Israel’s outpost approvals boost settlers, deepen conflict with Palestinians
GIVAT HAREL, West Bank — One day in the fall of 1998, Shivi Drori, a young farmer fresh out of the Israeli army, brought three trailers to a rugged hilltop deep in the occupied West Bank and began to plant raspberries.
It was an unauthorized settlement in the heart of territory claimed by the Palestinians, but Drori, now 49, said he considered himself to be “in a way, working with the government.”
Today, more than 90 Jewish families live in what has become the thriving village of Givat Harel — full of concrete homes with breathtaking views, a crowded nursery and an award-winning vineyard.
Just down the road is Turmus Aya, a Palestinian village that lost part of its land to the nearby Shilo settlement two decades ago. One of the villagers, Amal Abu Awad, 58, has watched her world shrink since the settlers arrived.
She said settlers prevented her late husband from reaching his grazing land and periodically uprooted her olive trees. Last week, masked vandals attacked her house, armed with clubs and knives, shouting insults as they smashed windows and broke her solar panels.
Her seven sons now take turns perching on the roof overnight, watching out for vigilantes.
“This was our land long before they thought to claim it,” she said.
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s new far-right government announced last week it would legalize Givat Harel, along with nine other unauthorized West Bank outposts, boosting settlers’ morale and strengthening their hold on the land.
Drori’s village, on a ridge between the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Nablus, is part of an extensive network of 150 outposts now home to some 20,000 settlers, according to anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now. The outposts appeared over the past three decades, many built at least partially on private Palestinian land, Peace Now says.
While the outposts were established without formal government authorization, they often received tacit government support or even public funding. Over 20 percent of the outposts, like Givat Harel, have been retroactively legalized, and more are in the pipeline.
Anti-settlement groups and experts describe a steady government effort to entrench Israeli rule over the West Bank and grab more occupied land that Palestinians seek for a future state. Strings of strategically located outposts have changed the landscape of the territory — threatening to make a future Palestinian state little more than a shriveled constellation of disconnected enclaves.
“We see this as a very big move toward annexation,” said Ziv Stahl, director of Israeli rights group Yesh Din. “Cementing the existence of these places blocks any hope for Palestinians to ever get their land back.”