Israeli Sovereignty Movement targets U.S.-led Gaza center in new campaign

The group denounces the cease-fire agreement as a threat to national security.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A movement calling for Israeli sovereignty in all parts of the country began a new campaign Monday by hanging large banners on the fence of the American-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) for Gaza in Kiryat Gat.

The Sovereignty Movement’s slogan read, “Sovereignty: A National Consensus.”

While similar signs will be posted on hundreds of major roads throughout Israel, the movement wanted to make its message clear first and foremost to the United States.

“We started specifically in Kiryat Gat, where we are losing our sovereignty,” Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar, co-leaders of the movement, told World Israel News Tuesday.

“That place is a disgrace. That we have allowed it in the heart of the land of Israel, where foreign troops are telling us what’s going to be and what’s not going to be – well, our activists posted the signs right in sight of the soldiers,” they said.

“The No. 1 rule of a sovereign nation is that you decide your fate and not foreign forces, so it was very important for us to start there.”

The CMCC includes representatives of a dozen other countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, as well as members of NGOs, international institutions and the private sector.

It was established to coordinate stabilization and relief efforts in the Gaza Strip, as well as to monitor the implementation of the US-brokered cease-fire agreement that both Hamas and Israel signed onto last month.

Jerusalem, which had started off with a policy-making role, has now been shunted aside and given only an operational role instead, according to Israeli defense officials.

“Decisions are now being made by the broader international body,” one defense official said.

Both the CMCC and the cease-fire agreement are unacceptable, according to the Sovereignty Movement, which believes that the deal poses “a grave danger to Israel’s future by undermining its sovereignty and paving the way for the establishment of a terror state in the heart of the country.”

Point 16 of the agreement states that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza,” while Point 19 opens the door to a Palestinian state, albeit only when the Palestinian Authority undergoes a complete reform that many, if not most, Israelis believe it is incapable of carrying out.

“Sovereignty is not a matter of politics or diplomacy,” Katsover and Matar said. “It is an existential necessity for the continued security and future of the State of Israel.”

“People who call themselves our friends have to respect the will of the overwhelming majority in the Knesset and in the people that want sovereignty,” they added.

They pointed to recent Knesset votes, which “demonstrate that over 70 members of Knesset supported the application of sovereignty, while more than 80 firmly opposed any political initiative that would force Israel to create a Palestinian state.”

While votes in both July and October were restricted to Judea and Samaria, the movement has actively lobbied ministers and MKs for years to formulate a law that includes Gaza as well, in the belief that if Israel does not do so, it will cost the country in blood as it did when Hamas-led forces massacred nearly 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023.

Katsover and Matar noted to WIN that “we have upcoming elections [next year]. The test for every right-wing politician is the sovereignty test. The time has come not only to talk about it but to actually implement such a law.”