Posted on 05/10/2003 10:29:34 PM PDT by Chirodoc
The illegal outpost of Migron is a trailer park on a hill in the West Bank surrounded by barbed wire fences and guarded by chained alsatians positioned at 20-metre intervals. It provides a home, with views of Ramallah, Jerusalem and a part of Jordan, to about 40 families.
If the first phase of the "road map", the supposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is to be completed, the families will have to be evicted and their homes dismantled.
Migron has been in existence for little over a year but it has an air of permanence. The trailers are surrounded by flower beds and arranged around communal lawns. The road to the outpost is new and superior to many in the region.
Yet the road map is unequivocal about its status. It says: "Government of Israel immediately dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001". This requirement is not one Israel's reservations about the plan.
An Israeli foreign ministry official told the Guardian this week that the government planned to dismantle between four and 12 illegal outposts like Migron as a "confidence-building measure" in response to Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister, taking office.
Migron is not on the initial list of outposts to be demolished but its future will be a clear yardstick by which to judge Israel's commitment to the peace process.
Yishai Ivri, 25, was on guard duty and happy to talk about his travels in the UK and Australia and his nonchalance about the road map.
"I have lived in settlements all my life and every couple of years there is a new plan," he said. "It always has a different name but it is essentially the same plan. We are still here and there is more of us than ever before. We have no intention of going away."
On the hills surrounding Migron there were compact blocks of red-roofed houses, newly-built settlements with newly-built unroofed houses by their side. In between were villages of flat-roofed houses where the Palestinians live.
Mr Ivri said:"We are building all the time but so are they. It will take some time before we come into our inheritance." He became a father for the first time last month. All the inhabitants of Migron are young, orthodox Jewish families.
The men mixed traditional Jewish clothes with western clothes. Mr Ivri wore a colourful knitted kippah on his head, grey trousers, sandals and underneath his t-shirt, a tallit, a religious garment with tassles falling over his trousers which correspond to the 613 commandments in the Old Testament. The women wore long skirts and covered their hair in much the same fashion as ultra-orthodox Jews.
Israel has evacuated settlements in the past. As part of the 1979 Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, Israel pulled out of its settlements in the Sinai desert.
The evacuation was resisted by the settlers but Amram Mitzna, the army commander at the time and last leader of the Labour Party ignored the settlers' claims of a biblical right to stay.
Mr Ivri said: "We are always concerned about bigger forces such as the US coming into play but we have heard it all before so many times.
"We do not agree with the road map process but we are not afraid of our neighbours," he said gesturing at the Arab village of Burka.
"We believe that we have a right to this place and they might say the same thing. We disagree but I think we have history on our side."
And now for something completely different...
Say what?
Referendum time!
Today, we in America stand for freedom. Well, at least most of us.
Now Israel exports 10 TONS of flowers to Europe EVERYDAY, the land is blooming with the Jewish invention of drip irrigation and the rainfall patterns are shifting back over Israel because the Jews replanted the forests. From a backwater armpit of the world, Israel has become one of the leading hightech exporters.
Now if you like goat turds, perhaps Israel is destroying palestine, but from no other perspective is that true. The Arabs have a life style and wealth VASTLY beyond all the other Arab states, or at least the Arabs that are with Israel.
It must be a goat turd thing...
Nah, destroying Jews is the problem dominating your world...
Wanna know how? American taxpayer dollars. Israel is nothing without continuous American support ... something I am not of proud of .... American aggression all over the world is getting worrisome.
"Now Israel exports 10 TONS of flowers to Europe EVERYDAY" -- American in Israel
Really? Back that up with fact as America is losing ALL of rights, liberties and freedoms. While you dot your and cross your , I want you to tell me about who talks about liberty. Who talks about liberty in government? Or is "liberty" just a term to hold your tax-payer dollars towards nothing?
"Today, we in America stand for freedom." -- Nachum
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