The Women in Green movement thanks Boaz Haetzni and Tsafrir Ronen for publicly exposing what many of us had feared from the outset: the "Renewed Moetzet Yesha" (the Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza) is just one big fraud. It is good that these two fellow activists did not fall into the trap of false unity, and did not agree to be the fig leaves of an organization that calls itself by a new name, but is really the same old goods in new packaging.

Actually, the Council's shame is in plain view.

Members of the "Renewed Yesha Council" denounced Haetzni and Ronen.

Members of the "Renewed Yesha Council" denounced Haetzni and Ronen, accusing them of "not having learned a chapter in democracy" - when the entire new bureaucracy of the "Renewed Yesha Council" is the antithesis of the democratic process. Instead of conducting genuinely democratic elections, in which every resident of Judea, Samaria and Gaza over the age of 16 could elect those who really are our representatives and leaders in the field, a small band belonging to the closed elite of the previous and failed Moetzet Yesha chose several dozen people, to be an "as if" democratic stage scenery. They will convene once every several months, while the truly fateful decisions will remain in the hands of a small group of people who were never elected to represent us in the struggles for Eretz Yisrael. These are the same people who so totally failed in the struggle to save Gush Katif and northern Samaria, and they are the very ones who continue to run things.

What is especially outrageous in the denunciation announcement by the members of the "Renewed Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza" is the sentence concerning the struggle by Moetzet Yesha to save Gush Katif: "We waged a struggle that will yet be studied in history. Nobody could have conducted the struggle better than we did. Nobody could have succeeded to allow us to remain in Gush Katif and Samaria."

Such a statement proves to us, once again, that there is no breast-beating in Moetzet Yesha over the failed struggle, nor do they take responsibility for the failure. Moreover, if they are so proud of the manner in which the failed struggle for Gush Katif and northern Samaria was conducted, we may reasonably assume that they will conduct a similar type of struggle if and when Israeli governments, Heaven forbid, will want to hand over additional parts of our homeland to the Arab enemy. The proof of the matter is that the prominent members of the "Renewed Council of Jewish Settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza" include people like Rabbi Eli Sadan and Rabbi Rafi Peretz, who will be remembered as preferring to embrace and dance with the expulsion forces, instead of fighting and trying to save Gush Katif.

Woe to us if we grant legitimacy to such a group that, as we remember, vehemently refused to call for nonviolent civil disobedience and for refusal to obey the expulsion order - the only two types of struggle that could have saved Gush Katif and northern Samaria.

Not only did the heads of Moetzet Yesha not support civil disobedience and refusal to
Woe to us if we grant legitimacy to such a group.
obey orders, they even sabotaged those who sought to advance these types of struggle. If I am not wrong, several heads of Moetzet Yesha were quoted after the expulsion as saying, "We did not want to be victorious over the state and the army."

Let us be clear on this: the struggle for Eretz Yisrael must be uncompromising, and it therefore cannot be waged by people like the Moetzet Yesha heads, nor by certain rabbis who are dependent on the government, because of the positions they fill.

The heads of Moetzet Yesha were elected by the public to be council heads whose job is to take care of the settlements, for gardening, garbage, the receipt of building permits, and possibly also the organizing of mass "happenings," such as mass prayer at the Western Wall, or tent cities for the purpose of distributing informational material to the public. There are many in Moetzet Yesha who fill this role in a wonderful manner. Just let them keep away from the stubborn and uncompromising struggle for all of our homeland, Eretz Yisrael.

The scepter of the struggle is to be given over to those who are totally independent of the government.