Zionism prize winner calls for Jewish sovereignty over all Judea and Samaria

Fifty-two years since the victory of the Six-Day War, the time has come to apply sovereignty over all of the Land of Israel, states Moskowitz Prize for Zionism winner Nadia Matar.

By Atara Beck, World Israel News

Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katzover, co-directors of the Sovereignty Movement, are two of the winners of this year’s Moskowitz Prize for Zionism.

The prize is “a bigger honor than the Nobel Prize,” Matar told Josh Hasten of Israel Uncensored in an interview Sunday. “Everything they [the Moskowitz family] do is the love and the development of the Land of Israel.”

The late Dr. Irving Moskowitz “was a prophet when he said we have to resettle Jews in eastern Jerusalem. He also acted upon his beliefs, and thanks to him and the entire Moskowitz family,” now so many Jews live there as well as in Judea and Samaria, Matar says.

The non-profit Women in Green grassroots organization – founded in 1993, headed by Matar and Katzover, and “dedicated to safeguarding our God-given biblical homeland,” as explained on its website – established the Israel Sovereignty Movement.

“What is our dream?” Matar explains in the interview. “Not only to live in the entire Land of Israel, but also to be sovereign.

“The government didn’t really know what to do” after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel, threatened with annihilation by the surrounding Arab countries, captured eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and Sinai desert in a war of defense.

“When you win a war and return to the God-given Land of Israel…they should have applied sovereignty from a legal point of view,” Matar states.

Instead, “the government stayed for 52 years with the same ‘stuttering’ about what is the status of Judea and Samaria.”

It’s no wonder the world says that perhaps Israel is the “occupier” and the Arabs may have a legitimate case, she adds.

‘The national right has a plan’

“The national right has a plan,” Matar declares, citing her movement’s progress over recent years.  “Originally it was considered a fringe idea to raise the flag of sovereignty,” but on January 31, 2017, the Central Committee of the Likud voted in favor of sovereignty over the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Considering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pre-election vow to annex areas of Judea and Samaria, Hasten asked Matar if she was optimistic that it will indeed be a top priority of the new government.

“We were certainly very pleasantly surprised,” Matar replied, stressing that the Israeli leader “understands that this is the wish of the majority” of Jewish voters, calling it “incredible advancement.”

“But there is talk and promises before elections and then there is implementation,” she said. “We have to make sure he will do what he promised.”

‘Immoral’ Palestinian state

Regarding the upcoming U.S. peace plan, it must be made clear that there can be no Palestinian autonomy in Judea and Samaria, Matar affirmed, saying the creation of a Palestinian state would be a “tragedy” and “unacceptable” as well as against American interests.

Such a decision would be “immoral” and increase the suffering of peace-loving Jews and Arabs, she said, noting the increased security challenges, such as missiles and rockets, that result when Israel retreats.

“We have Arabs who are with us,” she said, “cursing the Oslo agreements, cursing that the Palestinian Authority was created.

The Moskowitz Prize will be awarded on June 4 at a gala ceremony at the Jerusalem International Convention Center. Matar and Katzover plan to use the prize money to make a sovereignty conference for youth, noting that the next generation is the future.