The Morning After: IDF, Police Evacuate 5 Activists' Outposts

Settlers Star of David at Ma'alot Halhul

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

Hana Levi Julian. (IsraelNN.com). 19 Tishrei 5768, October 1, '07. After a chilly night in the hills of Judea and Samaria, dozens of activists awoke to find themselves being evicted from the sites where they hope to build new Jewish communities in the near future.

Hundreds of Jews had spent Sunday night celebrating the holiday of Sukkot on the breezy hilltops, where sparks of light twinkling in the inky darkness were the only signs of other Jewish communities already well-established in the areas.

Although determined to stay, activists at two of the sites were removed by IDF soldiers and police in the early morning light. However, some of the activists fled to nearby vineyards to escape evacuation.

Police swooped down on the dozens of people who camped out in Judea at Ma’alot Halhul in the Judean Hills south of Hevron, evicting them by 8:00 a.m.

One young woman activist said that five black-suited police officers tried to force them off the site Sunday night, but that the activists far outnumbered them. The police later returned with reinforcements and wrecked two sukkot that had been erected, but no serious violence took place. One soldier told IsraelNN.com, "Most of us support you."

Those who stayed overnight at Nofei Hashmonaim, in the Binyamin district, were taken out of the area by police in two groups. One was dropped off at the nearby community of Gamzu and the other was taken to roads leading to Jerusalem.

Activists at three other sites – Harchivi near Elon Moreh, Shvut Ami near Kedumim and Givat HaEitam on the outskirts of Efrat--were joined by supporters from nearby communities as they prayed the morning service. IDF soldiers and police officers were making preparations to carry out evictions there as well.

The ascent to the sites of the five hoped-for communities was carried out Sunday with smiles and song as activists celebrated Sukkot, when holiday booths are built as a reminder of the clouds of glory that protected the Jews in the desert on their way to the Promised Land.

Chief Rabbi Shlomo Riskin led hundreds of Efrat residents to the site of Givat Eitam (Eitam Hill), earmarked to become the city’s newest neighborhood. The site is located within the city limits at the northern edge of Efrat and is intended to connect the eastern and western parts of Gush Etzion.

Another group of activists marched to Shvut Ami (“the return of my people”), to be built in western Samaria, and more hiked their way to to the hilltop of Harhivi (meaning “expand”, based on the passage in Isaiah 54: “Expand the place of thy tent… for thou shalt break forth both right and left”), located in eastern Samaria.

Those who marched to the sites included dozens of children under age 12 and hundreds of teens. “But there were many adults in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s,” said one activist. “Some were in their 70's.”

Plans are still on for Tuesday’s march to Homesh, one of the four northern Samarian towns destroyed during the Disengagement of 2005.

The organizers have made no secret of their plans to rebuild the town, and have made dozens of ascents to the area over the past several months. MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) called on the Defense and Public Security Ministers to instruct the police and army to permit and protect the marchers.

Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu and Hillel Fendel contributed to this story

Pioneers on Their Way to 5 New Towns

Hillel Fendel, IsraelNationalNews, 30.09.07 18 Tishrei 5768. All eyes are on the clock, with 1:30 PM set as H-hour for the ascent to five new hilltop outposts in Judea and Samaria. Clashes with soldiers and police are expected. As of 12 noon Sunday, a group of idealistic youths was already climbing the hilltop near Kiryat Arba set to be named Maalot Halhoul. Near Hashmonaim, in western Binyamin, hundreds of people are making their way to a site they wish to build as the community of Nofei Hashmonaim, just ten kilometers east of Ben Gurion International Airport. The army has declared the area a closed military zone, and is out in force to prevent the Jews from arriving.

In Efrat, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and hundreds of townspeople are set to gather at 1 PM, preparing to march to the site of Eitam Hill, in the northern end of the city. The organizers say the hill, which connects eastern and western Gush Etzion, "belongs to Efrat, but is being stolen from us by the political [partition] fence. Handing it over to the Arab enemy will endanger all of Gush Etzion and Jerusalem."

Similar attempts to create new Jewish towns are underway in western Shomron, near Kedumim, at a site to be called Shvut Ami ("the return of my nation"), and in eastern Shomron, near Elon Moreh, at a hilltop already named Harhivi (meaning "Expand," based on Isaiah 54: "Expand the place of thy tent... for thou shalt break forth both right and left").

