Diplomats to learn to defend ‘legality of settlements’

Deputy Foreign Minister Hotovely changes cadets’ course to include right-slanted tours of West Bank and East Jerusalem’s City of David archaeological site

By ToI Staff 1 November 2015, 12:59 pm

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Visitors walk at the City of David in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on August 31, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Foreign Ministry cadets will tour West Bank settlements and learn how to defend their legality, as well as hear lectures on Judaism and tour the City of David archaeological site in East Jerusalem, officials said Sunday, in a rightward shift for the country’s diplomatic corps.

The new additions to the cadet course are a joint effort of Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovel and Foreign Ministry director Dore Gold, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The foreign minister post is held by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Both ministry officials believe the modified cadet course will help fledgling diplomats “honestly represent the positions of the Israeli government,” Army Radio quoted unnamed Foreign Ministry sources as saying.

Among the new classes added to the cadet course are a lecture on the legality of Jewish settlements in the West Bank based on the claim that the West Bank is not occupied territory; a tour of the City of David in the Silwan neighborhood near the Old City guided by David Be’eri, an official of the right-wing NGO Elad, which administers the site; a tour of the settlements guided by settler leader Benny Katzover; and a tour of the Jordan Valley devoted to the subject of Israel’s borders. This last talk will be given by Uzi Dayan, a former IDF general.

From a vantage point near the Temple Mount, Tzipi Hotovely waves the Israeli flag, with the Dome of the Rock in the background, May 1, 2014. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“We think it doesn’t matter what your political positions are – you must know that the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is legal,” Hotovely told Army Radio on Sunday, using a biblical term for the West Bank.

“When I say legal, I also mean international law. It is settlement with a historical base and very deep roots,” she said.

Foreign Ministry officials told the Walla news website that Hotovely felt the cadets course had been “stuck in the same place” for years and needed to be updated.

Changes in the course’s schedule are intended to “give diplomats tools to cope with the tough questions Israeli must answer today in the international diplomatic and legal arena,” an official said.

Hotovely, a hawkish lawmaker in Likud, was recently reprimanded by Prime Minister Netanyahu for saying that she “dreams” of building the Third Temple at the Temple Mount.