The National Religious Party is threatening to submit a no-confidence motion if the government decides to impose a settlement freeze in Yesha. NRP head Rabbi Yitzchak Levy said today that he has heard rumors that Prime Minister Sharon may adopt Foreign Minister Peres\' plan not to expand the existing settlements geographically, but instead to allow \"natural growth\" only on existing areas. \"This will show Arafat that his violence has paid off,\" Rabbi Levy said, although he knows that his no-confidence bill has no chance of attaining a Knesset majority. Israel will release its official response to the Mitchell Report, in which the settlement freeze is proposed, this evening.
Atty. Elyakim Ha\'etzni, a veteran settlement leader from Kiryat Arba, warns that the government may accept a near-total freeze of settlement construction in Yesha, including a \"geographical limitation\" on \"natural growth.\" The implications, explains Ha\'etzni, are that it will not be possible to pave new roads, even in Israeli-controlled Area C such as eastern Jerusalem, nor to expropriate land for sewage, water, electricity, or other projects. In addition, the permitted \"natural growth\" would only be vertical, \"as in the ghettos of the Middle Ages.\" The Women in Green organization notes that this would represent a \"complete collapse of Sharon\'s previous positions\" - one that is not even called for by the Oslo accords.
Ha\'etzni, writing yesterday in Yediot Acharonot, negated the entire thesis of \"natural growth only.\" He wrote,
\"The settlement enterprise is not an attempt by the settlers to solve their housing problems. It is rather a direct attempt to expand the territorial base of Jewish settlement in Yesha... The poor families from Tekoa who lost their young sons last week did not arrive there in order to solve their housing problems, but rather to stake a Jewish peg in the heart of the Jewish people\'s national homeland. Many of them left fancy houses and lived for years in caravans out of a sense of mission: to bodily take part in the return of Israel to its Promised Land... The Prophet Amos, from Nokdim-Tekoa, expressed their mission very well: \'I [G-d] will return My people Israel, and they will rebuild desolate cities and will settle them. They will plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof, and will plant gardens and eat of their fruit. I will plant them on their Land, and they will not again be uprooted from their Land that I have given them.\'\"
Atty. Elyakim Ha\'etzni, a veteran settlement leader from Kiryat Arba, warns that the government may accept a near-total freeze of settlement construction in Yesha, including a \"geographical limitation\" on \"natural growth.\" The implications, explains Ha\'etzni, are that it will not be possible to pave new roads, even in Israeli-controlled Area C such as eastern Jerusalem, nor to expropriate land for sewage, water, electricity, or other projects. In addition, the permitted \"natural growth\" would only be vertical, \"as in the ghettos of the Middle Ages.\" The Women in Green organization notes that this would represent a \"complete collapse of Sharon\'s previous positions\" - one that is not even called for by the Oslo accords.
Ha\'etzni, writing yesterday in Yediot Acharonot, negated the entire thesis of \"natural growth only.\" He wrote,
\"The settlement enterprise is not an attempt by the settlers to solve their housing problems. It is rather a direct attempt to expand the territorial base of Jewish settlement in Yesha... The poor families from Tekoa who lost their young sons last week did not arrive there in order to solve their housing problems, but rather to stake a Jewish peg in the heart of the Jewish people\'s national homeland. Many of them left fancy houses and lived for years in caravans out of a sense of mission: to bodily take part in the return of Israel to its Promised Land... The Prophet Amos, from Nokdim-Tekoa, expressed their mission very well: \'I [G-d] will return My people Israel, and they will rebuild desolate cities and will settle them. They will plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof, and will plant gardens and eat of their fruit. I will plant them on their Land, and they will not again be uprooted from their Land that I have given them.\'\"