As long as Netanyahu is prime minister, the legal residency status of Arab terrorists from eastern neighborhoods in Jerusalem will not be nullified. The Left may have nullified their residency status. But the Right? Never.
It is irrelevant to this article if I think nullification of residency is good or bad for the Jews. What is relevant – and sad – is that Israel has a maneuvering prime minister, not a leadership prime minister. A maneuvering prime minister is incapable of making any decision that even smacks of strategy. Nullification of residency is an example of a strategic decision.
A leadership prime minister understands that he is facing a new strategic situation; he understands that war has been declared upon him and that when you are in a war, winning is the only option. A maneuvering prime minister does not understand the new strategic situation. His one and only strategic goal is to get to twelve o’clock at night and go to sleep with the reins of government still in his hands.
When Rabbi Yehudah Glick was nearly murdered by an assassin last year, I anticipated the prime minister’s reaction and turned to him in a short speech at a Likud faction meeting. I said that regardless of one’s religious or political views, when the debate over the Temple Mount escalates into political assassination, the worthy Zionist reaction of any leadership is for the entire government, headed by the prime minister, to go to the Temple Mount and declare that assassination will not move us from the heart of Jerusalem and Judaism’s most holy place.
This is the way that Ma’aleh Hahmisha, Giv’at Hashlosha, and many more towns and villages throughout Israel were built. When Zionism was in its early days, it understood that wherever Arabs murder Jews to try to drive them away, the Nation of Israel must build new homes and communities and make new life flourish.
Tragically, the prime minister did just the opposite: He slammed more limitations on Jews entering the Temple Mount, awarding violence and paving the way for the current outburst of violence.
Now Netanyahu is employing the same method, trying once again to get to twelve o’clock at night. What exactly does his meeting with the Jordanian king, the further empowerment of the Muslim wakf on the Temple Mount, and the further restrictions on Jews project? Does it project zero tolerance for knifings? Or does it reward the murderous phenomenon and encourage it?
This morning I heard the head of the electric company promise to restore electricity (which has been out in many communities for almost two days) to the homes of all its “customers.” But a person who has no alternative is not a customer. We are not “customers” of the electric company. We are its captives.
The same is true for both the Right and Left in Israel. We are not customers of the political system. We are its captives. The Left’s path has collapsed, the Right’s path never existed, and we are all captive “customers” on a dead-end path, led by Netanyahu.
The time has come to emerge from captivity. The time has come for Zehut.