Letting the dog play with the shoe
By Ze'ev Schiff
Haaretz, January 14, 2004
The Americans gave Israel a list of 84 outposts that must dismantled if indeed it intends to keep Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's promise made to the U.S. president regarding their future. The Defense Ministry, the country's authority on this issue, has a counter-list of only 34 outposts, but Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz does not think the promise made to the Americans refers to the dismantling of all 34.
So according to Israel, how many outposts should be dismantled? The answer can be derived from a third list, prepared after Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon asked for the political echelon's decision on this matter; that is, which outposts must be evacuated from the political perspective, irrespective of whether or not they received construction permits. The list delivered to Ya'alon includes only six names, including a synagogue in Hebron. An earlier list had included 14 outposts, but six, some uninhabited, were "dismantled" in the meantime.
The government introduced plenty of deliberate confusion over the matter of outposts. And the argument is not only about numbers. At the Aqaba Summit, Sharon told the Americans that the establishment of outposts began before he became prime minister, during the premierships of Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu. The defense minister, on the other hand, said outposts should be defined as those established at the outset of the Sharon government in March 2001.
The confusion grew with changes in the definitions of the outposts' legality. The concept "illegal" began to disappear, replaced with the determination that an outpost is either authorized or unauthorized.
In other words, an outpost that had not received all required building permits could be legal. That means outposts without authorizations will be put "in order" in the near future. Therefore, the army understood there is no point evacuating them if another nearby outpost goes up within a day or two. That's why Ya'alon asked the political echelon to determine which ones must be evacuated, just as it determined which settlements should be established.
This was all pilpul, a legalistic methodology meant to obfuscate the entire subject of the outposts, creating lots of headlines with nothing happening on the ground. Leafing through the newspapers of the last two years shows that the misleading headlines about outposts are redundant - there's always an "upcoming discussion" prior to an evacuation. Lately, the headlines have been about the immediate evacuation of the Migron outpost. Every once in a while, there are headlines about the evacuation of a few outposts that turn out to be empty. But the number of outposts remains about the same as it was. One of the settler leaders explained with a smile that it's like letting a guard dog play with an old shoe. The dog chews on the shoe, and what needs to remain in place remains.
Government representatives recently told the Americans that Israel soon will prove to be serious and do something big. It's best not to believe that promise. The settlers determine what's happening on the ground. They've risen in strength and are challenging the state by virtue of being the government in practice when it comes to the territories, and they influence how much maneuverability room there is and how far the "concessions" can go. They will determine if the prime minister is found to be lying to the U.S. president.
It also means that Israel's occupation in the territories is expanding. That was the country's major violation of the Oslo Accords, while the Palestinians committed their own violations, including acts of terror and outright murder. Sharon understands this development. Apparently he does not want a showdown with the Palestinians. Indeed, he will make use of Sunday's large demonstration by the right. Against that background, he is leading a "disengagement plan," not a plan for an agreed-upon arrangement with the Palestinians. He is also interested in building the eastern fence, which has been delayed, in the meantime, due to budget constraints, quiet IDF opposition, or the attorney general's failure to approve private property expropriations enabling it to be built.
