Woman in Green launch major campaign for Sovereignty

Campaign to vote for MKs who support sovereignty in Judea-Samaria, call on MKs to make it their campaign cornerstone.

By Ari Yashar, INN

As Israeli voters become inundated with campaign slogans and political parties bashing each other to steal the limelight ahead of the March 17 Knesset elections, a new campaign has been launched, calling on Israelis to vote for “sovereignty.”

The campaign, an initiative of Women In Green (WIG), has seen large signs sprout up around the country reading “Choosing Sovereignty” and calling for voters to choose parties and candidates who support an implementation of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

“Voting for candidates who support Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” read the signs, posted on notice boards, hitchhiking stations and other public places.

In parallel to the sign campaign, WIG directors Yehudit Katzover and Nadia Matar have sent letters to right-wing MKs urging them to make the campaign for Israeli sovereignty in Judea-Samaria a cornerstone of their national policy platform. Letters were also sent to leading rabbis and regional council heads asking that they raise the public awareness and discourse on the topic.

Katzover and Matar sent their letters to the MKs under the title: “the people call for Israeli sovereignty in the land of Israel.”

“The election campaign that we are entering is characterized by the desire for clear statements,” wrote the two. “The reason is: the  majority of the people have sobered up and internalized that concessions don’t lead Israel to anything but a dead end full of terror, blood spilling and losing our path.”

“Israeli citizens have seen and experienced with tragic pain how the Oslo Accords, the expulsion from Gush Katif, the absence of an unequivocal decisive (blow) in (Operation) Protective Edge and the building freeze in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem brought the country to more international isolation, demands on it to make even larger concessions, and international legitimization for Arab terror in Israel and in the world,” continued the letter.

“The ongoing hesitation of Israeli governments regarding the future of Judea and Samaria causes world nations to support a Palestinian state,” they wrote. “The next government will need to block the hope and dream of the Arabs to establish a Palestinian state on the ruins of Israel, and that can be done through an historical process which is more justified than all others: implementing Israeli sovereignty on the land of Israel.”

“In going to the ballots the people of Israel will choose who will lead the challenge of implementing sovereignty,” wrote Katzover and Matar. “At this time the eyes of the entire Israeli public are on you, leaders and those elected by the public. You are questioned on different stages about the alternative vision you see before you.”

“This is the hour for leadership. This is the hour in which the people expects to hear from you true statements about the future of Israel. We call on you to proudly raise the vision of sovereignty, to turn the discourse on sovereignty to an idiomatic phrase spoken fluently by you without fear of concern,” they added.

In their letters to regional council heads in Judea and Samaria, the two called for a political process pushing sovereignty to confront the Palestinian Authority (PA) unilateral moves for international recognition.

The WIG leaders in their letter to rabbis asked that they work to change the national discourse in Israel, saying “through the order that the nation of Israel was commanded to dwell in the land and possess it comes the spiritual and active call for implementing Israeli sovereignty on our land.”