Army Removes Gush Members from Sites Occupied Illegally During the Night

A substantial portion of the Israeli army on the West Bank was occupied today rounding up and removing hundreds of Gush Emunim militants who broke out of their settlement compounds to occupy adjacent lands in defiance of yesterday’s Cabinet decision that privately owned Arab lands will not be seized to make room for Jewish settlements.

Gush squatters, reinforced by outside supporters, set up their makeshift huts on at least 45 unauthorized sites in the Judaea and Samaria regions during the night. Military sources reported this afternoon that soldiers had evacuated 15 of 24 sites spotted by aircraft in the Judaea region.

Nine squatters were detained for resisting; but in most cases the evacuation was carried out peacefully, the sources said. The Gush insisted that some 40 footholds were still occupied and said that when the troops arrived its people simply moved to other sites.

The Gush moves appeared to have been well orchestrated and planned in advance in the expectation that the Cabinet would decide against its demand for the large-scale seizure of Arab lands to make room for massive Jewish settlement. It was the largest Instance of civil disobedience by Jews since Israel was founded. Most serious was the polarizing effect on Israeli society, reflected in a bitter Knesset debate today between opponents and supporters of the Gush Emunim and the sharp division over the issue within Premier Menachem Begin’s coalition government.

Deputy Defense Minister Mordechai Zippori denounced the Gush today for “irresponsibility” and sowing discord “among the people of Israel.” He deplored the “many millions of Pounds” and the training time lost by the army in rounding up the squatters and dismantling their makeshift settlements. He said the armed forces would move firmly to quash the Gush defiance and would take legal measures against the squatters.

The Gush boasted, meanwhile, that its action was successful. Gush members said they originally planned to set up about 30 outposts but as things turned out more than 40 were established because of an outpouring of some 4000 Gush supporters. These Included members of the Poale Agudat Israel settlements of Mevo Horon and Gush Etzion which had previously taken no part in Gush Emunim tactics.

Elyakim Haetzni, a Gush leader, justified its defiance of the government by claiming that the Gush was simply implementing government policy to establish facts that will prevent forever the creation of a Palestinian state.

The Gush line was echoed by its most vociferous supporter in the government, Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon, who hailed the militants as “the real pioneers of Israel” and assailed its opponents as “self-hating” Jews who would “belittle Israel” to curry favor with foreigners. Sharon spoke at a Knesset session this morning where coalition forces defeated a Labor Alignment motion to discuss the settlements issue by a vote of 45-35.

Sharon was answered by MK Meir Amit of the Shai who accused him of conduct unbecoming a minister. Amit, who is himself a general in the reserves and a former Minister of Transport, challenged Sharon’s contention that the Gush settlements enhanced Israel’s security. “You have no monopoly over security,” he declared facing Sharon. “Whoever grasps the issue of security only in the narrow dimension of geography simply has a narrow-minded concept of security,” he said.

Meanwhile, former Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, a leader of the Labor Alignment, called for an urgent meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Security Committee to find out why the army did not know of the Gush plans beforehand and why they were not prevented. Zippori replied in a radio interview later that the army has no way of preventing “and group of 10 or so settlers who decide to build a shack outside their settlement overnight.”

CONSEQUENCE OF CABINET DECISION

Yesterday’s Cabinet decision which sparked today’s outbreak was viewed as a compromise, engineered by Begin, to defuse the settlement issue which has injured Israel’s image abroad. The Cabinet agreed to expand seven existing or projected Gush settlements on the West Bank but affirmed that this would be done only on State-owned lands and that Arab lands would not be expropriated in the future.

Labor MK Yossi Sarid said in the Knesset today that the decision was a “bluff” because there was not enough State land on the West Bank. He predicted that the government would continue to confiscate privately-owned land. Sharon said that the government would honor its no-confiscation commitment but would continue with the “massive settlement of Judaea and Samaria.” He did not elaborate.

Just how much State land will be handed over to the Gush was uncertain today. One source said that some 4000 dunams would be allotted to six settlements for expansion purposes. Another source said no more than 1500 dunams would be handed over. It was clear, however, that it will be up to Arab claimants to prove that any particular piece of land belongs to them.