Wed., March 09, 2005 Haaretz
Who's kidding whom?
Sharon knew exactly how settlement outposts began
By Amos Harel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/549584.html

In the spring of 1998, the commander of the Samaria Battalion, Col.
Yehuda Shaked, hosted the press for a tour of the hills around the
settlement of Itamar. The reporters were astonished to find a large
number of outposts scattered on the hilltops. The battalion commander
didn't understand their surprise. The outposts were built without
permission, he admitted, but "the system" approved them retroactively.
The process, he explained, is called "laundering." Indeed just that
morning, Eli Cohen, the defense minister's adviser on settlement at the
time (and ambassador to Japan now) visited the outposts to make
arrangements for their legal status.

A headline in Haaretz that week added a new term to the lexicon: the
Defense Ministry was "laundering" illegal outposts. The ministry refused
to react. The minister's adviser's schedule is personal. The media, as
usual, lost interest. And the hilltops of Samaria continued to sprout
outposts, with all the relevant agencies and ministries happy to take part.

There will be a lot of hypocritical eye-rolling in the coming days in
response to Talia Sasson's report on the outposts. But beyond the ruckus
in the press, it is doubtful that there will be much change as a result.
Most of all, because the right is correct when it says that this is a
rare case in which the main culprit, the inventor of the system, has
appointed an investigator whose authority is not at all clear to examine
a historical process that he should know best of all. Can Ariel Sharon,
who loved spending the nights in the Prime Minister's Residence with
rolled-out maps and his friend Ze'ev "Zambish" Hever, father of the
outposts, really be shocked by what Sasson finds? The main public
service the report will provide when it is formally presented during a
press conference will therefore be an authorized, organized history of
what happened.

The picture is well-known to all those involved and has even been
reported with relative frequency in the press: the settlers initiate,
the World Zionist Organization's Settlement Division provides support,
the Housing Ministry provides financing, the roads and fences are put up
by the army, on the grounds that it must "defend Jews wherever they are,
irrespective of the legality of the settlement." The various forms of
fraud have been revealed in the past. There was the fake antenna near
Pnei Hever that was claimed to be a research and development station,
and two Israeli guards were killed there by accidental friendly fire two
years ago. And there was a plethora of initiatives, all in the service
of the idea. Who has ever heard of the "Jericho Outskirts Weather Farm"
at the western edge of Jericho? Five years, 17 families, 11 births in
the last eight months. It's there to stay, with or without the
appropriate permits.

There was nonetheless a bit of a disturbance in the corridors of power
on the eve of the report's publication. Some of the agencies tried
kicking responsibility for what happened upstairs. At a certain stage,
senior officials in the Defense Ministry tried to blame the Civil
Administration in the territories. The idea dropped from the agenda when
it became apparent just how much paperwork had accumulated in the Civil
Administration, documenting the direct involvement of chiefs of staff,
major generals and ministerial bureaus. Yesterday, a lot of fingers were
pointed at the WZO's Settlement Division. But it also don't want to be a
scapegoat.

Many documents reveal a bit about how the system worked. A letter from
Avigdor Yitzhaki, director general at the time in the Prime Minister's
Office, goes in June 2002 to the division to deal with a series of
outposts "just like any other settlements in the realm of your
responsibility." A letter from Ron Shechner, the defense minister's
adviser on settlements, goes out in February 2003, authorizing aid to
another list of outposts and thereby "launders" them. In both letters,
the lists include the names of outposts that are now considered "illegal."

At the WZO they not only feel "the bastards changed the rules" but that
the rules have been changed retroactively. In recent years, they say,
not a shekel went into an outpost without the necessary approval from
the offices of Sharon and Mofaz. In contacts with the WZO's Settlement
Division, Defense Ministry officials emphasized the security aspect.
"Security elements," like lighting, must be provided to even the most
dubious of outposts because of the state's responsibility for the safety
of the residents. Moreover, no authority gave the settlement division
any list of outposts that it must not finance.

The Sasson report is supposed to help the law enforcement authorities
deal more effectively with the new outposts that go up. In effect, the
state has already conducted legal proceedings against 12 outposts but
the evacuation was postponed the minute Sharon managed to persuade the
Americans that fighting over them now would take unnecessary energy
before the main mission, the disengagement. Meanwhile, the the Civil
Administration has become more efficient at tracking the movement of
mobile homes in the areas. The army makes it more difficult nowadays to
put up a new trailer to fortify an outpost. But it is doubtful that any
of this will be enough or Sasson's recommendations, when the real test
comes. The Central Command expects that parallel with the disengagement,
the settlers will conduct an operation put up an outpost for every
settlement removed in Gaza. And considering the clashes anticipated this
summer, it is doubtful whether the report, no matter how comprehensive,
will stop Sharon's friend and pupil Zambish and his cohorts from putting
up dozens more outposts.