Legalising Outposts
In the "Blue Line"-plan, written in January 2011, at least 26 outposts were included in areas defined as "state lands". Left-wing activist Dror Etkes said, this means the state has started a process to legitimize these outposts. In March 2011, the Israeli government under Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu declared that it intended to legalise outposts that were built on state land, and to evict the outposts that are on private Palestinian lands.
According to the Israeli NGO Peace Now, the Israeli government under Netanyahu legalised ten illegal outposts in 2012, being the only Israeli government to ever authorize outposts. In February 2012, approval was quietly granted to the outpost Shvut Rachel by redesignating it as a “neighborhood” of the nearby settlement of Shilo, in April of the same year, legal status was conferred on the three outposts Bruchin, Rechelim and Sansana. The Minister of Defense also approved the promotion of plans that will legalize the outposts Nofei Nehemia, Mitzpe Eshtemoa, and El Matan as “neighborhoods” of other settlements or outposts, and in June 2012, the outpost Givat Salit in the northern Jordan Valley was retroactively legalised by redesignating it as a neighbourhood of the nearby Mehola settlement, from which it is separated by a major inter-city highway.
Read more about this topic: Israeli Outpost
Famous quotes containing the word outposts:
“So here they are, the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the fifty-cents-a-day professionals riding the outposts of the nation, from Fort Reno to Fort Apache, from Sheridan to Stark. They were all the same. Men in dirty-shirt blue and only a cold page in the history books to mark their passing. But wherever they rode and whatever they fought for, that place became the United States.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)