Israel National News spoke with Nadia Matar, the co-chair along with Yehudit Katsover of the Sovereignty Movement, at the Israel National News-Besheva conference in Jerusalem.
“We represent all those in the majority of the Jewish people who say that the Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. The question is how do we keep the land,” Matar says. “What do we do to keep the land and we are here in this conference organized by Besheva and Arutz Sheva that focuses on economy and some people might say what is your connection to economy. A good friend of ours once said an ideology is a good one and a correct one if you can bring down the ideology to the practicality, not only in the realm of messianism and in the sky, but if you can bring it down. That is why we founded that the Sovereignty Movement in 2011.”
She continues: “In 2011 Yehudit Katsover said, ‘We cannot win the battle for Judea and Samaria if we only fight for a hill here and a hill there.’ It's very important but that's like taking out the sea with a spoon. What needs to be done is a plan. Up until now the national camp doesn't have a plan, the left has a plan – we oppose their plan, the two-state solution. We think and we believe and we know it's suicide, the majority of the Jewish people know it's suicide. But what do we present? We only say, ‘No’ to a Palestinian State, ‘No’ to giving them weapons, ‘No’ to shaking the hands of the murderers. ‘So what is our Yes?’ said Yehudit in 2011. And she said, ‘We must raise the flag of what should have been done at the end of the Six Day War.’ The application of Israeli sovereignty, Israeli law, over Judea and Samaria. And we started promoting that.
“Little by little together with many others and Knesset members who joined, the word sovereignty became consensus. The left has a two-state solution, we call it a delusional two-state solution – suicidal – and the right now has a plan. No only saying ‘No’ but saying sovereignty,” she explains.
She comments that building in Judea and Samaria is also the answer to many problems associated with high housing costs. According to her, building new units there will lower housing costs in not only Judea and Samara, but also in Tel Aviv.
At the conference, they presented a document describing their findings on lowering housing costs across Israel if hundreds of thousands of housing units are built in Judea and Samaria.
Matar notes that over the past decade, the prices of housing went up a hundred percent. With a large demand for units, building in Judea and Samaria will lower the price across the country, she explains.
“We need to build much more. Our researcher found that we need to build another 25,000 units per year in order to lower the prices. But the question is where are we going to build? With all our love to the Negev and the Galilee – and they must be built and Jews must move there – but this is good for the ideologues. Most people want to be [close to Tel Aviv] because that's where the work is, that's what we found out in our research. And how can they be close to
Tel Aviv but not in Tel Aviv? Thirty kilometers from there is Judea and
Samaria and in Samaria there is empty land where you can build hundreds of thousands of units in the next few years,” Matar says.
“All we need to do is to commit our politicians, and hopefully if the right wing comes to of power, then we will promote that and that will bring in ideology with the kind of economy where the prices lower. We have over 60 Knesset members who commit in a letter that if there will be a right-wing government, they will promote this plan of moving eastward.”
She adds: “The best way to bring sovereignty is by building hundreds of thousands of units in Judea and Samaria and understanding that Judea and Samaria is not a problem, it’s the answer.”
Matar remarks that “all this will be much easier when we will have another 2 million Jews coming on aliyah to the best country in the world, the only country where there's a future for Jewish [people].”
In terms of the elections, Matar says: “As an extra parliamentary organization we're not allowed to call to vote for a specific party. What we are allowed to do is to say a message, a message that's connected to what our party represents and we are calling upon everybody to go out in masses to vote for those parties that stayed loyal to the Land of Israel who will continue to be loyal to the land of Israel and to come out and vote.”
She describes the election as between two opposing worldviews.
“We feel that this time it is the most crucial ever in choosing and voting between two worldviews. Between those who have no problem seeing Israel as a state of all its citizens, it doesn't have to be a Jewish state, that is all those who are included in the group of Palestine, because they will go together with the Arabs, they will go together with Hamas, they have no problem. Or vote for those who are in favor of the Land of Israel. It is really a vote between two different worldviews and therefore you can stay home, you can't be too picky. It’s like with a ship. The ship is going in a certain direction. There's two directions now, there's the directions of sovereignty, of Jewish Pride of the Land of Israel and there's the direction of a Palestinian state – of terror, caving in, of losing our identity. That is what these elections are about. That's why they're so crucial. Nobody has the luxury to stay home because if you stay home belonging to one ship, you are giving your vote to the other.”