Women protesting the government’s intention to destroy 18 families’ homes, including theirs, have been only partially successful in being heard.
The Supreme Court ruled two months ago that the State must submit, by November, a timetable for the razing of no fewer than 18 permanent homes. The homes are located in two Jewish towns that are part of the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria: Haresha, and Eli's HaYovel neighborhood, near Shilo.
The news was greeted with outrage at the time, but it was focused on the fact that one of the homes in HaYovel belongs to the family of Ro’i Klein, who was killed during the Second Lebanon War in 2006 when he jumped on a grenade thrown at a group of soldiers, thus saving their lives. His widow Sarah is raising her two small children in the marked house, alone.
However, in addition to the Kleins, 17 other families face the same fate of having their homes destroyed: six in Haresha, near the Talmonim bloc in western Binyamin, and 11 in HaYovel.
Several women whose homes are threatened attempted to visit government ministers on Tuesday night to ask them to intervene – but were mostly unsuccessful. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman – who himself lives in eastern Gush Etzion - is abroad, and the police did not allow them to approach his residence or that of Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman. Only in the home of Interior Minister Eli Yishai of Shas did they receive a warm welcome; Mrs. Yishai promised to speak with her husband about their plight and ask him to stand fast against the intention to destroy their homes.
Haresha, an 11-year-old community, has seen three new families move into caravans (mobile homes without wheels) over the past year. This, despite the lack of basic conveniences, such as a grocery store, health clinic, and public transportation. The town now has 41 families: eight in permanent stone houses, and the rest in caravans
“For our most basic needs,” one resident told Israel National News, “such as a bag of milk or a trip to town, we have to first drive four kilometers to nearby Talmon or Neriah – and the costs add up.”
Of Haresha’s eight stone houses, two are “safe” from IDF bulldozers, “because they were occupied before the first court orders were served,” the resident said. “But the other six were just barely finished, and we were not able to move families into them in time. The families all have between four and seven children, so we are talking about some 45 people being thrown out onto the street.”
“An illegal Arab house just below us has also been served demolition orders, but the Court had nothing to say about that. They enforce the law very selectively here; the Arab homes are safe, while the Jewish ones are to be destroyed…”
“Meanwhile,” he concluded, “I have been living with my family in a caravan, unable to build – because, we are told, it will ‘endanger’ the families living in the houses. We are thus all caught between a rock and a hard place.”
In the HaYovel [Jubilee] neighborhood in Eli, the homes of 12 families are threatened with destruction, while four others, and 20 caravans, are considered safe. “This is not a judicial or legal question,” one resident said, “but is rather totally political. If Defense Minister Ehud Barak would simply sign the legalization papers, we would be legal – but he refuses. We are not on privately-owned land; the land belongs to the State, and there are no legal problems - only political."
Culture Minister Limor Livnat, a potential Netanyahu rival in the Likud, visited Haresha on Wednesday afternoon. She expressed opposition to the razing of the homes and to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s apparent intent to comply with the American demand to freeze all Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria.