Settlers are encountering their first real opponent - Obama

Amos Harel, Ha'aretz
...[T]he United States is now demanding the evacuation of more than 100 outposts included in United Nations lists and in a parallel report written by Israeli attorney Talia Sasson in 2005.

...Thus, the administration's official line is that everything - the settlements that are inside the large blocs and outside them, and on either side of the separation fence, plus the outposts established both before and after 2001 - has to stop (and in the case of all the outposts, also be dismantled).

In one way, at least, one can see the logic in the current American approach. The outposts are a continuation of the settlements by other means. The sharp distinction Israel makes between them is artificial. Every outpost is established with a direct connection to a mother settlement, with the clear aim of expanding the takeover of the territory and ensuring an Israeli hold on a wider tract of land. Construction in the outposts is integrated into the overall plan of the settlement project and is carried out in parallel to the seizure of lands within and close to the settlements.

...Migron is surrounded by a fence, guarded and connected to the necessary water and electricity infrastructures. Its "ascent to the land," even though it was done on private Palestinian property, and despite the fact that it was undertaken in a deceptive manner, has received backing and practical support from the state. The security establishment's declaration to the High Court of Justice this week that it would take more than a year to implement the compromise agreement, whereby the inhabitants of Migron would be moved to the adjacent settlement of Adam, shows that this backing is still in place.

...Behind every settlement action there is a planning and thinking mind that has access to the state's database and maps, and help from sympathetic officers serving in key positions in the IDF and the Civil Administration. The story is not in the settlers' uncontrolled behavior, though there is evidence of this on some of the hilltops, but rather in conscious choices by the state to enforce very little of the law.

Most of the outposts were established during two periods: 1997 to 1999, whose climax came when foreign minister Ariel Sharon, upon his return from the Wye summit, called on the settlers to take over the hilltops; and later, between 2001 and 2003.

...One of the most obvious things learned from every visit is the extent to which things are done in a planned way, to this day. It is hard to miss the destroyed terraces in the settlement of Adam or the sight of the sewage flowing from Psagot, not far from the Binyamin regional council building, straight into the wadi that runs to the adjacent Palestinian town of El Bireh. ... In the outposts live scores of officers in the career army and the reserves, who serve in elite units and win citations for their courage. At the same time, according to the official state data, many of them have built their dream homes, a modest mobile home or a more luxurious villa, on land that has been stolen from someone else by force.

Full Article