"It would seem that the Israel Defense Forces would be interested in defending Israeli interests," one of the leading organizers, Datit Yitzchaki, told Arutz-7, "and would allow us to build these new towns. Instead, the Olmert government makes plans to turn over these areas to our enemy - repeating the mistakes of the Disengagement and similarly endangering hundreds of thousands more Israelis - and gives political orders to the army to stop us."

Asked what the pioneers are bringing with them to the sites, Yitzchaki said, "They are bringing what they need to remain out in the fields or hills for 24 hours. It depends on how violent the army is going to be. We don't think the army will be able to stay in the area in such force for 24 hours - so we'll wait them out if we have to. We have time. As the motto goes, the Nation of Israel does not fear a long trek."

Three planners of the new Hashmonaim community were arrested in a Wednesday morning raid. The police also confiscated from their homes items such as orange hats (orange being the color of the Land of Israel movement), bumper stickers and T-shirts promoting settlement in Yesha. The most common slogan: "Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) - We Continue With Our Heads Held High."

For more information on the plans to start the new Jewish towns, click here.

Some 20 rabbis of Gust Etzion have signed a proclamation in favor of the attempts to build the new towns. The rabbis state that the next step in settling the Land of Israel - "a commandment that is equal to all the others in the Torah" - is now to "build the hilltops, whose construction and development are being held up for various strange reasons stemming primarily from the weakness of our leadership, and also from a failure to see the reality religiously, politically and demographically."

Plans are also underway to march to Homesh, one of the four Shomron towns destroyed during the Disengagement of 2005. The organizers have made no secret of their plans to rebuild the town, and have made dozens of ascents to the area over the past several months. MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) called on the Defense and Public Security Ministers to instruct the police and army to permit and protect the marchers.

We have been warned!

Elyakim Haetzni, Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), 05/09/07. There was another summer like this one preceding Yom Kippur in ’73, but this time the surprise attack is being readied from within, and the calamity will be diplomatic. I’m referring to the ritual sacrifice that the Bush administration is preparing for us this November that goes by the name of a “peace conference.”

Settlements in the "Land of Benjamin"
"Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; In the morning he devours the prey, And in the evening he divides the spoil."
Genesis 49:27

The role of the sacrificial lamb will be filled by Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, hundreds of Jewish communities, and hundreds of thousands of Jews that will become refugees in their own land ­ all this on the backdrop of national, societal, and diplomatic collapse. The kindling and the fire for the sacrifice will be brought by Shimon Peres and his perpetual partner in crime, Terje Larsen. Serving them are Haim Ramon, Ehud Olmert, and Abu Mazen. Spurring them on are two evil and ambitious women who, like the most destructive tornadoes, are called by cute nicknames: Tzippi and Condi. On the tombstone the gravediggers will engrave the words “The Diplomatic Horizon” (for the Palestinians) and/or “Principles for the Final Status Agreement” and/or “Framework Agreement for the Establishment of a Palestinian State.” The conference will deal with “core issues”, that is to say it will uproot the core and the heart of our hold on our land: Jerusalem, borders, refugees, destruction of the settlements.

Discussions on these matters are being held continually and urgently to the end of bringing the sacrificial lamb to Washington on time, already bound and readied for slaughter. There are those who are working to ensure that the sacrificial feast will be well attended -- from Morocco in the West to the Gulf States in the East. Israel’s enemies have waited 40 years for this moment when Israel will be forced to regurgitate all that she swallowed during the Six Day War. Their eyes will finally merit to see the ceremony of subjugation whereby the Jews will return to the Arabs their lost honor and resume their proper places. To our enemies’ good fortune, manning the helm of Israel’s ship of state is a man supremely appropriate to the task of self-administering this coup de grace to the Jews -- a man dogged by failures and accusations of corruption, whose personal attributes embody all that is weak, rotten, spoilt, and foundering among the Jews in their land at this hour . . .

At this “peace” conference, the enemies of Israel from the East and from the West will dictate the decree that Olmert and his friends are writing now in absolute secret together with the Americans and the Arabs while the Israeli public, including the national camp and the settlers, twiddle their thumbs. It’s comforting to tell ourselves soothing tales such as how Olmert is weak and Abu Mazen is even weaker, and that both of them lack the standing and support among their people to undertake such far-reaching diplomatic initiatives. There are no lack of such rationalizing yarns. Whoever calms themselves in this way doesn't understand the nature and quality of the liquidation ceremony that’s being prepared for us.

