Wallerstein: Obama wants pound of flesh
Photo: Gil Yohanan
Yesha says willing to transfer outposts built on private property
Yesha Council director says transfer will occur only if 'decree on freezing of settlements is lifted'
Yesha Council Director-General Pinchas Wallerstein wrote in an article published Sunday that he would agree to evacuate outposts built on private property in the West Bank.
The article, published in a local Binyamin region paper, says that "if an outpost is found to have been built on private land, which belongs to someone, and there is no way to settle it or purchase it, we will be willing to pay the painful price and transfer it to a permanent location somewhere nearby".
Global Opinion
Foreign ministers from Group of Eight (G8) powers reiterate Sarkozy's call to halt Jewish construction in West Bank, urge all parties to resume peace talks based on Road Map initiative
But Wallerstein says he will cede the land "only on the condition that the decree regarding the freezing of settlements is removed".
"We will not cooperate with anyone who has the erasure of Zionist settlement in Judea and Samaria at the top of his political agenda – and is only adopting legal terminology to decorate himself with," he adds.
Wallerstein writes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech "proved he would not cede to all of the US president's demands, but his speech still includes a rather large risk, and his regime still yields to the dictates of Haim Ramon and the prosecution".
He claims that "Netanyahu's speech returned some sanity to the reality drawn after Obama's speech", adding that the prime minister "did not fold under US pressure".
Referring to American demands on the freezing of settlement in the West Bank, Wallerstein accuses the US of attempting to extract "Barak Hussein Obama's pound of flesh for the Arab world towards which he now sets his sights".
"If indeed Netanyahu means to allow the development of settlements, and desires to take the 'illegal outpost' issue out of the agenda by regularizing them, I am willing to cooperate, but by examining (the issue) from an objective point of view and not from a political one," Wallerstein adds.
"A new outpost agreement may demand a certain, possibly difficult and painful price from us, but it will allow us to finally place a legal stamp on many of the outposts, and finally be able to build in them and unfreeze them," he concludes.
