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) attacked the freeze orders at the meeting and said that the prime minister is deviating from the promises he gave to his voters. “At present, the Likud is acting in a way that is opposed to its platform,” she said. “The struggle is not just for the Land of Israel but also over the bankruptcy of Israeli democracy. It is a pathetic and shameful excuse to say that American pressure caused the freeze.”
"The struggle must widen,” she said. “We have to bring in additional Knesset members and ministers who are currently straddling the fence. The Likud members need a wake-up call.”
'Don't Let Them In'
The grassroots Samaria Residents Council issued an “instruction sheet for residents” Saturday night following the new freeze orders. The text instructs each community to select one central construction project to be carried out by the residents. In addition, it calls for “interfering with the inspectors' work, including resistance to their entry, shutting of gates, blocking of roads, marches of women and children in a way that does not let them work” as well as a demand that the IDF “take all military forces out of the communities in order to hand over the residences to young couples.”
The instructions call for pressure to be applied to politicians, and for legal action in the form lawsuits demanding compensation. Reserve soldiers must suspend their activities for the entire freeze period, they say.