Thursday, February 15, 2018

Netv Ha'Avot - the Next Community of Refugees? By Helen Freedman Exec. Director or AFSI

Netiv Ha'Avot – the Next Community of Refugees?

An approval by the Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria was issued Monday for the construction of modular homes for 15 families from the Netiv Ha'avot outpost whose permanent homes are slated for demolition by March 6.
The government has stated that it intends to authorize the outpost, which is located within the boundaries of the Elazar settlement in Gush Etzion. Legal issues have delayed that move. Full Jerusalem Post article HERE. Today's Arutz Sheva reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu will hold a meeting with coalition faction heads this Monday to approve a NIS 70 million alternative housing spending plan for the 15 families who will become homeless.

Will this 11th hour planning and spending keep these Israeli families from facing the same kind of "refugee" status that befell those who were expelled from Gush Katif, Migron and Amona? There is still a percentage of former Gush Katif residents who have not found permanent housing. All the Amona families are still living in tents while the construction proceeds on their new community, Amichai, in the Shiloh bloc.

Speaking at the first of AFSI's Special Series, (see below) Simcha Rothman, head of Meshilut, an Israeli NGO that is actively working to reduce the powers of the Israeli Supreme Court, informed a distressed audience that the Court has refused to destroy Arab villages even on land that is clearly Israel State Land because it would be "inhumane". 

During our travels we see Arab construction rampant in Jewish territory and have never heard that the Court has ordered it be destroyed. The self-selecting, self-governing Court is afraid of an Israel that is becoming "too Jewish" and makes decisions accordingly.

As one Amona resident told us before they were expelled…You wouldn't destroy a zoo and then go looking for where to put the animals – how can you destroy a village of your own people without providing a place for the residents to relocate? And yet, here they go again. Will the insanity ever end?

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