Speaking at the Israel Heritage Foundation & Arutz Sheva summit, MK Rothman calls to solidify Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, pass sovereignty laws, and block recognition of a Palestinian state.
At a special summit hosted by the Israel Heritage Foundation and Arutz Sheva in New York City on Thursday, MK Simcha Rothman (Religious Zionist Party) delivered a resolute speech calling for bold steps to safeguard Israel’s future—including applying full sovereignty over Judea and Samaria and legally barring any recognition of a Palestinian state.
“We talk about ‘Ki miTzion tetze Torah’, that the ideas of Torah will come out from Israel and spread to the entire world. And this is the truth,” Rothman began. “We now, besides this special week, celebrate seven years since the embassy in Jerusalem was inaugurated. We all saw it, we’re all excited by it. We’re all very thankful for President Trump, then in his first term, and we’re just looking forward to what will happen.”
He continued, “We know that the benefit of a good deed that you have done is that you will do more good things. And the benefit that you will get from doing good things for Jerusalem, for the state of Israel, is to do more and more things that will bring peace to Jerusalem and to Israel.”
Rothman praised recent American legislative efforts to use the correct historical terminology—“Judea and Samaria” rather than “West Bank”—and shared that Israel is advancing a similar measure.
“We heard before about the legislation on using the term, the right term, Judea and Samaria, and not the term West Bank, that is going on in US Congress,” he said. “I just spoke to the governor in Arkansas about the legislation that went through there. And we have our own legislation like this in Israel. I’m proud to say that it’s my bill, and it’s going to become a law very soon.”
“It’s already passed two of the necessary four readings, and it will become legislation in Israel too, that any formal legislation and any formal paper will acknowledge that the term, the right term, is, of course, Judea and Samaria and not the West Bank.”
Reflecting on the murder of Jewish mother Tze’ela Gez in a shooting attack in Samaria just one day prior, Rothman warned that terrorism grows in the absence of Jewish presence.
“Our hearts are with the wonderful family that lost the mother just yesterday,” he said. “But we know that these terrorists came from weakness. They came from weakness in building Jewish communities in an area where Jews do not live. This is the place the terrorists came out from: The biggest piece of land without Jewish communities, this is the Burqin area.”
“We have to make sure that we will have Jewish communities all over Judea and Samaria, because that’s when the land of Israel is within the hands of the Israelis and within the hands of the Jewish people. We know that good things come from the land. But when we are not there, we see the terror that comes from there. It’s true in Judea and Samaria. It’s true, and we saw it with our own eyes, in Gaza. It’s true all around the land of Israel.”
Rothman emphasized that ensuring lasting peace requires full application of Israeli sovereignty: “If we want peace to come to the land, we have to make sure that Israeli sovereignty is on every piece of land of Eretz Israel. We have to make sure.”
He also outlined legislative efforts to prevent any Israeli government from recognizing a Palestinian state without the explicit consent of the people.
“Another bill that goes in my committee, and I hope to pass also in the next month or two, is to demand that any recognition, even remote recognition, of a Palestinian state—even recognition of a vague idea of a Palestinian state by the government of Israel—will not be done at all.”
“But if someone thinks to do it, the only way to do it in Israel is by stealing the votes of the people,” he added. “Every time it has been done in the past, it was when the government was elected and said no to a Palestinian state, and then caved under pressure that came from somewhere else. So we have to make sure that will not be the case.”
“That’s why we are passing a referendum law, saying that recognition of a Palestinian state of any kind, in any piece of land, will have to go through a referendum, because we know that the people of Israel, in the vast majority, object to this idea.”
Recalling a decisive moment in the Knesset, Rothman stated: “We passed in the Knesset last July, we passed a resolution with the support of 80 Knesset members. As one of my positions, I’m chair of the Land of Israel Caucus. We passed a resolution with the support of 80 Knesset members—two-thirds of the Knesset—saying no to a Palestinian state. Not now, not ever.”
“And the Knesset voted for it, and actually it was not 80 to 40—it was 80 to 10—because only the Arab terrorist-supporting parties were able to object to it. Even the left-wing parties in the Knesset did not find within themselves, and I think it’s important, the courage to go and say ‘we are for a Palestinian state’, because everyone in Israel now understands what are the dangers of leaving the Land of Israel and allowing a Palestinian state to be built there.”
Rothman concluded with a firm call to action: “So we must make sure that this understanding, that we earned by paying such a heavy price—we paid a very, very heavy price for this understanding—that this understanding will stay. That this understanding will create not only the wide consensus that we already have against the Palestinian state, but to make sure that we will use the wide consensus towards applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria to be enacted fast.”
“Now is the time to do it, and we have to make sure that the Land of Israel will stay within the hands of Am Yisrael. Am Yisrael Chai. And thank you very much for all the support.”
