Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Israel's 'hilltop youth' are settling in

Israel's 'hilltop youth' are settling in
Their illegal outposts in the West Bank are muddling peace efforts.
By Richard Boudreaux
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
February 18, 2008
GIVAT HAOR OUTPOST, West Bank — It was a festive night for the teenage
squatters in this renegade hilltop camp. A rabbi was on his way, and they
were cranking up a generator, stringing light bulbs and arranging benches,
turning what had been a Palestinian family's barn into a synagogue.
Suddenly the group fell silent. An Israeli soldier and a policeman had
trudged up the slope and were demanding to know who was in charge. No one
would tell them.
After a few tense minutes, the uniformed intruders left. The "hilltop
youth" had prevailed again.
As Israeli and Palestinian leaders try to end decades of conflict, this
outpost and other unauthorized Jewish settlements have become a battle
line between the Israeli government and a settler movement unwilling to
give up any part of the West Bank.
Under commitments made to President Bush at a November peace conference,
Israel is supposed to dismantle about 50 outposts as a first step in
negotiations on definitive borders and other terms of a final accord.
Instead of vanishing, however, the outposts are growing, swollen by a
loose-knit group of young second-generation settlers believed to number in
the hundreds.
Since this outpost was set up in December, Israel's paramilitary border
police have chased away its occupants at least a dozen times, but never
for long. "They come up the hill, we go down the hill, we come back two
hours later," said Yaakov Cohen, 17, shrugging off the timid evictions.
About 100 outposts, in addition to 126 settlements formally authorized by
Israel, occupy West Bank land the Palestinians seek for a future state.
Some of the bigger outposts have a few hundred residents each and de facto
government support in the form of running water, electricity, paved
streets and schools.
Bush pressed the issue last month after his motorcade passed this outpost
during a visit to the region.
"The agreement was, 'Get rid of outposts, illegal outposts,' and they
ought to go," he said at a Jerusalem news conference. Standing beside him,
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert replied: "This was discussed. . . . We
ought to fulfill our commitments, and we will."
But that resolve has provoked new land invasions by the hilltop youth,
guided by a belief that the Torah commands Jews to settle all of biblical
Israel no matter what modern Israel's elected leaders say.
Since the peace conference in Annapolis, Md., young Israelis have set up
or expanded nine outposts, according to Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy
group critical of the settlements.
The outpost here, whose Hebrew name means "Hill of Light," is populated by
about 40 boys and girls who attend religious high schools in nearby
settlements during the day. At night they climb the hill, cook by campfire
and sleep on mattresses in a complex of farm buildings, taking care to
maintain a daily presence.
They say they're determined to outlast the police and build a viable
community on the hilltop, just north of Ramallah.
"It's not Bush's decision. He isn't the landlord," Cohen said. "Neither is
Olmert."
"God is the landlord," the teenager insisted.
The titled owner is a Palestinian American family -- the Khalaf brothers
and a cousin, two living nearby in the West Bank and two in Ohio. The
Jewish youths occupied the seven-acre farm in December, claiming it had
been abandoned; the Khalafs say the land was temporarily unattended
between olive seasons.
Israeli police officials have authenticated the Khalafs' land title but
failed to make good on a promise in December that the settlers would be
removed from the farm.
When three Khalaf men tried to visit their property more recently, they
were turned back by the Israeli army, which had declared it a closed
military zone to prevent any violence between settlers and Palestinians.
"But the settlers are still there," complained Midian Khalaf, 40, a
Cleveland grocer, pointing to an Israeli flag over the farm that is
visible from his family's West Bank home in Al Birah. "The longer they
stay, the more likely their outpost will become permanent."
Many full-fledged settlements started exactly this way, as camps or small
clusters of trailers. Today, 282,200 Jews are settled in suburban-style
communities funded by the Israeli government on West Bank land captured in
the 1967 Middle East War.
Most governments consider all Jewish settlements in the West Bank a
violation of international law, which forbids populating land seized in
war. Palestinian leaders say the settlements are a major obstacle to peace.
Israel asserts that the West Bank is disputed territory and that the
settlements are legal.
Olmert has nonetheless pledged to dismantle unauthorized outposts while
trying to negotiate border adjustments that would enclose the biggest
settlements on the Israeli side. He has public support; 53% of Israelis
polled by Tel Aviv University in December favor such a course.
Yet he is reluctant to move decisively. Part of his fragile coalition
opposes any concessions to the Palestinians until they live up to their
commitment at Annapolis to curb violent attacks on Israel.
Also, Israel's military and civilian hierarchies have supported or
tolerated outposts for years and are ambivalent about helping Olmert
abolish them for the sake of an uncertain peace.
"The Zionist ideal of settling the land is deeply embedded in Israeli
society," said Gershom Gorenberg, author of "The Accidental Empire," an
early history of the settlements. "When a politician is told that
settlement is now detrimental to Israel's long-term strategic interest,
this is something extremely difficult for him to absorb."
Even more troublesome is the specter of violent resistance by the hilltop
youth, who emerged as an unruly force several years ago. They have left
comfortable settlements close to Israel to stake claims deeper inside the
West Bank, displaying a rugged back-to-the-land lifestyle and anarchic
contempt for authority. They are linked by settler websites and recruit
volunteers online.
Cohen and some of his comrades are veterans of a major clash with police
two years ago at a nearby outpost called Amona. They say they're ready to
fight and risk imprisonment to defend other outposts.
Olmert's government prevailed at Amona, demolishing nine Jewish homes
illegally built on private Palestinian land. But televised images of the
clash, which left more than 200 soldiers, police and demonstrators
injured, shocked Israelis; since then, the government has been reluctant
to confront the settlers head on.
The Givat Haor outpost looks less like a battle-ready fortress than a
pioneer camp for religious bohemians. The boys sport curled sidelocks,
scraggly beards, knitted yarmulkes and baggy jeans; the girls wear long,
modest dresses and keep their heads covered. Boys and girls stay apart,
praying on opposite sides of a green plastic sheet.
The guiding hand of adults came into view as more than 100 people crowded
in for the inaugural religious service.
Rabbi Dov Lior, from a far-right enclave near the West Bank city of
Hebron, led the service and congratulated the settlers for "serving your
country." Daniella Weiss, a veteran ideologue of the settler movement,
came to promote a campaign to double the number of outposts this summer.
The young settlers had another reason to celebrate.
A judge had just ordered the release of seven girls from the outpost who
had been detained in a police sweep. Defying the legal system, the girls
had refused to give their names to police, and their jailing had sparked
protests and sympathetic media coverage.
After that incident, the settlers say the police raids became far less
frequent. That freed them to clear a dirt road to the outpost and start
trucking in furniture through the Palestinian village of Beitin, which
shares the same hill.
Now the village's mayor, Diab Yasin, is worried about his own hilltop
youth.
"This has been a peaceful village, but now our young people want to fight
the settlers," he said. "If we let them, somebody will get hurt."
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times 
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 the settlers," he said. "If we let them, somebody will get hurt."
dal che si apprende che il sindaco non è capace di controlla gli
impulsi dei giovani cittadini. Istruttivo.