NAZARETH // Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, has indicated
he will defy an Israeli court that has ordered the demolition of 18 settler
homes in the West Bank, in what is widely seen as a test of the government’s
commitment to halting settlement expansion.
The homes are to be found in what Israel terms “outposts” –
small, land-hungry settlements it has promised the United States it will
dismantle. Unlike the main settlements, which violate international law, the
outposts are also illegal under Israeli law.
Mr Barak wrote on April 14 to the Supreme Court, arguing that it
would not be “sensitive or humane” to destroy the outpost houses for the time
being because they include the homes of the widows of two Israeli soldiers
killed in action.
Mr Barak’s officials are reported to be secretly trying to find a
way to legalise the two outposts to avoid enforcing the ruling.
His resistance to carrying out the court order appeared to
contradict his warning last week that Israel must take steps to end the
occupation. “The alienation that is developing with the United States is not
good for Israel,” he told Israeli radio.
Critics said Mr Barak’s move had exposed the deep collusion
between the settlers and the authorities in establishing 100 outposts in the
West Bank since the mid-1990s, when Israel promised under the Oslo accords not
to authorise any new settlements.
Although home to only a few thousand settlers, the outposts have
been used by the 120 main settlements to dramatically increase their takeover of
Palestinian land.
“Israel is hiding behind an official policy of not building new
settlements while secretly assisting the settlers in setting up these outposts,”
said Hagit Ofran of Peace Now, an Israeli peace group that originally petitioned
the Supreme Court to enforce the demolitions.
“Our case has put the government in a dilemma: it says it wants
to enforce the rule of law in the occupied territories, but when given the
chance it sides instead with law-breaking.”
Mr Barak promised the US administration of Barack Obama in July
that he would begin by razing 23 outposts “in a matter of weeks”, though none
has been dismantled so far. Under the terms of the “road map”, a US peace plan
from 2003, Israel is obligated to destroy dozens of outposts as a first step in
peacemaking.
Peace Now petitioned the courts back in 2005 to enforce
outstanding demolition orders on 18 permanent homes in Givat Hayovel and Haresha,
two outposts north of Ramallah, that were established in the late 1990s. Both
outposts were set up by members of the security forces.
The communities, which have more than tripled in size since, have
become the main focus of the struggle against the outposts.
In February, after five years of foot-dragging by the authorities
over how to implement the order, the Supreme Court imposed a deadline of this
Saturday for Mr Barak to issue a timetable for destruction.
Mr Barak, however, wrote to Dorit Beinisch, the court’s
president, two weeks ago, urging her to set aside the demolitions on the grounds
that they would include the home of Eliraz Peretz, killed in a firefight last
month in Gaza.
“The shock and tragedy that have befallen the small community
require sensitive and humane handling of the matter of demolishing the homes,”
he wrote to the judge. He added that the court should agree to a further
six-month postponement of the order.
The liberal Haaretz newspaper has reported that Mr Barak and the
defence establishment are seeking a way to legalise the two outposts, in what
one of its commentators referred to as “a kind of magic act”. Mr Barak’s
officials are said to have been scouring land registry records in hope of
showing the outposts are built on “state land”.
In a reversal of the army’s long-standing refusal to take a
public stance on the outposts, the chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, promised
Peretz’s family last month that he would force the court to overturn the
demolition orders on security grounds. He is expected to argue to the court in
the next few days that the army’s presence at Hayovel is essential because of
its “commanding location” overlooking the Jordan Valley.
Some 35 members of the parliament and several government
ministers have also expressed opposition to the demolitions, calling the
outposts’ residents “Zionist pioneers”.
They have pointed out that the home of another soldier, Roi
Klein, would also be razed. Klein, killed in Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon, is
seen as a war hero for jumping on a grenade to protect fellow soldiers.
The suffering of Peretz’s family was widely noted in the Israeli
media last Monday, Israel’s memorial day, which honours the soldiers who have
fallen in Israel’s wars.
Ms Ofran said Mr Barak was “exploiting the families’ bereavement”
as an excuse not to carry out the demolitions. She added that Peace Now had
agreed to withdraw its petition in relation to the two soldiers’ homes to
prevent that becoming an obstacle to enforcement.
After a tour of the two outposts late last year, Moshe Yaalon,
the deputy prime minister, and Eli Yishai, the interior minister, called for all
the outposts to be made legal. Mr Yaalon said: “We need to eradicate the term
‘illegal outposts’. These are communities that were established with the state’s
encouragement.”
The point was underlined by the settlers themselves when they
published a pamphlet highlighting the millions of dollars invested by government
ministries in establishing and maintaining the two outposts.
Officials, it was noted, had authorised specially discounted
mortgages and grants worth $65,000 for each family. The housing ministry had
also spent more than $1 million on infrastructure for up to 100 homes at Hayovel
and 10 homes and a hostel at Haresha.
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