Settler leader: Trump’s plan completes 2005 Samaria evacuations
“It is inconceivable that precisely this government will determine facts on the ground that would abolish Israeli [rule] on settlements that were already uprooted,” Yossi Dagan said.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFSamaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan at a protest rally on the ruins of the former Sa-Nur settlement. (photo credit: TOVAH LAZAROFF)
In his latest attack on Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan, Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan charged Sunday that the plan completes the Israeli withdrawal from northern Samaria carried out 15 years ago by former prime minister Ariel Sharon.According to Dagan, the plan takes territory in northern Samaria that had been part Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal and places it within the boundary of a future Palestinian state.“It is inconceivable that this government will determine facts on the ground that will abolish Israeli [rule] over the land of these former settlements,” Dagan said.At issue for him is the territory where four northern Samaria settlements – Homesh, Sa-Nur, Kadim and Ganim – once stood. The settlements were evacuated and demolished during the implementation of Sharon’s Disengagement plan in 2005.Executed by Sharon, the plan dealt largely with the evacuation and demolition of 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip. In northern Samaria, Israel maintained its military rights to the evacuated territory and declared it a closed military zone, effectively turning the territory into no-man’s land.The High Court of Justice has since ruled that the land on which the former settlement of Homesh was built, was private Palestinian property and should be returned to its owners. The Palestinians have not yet been able to access that land.Dagan, a Sa-Nur evacuee, has been the instigator and leading voice in the movement to rebuild the four evacuated communities. Over the years he has successfully solicited support from parliamentarians who have filed bills on his behalf to rescind the Disengagement Law as it applies to northern Samaria. None of the bills were ever advanced to a final vote. Among those who in the past had lent their support to Dagan’s campaign was Health Minister Yuli Edelstein (Likud). Dagan has also sought support from US Evangelicals.Continued Israeli military hold on the northern Samaria territory where the former settlements stood, means that a government decision could allow for the settlements to be rebuilt.The Trump plan, however, could put an end to that dream. The ruins of the four settlements are located in a portion of Area C, that is designed to become a Palestinian state under the Trump plan. For the next four years all settlement activity is banned in that area, according to the plan.Only if the Palestinians fail to engage with the Trump plan or refuse to negotiate with Israel could that territory be used for settlement activity.
It’s a gamble that Dagan is not willing to take. He has written to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to ensure that this territory would become part of sovereign Israel under the Trump map.There was much speculation in 2005 that Sharon’s evacuation of the four Samaria settlements was just the first step in a number of demolitions of isolated West Bank settlements that Sharon was planning at the time.Dagan, however, said that the opposite was correct, and that even Sharon knew that this northern Samaria territory has strategic value and could not be abandoned.“Sharon, who initiated the evacuation, left the [territory] of the [four] northern Samaria communities under Israeli rule. Netanyahu can’t be allowed to be the one who completes this displacement,” Dagan said.He warned that under Trump’s plan, the fate the territory would be worse than what happened under Sharon’s rule or the impact of the Oslo Accords.Dagan called on Netanyahu to include that territory in his application of sovereignty later this summer, noting that these particular hilltops command a view of almost half the state of Israel – including Hadera, Tel Aviv and Ashdod – and that form a security perspective that can not become part of a Palestinian state.Dagan said that the families that lived in those communities were forced to leave for no reason and that the foundations of their homes and streets, including the blue and red parking markers on the curbs, can still be seen at those locations.To Netanyahu, Dagan said, “Don’t be the one who brings about an additional uprooting of these communities,” he said.His campaign with regard to including the evacuated northern Samaria territory in the Trump map, is just part off an overall campaign in which he, like the Yesha Council, has contended that the Trump plan could create a situation of de-facto settlement freezes and lead to the destruction of at least 15 settlements.In an interview with the Makor Rishon newspaper last week, Netanyahu said that the map had not been finalized.
