JERUSALEM – Jewish settlers accused the Shin Bet security service on Monday of planting spies among groups of protesters of Israel’s Gaza pullout plan in a bid to arrest their leaders.
Such a claim has been made before by opponents of Israel’s planned withdrawal from all 21 settlements in Gaza and four of the 120 in the West Bank next month. Security officials had no immediate comment on the allegations.
“The Shin Bet tried to plant provocateurs among us, to turn us into Masada,” a settler official told reporters, referring to a massive and deadly siege in 73 CE where Romans captured a castle in southern Israel and killed and enslaved its Jewish inhabitants.
“The Israeli government is deteriorating into the dark days of Russia, when they not only steal democracy by preventing a legitimate struggle but also attempt to plant people on the inside .. to carry out arrests and present us in a negative light, another settler said.
Settler Yossi Dagan said inciting calls had been voiced recently against residents of Sa-Nur, one of the four West Bank settlements Israel plans to evacuate.
Most settlers from the other three have already left their homes or have signed deals to evacuate, while Sa-Nur residents have refused contact with government officials who oversee the pullout and compensation.
But others have vowed to resist the evacuation and have in recent weeks blocked dozens of roads and planted fake bombs to protest it. Forces stopped thousands last week from reaching Gaza settlements despite a military closure.
'We then knew it was a political campaign'
“It started with the prime minister and continued with the defense minister, with security officials saying that Sa-Nur would turn into Masada, there would be violence, where the residents would attack Arabs, and that’s why their guns should be taken away,” Dagan said.
“We knew then that this was a political campaign. We started to understand there were attempts to plant provocateurs among us.”
Dagan said a 30-year-old Jerusalem resident had moved to Sa-Nur shortly after the government banned Israelis from establishing residents in settlements slated for evacuation.
“People fought to move … to Sa-Nur but no one could do so after the decree. But this person, surprisingly, moved .. to Sa-Nur long after the order was given,” he said, adding that the man had tried to reach the “circle of decision-makers” among the pullout protesters.
Dagan said the man had also tried to reach another settlement, Kiryat Arba, which is not due to be evacuated under the plan, to recruit a group of people and establish an illegal outpost in a Palestinian house that was mostly abandoned.
The incident occurred a month and a half before police evacuated settlers from an outpost they had established in the Gaza Strip inside a building in a Palestinian town.
“Questions were raised and we started to check out the man,” Dagan said. “We then found he was a provocateur. He then mysteriously disappeared and his phone number was changed as well. He disappeared as if the earth had swallowed them.”
'Tell me the plans'
Dagan also said another 30-year-old man arrived in Sa-Nur and tried to probe settlers to see if they planned to resist evacuation.
“He told me, ‘There’s a person on Highway 6, a millionaire, who wants to support the struggle. Tell me the plans and I’ll present them to him – it’s urgent,’” Dagan quoted the man as saying.
“It all seemed very suspicious. Our intension was to hold a public struggle and protect the community,” Dagan said. “Our investigations revealed that he had in the past tried to turn in a group of pullout opponents. Three weeks ago, he was gone as if the earth had swallowed him.”
Another settler said that another 20-year-old man is also suspected of being a spy. They said he came from the center of the country and offered to supply a lot of equipment to help the protesters. He became “stuck” to residents of Sa-Nur and then disappeared.
“This is a cynical and ugly attempt to turn the tables,” Dagan said. “We believe in a public struggle and feel the people of Israel are with us. We tell the prime minister – stop, you have ruined enough. Stop, before it’s too late.”