Perilous
Times
Jewish settlers agree to evacuate West Bank outpost
By Maayan Lubell | Reuters
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Jewish settlers signed an agreement with the
Israeli government on Sunday to leave the biggest illegal outpost
in the occupied West Bank and move to a nearby site after months
of negotiations to avoid their forced removal.
The 50 families from the Migron settlement welcomed the deal with
coalition government, comprised mainly of pro-settler parties,
saying it would avoid the unpleasant scenes seen in past
evictions.
But campaigners against Jewish settlements on land claimed by
Palestinians described the deal as a disgrace, as the families had
been allowed to relocate to another already-established West Bank
settlement a few kilometers away.
The long dispute over Migron has revealed a contradiction at the
heart of the Jewish state - despite publicly endorsing the notion
of an independent Palestinian nation, successive Israeli
governments have nurtured settlements on the very land that the
Palestinians claim as theirs.
Over the past decade the government has spent at least 4 million
shekels ($1.1 million) on establishing and maintaining the cluster
of squat, prefab bungalows at Migron.
But in an unprecedented ruling in August 2011, Israel's Supreme
Court told the government to evacuate Migron, 32 km (20 miles)
east of Jerusalem, by March 31, 2012, saying the land belonged to
Palestinians.
About 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured from Jordan in
the 1967 war that Palestinians want for a future state together
with the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians say the settlements will deny them a viable state and
demand a total freeze in settlement building before peace
negotiations with Israel, frozen for over a year, can restart.
Migron is the largest of more than 100 outposts built without
official Israeli government authorization in the West Bank that
are home to almost 2,000 people.
"This agreement is intended to fulfill the Supreme Court ruling
and to prevent unpleasant scenes that we have seen in other places
where there was an eviction and demolition of houses ... The
government has taken responsibility for a settlement that it
erected," Migron settlers' spokesman Itai Hemo said.
A spokeswoman for the anti-settlement advocacy group Peace Now
called the agreement "a disgrace".
"This agreement is no less than a disgrace. The government of
Israel is actually saying 'We will not evict Migron, we will not
do what the Supreme Court told us. And we will give in to any
settlers' threat ... It sends a message that Israel (does not
want) peace (and will) build more settlements," Peace Now's Hagit
Ofran said.
The new site allocated to the settlers is on land that is not
under private Palestinian ownership, Israeli officials said.
While the United Nations deems all Jewish settlements in the
region to be illegal, Israel backs 120 official settlements, home
to about 310,000 people.
(Writing by Maayan Lubell, Editing by Ori Lewis and Andrew
Heavens)