Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, blocked a controversial Bill yesterday to legalise rogue Jewish outposts in the West Bank, but as a sop to the powerful settler movement, he immediately promised to expand an existing settlement by building 300 new houses there.
The international community deems all Jewish settlements built on the West Bank -- conquered in the 1967 Six Day war -- to be illegal.
The Bill was drafted by ultra-nationalist members of the Knesset after the Supreme Court ordered the demolition of five building in Ulpana, an outgrowth of the Beit El settlement on the outskirts of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.
The neighbourhood had been built on private Palestinian land and Mr Netanyahu had tried to find a compromise by offering to move the buildings into Beit El itself. He threatened to sack any minister who voted for the Bill, which would have brought international condemnation and much High Court wrangling had it passed.
The court order to knock down the houses infuriated the settler movement and hundreds turned out yesterday to chant defiance outside the Knesset. The park surrounding the Israeli parliament was filled with women in headscaves and bearded men — many with pistols tucked into their belts — praying or reading religious texts.
Advertisement
“It’s very painful, it’s like cutting off a leg or a hand,” said Tsvi Ben Ruben, a 23-year resident of Beit El as he pushed his 10-month-old child in a stroller, an assault rifle slung over the prayer shawl on his back.
“We have a right to be here that is not given by flesh and blood but by the divine creator,” said Natanel Epstein, a 26-year-old settler of British parentage. “The whole world knows this . . . The eternal nation is not afraid of the long journey. If we’d been afraid we’d have given up back in the gas chambers.”
But Yaariv Oppenheimer, head of the anti-settlement group Peace Now, said the political manoeuvering showed Mr Netanyahu’s sophistication, allowing him to be seen as the defender of the law while expanding the settlements. About half a million Israelis now live on the other side of the Green Line, the armistice line dating from the end of the 1948-49 war that led to the creation of Israel.
“By stopping this law he’s saying to the world, ‘I’m kosher, I’m progressive’, but at the same he’s making a decision to expand the settlements in the West Bank,” said Mr Oppenheimer.
Having scuppered the Bill by 69 votes to 22, Mr Netanyahu sought to appease the infuriated settlers. “Beit El will be expanded, the 30 families will remain in Beit El, and 300 new families will join them,” he said after the vote.
Advertisement
“Instead of diminishing Beit El, expanding it. Instead of harming the settlement, strengthening it.”
He insisted that he remained a champion of the settler movement. “I understand your pain. I share it,” he said. “There is no government that would support the settler movement more than the one I head, we will continue to strengthen the settlement movement and strengthen the democracy.”
Avigdor Lieberman, the Foreign Minister who himself lives on a West Bank settlement, gave his backing to the prime minister’s approach. “Every left-wing organisation that thinks that in this way they can stop settlement have to understand that there is a price – if 50 houses are built for every one [that is evacuated] this will be an important message for the other side.”