The abandonment of the population in Yesha, in addition to being a political imperative against which Israel stands impotent, is thus also an economic imperative. To these two ingredients must be added the delegitimization of "the settlers, the destroyers of the peace process."

The above facts explain the Israeli government's inaction on the issue of the Yesha settlers. For a year and a half, Arafat has been declaring his intention to establish a state that will extend to the Green Line. Although the date originally was set for May 2000, it was postponed, and the final date is apparently the 13th of September. In this time span, the Israeli government, that of Barak and that of Netanyahu, could have given flesh and blood to the plan regarding those "blocs of settlement" about which there is ostensibly a national consensus, by annexing the territories in question to Israel--for our purposes, in Gush Etzion or in the territorial square formed by Karnei Shomron-Kedumim-Ariel-Shaarei Tikvah. The latter is an area of about 400 square kilometers where there is a Jewish majority that shields the soft underbelly of the Greater Tel Aviv area, and that no Israeli government has ceased to refer to as the minimum that is necessary to offset the vulnerability of Israel's "narrow waist" and so on. However, not only has nothing been done in this regard but, de facto if not de jure, the area has already been transferred (except for the IDF bases and the settlements) to Palestinian sovereignty, its designation as Area C being obviously fraudulent. Since the Barak government and its predecessor were and are well aware of their readiness to withdraw to the Green Line, they have had sufficient time to deal with the issue of compensation. And yet, for reasons cited above, nothing was done. This inaction well served the deception of the settlers: it instilled in them a faith that they would not be expelled, so that they did not consider organizing themselves to demand compensation.

If, at this point, an organization is formed at the last minute, the government will present the huge sums needed for compensation as a prescription for economic collapse. Thus the residents will be portrayed to the Israeli public as a band of swindlers seeking to get rich on the back of peace. The campaign of incitement, which has already begun in the press, is meant to divert public awareness from the settlers' existential distress to "extreme right-wing organizations," "the crazed settlers," "the underground," and so on.

It is an illusion that there is any "national camp" in the Knesset standing behind the settlers. The National Religious Party provided backing for the policies of the Barak government, so that its responsibility for the fate lying before the settlements in Yesha is not only no less than that of One Israel or Meretz but clearly greater. Any expectation of national responsibility from the Likud is self-deception. It was the Begin government that established the historical precedent for destroying Jewish settlements. It was Ariel Sharon, today's head of the Likud, who personally supervised the razing of the Sinai settlements; it was Yitzhak Shamir who led Israel to the Madrid Conference, which paved the way to the Oslo agreements; it was Binyamin Netanyahu who, in the Wye agreements, provided territorial continuity to the Palestinian state (something Yitzhak Rabin shied away from doing). As if all this were not enough, the Likud today is fragmented and impotent, and any attempt to rely on this broken reed is nothing but wishful thinking.

The Yesha Council is made up of excellent people, but this group lacks qualities of political leadership, let alone spiritual or ideological authority. Its political grasp is limited, and it lacks a basic capacity to consider issues objectively because of conflicting interests between different settlements and its complete dependency on government budgets.

Hence, if in normal times this is an efficient body mainly devoted to the building and expansion of settlements, then in days of existential distress, when the property, well-being, and lives of the residents of Yesha are in question, the tragic weakness of the members of this Council is exposed.

For at least seven years, since the signing of the Oslo agreements, the fate of settlement in Yesha has been clearly foreseeable. If this Council had been blessed with outstanding leadership, it would have organized in good time for the struggles ahead. Undoubtedly, a population of tens of thousands that is united by an existential threat to its property and life can be a powerful source of activism. Nothing, however, was done. Inaction gave individuals the illusory impression of "business as usual." The withholding of information, even when certainly not done with malicious intent, is tantamount to deception. And if today the large population of Yesha settlers is living in a Garden of Eden of fools, the responsibility for this rests first and foremost with the Yesha Council.

The reader may find it hard to believe that a process of such a critical nature, which may bring personal tragedy to 200,000 people, economic devastation to tens of thousands of households, and existential danger to the state has become government policy with no remedies even having been proposed. And indeed, who-ever is unfamiliar with the decision-making process of Israeli governments may well be surprised.

It must be borne in mind, however, that the political capitulation known as the "peace process" has been conducted without any preparation or long-range planning. It is all a matter of shooting from the hip, bringing in its course the collapse of one red line after another, the handing over of national assets, the loss of strategic strongholds, the relinquishment of water sources, the abandonment of allies, and the signing of treaties with a terrorist organization that, as a proxy of the Arab world,

Outpost               - 6 -               August-September 2000