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TITLE: IDF Orders Settlers Out of Ofra Outposts |
AUTHOR: Nadav Shragai |
PUB: Ha'aretz |
DATE: January 14, 2001 |
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The residents of outposts near Ofra and Beit El were served on Friday with evacuation orders and orders declaring the sites closed military areas. The two outposts were established in response to recent shooting attacks. Mevo Ofra was established the day after the murder of Benjamin and Talia Kahane. Ofra residents called their outpost the correct Zionist response to the killings and said it was in fact an expansion of the settlement. Beit El residents, on the other hand, declared that they planned to remain at their outpost until the IDF took over the site, which they said the army had abandoned. Ofra residents said they had no intention of willingly leaving the outpost, which they maintain falls within the project outline of their settlement and where they plan to build a new neighborhood. In another development, hundreds of Psagot residents marched a number of kilometers to the site of recently constructed Palestinian buildings on the road to their settlement, from which shots were recently fired on Jewish cars. They conducted a demonstration at the site, demanding that the army take over the buildings and stop the shooting. National Religious Party chair Shaul Yahalom asked the Attorney General to immediately halt the activities of the "peace cabinet," which he maintains is acting illegally, as well as the participation initiative of MK Yossi Sarid, who is not a member of the ministerial committee for foreign affairs and defense. "The peace cabinet is circumventing the authority of the ministerial committee over defense matters," said Yahalom. President Moshe Katsav will today visit the hunger strikers protesting proposals to divide Jerusalem and leave most areas of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Gaza. On Friday, Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg visited the strikers in their tent in Jerusalem's Safra Square. Burg said that he opposes any transfer of Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, as well as the transfer of territory in the Negev to the Palestinians. He said that to date, negotiations with the Palestinians concerned territories Israel obtained as a result of the Six-Day War. "It would be a mistake to open territorial discussion over the results of the War of Independence," said Burg, adding that true peace will come only when Palestinian schoolbooks are devoid of hatred. Dr. Ron Briman of Professors for a Strong Israel, one of the hunger strikers, told Burg about the visit by former Prisoners of Zion to the strikers' tent. "They told us that even in the camps in Siberia, when they chopped wood in the snow, they felt proud to be Jews, but that here, when they see what the Israeli government is doing, even to the army and the Israeli capital, they feel ashamed to be Jews." Two Meimad leaders, Rabbi Yehuda Amital and Rabbi Yehuda Gilad, also visited the hunger strikers at the end of the week, stating that Barak had gone too far in his concessions to the Palestinians. They expressed their opposition to dividing Jerusalem and handing over the Temple Mount. The Makor Rishon weekly quoted a talk Amital gave his students at the Har Etzion yeshiva, in which he was quoted as saying, "There are those among us who are willing to give the Palestinians the Temple Mount in the belief that this will bring peace. In my view, this type of concession is incompatible with the view of Judaism. END |