The head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, has moved his office to the town of Evyatar, in the wake of attempts on the part of the Civil Administration to proceed toward its evacuation, as well as statements made by senior politicians indicating that Evyatar will indeed be dismantled, despite the huge price-tag attached.
On Sunday, the Civil Administration ruled that the existence of a planning application for the town as a whole does not constitute a legal impediment to proceeding with the settlement’s evacuation. Dagan, responding to the ruling, noted that, “First of all, I welcome the Civil Administration’s admission [in its response] that Evyatar is not constructed on privately held land,” as had been claimed, adding that, “It is scandalous that the IDF and Defense Ministry are relying on the excuse provided by terrorists and rioters from Bayta [a nearby Arab village] for uprooting a Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. There is no greater prize for terrorism than this. Now, Hamas can take this letter from the Defense Ministry and hang it on the walls in Bayta and Shechem.”
Dagan also noted that dismantling Evyatar would “grant a double prize [to terrorism] with this obsession with regard to destroying a settlement that was established as a Zionist response to a terrorist attack, and for now giving in to terrorism once again. [Destroying Evyatar] would simply encourage terrorists to continue with their methods, to throw rocks at soldiers and at citizens.”
He added, “How interesting that they’re always telling us how they don’t have sufficient manpower to deal with illegal Arab construction, and then suddenly the Civil Administration realizes it does know how to work on beyond midnight. Even though the demarcation lines were changed years ago, so that it was actually possible to clearly define Arab construction as illegal, the Civil Administration never saw fit to take any steps toward that end.
“Whenever we requested of them to enforce the law in Area C and demolish illegal Arab construction, they told us that they didn’t have the manpower to do so. Now it pains me to see how when it comes to construction by Jews, in an area where the government could easily regulate the legal status of the land – if it chose to do so – not only do they suddenly have sufficient manpower, but in order to hurry up the destruction, they manage to issue all the right paperwork at any hour of the night.”
Dagan also stressed that, “One thing is clear, at least – that there is no basis to the empty claims put forward by various political bodies that Evyatar is situated on private land. Now we know that only the lack of a political decision is preventing the normalization of the town’s legal status.”
