Israel’s Outgoing A-G, Ahead of Exiting Office, OK’d Illegally Erected, Evacuated, Army-Occupied Evyatar Outpost
For weeks, the country held its collective breath, expecting that outgoing Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit’s last major act in office would be to finalize a plea deal for former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is on trial over multiple corruption charges. The much-discussed plea bargain never came to fruition. Instead, Israeli media reported Wednesday that Mandelblit’s last act before the end of his term this past Monday was to OK the retroactive authorization of a controversial West Bank settlement outpost that was originally established without the government’s consent. The deal still needs approval by Defense Minister Benny Gantz.
The settlers who established the outpost named it “Evyatar” after Evyatar Borovsky, a 32-year-old Israeli civilian who was killed nearby in a 2013 stabbing attack.
Under an agreement reached last year, the settlers left the outpost peacefully rather than clashing with the army while being forcibly evacuated, as had happened in previous cases when illegal outposts were shut down. The structures that the settlers hastily erected at Evyatar would remain in place. Normally, when the military decides to evacuate an unauthorized settlement outpost, it destroys the structures that were built illegally on the site. Evyatar then became a closed military zone, guarded by the army. A survey carried out at the site has reportedly concluded that some of the disputed area is government land, not privately owned by Palestinians, and thus, with government approval, could be made available for Jewish settlement. Member of Knesset Michal Rozin, from the left-wing Meretz party, which is part of the current coalition government, said in a tweet that retroactive approval of Evyatar was “a victory for the violence of the outlaws in the outposts” and violated the fractious coalition’s resolve to only promote policies for which there is a broad consensus while avoiding divisive issues.
