Return to settlements

Is there any other way, after the political solutions have failed so miserably (Oslo, disengagement, realignment) and after the military has failed to find an answer to the Qassam fire?

We have no choice but to return to the path that has served us for 100 years – resulting in all we have achieved thus far: The Zionist solution.

The residents of Sderot shouldn't have been sent to Eilat, but rather, closer to home – to rebuild the debris of Nisanit, Elei Sinai, Dugit and Netzarim from where the Qassam rockets are being fired and where the army should be stationed. The settlements were originally set up there for this very purpose.

Renewal of the settlements – this is the only response that may still deter the enemy, and it is also the answer to the ideological vacuum and emotional distress that has befallen the people. The idea of land for peace is no longer valid, the primary color is peeping through again – The Land of Israel.

In wake of the catastrophic results of the disengagement, recommendations are being made to recapture the Philadelphia Route. However, this route - 14 kilometers (roughly 9 miles) in length and 100 meters (about 300 feet) wide – was only evacuated because its front, Gush Katif, ceased to exist. The military cannot return to the Philadelphi Route without reestablishing Jewish settlements there.

The military is asking to return to Sa-Nur in the West Bank, an area where four settlements were destroyed and abandoned and which has now become Hizbullah-land.

However, the body politic is refusing the military's return, afraid that the extent of the disengagement's failure will be revealed. The military and settlers should return to these areas as well, because only from there can we prevent central Israel from turning into Sderot.

The Adam settlement, north of Jerusalem, has remained outside of the separation fence, albeit bordering the Jerusalemite neighborhood Pizgat Zeev. Susya and Beit Yatir have remained outside of the fence in the southern part of the Mount Hebron.

Nonetheless, settlers disturbed by the separation from sovereign Israel rest assured. The fence is exactly where it is supposed to be, because the purpose of the settlements in the West Bank is to protect it from the "other side."

The fence on the roads to Gush Etzion and Ariel traps drivers. How are they supposed to protect themselves against stones and hand grenades thrown from over the fence when the fence prevents them from responding and preventing further attacks? This "shot in the foot" has only one answer: Jewish presence on the other side of the fence as well.

The fence itself, whose efficiency in stopping terrorists has already been proven, will be dismantled and stolen very quickly if there is no military presence on the other side hinging on Jewish settlements.

Right from the start, settlements should have been built on the other side of the fence at a distance of a few kilometers apart.

A foreign army and foreign settlers are reminiscent of imperialism and colonialism; however, we are not strangers in our land, and we have the right to secure settlements as per the Zionist model of days gone by.

Even the phrasing of the mandate, according to which the League of Nations handed Palestine to the British, determined that it recognized the Jewish people's right to reestablish its national homeland in Palestine (which of course included Judea and Samaria.)

Jewish leaders who called Judea and Samaria "occupied territories," making an effort to turn it into Palestine, are putting Israel's physical existence at risk while also taking away the spiritual, national-religious-historical ground that gives it its right to exist.