Last update - 00:00 14/12/2006
Peretz orders IDF to crack down on illegal West Bank building
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Wednesday instructed GOC Central Command Yair Naveh to sign four directives on building in the West Bank to crack down on illegal construction in settlements and outposts.
Peretz also instructed the director general of the Defense Ministry, Major General (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi, to "negotiate the issue immediately" with the Finance Ministry with regard to budgetary additions to the supervision unit of the West Bank's Civil Administration.
The directives were to enforce more effectively the new building and planning laws in the West Bank and prevent illegal construction.
Meretz chair MK Yossi Beilin intends to petition the High Court of Justice against the defense minister and attorney general for repeatedly putting off steps to evacuate illegal outposts and to stop illegal construction in West Bank settlements.
Beilin asked Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to act to stop the defense establishment's footdragging and to enforce the law at the outposts and settlements. He also urged Mazuz to implement immediately the recommendations in attorney Talia Sasson's report on the illegal outposts.
Beilin wrote to Mazuz after Haaretz reported on Mazuz's letter to Peretz, in which he urged him to stop stalling the publication of regulations that would make it easier for the state to combat illegal construction in settlements and outposts.
The defense ministry said Wednesday, however, that Peretz has still not received Mazuz's letter, although it was sent at the beginning of December. It also said that the defense minister was required to order the Israel Defense Forces, as the ruling authority in the territories, to sign the directives - not to sign them himself.
About three weeks ago Beilin wrote to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Peretz and Mazuz, demanding they act to implement the Sasson report's recommendations.
The report, released in March 2005, states that private persons and bodies were not the only ones to violate the law, but that ministries and senior state officials had helped the settlers build the outposts. Thus the state became a "collaborator to the offenses," Beilin wrote.
MK Ophir Pines-Paz (Labor) on Wednesday castigated his party's chairman, Peretz, following Mazuz's letter.
"I take a very grim view of the defense minister's conduct," Pines-Paz said. "It's a betrayal of trust, because the evacuation of outposts was an explicit election promise by Labor."
Pines-Paz said he would call a debate on the issue at the next Labor faction meeting. "I expected Peretz to urge Mazuz to act against those residing in the illegal outposts, not the other way around. Apparently, reality is worse than anything I could imagine. I wouldn't have believed that a defense minister of ours would hinder the evacuation of outposts; it's simply a nightmare," he said.
In his letter, Mazuz wrote that Peretz refrained from approving the new directives - which had been drafted a long time ago - due to a dispute between the defense establishment and the treasury concerning the additional personnel that the Civil Administration could hire to enforce them.