Evyatar outpost eviction can take place after seven days, IDF says
The West Bank settler outpost Evyatar can be evacuated seven days after June 20, the IDF said as it rejected a legal appeal by the fledgling community.
Evyatar was “absolutely built against the law,” the IDF Deputy Attorney-General Lt.-Col. Lahat Shemesh for Judea and Samaria stated in a written response to Evyatar’s attorneys.
“Worse,” he wrote, “the establishment of the illegal outpost was carried out during a complex period in which security forces and the regional authorities faced significant security challenges, both in the Judea and Samaria sector and in many other sectors (including Operation Guardians of the Walls).”
The building of Evyatar inflamed that immediate region of the West Bank and “required the allocation of forces that were diverted from other operational tasks,” he said.
Outpost residents could now appeal that decision to the High Court of Justice, but have yet to do so.
The Samaria Regional Council is also hopeful its submission to the IDF of a master plan to legalize the outpost would be enough to stave off the eviction, irrespective of the legal appeal.
The master plan called for a new neighborhood of the Kfar Tapuah settlement, even though it does not abut that community.
The outpost, which was built last month to protest a terror attack at the Tapuah junction, that claimed the life of Yehuda Guetta, 19, now encompasses 50 families.
It’s located near the Tapuah junction in the Samaria region of the West Bank and is an initiative of the Nahala movement and the Council.
Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan said the IDF’s decision to push forward with an eviction was “shameful and disgraceful.”
The construction of the community was a response to terror and not the cause of terror, he said. Neither the IDF or the Defense Ministry should allow Palestinian rioters to set policy for the state of Israel, particularly when it comes to the evacuation of settlements, he said.
“There is no greater reward than this for terrorism,” Dagan said. “Hamas can print the letter [about an Evyatar eviction] from the Defense Ministry and hang it on the walls in Beta and Nablus,” Dagan added.
He noted that the outpost was not constructed on private Palestinian property and could be legalized. He referred to the Channel 12 report that its evacuation would cost NIS 10 million and called for that money to be spent authorizing the community.
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not evict the outpost and spoke in support of its authorization, but left the issue for his successor Naftali Bennett who has yet to speak about the matter.
Evyatar’s evacuation or eviction is considered one of the tests of the new coalition sworn in last week.
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on Monday called for Evyatar’s evacuation noting that this was not an issue of Right or Left.
Dagan and others on the Right shot back that Israel should apply the same standards to the settlements as it did to illegal Palestinian building. They noted that if Evyatar’s eviction was above partisan politics then so was the pending eviction of the illegal West Bank Bedouin encampment of Khan al-Ahmar, which was slated for demolition in 2018 but against which no steps have yet to be taken.