For over 20 years Israel has been warning about the existential nuclear threat that Iran poses. In the recesses of many Israelis’ minds was the fear that at some random time Israel could be wiped out by a nuclear inferno. It seems that the recent attacks by Israel and the United States have put that nuclear nightmare to rest, maybe even permanently.
For the first time in decades, Israel is facing neither an existential threat, nor the potential such threat.
Iran didn’t only pose an existential threat by way of a nuclear weapon. It also posed a conventional threat to Israel via its use of proxies, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Over the past 20 months of war, through aerial bombings, on the ground forces, and subterfuge, Israel has severely weakened, if not completely neutered, these proxies as threats to Israel.
Israelis still pray and pine for the hostages’ return to Israel from Palestinian imprisonment in Gaza.
October 7 was the worst day in Israel’s history. For Israelis, every lost soul is a whole world, every wound is a tragedy, and every piece of property damaged is a painful setback. At the same time, Israel has suffered less losses in this conflict than during any previous conflicts.
Israelis will never forget those whom they have lost, but they have great reason to hold their heads high. Israel is arguably safer today than it has ever been in its history. It has faced seven different enemies on seven different fronts and defeated them all.
OVER THE past several decades, Israel has postponed planned development and growth due to the need to focus its energies and resources on fighting its enemies. Israel didn’t only focus needed budgets and diplomatic efforts on defense over development, but even ambitions and planning prioritized defense over growth.
Israel can afford to focus on growth with threats diminished
However, now that the Jewish state is in a more secure situation, it can afford to begin putting more thought into growth, and the first steps of that growth should be extending Israeli sovereignty to the the West Bank
As a result of its victory in the 1967 Six Day War in which it defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, Israel quadrupled in size. Some of the areas it accrued, such as the Sinai Desert, had not historically been part of the Land of Israel. Others, namely Jerusalem – and the the West Bank – are areas where Jews had lived for thousands of years.
Israel had to choose whether to keep control over those lands or forfeit them as many claimed that international law demanded. An academic debate broke out among Israel’s leaders, who advocated for keeping the land.
Some favored annexing the land, while others, such as future prime minister Menachem Begin, made a semantic argument that Jewish land that was historically Jewish couldn’t be annexed since it was already rightfully Jewish. Instead, Israel extended its sovereignty to those lands.
After Arabs turned down Israel’s peace offers, the state annexed Jerusalem and extended sovereignty to the Golan Heights. Most of the world still refuses to recognize those policies. Israelis began founding towns and moving into the Sinai Desert, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank. Jewish towns in the West Bank have grown. Conversely, Israel gave up the Sinai Desert and the Gaza Strip for peace.
For decades, the assumption was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be solved via a two-state solution: the establishment of a Palestinian state in Israeli-controlled Gaza, and in parts of the West Bank.
And yet, after years of Palestinian terrorism and intransigence, culminating in the October 7 massacre, the Palestinians have forfeited their claim to a state on Israeli territory. They don’t get to start a war, lose the war, and then claim a new state as a prize.
President Donald Trump has several goals in his second term as president. These include large, historic gestures and peace-making efforts throughout the world. In just the first half year of his presidency he has excelled in both these aims.
It is now time for President Trump to support the reality on the ground. Essentially, Israel already has sovereignty over the West Bank, and now is the time for the United States to lead the way, by recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the West Bank as it did over the Golan Heights in Trump’s first term in office.
It has become clear that Palestinians are more interested in ending the Jewish state than in creating a Palestinian one. They have rejected multiple Israeli peace offers, including several two-state solution offers.
It is time to abandon the notion of creating a Palestinian state and of thinking that doing so could ever lead to peace. The Palestinians have demonstrated that it is far more likely that a Palestinian state would be used to attack Israel than to live peacefully alongside it.
The time has come to begin thinking creatively about restricted municipal autonomy for Palestinians alongside programs specifically designed to improve their quality of life.
THERE HAS been a long-standing misconception about settlements and settlers as impediments to peace. The error lies in the notion that the entire region of the West Bank belongs to the Palestinians, that peace can only come when Gaza, the West Bank are handed over to them, and that every Jewish town, Jewish house, and Jewish person on that land impedes peace.
According to this logically flawed position, extending Jewish sovereignty over the West Bank would forever kill the chances of peace and a conclusion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What the settlers and settlements do is impede a Palestinian takeover.
Jews lived in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria thousands of years before Arabs came to those lands and Palestinians developed a national movement. The notion that those lands belong to the Palestinians has no basis in reality or history.
The position that peace can only come through the establishment of a Palestinian state on them is a false talking point, designed by Palestinians and their supporters to deny the Jewish people access to their historic homeland.
Now, more than ever, is the time for Israel to extend its sovereignty over the West Bank.
Israel has governed this region successfully for the past 59 years, hundreds of thousands of Jews have moved in and created thriving communities, and Palestinian quality of life, population numbers, and life expectancy have all increased under Israeli control. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows that extending sovereignty is the correct policy, and President Trump, an advocate for dealing with reality as it is, should support it. With God’s help, it should happen before the end of the Jewish year.
The writer is a certified interfaith hospice chaplain in Jerusalem and the mayor of Mitzpe Yericho, where she lives with her husband and six children.