Israel to legalize outpost in West Bank
JERUSALEM — Israel on Sunday said it plans to legalize an isolated West Bank outpost in response to the murder of one of its residents in a shooting attack last month.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his weekly Cabinet meeting that his government will legalize Havat Gilad to “allow the continuing of normal life there.”
“Whoever thought that through the reprehensible murder of a resident of Havat Gilad, a father of six, that our spirit can be broken and we can be weakened, is making a bitter mistake,” Netanyahu said.
Last month, Rabbi Raziel Shevah, 35, was shot dead from a passing vehicle as he drove near his home in the unauthorized settlement outpost near the Palestinian city of Nablus. The Israeli military is still searching the area for suspects.
Israel captured the West Bank, with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, in the 1967 Mideast war, areas the Palestinians want for a future state. Israel has established about 120 West Bank settlements, which it considers legal. About 100 settlement outposts have been erected without official approval, but Israel generally tolerates them.
Havat Gilad, a community of a few hundred Israelis, is among these rogue outposts and is located deep inside the West Bank, away from areas Israel expects to keep under any peace deal with the Palestinians. Critics see their expansion as complicating peace efforts.
The anti-settlement group Peace Now called the effort to legalize the outpost a “cynical exploitation of the murder.”