Netanyahu Plans 300 Settler Homes after Outpost Vote
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Wednesday to expand the Beit El settlement by 300 homes after MPs voted down a bill to prevent the razing of buildings in one of its neighborhoods.
Netanyahu had opposed the bill, which would have circumvented a Supreme Court ruling ordering the dismantling of five buildings in the Ulpana neighborhood -- a settlement outpost built on private Palestinian land -- by legalizing outposts.
But he warned after the vote that he would not allow people to "use the legal system to harm the settlement movement," and announced plans to add 300 new homes to Beit El, which is near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"Beit El will be expanded, the 30 families will remain in Beit El, and 300 new families will join them," he said after the vote in remarks relayed by public radio.
Netanyahu has backed a plan to move the five buildings in Ulpana, home to 30 families, stone by stone to Beit El itself.
"Instead of diminishing Beit El, expanding it. Instead of harming the settlement, strengthening it," he said.
Netanyahu has come under attack for his decision to oppose legislation to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling, but insisted his government remained a champion of the settler movement.
"I understand your pain. I share it," he said.
"There is no government that would support the settler movement more than the one I head, we will continue to strengthen the settlement movement and strengthen the democracy."
The Knesset vote earlier, which saw 69 MPs oppose the legalization bill against 22 in favor, effectively ended legislative efforts by the settler lobby and its rightwing supporters to avoid the court-mandated July 1 removal date.
The bill sought to offer compensation to Palestinians whose private land had been taken over by settlers rather than returning their land, if they had not lodged a legal demand to evacuate the land within four years of the settlement.
A second, similar bill, was taken off the parliamentary agenda before the vote.
The planned demolition, which will affect 142 people, has sparked fury among settlers and their backers, and exposed a split within Netanyahu's own rightwing Likud party.
Netanyahu made clear both before and after the vote that he opposed the efforts because they could spark an international backlash.
"The law rejected today would have harmed the settlement movement," he said after the vote.
But the movement has responded with anger, and outside the Knesset some 2,000 people reacted with fury to the bill's failure.
"Jews do not evict Jews!" they chanted.
"This is one of the most evil things that Jews are doing to Jews, that this government is doing to Jewish people only because they are Jewish," protester Yosef Yom Tov told Agence France Presse of the planned eviction.
Among the crowd was a group of around 250 settlers who had completed a three-day march to Jerusalem from Ulpana.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said five people were arrested for disturbances at the Knesset where demonstrators tried to block the entrance to the building, and on the main route into Jerusalem, after they tried to block the road.
Despite a commanding majority of 94 within the 120-seat parliament, Netanyahu has struggled to rein in far-right members of his ruling Likud party, many of whom said they would back the bills.
Lawmakers from the extreme right slammed Netanyahu and his Likud party for failing to prevent the court order.
But members of the government praised the outcome of the vote, which intelligence minister Dan Meridor of the Likud called "a show of the seriousness of the government not to act outside the rule of law."
Israel differentiates between "legal" settlements and "illegal" outposts, but the international community views all settlement on occupied territory as a violation of international law.
Source: Agence France Presse
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