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.”

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“Any solution to the conflict must be based on ending the occupation,” PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said.

By Associated Press

The Palestinians are giving a cool reception to an American plan to hold a conference next month to unveil the first phase of its Mideast peace plan.

The White House announced Sunday that it will hold the gathering in Bahrain to discuss large-scale investment in the Palestinian territories. It said the conference will not address the contentious political aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as final borders, and the status of Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said that “any plan without a political horizon will not lead to peace.”

Any solution to the conflict in Palestine must be political … and based on ending the occupation,” PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said Monday at a Palestinian cabinet meeting. “The current financial crisis is a result of a financial war waged against us and we will not succumb to blackmailing and extortion and will not trade our national rights for money.”

Bashar Masri, a major Palestinian industrialist with vast business holdings throughout the West Bank, said he had turned down an invitation to the conference.

“I will not participate in this conference, and none of the representatives of our companies will participate,” he wrote on Facebook. “We reaffirm our clear position: We will not deal with any event outside the Palestinian national consensus.”

The Palestinians severed ties with the White House after President Donald Trump recognized contested Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017. The U.S. has responded by cutting hundreds of millions of dollars of aid.

In a joint statement with Bahrain on Sunday, the White House said the conference will give government, civil and business leaders a chance to rally support for economic initiatives that could be possible with a peace agreement.

“The Palestinian people, along with all people in the Middle East, deserve a future with dignity and the opportunity to better their lives,” President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said in a statement.

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Former Israeli intelligence chief Amos Yadlin assesses that the Trump administration will pressure Netanyahu to include center-left Benny Gantz instead of the New Right party in his new government. 

By David Jablinowitz, World Israel News

With the Knesset election approaching and the U.S. administration getting ready to present a “deal of the century” for the Israelis and Palestinians, questions continue to arise over how the juxtaposition of the two will work out.

Even as conflicting reports have emerged over how advanced the U.S. plan is towards completion, American officials have made clear that they want to make it public soon.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said in early January that the release of the plan would be postponed by “several months” because of the Israeli election and the ongoing refusal by the Palestinian Authority to accept the plan. However, later in the month, Friedman reportedly revealed in private talks that the Trump administration is planning to roll out its plan at the end of April.

The Knesset ballot is scheduled for April 9th. It is uncertain that a new government could be established by the end of the month.

“I think that the Americans have reached the conclusion – and this is an assessment, not a statement of fact – that they need to influence which government there will be in Israel after the elections,” said Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Yadlin, executive director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Yadlin is a former chief of Israeli military intelligence and has served as military attaché at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to lead the next government, has already inserted U.S. President Donald Trump in his election campaign by putting the president in a video clip and on a giant billboard advertisement.

Interviewed on Kan public radio on Sunday, Yadlin indicated that while Trump might not openly get involved in the Israeli election campaign, he could get involved in the formation of the next Israeli government by issuing his peace plan during the weeks immediately after the election, when the potential prime minister is negotiating with various smaller parties to form a parliamentary majority.

Public opinion polling numbers have shown Netanyahu’s Likud party leading the pack by a sizable number of seats but with neither the right nor the left holding a majority. In this case, Netanyahu would have to think more broadly about who to choose as his government coalition partners. In previous governments, he has included center-left parties with the likes of Ehud Barak serving as defense minister and Tzipi Livni as peace negotiator.

Asked in the radio interview whether the Americans might encourage Netanyahu to include the new Israel Resilience party, headed by former IDF military chief Benny Gantz, into the new government, Yadlin said: “This is exactly the intention, to move the next coalition of the State of Israel to the center-right, not to the extreme right.”

The strong showing by Israel Resilience in the opinion polls bolsters the possibility that Trump’s team could convince Netanyahu to offer Gantz a place in the next government instead of the New Right party, which has been receiving far fewer seats in the polls.

Gantz has spoken in favor of territorial compromise while the New Right is against the establishment of a Palestinian state and has raised doubts over whether they could accept the Trump plan if, in fact, Israeli pullouts from Judea and Samaria are part of the deal.

Kan aired a recording of Netanyahu speaking to leaders of Arab states at last week’s Warsaw conference on Middle East stability, in which the prime minister says: “We will wait to see what the [U.S.] plan that will be presented after the Israeli elections will look like…I don’t think any of us should reject the plan by the American administration before it is even presented.”

Netanyahu has touted the Jewish State’s growing ties with the Arab world, adding in the recording: “For Israel to be at peace or normalize relations with the broader Arab world, we must have Israel-Palestinian peace.”

On the other hand, New Right candidate Caroline Glick told the Jerusalem Post in an interview: “It’s mystifying that [Trump administration officials] think there’s a deal to be made when there so obviously isn’t one from the Palestinian perspective.”

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