Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times
The Ulpana neighborhood in the established settlement of Beit El, West Bank.
JERUSALEM ? The Israeli government on Tuesday retroactively legalized three Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank, and moved to delay the scheduled evacuation of a fourth, in a provocative move that some critics said marked the first establishment of new settlements in two decades.
But while antisettlement advocates saw it as a significant shift in policy that could undermine the prospects for a two-state solution ? and the United States and other foreign governments immediately raised concerns about the move ? a spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that it was simply a matter of resolving technical problems such as improper permits and mistakenly building on the wrong hill.
?One can be critical of the Israeli settlement policy, that?s everybody?s right, but you can?t tell me that the Israeli government has built new settlements, and you can?t tell me this is legalizing unauthorized outposts,? said the Netanyahu spokesman, Mark Regev. ?These decisions are procedural or technical. They don?t change anything whatsoever on the ground.?
As with most matters in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is disagreement over the basic facts concerning the three settlements, where 188 families live. Mr. Regev cited government decisions regarding two of them, Bruchin and Sansana, going back to 1983, and a 1991 authorization for the third, Rechelim, and denied that they were ?outposts,? the most fiercely fought-over category of settlements.
Michael Sfard, a legal adviser to Yesh Din, a human rights group that helped bring the legal cases against the settlements, pointed to two of the government?s own reports on illegal outposts that listed the three as problematic.
?The question is whether you can retroactively legalize it,? he said. ?This government only now reaches the crossroads, the dilemma: it has to choose between the rule of law and ideology.?
The international community broadly views settlement in the West Bank as illegal, but Israel draws a distinction between those communities it has officially sanctioned and outposts that settlers built without permission.
Hagit Ofran, who monitors settlement growth for Peace Now, said 17 such outposts were being challenged in court, and that the legalization of the three signaled a dangerous precedent, because ?no government before ever dared to take such an action.?
The State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said the United States was concerned by the decision and was seeking clarification from the Israelis.
?We don?t think this is helpful to the process and we don?t accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity,? she said.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, condemned the legalization, saying, ?Netanyahu has pushed things to a dead end yet again.?
Perhaps even more significant is the case of Ulpana, a spinoff of the settlement of Bet El, which was built with government authorization and subsidies, but sits on private Palestinian land whose sale is being challenged in court.
Last year, the Netanyahu administration promised to remove all settlements on private lands, and told the Supreme Court it would evacuate five buildings housing 30 families in Ulpana by May 1. Now, it is asking the court for more time to sort out the specifics regarding the sale, and Mr. Netanyahu said in a radio interview on Tuesday, ?We are looking for ways to prevent the destruction of the homes.?
The developments came as Israel prepared for Memorial Day, which began Tuesday night, and Independence Day, which follows immediately ? the nation?s most important secular holidays, and a traditional period of reflection.
With the peace process stagnant and discussions of the Iran nuclear threat having momentarily quieted, the question of settlement expansion has gained new focus, particularly since a Supreme Court decision last month ordering the dismantling by Aug. 1 of Migron, an outpost of 50 families also built on private Palestinian land.
Estimates of how many settlers live on such private lands range from several hundred to 9,000. Complicating matters is that the Palestinian Authority considers selling land to Israelis a capital crime.
Right-wing ministers still seething over Migron this weekend suggested that any move to evacuate Ulpana could threaten the Netanyahu coalition.
Mr. Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, who was accused of trying to appease the left by talking tough on Ulpana, quickly moved to shore up support among the settlers, and Dani Dayan, the head of the settlers? Yesha Council, said he was confident the wind had shifted.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=847f3dd004b47216662852966c0278b4
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