Does Defense Minister Mofaz intend to try to uproot a Jewish community of over 40 families, only 20 minutes’ drive from Jerusalem, within the coming days? Yesha leaders suspect the answer is yes.

Does Defense Minister Sha’ul Mofaz intend to try to uproot a Jewish community of over 40 families, only 20 minutes’ drive from Jerusalem, within the coming days? Yesha leaders who met with him yesterday say that that was the gist of his remarks, and that two other large towns are also on the chopping block. They said, however, that another meeting is planned with him before such a plan goes through. Binyamin Regional Council head Pinchas Wallerstein, who is largely responsible for building two of the towns that are reportedly in question - Migron, just east of Psagot, and Amona, adjacent to Ofrah - left the meeting in pain and anger when the topic was raised.

Mofaz told the Yesha leaders that he plans to uproot eight outposts in Yesha in the near future, including three in the coming days. One of the latter is populated: Mitzpeh Yitzhar, just south of Yitzhar in the Shomron.

Gush Etzion Regional Council chief Sha’ul Goldstein said that the meeting yesterday with Mofaz was in fact “difficult,” especially the “ease with which some people talk about dismantling Jewish points in the Land of Israel. For us, this is very difficult.” Speaking with Arutz-7 this morning, Goldstein said, “We tried to transmit to him the extent of the great pain we feel regarding these matters, as well as our disappointment that several agreements we made with the Defense Ministry in the past few years have not been fulfilled. It was very hard for us to give up certain populated points, but we did so in order not to have to clash with the security forces, and after being promised by various Defense Ministers, including Yitzchak Mordechai, Ehud Barak, and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, that other points would be established - and this has not happened. Instead, we are portrayed as law-breakers by settling in various places, when in fact all that is missing is some signature on some permit that was promised to us… Minister Mofaz said that he would look into this matter.”

Goldstein said that it wasn’t true that Wallerstein had left the meeting with a door-slam: “Pinchas did something very valiant, and he deserves a yasher-koach [kudos]. He felt that the session was very difficult from an ethical point of view, and that he simply could not remain. He did it respectfully, even asking permission to leave, but the Minister understood the message, that this was not simply a technical discussion of maps and moving caravans, but rather something that deals with people’s lives and the values that we teach our children. I think that what Pinchas did was indicated and was very important.”

Asked if thinks that the Israeli government can withstand the heavy American pressure to dismantle the “illegal outposts,” Goldstein said, “I think that this ‘pressure’ is partly self-inflicted. The Americans are simply saying that if the outposts are illegal, then get rid of them… But we know that illegality is not really an issue for [our] government, because if it was, then what about all the illegal Arab housing? … Israel historically has always known how to withstand pressure, or supposed pressure, regarding its internal matters, and especially on political issues that come in the guise of legal ones.”

It is a matter of no dispute that when and if an order is received by the IDF to begin uprooting a populated community or outpost, massive physical resistance will begin. Yesha Council spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef said that the struggle against the uprooting of outposts in Yesha will be “bitter and stubborn, even more so than on the previous occasions in the Gilad Farm and Mitzpeh Yitzhar.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2003 and is filed under hotnews.