Migron
MigronOshrat Cohen

Migron resident Shuki Sat said on Wednesday that the Israeli government is violating the compromise agreement that was reached with residents of the community, after the Supreme Court, under then Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, ruled that the community must be demolished.

Earlier this week, the Cabinet approved a nearby temporary housing site for residents of Migron on Givat HaYekev in Kochav Yaakov, located in central Samaria.

The temporary housing site was part of the agreement negotiated between the residents and the government if the present location is proven to be Arab owned.

Sat, however, in a conversation with Arutz Sheva, noted that there is a second part to the agreement which the government has yet to meet.

“We do not see that the agreement is being implemented,” he said. “The agreement has two sections, one section that talks about moving the community to a temporary residence and a second part which talks about considering the possibility of leaving a civilian presence in Migron [until the final status of the land is decided,ed.].”

Sat added, “No one is even looking at the issue of keeping a civilian presence in Migron. They talked about establishing a military preparatory academy there or a therapeutic farm, but apparently the state prosecution wants to ignore this. As far as we’re concerned, if the state does not meet the agreement we will not go through with it either. There is no such thing as half an agreement.”

The High Court recently threw out the compromise deal between the government and the residents of Migron, and gave the government until August 1 to evict the residents. 

That compromise, worked out by MK Benny Begin (Likud) with much difficulty, would have had the residents move to permanent homes on a small, nearby area that is uncontested state land and have the present Migron houses used by the government for other purposes. An earlier compromise moving them to a large, new suburb to be officially recognized and built near the existing community of Adam on state land was worked out by the Judea and Samaria Council two years ago, but the residents rejected it, still hoping to save the existing community.

In both compromises, the residents were to remain in Migron until permanent houses were built on the alternate site, but the court did not allow that. In the second compromise, it was agreed that if the courts do not allow the residents to remain for that period, Migron would be used for civilian purposes and not destroyed or totally abandoned. The new compromise was agreed to by both government and residents in order to avoid both the violence that accompanied the destruction of the houses at Amona in 2006 and the bitter split in the nation that occurred due to the expulsion from the Katif Bloc in 2005.

The courts, however, may have made the new compromise unachievable.

Nationalist legislators still are hoping to be able to pass a law that would allow the residents to remain in their homes. It is built on land that the court ruled, after a petition by Peace Now, belongs to Arabs, even though no conclusive proof has been submitted of their ownership. The status of the land is unclear and the residents were hoping to remain in their present homes until that is decided in the lower courts - and that even if the decision is against their claims, that they could stay in their present homes until the new ones are built.

Sat said that the residents of Migron demand that the government legalize their future and set up schedules for the establishment of permanent buildings in Migron’s new location.

“They are actually making us move twice, once to a temporary neighborhood and then again to a permanent one,” he said. “Our concern is that the permanent neighborhood will take decades to build, so we're not satisfied with the agreement and are demanding a government decision that will anchor the construction of the permanent neighborhood.”