On May 31, 2001, after Palestinians killed an Israel security guard at a settlement outpost near Itamar, the Israel Defense Forces presented then-Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer with a breakdown of the outposts in Judea and Samaria.
The picture showed 66 outposts, 24 of which had been established since the start of the armed intifada, and 19 of which were being guarded by the IDF. The minister's aide on settlement and infrastructure issues added that 60 of the outposts were legally flawed from various points of view. Following a review of the matter by a Defense Ministry panel, Ben-Eliezer announced that 15 outposts had to be evacuated.
Some 18 months later, on October 16, 2002, a document submitted to the defense minister said that, in addition to 15 outposts evacuated in July 2001, a further 20 such sites named in the document were evacuated in July 2002. The document added that an order had been given to evacuate another 30 illegal outposts. The document again named the sites, which included six over which the settlers had petitioned the High Court of Justice.
This was the report given to the defense minister and this is how the issue was covered in official documents. On the ground, however, the picture was very different. On the face of it, 65 outposts should have been evacuated but toward the end of October 2002, the office of the adviser on settlement affairs announced only 21 such sites had been dismantled. This, too, was a virtual report.
The real picture bursts forth from the material released recently by the committee (an inter-ministerial one, this time) on the issue of the outposts set up by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. The number of outposts in existence as of May 2003 ranges from 90 to 100. In other words, despite the repeated directives to evacuate outposts, and the alleged evacuations that took place in the field, the number of such sites has increased during the period of May 2001-May 2002 from 66 to 90-100.
All of this means that, when it comes to outposts, the issue has involved the spreading of one of the State of Israel's biggest lies - not only a lie that was told to the Americans and conveyed in semi-official announcements, but also an ongoing lie that the Israeli public is being fed. The stories about the ministerial and inter-ministerial committees that are reviewing, ad nauseam, the precise legal status of each and every outpost are part of the greater lie; and if the members of these committees are party to the lie, then their time is being wasted.
The establishment of an outpost with authorization on private Arab land is clearly daylight robbery. But trying to create the impression that a portion of the outposts have something of a legal foothold, and that there are only certain anomalies in the field, the question that has to be asked is: "Legal in whose eyes?"
This is another matter in which the government has failed recently in its dealings with the Americans. In talks in Washington on the road map, Israeli representatives said Israel would act in the matter in accordance with "the understanding" reached at the time between former foreign minister Shimon Peres and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.
When an Israel representative was asked to elaborate on the understanding, he said: No more settlements will be established; the recommendation that the existing settlements will not be expanded, including expansion as the result of natural population growth, will not apply to the built-up areas of the settlements; and the final fate of the settlements will be determined in the final-status agreement.
The U.S. administration and Powell himself denied that such an understanding exists. Which of Israel's ministers is aware of this?
Israel's governments appear to have a policy with regard to the outposts; but ever since the outbreak of the armed uprising, it appears to be more intentional haphazardness than policy. Just as Yasser Arafat wants disorder on security matters so as to allow the terror to continue, so, too, is Israel causing disorder vis-a-vis the outposts so as not to put its own policy into practice.
Israel, in fact, wants the settlers to deceive it; and when its policy is rudely breached, it does not enforce the law. If we have, indeed, entered a new period, the only viable conclusion is that, on this issue, Washington must apply pressure to Israel for its own sake.
