(IsraelNN.com) Atty. Sasson says that the Settlement Division authorized the construction of illegal neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (Yesha), and should therefore be closed.

The report lists the ways in which the government "closed its eyes and enabled" the establishment of the new residential communities. Among the methods used were allowing the construction of a small structure such as an antenna or a farm building, or by allocating caravans (mobile homes without wheels) and even land for the new outlying neighborhoods.

In her document to Prime Minister Sharon, who requested the report, Sasson wrote that there is no official person or body involved in enforcing the law in this area. "Institutionalized law-breaking," she termed it.

MK Tzvi Hendel (National Union), a former head of the Gaza Coast Regional Council, says that Prime Minister Sharon himself must be investigated – "the great Chief of Staff of settlement construction." Sharon, who served as Housing and Infrastructures Minister in the past, is in fact widely considered the father of the Yesha enterprise.

In addition, following the Wye Plantation agreement in late 1998, Sharon - then a minister in Binyamin Netanyahu's government - exhorted the Yesha residents, "Let everyone get a move on and take some hilltops! Whatever we take, will be ours, and whatever we don't take, will not be ours!"

Hendel also said that various Defense Ministers and other political leaders of the past few years, whose approval was necessary at many stages along the way, should be investigated.

On the other hand, however, Hendel said that everything was legal: "If there was anything illegal, we wouldn't have done it. We acted according to government decisions, and nothing could have been accomplished without the proper permits."

Pinchas Wallerstein, head of the Binyamin Regional Council, said that in a random check that he made, he found that on the average, towns throughout the entire country on both sides of the Green line received their final approval 8-10 years after they were first established. "This is the regular policy in Israel," he said.

"Especially during the years of the current war," Wallerstein said, "the various Israeli governments saw the establishment of new communities and neighborhoods as an 'appropriate Zionist response' to the Palestinian terrorism, and everything was done with their approval and coordination."

Former Housing Minister Yitzchak Levy (Religious Zionism faction) said this morning that he is anxiously awaiting Sasson's special report on the situation in the Negev and Galilee. "The Arabs and Bedouin there are building illegally on a much greater scale," Levy said, "but the fad today is to attack Yesha, so therefore her report is accepted as it is. What was done in Yesha was and is a great pioneering and Zionist enterprise, with the coordination of the governments of Israel."

Sasson, who formerly served as Head of the Criminal Department in the State Prosecution, has long been known as one of the great opponents of Yesha development. Her report mentions 150 communities in Yesha without complete permits, while even Peace Now has never mentioned more than 100.