Ahead of the Jewish New Year, which began Oct. 2, the Central Bureau of Statistics made an announcement that heartened those who oppose the division of the land into two states and to devotees of the settlement enterprise: in 2015 the Judea and Samaria region saw a growth of 4.1% in its Jewish population — from 362,900 in the beginning of the year to 377,900 at its end. This rate of growth is slightly more than double the national average, which stands at exactly 2%.
It seems this is an impressive achievement for the settlement enterprise: Here you have further proof that there's no way back from "Judea and Samaria" (namely the settlement enterprise), and that the two-state solution is obsolete. Could it be that the leader of HaBayit HaYehudi party, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, was right when he said Oct. 6 that the settlement project (or "settlement in the land of Israel," in his words — using the preferred right-wing term for "settlements") is the realization of the will of the people? Is there truth to the education minister's claim that the left, in its call to freeze construction in the territories, distorts the Jewish people's deeply held feelings?