This ceremony doesn't require any strength, in fact it doesn't require anything at all except for a declaratory statement, ink on paper, the most feeble exhalation of breath, an effort that even a dying man could make without difficulty. However, a declaration like this is enough to bring about, in the words of Shimon Peres, “the concluding chapter of the conflict with the Palestinians,” and, in actual truth, the concluding chapter of Israel’s independence. After this, Israel will be a state in name only. In reality Israel will become a protectorate of the United Nations, whose foreign policy and security are given into the hands of the Quartet, and whose security, that is to say our lives, are entrusted to international forces in the North, center, and South of the country.

At the sacrificial peace conference in Washington, Israel will likely obligate itself to establish a Palestinian state on its ancestral inheritance. The capitol of the new state will be Jerusalem, and not even one Jew will be allowed to live within its boundaries.

It doesn't matter that the conference will not determine on which street in Jerusalem and over which hill or through which valley the border will pass. It is of no significance that the conference won't decide how many Arab “refugees” we'll be forced to swallow. What will be determined, irrevocably and eternally, this coming year or next year at the latest, is Palestinian sovereignty as a diplomatic, international, fact ­ with finality. The rest truly isn't important. So too when they signed the Oslo Accords with only the “Declaration of Principles.” In its wake, as thunder follows lightning, we were hit by the “interim agreement” with all its details that demanded actualization: areas A, B, and C, the Palestinian “police”, inserting a terror state infrastructure from Tunis into our borders, and all the rest of the insane arrangements that buried 1,500 Jews in their land and prepared the state for its final act of self-immolation in the guise of a Palestinian state that will turn life in this land into a living hell -- an irrevocable living hell.

It’s not important that the governmental apparatuses of the Palestinian state will be weak or even non-existent. It doesn't matter whether a prime minister or the head of some terrorist faction will rule. It’s not important if this state has no economy and will live on the handouts that Israel, the Europeans, and the Americans pay to the gangsters as protection money for a modicum of quiet. The world contains a number of such non-functional states. Somalia, for example, is ruled by gangs of tribal thieves and thugs, but that doesn't in the least detract from Somalian sovereignty and from the land remaining the land of Somalia according to international law.

Herzl had a vision of a Jewish state arising with international legal recognition. Now this vision has been turned on its head, and a foreign entity is achieving international recognition as sovereign over the Land of Israel. And who is promoting this travesty? The Jews themselves.

What is the irredeemable, eternal meaning of Palestinian sovereignty? When Israel liberated Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza in the Six Day War, she didn’t conquer land that belonged to any sovereign power. Neither Jordan in Judea and Samaria nor Egypt in Gaza had any sovereign rights in those territories. Both had invaded those territories in 1948 in order to frustrate the League of Nations decision of November 29, 1947 recognizing Israel. Egypt never claimed sovereignty over Gaza and established military rule there from the beginning. Jordan, in contravention of international law, attempted to establish sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, but renounced this aspiration on its own initiative in 1988.

Only because of this vacuum in sovereignty was Israel authorized to utilize state lands to settle Jews in Yesha or to settle the lands in any way. Had there been a legal sovereign before Israel’s takeover of those territories, the Hague Convention would have forbidden Israel from making fundamental changes to the status quo, including the utilization of state lands. International law views the conquering military administration as custodian over the occupied territories until they are returned to the original sovereign in a future peace agreement. Until then, the conquered lands are held in trust by the occupying power. In the same way, the conqueror is forbidden from excavating antiquities located in occupied territories. They too are held in trust for the conquered power that will eventually regain sovereignty. Therefore, coins from the Great Revolt or the Bar Kochba Revolt, bearing images of the Holy Temple and other Jewish symbols, will belong to the Palestinians the moment they became sovereign over Judea and Samaria; Israel will be obligated to give up all the Jewish antiquities that she’s excavated since ’67. All this we will bring upon ourselves the moment a Jewish hand signs an agreement granting Palestinian sovereignty over the Land of Israel.

For the Palestinians to win eternal sovereignty over our homeland, it doesn’t matter that Abu Mazen today happens to be weak, or if the day after signing an agreement he resumes his alliance with Hamas, or that he resigns, or is assassinated. From the moment that Palestine is declared a state, what is done can never be undone. The Palestinians, of course, will instigate terror and wars. The IDF might conquer Shechem over and over again, but will always be forced to leave and return the land to the Palestinian sovereign. This is because the land has become Palestinian land according to international law from the moment that Palestinian sovereignty is officially recognized. Just so was Berlin conquered and destroyed and divided, but in the end returned to Germany as its capitol. Just so the Nazis came and went, but Germany remained.

