Central Command Chief General Tamir Yadai on Sunday rejected the criticism filed by the residents of the Evyatar outpost in Judea and Samaria regarding an order instructing them to evacuate. The criticism was submitted by the settlers alongside a construction plan aimed at preventing evictions. This means that as of next week, security forces are expected to start evicting the settlers and destroying their newly build, 40 or so homes.
Unless somebody above the General’s pay grade, say, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett (Yamina), would order his defense minister (Benny Gantz) to halt the destruction. There’s also the appeal to the High Court of Justice the residents are preparing. They argue that since the area is being evaluated as part of the process of turning it into state-owned land and as such available for Jewish settlement, the IDF should wait for the results of the evaluation. What’s the hurry?
The Deputy Attorney General for the Judea and Samaria Region, Lt. Col. Lahat Shemesh, justified the rejection of the criticism and said the outpost had been established illegally, and that dozens of buildings were erected there illegally. Lt. Col. Shemesh added that the establishment of the outpost led to an undermining of the stability of security in the area, which was expressed, among other things, in “dozens of significant disturbances,” which “affected the security assessment in the sector, and requires the allocation of many forces that are diverted from other operational missions, for all that this implies.”
The good Lt. Col. Was referring to the fact that hundreds of local Arabs are making it their main daily concern to attack and harass the Jewish residents of Evyatar, a community that was created in the first place to commemorate young Jews who were murdered in the nearby Tapuah junction by local Arab terrorists.
It would have been funny had it not also been so tragic: the people in charge of securing the lives of the Jews of Evyatar are annoyed because their presence there brings on murderous attacks which said security forces must now go over and stop. Jewish settlers can be so annoying…
In any event, the violent clashes between Arabs and the security forces take place around the outpost almost every day, and since the outpost was established at the beginning of May, four Arabs have been killed in clashes with security forces. So the military is obviously eager to remove those pesky Jews and go home.
Early last week, General Yadai imposed on Evyatar a military order allowing the evacuation of the entire outpost within eight days of the signing. The residents were given an extension to appeal the order, and filed such an appeal last Thursday, just before a possible eviction went into effect. That appeal was rejected outright Sunday night.
The High Court of Justice is probably also going to reject the settlers’ plea unless they land one of the conservative justices appointed by then-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Yamina). In the end, the Evyatar folks are hoping Prime Minister Bennett will prefer to avoid the evacuation of the outpost, at least in his first months as prime minister.
There’s a movement in the bizarre Bennett-Lapid coalition to offset the regulation of Jewish outposts (the code words for which are “young settlements”) with the legalizing of Bedouin settlements in the Negev. It may be a deal with the devil, but trading the survival of real, Jewish communities in exchange for large swaths of Negev lands may offer a happy, albeit short term, resolution.