Amona. No one likes seeing people being evacuated from their home
Photo: Gil Nehushtan
Only the Right can evacuate settlements
Op-ed: Where else in the world would young people who attack police with iron rods be treated with so much forgiveness? In Israel, the settlers are the masters of the land, their evacuation from robbed land costs the state more than NIS 150 million, and in return for their violence they get a new community.
"Hooligans"—that was the word used by Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan on Thursday, when he addressed the dozens of young people who barricaded themselves in the Amona synagogue
and threw on the police whatever they could get their hands on.
In a normal country, the word “hooligans” as a description of a group of law transgressors who wounded more than 60 police officers would be considered an understatement. Where else in the world would young people who attack police with iron rods be treated with so much forgiveness? But in a country like ours, where the settlers are the masters of the land, their evacuation from robbed land costs the state more than NIS 150 million, and they get a new community in return for their violence—calling them “hooligans” is an act of heroism.
Up until Thursday afternoon, it felt like the 2017 Amona evacuation would go smoothly, definitely compared to the sights we saw there 11 years ago. Police forces worked undauntedly and with great sensitivity, but mostly slowly. Up until Thursday afternoon, one could say that the evacuation had ended successfully. The 42 families evacuated from the mountain in relative calm. In general, when one compares this evacuation to other evacuations—the one in the Bedouin community of Umm al-Hiran, for example—one has to wonder whether they were carried out by two different police.
Youths being evacuated from Amona synagogue (Photo: AFP)
The High Court’s decision to reject the proposal to relocate Amona’s residents to one of the nearby hills was made public during the evacuation. One can only imagine what would have happened had the evacuation been carried this week, after the High Court decision had time to sink in among the evictees and the groups of youths who arrived at the outpost to create provocation and riots. I believe that in such a case, the sights would have been completely different.
Up until the violent evacuation from the synagogue, the most outrageous thing was Knesset Member Bezalel Smotrich’s metaphor, likening the Amona evacuation to “brutal rape.” Smotrich’s world of associations is nothing new. He has already confessed that he has sexual fantasies—or, as he argued, "who doesn’t?"—but he managed to infuriate quite a few people, particularly women, and managed to irritate even those who were willing to have pity on the people that were clinging onto what used to be their home until last week. Those families who drove an entire state crazy, including the media, which offered live broadcasts of every single moment of the evacuation.
No one likes seeing people being evacuated from their home—neither in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Givat Amal nor in Umm al-Hiran or in Amona. We are talking about people, children, entire families uprooted from their homes. These are unpleasant sights even in cases of illegal construction or, like in the Amona case, private land that belongs to Palestinians and a conclusive High Court ruling ordering its evacuation.
Nevertheless, now that the evacuation is over it must be noted that whoever says Amona’s resident went up there with authority and permission is simply lying. Amona’s residents knew that they were settling on stolen land. Settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein admitted only recently, while rolling his eyes and chuckling, that when he proposed to people to settle on the land in Amona, he knew that the regulation move had yet to be completed, and even the residents who settled there at the time, and definitely in the past 10 years, were aware of the land’s legal status.
Ministers Bennett and Shaked. The Bayit Yehudi party stands to lose the most (Photo: Yonatan Sindel, Flash 90)
This cannot be said in any other way: A right-wing government, or even radical right-wing, evacuated a settlement in Judea and Samaria last week. The Bayit Yehudi party, led by Naftali Bennett, stands to lose the most from this. It should be mentioned that Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked were the ones who told the Amona residents the truth. It was on the eve of Yom Kippur. In a meeting with the residents, they admitted that they could no longer promise to rescue Amona, but they promised to leave no stone unturned so that there wouldn't be another Amona.
Now, Bennett and Shaked are finding comfort in the fact that the Regulation Bill will be adopted on Monday. As far as they are concerned, it is another piece in this mosaic, in the move from the old era, in which communities could be demolished through petitions, to the new era. The regulation era. The annexation era.
If you try to tell them that this bill, which even the attorney general is refusing to defend, is not going to pass the High Court test – they will tell you that no one knows that for sure. After all, the same was claimed when the law reached its first reading.
And where was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in this entire affair? On Wednesday, he disappeared. His Twitter account, which reaches all the way to Mexico, fell silent. Immediately after the High Court announced that it was cancelling the compromise agreement signed with the Amona residents, Bennett announced that a new community must be built for the Amona evictees, that it would be a proper Zionist response.
About half an hour later, Netanyahu announced—on Twitter, of course—that he had decided to establish a new community.
By the way, it was not a spontaneous decision born from his solidarity with the evacuated residents. It is enforced in the agreement that was signed with the residents about a month and a half ago, in a late-night meeting between the prime minister and the settler leaders.
Clause 8 of the agreement specifically states: “Should it be impossible to work the relevant lands, or some of them, the prime minister will order the location of a piece of land, with the state and the settlers’ consent, to establish alternative permanent housing on state lands in the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council. The work on the land will begin by, and no later than, March 31, 2017, subject to any law.”
On Thursday, during a visit to the city of Ariel, Netanyahu expressed his solidarity with the pain of the families forced to abandon their homes and their life’s work. He remembers very well, after all, what it means to abandon a home, from the days he was forced to leave the prime minister’s residence after losing the 1999 elections.
And he must understand that the day is near when he will be forced to abandon his life’s work.