I've already described how this scenario is viewed under international law. The giants in the field, professors Stone, Rostow, and Schwabel, have proven how the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine, granted by the League of Nations to Britain over the Land of Israel, are in force in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza until this day. According to the Mandate, the area of the Land of Israel is allocated under international law as the national homeland of the Jewish nation ‘in recognition of the historic right of the Jewish people to reestablish their national home in Palestine’ (including, of course, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza). Why are the provisions of the Mandate in force to this day despite the fact that the League of Nations has passed from the world and been replaced by the United Nations, and despite the fact that England is no longer here? The professors have explained that although a part of the lands of the Mandate have become the internationally recognized State of Israel and although another part of the lands of the Mandate east of the Jordan River have become the internationally recognized State of Jordan, a third part of the Mandate lands, that include Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, were left without a recognized sovereign. As long as international law doesn’t officially recognize any other sovereignty, they'll continue to be governed by the provisions of the Mandate, which states, inter alia, that state lands are to be used for intensive Jewish settlement, to encourage aliyah, and names the Jewish Agency as a tool to serve those ends.

When will these Mandate provisions cease to apply? When another sovereign will be declared over Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jerusalem. In the first stage, Israel abdicated her right to declare her sovereignty over Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and left those lands undefined and ownerless. Now she is moving to the next stage, the stage of the historic terminus of Jewish rights over the Land of Israel, the stage of voluntary relinquishment of sovereignty and of transferring her rights to an alien power. In all the years of our exile and persecution, there was not found among the Jewish people any authority willing to sever the people from its beloved land. We had to return and persevere here for 120 years, undergoing difficult and bitter trials, in order to establish a state authorized under international law to give the Land of Israel a decree of divorce in the name of the Jewish People, now and forever.

Intensifying the heartbreak is the fact that Judea, Samaria, and Gaza are the only remaining territories on the entire earth (excepting the South Pole) which remain ownerless ­ as if an invisible hand guarded the ancient Jewish home for the Jewish people. And now that people’s representative is pushing away this hand in an act of historic betrayal that will resound throughout the generations. Now the more we ground and strengthen our claim that we’re the real and legal owners of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jerusalem, the more we’ll ground and strengthen the newly acquired right of the Palestinians to those lands. After all, who is most authorized to gift and grant ownership over land if not the rightful owner? He and only he can legally effectuate the transfer!

When this despicable act will be final, all else will flow from it. Whether the Israeli army drags the Jews out by their hair from their homes on land that has become “Palestine,” or whether it will be left to the Palestinian murderers in uniform to do the job by themselves, from the moment land comes under Palestinian sovereignty, that will be the end of all Jewish life there.

One can almost hear the destroyers talking, from Ramon to Livni and from Olmert to Peres: Soon the Palestinians will come and sweep away everything with a giant broom, the legal and established cities together with the “illegal” outposts and hilltops. Nothing will remain of the hated settlement enterprise, and together with its disappearance will come the collapse of those that bore it, the religious and national camps that endanger leftist rule. Our rulers are an elite that sprouted from what used to be called “the rule of the proletariat”, in whose name they meant to appropriate the state in perpetuity. While the Socialist rationalizations have passed from the world and the elites represent no one but themselves, the socialist heirs still intend to rule in perpetuity.

I don't bother to ask, “Where is Netanyahu?” or “Where is the Likud and its Knesset members?” at this fateful hour. Neither am I asking where Lieberman is or what Rav Ovadia and his party are doing. I'm asking the settlers whose lands will be the first the Palestinian bulldozer overturns: “Where are you?!” “Going up to Homesh”? The return to Homesh isn't taking place in a void. Homesh is not suspended in thin air. This enterprise only makes sense and has purpose as part of a struggle for our continued existence in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, and Jerusalem that is now in immediate danger of destruction.

We need to gather all the Jews ­ all those who remain Jews ­ while there’s still time and embark on a struggle to the bitter end in order to prevent at any price taking the one step from which there’s no return, the one additional step that will pull the ground from under us and fling us into the abyss of Palestinian sovereignty.

Remember, we've been warned!

Elyakim HaEtzni

Attorney Elyakim HaEtzni was among Hebron's first settlers and is a prolific publicist for Eretz Yisrael causes. Contact him at ehaetzni@netvision.net.