Jewish settlers living in this cluster of trailers in the West Bank warn they'll resist a government decision to remove them as part of the implementation of a US-backed peace plan that mandates evacuation of dozens of unauthorized settlement outposts like this.
One Israeli declared Monday that he would never leave Ginnot Arieh alive.
PHOTO: AP
The "road map" plan requires Israel to take down all outposts erected in the West Bank since March 2001, along with stopping construction in veteran settlements. Israel's compliance has been spotty since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accepted the plan -- with reservations -- in June.
Soon after, soldiers dismantled a few of the more than 100 outposts, but momentum fizzled as the peace process bogged down and Palestinians ignored the road map requirement that they dismantle violent groups responsible for deadly attacks against Israelis during three years of violence.
Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz agreed on Sunday to order four of the outposts -- three of them uninhabited -- dismantled in the coming days. One of the three, Havat Shaked, has been evacuated several times before but rebuilt each time.
The fourth is Ginnot Arieh, about 7km northeast of the Palestinian city of Ramallah and home to some 25 settlers.
Dismantling uninhabited outposts is convenient for the government, because it minimizes the threat of confrontation with settlers. Still, some settlers defend even uninhabited areas, because they see them as the kernel of future settlements.
The Defense Ministry would not say when exactly the outposts would be taken down, but the military said the commander overseeing the West Bank, Major-General Moshe Kaplinski, signed an order Monday for their removal.
One resident of Ginnot Arieh said he would never abandon the stony hills where he lives.
"God says `live here' -- and that's it," said Pinchas Yamin, 27, an Orthodox Jew and disc jockey at a settler radio station. "I won't leave alive. If a soldier wants, he can take me, but not alive. This is my home."
Oren Rund, secretary of the outpost, said thousands of settlers would flock here if soldiers try to force them off the land.
The unauthorized outposts -- none of which house more than a few dozen families, and many of which are unpopulated -- are widely viewed as a separate issue from the 150 established West Bank and Gaza Strip settlements where some 220,000 Israelis live.
Because the government has hardly interfered and in some cases even provided utilities and military guard, many see the outposts as a way for Sharon to get around his promises that no new settlements would be established.
In fact, the government has been investigating for nearly a year whether some of the outposts might be considered legal.
"What is illegal will be remo-ved," Sharon said in a recent speech, without elaborating. He promised to carry out the evacuations in the "least painful way possible" for settlers.
Past efforts to remove outposts have led to hours-long standoffs between soldiers and radical settlers that sometimes ended in scuffles and protesters being dragged off.
Such scenes, played out before TV cameras, are calculated to underscore the difficulty any government would have in removing settlers.
Many outpost residents are observant Jews who believe the West Bank is part of the biblical land of Israel and must remain under Israeli control. Some of them establish outposts as gestures of defiance after Palestinian attacks.
Ginnot Arieh was such a case: It was set up after a settler, Arieh Hershkowitz, was shot to death in an attack nearby three years ago.
Deputy Education Minister Zvi Hendel, who visited the 10 mobile homes here Monday, said his hard-line National Union Party would withdraw from Sharon's coalition and launch an unspecified "struggle" if the outpost is removed.
Hendel's party and the hawkish National Religious Party, which has also threatened to quit the coalition, could bring down Sharon's government.
The government says it has taken down or prevented the establishment of 43 outposts since June. Peace Now, an Israeli group opposed to the settlements, says Israel has taken down only eight of the old outposts, but settlers have established five new ones that remain standing. The group says over 100 outposts remain, some established before March 2001.
But Ginnot Arieh settlers said it doesn't matter if courts decide the outpost is "unauthorized." For them, only God's law matters.
"The whole world must understand that this is our land, the Jewish people's," said Yamin, who slid his M-16 assault rifle under the table and out of view when he invited journalists inside for coffee. "We live here and we die here -- and that's that."
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