In the framework of the struggle against the expected outpost destructions, the Shomron Residents Council has established a Youth Council. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Ehud Barak promises that outposts will be destroyed "in a matter of weeks or days."
The new Youth Council will be charged with organizing and coordinating the many youths who are interested in taking part in the struggle for the Land of Israel. The youth wing will also be given video cameras to document police and left-wing activity against them.
Just today (Tuesday), Minister Barak told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the uprooting and destruction of 23 Jewish outposts in Judea and Samaria "is not a matter of years, but of weeks and days." On the other hand, he said, it would not be done "overnight."
Barak said he was referring to the 26 "illegal outposts" built after March 2001, and that three of them had already been removed. Most of them are illegal only in that they do not have the final authorizing signature of none other than Barak himself.
"This is How Towns Are Built"
Gush Etzion Regional Council Chief Sha'ul Goldstein has said that the Jewish towns in Yesha were built the same way other Israeli towns were established: "We did a study of 200 towns in Israel, out of 1,000, and we found that every single one of them was first built, and only years later received final approval. Every single one! And this was true for towns built not only before the State was established, but even for towns built in the 1980s."
"To accuse us of building illegally, when a host of government offices helped us, and when this is how the entire State of Israel was built, is simply to lie and deceive," Goldstein said.
Police Strong-Arm Settlers
Earlier on Tuesday, at 6 a.m., a large police force arrived at the Havat Gilad start-up neighborhood in the Shomron and arrested seven residents. The police said they were looking for drugs, and that the group of seven had not shown up for questioning when summoned previously. However, the seven were released unconditionally later in the day – and the "suspicious substance" allegedly found on their person turned out to be none other than regular cigarettes.
Veteran Moshe Zar, father of one of the arrestees and whose son Gilad was murdered in a Palestinian terrorist roadside shooting several years ago, said he was sickened by the police behavior: "They threatened and tried to frighten… Their actions, which were apparently approved in high echelons, represent taking a country that could have been 100% and making it into something that is 0%."
The Residents Council also resolved last week that the "young settlements" must be strengthened. Youths from around Judea and Samaria, with some support from elsewhere in Israel, man many different tiny outposts throughout the area. The physical conditions are nearly unbearable, but the youths are armed with the knowledge that many areas of the Land of Israel were built up in exactly this manner.
The Residents' Council's Yossi Dagan explained why it is distributing cameras: "We have learned from the manipulations performed by the Arabs and the leftists, in selectively documenting and publicizing Jewish reactions to their own violence and provocations. Our youths will be at every point of friction and will reveal the truth."