Speaking over the din of half a dozen earthmovers, Evo Katz, the mayor of Yizhar, shrugged off the latest United States diplomatic push for a settlement freeze in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
”We will continue to build without asking the international community what they would want us to do,” he said as tractors levelled the ground for the construction of 10 new homes in this northern settlement.
But he admitted the possibility of a freeze had made it urgent to launch the project because he was convinced the government would not halt construction that was already under way.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday ruled out a complete freeze in settlement activity.
Speaking a day before he was to meet US Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell, the hawkish premier also stressed any ”reduction of construction” would be temporary.
Katz shrugged off the talk of a freeze, saying construction of the new Yizhar neighbourhood had been authorised a while back, and insisting the government had no real desire to halt any settlement building.
In any case the real decision is ”in God’s hands”, he said. Like many settlers, Katz is convinced Jews have a divine duty to settle the biblical Land of Israel, including the entire West Bank.
Watching the construction, an elderly Yizhar resident, sporting the knitted wool skullcap favoured by hardline settlers, broke down into sobs as he decried suggestions Israeli soldiers could evacuate him.
”How can we not be allowed to build, to live on our own land,” he said. ”It is our land.”
The view from the community of 800 is stunning, overlooking the rolling hills of the northern West Bank and the hilltop settlements that dot them.
The international community considers all West Bank settlements illegal because they are built on occupied Palestinian territory, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Settlements, which are home to 500 000 Israelis — 200 000 of them in east Jerusalem — are a major hurdle in hobbled efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
Israel only considers a number of so-called outposts to be illegal because they were built without government authorisation. Those often consist of little more than a few shacks and a religious school and are usually located close to larger settlements.
Palestinians see the outposts as part of a land grab and a scheme to further tighten Israel’s control over the territory, which is home to 2,4-million Palestinians.
For months, authorities have vowed they would raze two dozen outposts but have failed to make good on the pledge.
In Havat Gilad, a notorious hardline outpost north of Yizhar, trucks delivered building materials barely one day after a clash erupted on Sunday as police tried to stop the relocation of a trailer home.
It was not the first time security forces have intervened in the outpost built by Moshe Zar, a former member of a Jewish underground movement that planted bombs in the cars of Arab mayors in the 1980s.
It was first torn down just hours after a group of teenagers pitched the first tents in 2002. Rebuilding started the next day.
The main problem is that the rest of the world fails to understand a basic truth, said Rabbi Arie Lipo, who teaches at the Havat Gilad yeshiva, a Jewish religious school.
”The world must recognise we are the people of the Bible … When the Jewish people are on their land, the world works as it should because the heart of the world is Israel,” he said, sitting on a bench by the outpost’s dilapidated playground.
The dusty, sun-baked village on the rugged hillside consists of about 20 trailers, a small factory that produces them, a religious school, a few gutted cars and a cage with a scrawny chicken inside.
It may not look like much to outsiders, but residents say they are ready to fight for it.
Hardline settlers have adopted a price-tag policy under which they attack Palestinian villages whenever an outpost is demolished or under imminent demolition threat by Israeli security forces.
”It’s legitimate,” says Lipo. ”I believe it works.”
For one, he says Jews should avoid fighting fellow Jews, so Palestinians are an obvious target.
But the army must know ”that if it provokes it can be dangerous.”
Last week a gang of settlers attacked a Palestinian village near Yizhar, shooting in the air and smashing windows, in the latest of what human rights groups say are frequent acts of violence and intimidation.
Yizhar’s mayor denied residents of his settlement were involved.
Asked about whether he approves of attacking Palestinians in response to demolitions ordered by Israel, Katz sidestepped the question. ”Our response is build, build, build,” he said. — AFP
