Pinchas Wallerstein, who heads the Binyamin Regional Council and sits on the Yesha Council of Judea Samaria and Gaza Jewish Communities, spoke with Arutz-7 Thursday about the details of the meeting and responded to criticism of the council’s modus operandi.
“We have not reached any agreement – there is nobody to negotiate with,” Wallerstein told Arutz-7’s Yigal Schock. There was a private meeting between Ze’ev Hever and Amir Peretz regarding the need to have a dialogue. We explained – Zambish explained – that we are prepared to negotiate but we don’t really know who to talk to.”
“What agreement was he trying to arrive at?” Schock asked.
“Look, the State of Israel committed to the Americans that all the outposts that were built after March, 2001, will be evacuated. And from time to time Peace Now has been very active in reminding the government that it made a commitment to the Americans. We believe this is not realistic and should not even be discussed now that the nation has finally realized that there is no more reason to discuss unilateral steps toward the Palestinians.
“It is therefore clear to us that the entire matter of the outposts is just a provocation and a search for conflict in order to induce forgetfulness in the public about the war in Lebanon or a mad bid to implement the vision of the extreme-left.
“We want to get to a position where the places where Jews are living are able to continue to develop. But the situation today where every effort to expand is a long process and prevented at every step has – it is an open secret – left us without the ability to expand. Nothing is happening in the Shomron…
“We are not simpletons. We know there will be a price. But if someone thinks that the struggle for the outposts can be an uncompromising one is sorely mistaken. If we don’t negotiate, Peretz could simply decide unilaterally tomorrow to send evacuate a community like Givat HaRoeh. We are obligated to warn him about the severity of this step.
Asked again about specific newspaper reports that the council was ready to agree to destroy populated communities, Wallerstein answered:
“Some of the outposts – those termed outposts – are places that have residents and don’t have residents. There is a place called Ofra Southeast. I am mayor of the region and I truly have no idea where that is…Most of the places will be authorized. There are no unilateral withdrawals going on here.”
Outpost insiders say they find it hard to believe that the government will settle for destroying unpopulated locations without going after at least one populated community. Asked straight out if there is the possibility that the Yesha Council will negotiate into a position where residents of a hilltop community will have to be evicted by the council itself, Wallerstein said: “In the past we did things to avoid violence and to avoid dispute. There were outposts here and there, near Kochav HaShahar or near Michmas, that we ourselves destroyed during the Barak-era. We did this because the government said, ‘destroy this and this place, do A, B, C and D and you will be allowed to return and develop the place.’ And afterward they enabled us to return and those places are alive and breathing today…I would do this with a heavy heart, but I would do it.”
Varied Definitions of Outposts
The definition of an outpost varies. According to Peace Now, which believes all Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and parts of Jerusalem to be illegal according to international law, it is any small community established since the signing of the Oslo Accords. The Road Map political plan defined outposts as communities or neighborhoods founded since the arbitrary date of March, 2001, when Ariel Sharon became prime minister. Sharon himself, in his preceding position as Defense Minister had publicly urged pro-Land of Israel circles to “grab” the hilltops.
The Road Map commitment has not actually come into effect, as the government’s acceptance of the plan stipulated that it would not be implemented until Palestinian terrorism and incitement cease. In May 2003, the Israeli government, under Sharon, voted that a series of 14 reservations - including an end to all Palestinian terrorism and incitement - must "be implemented in full during the implementation phase of the Road Map."
"Full performance [of the above conditions] will be a condition for progress between phases and for progress within phases," the May 2003 government resolution states.
In 1998, then-Foreign Minister Sharon, having just returned from the Wye Plantation Summit raised his voice in front of the cameras, saying: “Everyone should move, should run, should grab more hills, expand the territory. Everything that's grabbed will be in our hands. Everything we don't grab will be in their hands. That's the way it will be...That's what must be done now.”
It is believed that at that point, both Sharon and then Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had decided that Israel would retain only “settlement blocs” within Judea and Samaria.
Since then, the Yesha Council, which is funded by the Interior Ministry and has used much funding to be the de facto leaders of the struggle to retain such areas, has both assisted in the strategizing of how and where outposts should be built, but in many cases autonomous groups of ideological young people have done the actual leg-work of settling and building a community on a rugged hilltop with limited, backhanded or no assistance from government sources and ministries.
Yesha Council Comes Under Attack
In the struggle against Sharon’s Disengagment Plan, which called for the destruction of all Jewish towns in Gaza and four communities in northern Samaria, many accused the council of waging the struggle as a “lost cause” with the aim of strengthening areas of Judea and Samaria slated to become settlement blocs (i.e. those left on the pre-1967 side of the Partition Wall).
Baruch Brenner, a contractor for a Jewish Labor construction company who moved down to the Gush Katif community of Gadid prior to the Disengagement and drew up alternative plans to thwart the expulsion through massive civil disobedience dismissed Wallerstein’s claims.
“The Yesha Council used deception,” Brenner says. “They treated people like pawns. I don’t have to remind you about Kfar Maimon and the very entry of IDF forces into the community of N’vei Dekalim with their direct assistance. The problem is that they receive the money for their struggle from the government and have always worked with the government, so that is what they will continue to do.”
“Zambish wasn’t elected by anyone and nobody knows what he does exactly,” Brenner said, “but we do know that he has met with Amir Peretz. For those who believe the council has changed its tune since Gush Katif and since Amona let this be the final test case. Personally I don’t think its true, but if the Yesha Council did learn its lesson I would be overjoyed – everyone would be happy.”
Wallerstein: I am at Peace With Council's Decisions
Wallerstein says he believes that the council has acted properly and will continue to lead the struggle for Judea and Samaria. “It is clear there is a populace that has harsh criticism for the Yesha Council,” he said. “I am of a whole heart on the ideological level with all the actions of the Yesha Council, including during the struggle for Gush Katif – though obviously I am sad and very hurt at the results that we arrived at.”
Wallerstein added that those who wanted to pursue other avenues of protest during the struggle for Gaza cannot claim that the Yesha Council obstructed their ability to carry them out. “It would be worthwhile for such people to investigate why other entities didn’t do otherwise.”
Alternatives Rising Up From the Youth
Kedumim Mayor Daniella Weiss, one of the founders of the Gush Emunim movement, which spearheaded the settlement movement and bore the Yesha Council and Amana logistical settlement branch, says an alternative to the council has sprung forth already. Speaking with Arutz-7, she called the Yesha Council’s negotiations with the government and police a “betrayal of the Land of Israel.”
“We are talking about the continuation of the betrayal that began with the first ‘outpost agreement’ and those that came after it, and, of course, the cooperation with the police and government in Gush Katif and northern Shomron.”
Weiss, who as mayor of one of Samaria’s main Jewish towns has been granted heightened involvement in the council, says she has not conducted any business or discussions with members of the council since the expulsion.
She says that the youth and many members of the public who had enough with the council have indeed formed alternative activism networks since the Disengagement. She added that the response to the documented police brutality at Amona was but a fraction of the opposition that future attempts would herald. “Amona was only a tiny sample of what will be if, G-d forbid, they touch the tiniest of outpost.”
Asked why she could not accept the removal of one tiny community to strengthen a larger one, Weiss said: Just like we do not give up a single letter of a Torah Scroll, so too we do not give up even a grain of the Land of Israel; both are holy.”
Asked about the possibility of violence at future evictions, Weiss said: “We will see much more than at Amona. The one who wants to remove a human being from his or her home is the violent one and not the opposite.”