The Israeli government has built a road to the construction site of a seminary to be run by an extremist Jewish group on the US State Department's terrorist list, a TV station reported on Thursday. The site is an unauthorized settlement outpost in the West Bank.
Channel Two TV showed the new road, freshly paved, snaking through gentle hills to "Tapuah West," where a seminary to perpetuate the teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a US-born extremist denounced as a hatemonger toward Arabs, is being built.
Kahane was assassinated in New York in November, 1990. He served a term in the Israeli parliament in the 1980s, but his party was banned from the next election because of its racism.
The Yesha Settlers Council issued a statement denying the TV report, saying that the outpost received government approval five years ago.
Posters on lamp posts and bulletin boards in Jerusalem invite the public to a ceremony at the seminary to be held tomorrow night, offering transport in an armored bus. The evening is dedicated to Kahane, as well as his son and daughter-in-law, who were killed in a West Bank ambush in December, 2000.
One of the groups signed on the base of the poster is "The Yeshiva of the Jewish Idea," the religious seminary and movement that spreads Kahane's philosophy. The group, along with others associated with the late extremist, are on the State Department's list of terror organizations.
Channel Two TV visited the West Bank site and showed the wooden school building nearing completion. The unauthorized outpost near the Palestinian city of Nablus is a few hundred meters from the main settlement of Tapuah, founded by followers of Kahane, who preached that Arabs must be expelled from Israel and the West Bank.
Kahane's followers have been repeatedly accused of attacking Palestinians. Some have been convicted, and others have been placed under lengthy house arrest.
Channel Two estimated the cost of the new road at 1 million shekels (US$230,000) but Yesha said in its statement that it had cost less than half that.
The prime minister's spokesman was not immediately available for comment on the TV report.
Under the terms of the US-backed "road map" peace plan, Israel must remove dozens of outposts put up in the West Bank since March, 2001. This week the Israeli government listed four outposts for evacuation, but Tapuah West was not on the list.
David Haivri, an Israeli settler interviewed by Channel Two next to the new building, scoffed at the government's stated intention of removing all the unauthorized outposts.
"We are the law here," he said.
Critics of the government charge that its outpost removal program is a sham, since most of the outposts taken down so far are uninhabited, consisting of a temporary structure or a container, while populated outposts have been largely untouched.
The only populated outpost on the latest list is Ginnot Arieh, with 25 settlers. Their backers pledge to bring thousands to the site to stop the dismantling. Channel 10 TV reported on Thursday that the army would send 3,500 soldiers to the site, expecting the evacuation to take three days.
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