Tiny Israeli Outposts Loom Large on Mideast Road Map

The community looks almost too insubstantial to be a bone of contention -- just 11 trailers and a few electrical poles strewn across a rocky hilltop deep in the predominantly Palestinian West Bank.

But even barren hilltops are contested in the West Bank.

It is places like this Jewish outpost that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has pledged to remove as the first Israeli step in the “road map” to peace designed to end the conflict with the Palestinians.

Givat Assaf is just one of the unauthorized settlement outposts, built since March 2001, that are scattered along the stony crests of hills, in the Judean desert and in Hebron, among other places. Like almost everything in Israeli-Palestinian relations, the exact number is disputed, ranging from a handful to more than 100, depending on the politics of the person doing the counting.

The outposts are not to be confused with the larger and far more established “settlements” authorized by the Israeli government. Some of those have thousands of residents and considerable infrastructure -- stores, schools, gas stations and restaurants. Their fate is one of the key issues to be negotiated later.

Outposts vary from a single person living part time at a site to as many as 40 families. They are embryonic settlements, the first signal that Jews plan to seize and settle a particular piece of land. Putting down stakes has become the main method by which Israel has expanded its population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Dismantling even the outposts will be difficult. Former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer tried to uproot a handful of outposts amid great controversy in 2002, but some of those have been repopulated.

The settlers, who number more than 225,000, represent a powerful political constituency and attempts to evict them are likely to put Sharon’s government at risk.

Sharon is in a particularly difficult position because for years he was one of the strongest proponents of the settler movement. It is Sharon who made famous the phrase “facts on the ground” to describe putting a settlement in the West Bank to make it difficult to strike a deal to hand over land to the Palestinians.

Already, even with only thinly populated outposts under discussion, Sharon is encountering resistance to the idea from the religious political parties, which form a cornerstone of his coalition, as well as disapproval from some members of his Likud Party.

“I call upon the people of Israel and to all the young as Ariel Sharon once called on [them]: Go to the hills, take over the hills, they are our home,” said Yehiel Hazan, a Likud member, speaking at a rally Wednesday by conservative religious groups.

The outposts are viewed by Palestinians as a deliberate land grab designed to shrink their territory and prevent them from having lands, villages and towns that are contiguous. Some critics contend that Sharon’s agreement to dismantle the outposts is a hollow gesture because they proliferated under his government.

For those who live in these unauthorized communities, the idea of moving is inconceivable.

“We need to be here,” said Ahuviel Nizri, 21, a soft-spoken, bearded student at a yeshiva, or religious university, who lives full time in Givat Assaf with his wife and 4-month-old son.

“We believe this land is ours. It’s written in the Bible that it is ours, and it’s hard to argue with the Bible.”

Right off the intersection of a highway along one of the main roads to the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Givat Assaf is several miles from the nearest authorized settlement, but the area is far from deserted. Arab villages, recognizable by the minarets of the mosques used to call worshipers to prayer, dot the hillsides. At midday, except for two women hanging clothes to dry in the desert sun, no one is in Givat Assaf, because there is neither employment nor schools.

With its 11 families, Givat Assaf is similar to many outposts in that it is populated entirely by young families and single people, most of them with a fervent religious conviction about their right to the land.

Many people in the outposts say they like to feel close to nature and eschew city life even though they are at constant risk of attack by angry Palestinians and they must drive miles for any services or amenities.

Givat Assaf is typical in that it was established for ideological reasons, complete with elements of retribution and redemption. It was founded two years ago as a living memorial to Assaf Hershkowitz, a 30-year-old settler who was on his way to his job working for a fencing contractor when his van was fired on by a Palestinian gunman near the intersection where the outpost is now located. His death came just three months after his father was killed in a similar incident on the same road.

For Nizri and others who live there, some of whom were friends of Hershkowitz, founding the outpost was a way to pay tribute to his memory, but it was also something else: “It was an act of revenge,” Nizri said.

“Because [Palestinians] want to get us out of the West Bank, this was the response to that and to say, ‘We will stay,’ ” he said.

For Hershkowitz’s mother, it was also a way of showing that amid the sadness of death, some things can grow.

“I feel very strongly that wherever a Jew is killed something will flourish,” said Geula Hershkowitz, who lives in Ofra, a settlement nearby.

She personally pleaded with Sharon to leave the outpost intact. She said he told her that the place was strategically important and might be turned into an Army post. She said she responded by telling him that if that happened she would go to live there because an army post was not an appropriate way to honor her son’s memory.

Israeli advocacy groups, such as Peace Now, have vociferously opposed the outposts, seeing them as an obstacle to any lasting coexistence for Jews and Palestinians.

“People come to live in the outposts illegally and because of them, the Israeli people pay a huge price in money to support the outposts, in soldiers who protect it, and in the hatred it breeds between them and the Palestinian people,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, a spokesman for Peace Now.

Even before Sharon made his public pledge this week to remove the outposts, a fierce debate had begun over how many “unauthorized outposts” there were. The government does not reveal how many outposts have been granted legal status, how many are in the process of obtaining it and how many have yet to apply.

In recent days, government officials have said between 15 and 20 outposts might be removed, although they have not given a starting date.

Peace Now counts 62 outposts that have been established since Sharon became prime minister in March 2001, and a total of 106 established since 1996. Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that there are more than 100 unauthorized outposts.

Under the terms of the peace deal, only those established after Sharon came to power would have to be dismantled in the first phase of the peace plan.

Some outposts start as satellites to older, more established settlements. Slung onto adjacent hilltops or nestled in nearby valleys, their residents often do their shopping and errands in the main settlement but live in the outpost. Others, however, are more remote, staked out on hilltops in areas where there is nothing else nearby.

The Yesha Council, a group representing settlers, is concerned mainly about the fate of the settlements and said it has been careful to avoid spending political capital defending the outposts.

“We are not going to disobey the law or confront the soldiers -- they are our brothers and sisters and sons,” said Shaul Goldstein, a spokesman for the council. But the worry is that “the first stage will be [removing] the unauthorized outposts and then the second stage will be dismantling the settlements,” he said.

If Sharon tries to do the latter, the settlers will resist unless parliament, known as the Knesset, and the courts approve it, Goldstein said, because such a move would “be risking the state of Israel.”

Meanwhile, in the tiny outpost communities, people are watching and waiting.

They find it hard to believe that Sharon will follow through. Even if he does, they say, the Palestinians can be counted on to attack the Israelis, and that will blow up the peace plan.

“What I suppose will happen is that the road map will begin, but then the Arabs will begin terrorist acts,” said Ariel Kahana, 29, who lives in Amuna, an outpost about 20 minutes away from Givat Assaf.

As he looked out the front door of his trailer to the neighboring hills where there are Arab villages, he shook his head.

“The road map will be stopped, one way or another,” he said.