Last update - 00:00 10/05/2007
Yesha Council hopes makeover will renew its political relevance
The campaign against road accidents that the Yesha Council of settlements initiated a few months ago is symptomatic of its situation. It's not that road accidents are not a worthy subject: The issue, which is not an area of standard settler concern, characterizes' the council's disappearence from the "struggle for the Land of Israel."
However, this might change soon. After the Yesha Council's huge failure in preventing the destruction of Gush Katif and the evacuation of northern Samaria, it is trying to make a comeback. Tomorrow, at Eshel Hashomron Hotel in Ariel, the renewed council will hold its first meeting. The 65-member plenum is set to include more grass-roots activists as well as some former opponents. The majority will be from the national-religious camp.
The Yesha Council's role is gradually being replaced by right-wing extra-parliamentary bodies, most of whom oppose the council. They see it as an anemic group that cannot have its cake and eat it too -- it cannot fight the government while being dependent on its funding. Meanwhile, since the disengagement, the council has been focusing mainly on local municipal issues. It was not involved in the purchase of the house in Hebron or the recent activities at Homesh. The outposts are perhaps the only matter in which the council's leaders have maintained their political appeal. But it is doubtful an outpost agreement presented by the old Yesha Council would be viable, since grass-roots activists may have stopped considering it.
Tomorrow's meeting is set to include members of Homesh First, Yesha's most serious opposition. In addition regional council heads will be taking a back seat to members of the settler public: Only 24 of the 65 people scheduled to attend are local authority heads. Not all of the representatives are residents of the settlements; others were evacuated from Gush Katif.
The plenum, which is eventually set to include 125 people, was largely chosen by the steering committee behind the Yesha Council's renewal. The committee is led by Adi Mintz of Dolev, former council director general; Bentzi Lieberman, the outgoing council chair and head of the Samaria Regional Council; Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, the rabbi of Elon Moreh; Sarah Eliesh, director of the religious girls' high school in Kedumim; and other public figures.
The plenum is set to meet at least twice a year to set issues of principle, such as the outposts or ways of responding to evacuation plans. A new chair will be chosen for the council, and two advisory committees will be set up -- a 14-member spiritual committee comprised of rabbis, and a political committee consisting of Knesset members representing the parties that support West Bank settlement.
The plenum will elect a 23-member leadership tomorrow. This leadership will meet every six weeks, and it will select a smaller secretariat to manage the council. Most of these leaders will be grass-roots leaders. The 65-member plenum is full of surprise members. Alongside moderates like Rabbi David Stav, of the modern Orthodox movement Tzohar, and Rabbi Eli Sadan, the head of the pre-army preparatory program who criticized those who refused orders during the disengagement, are Noam Arnon of Hebron, Moshe Shnit of the organization Gamla Shall Not Fall Again, and Boaz Haetzni of the Homesh First group.
Not all members of Homesh First are happy about joining the Yesha Council. Yehuda Liebman, a resident of Yitzhar, and Betzalel Smutrich, of the group Komemiyut, which was central to the attempt to return to Homesh, refused to join the new body. Emmanuel Shiloh, the editor of the local weekly Besheva, wrote that the reorganization is window dressing and that the Yesha Council's veteran leaders will continue to control the organization.
As often happens in right-wing organizations, secular and ultra-Orthodox representation is missing. The Jewish West Bank population is 35 percent Orthodox or traditional, 35 percent ultra-Orthodox and 30 percent secular, but the main representatives in the revamped Yesha Council are religious Zionists. "We did not base ourselves on sectors. And the ultra-Orthodox are not interested in being members of such an organization," said Adi Stein, a leader of the new group.
Dani Dayan, of Ma'aleh Shomron, one of the plenum's few secular members and the former director general of Tehiyah, a right-wing Orthodox-secular party, sent an angry letter to the steering committee two months ago to protest what he called its "insularity, short-sightedness and arrogance" in not including more secular activists. In response, several religious Zionist members were replaced by secular ones, but the group's profile did not significantly change.