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World Jewish News
Police set up special unit ahead of mass outpost evacuation
22.07.2009
The police's Shai District, which is responsible for the West Bank, has set up a special dedicated command to handle preparations for a large-scale evacuation of illegal settlement outposts.
The government has not yet formally ordered the defense establishment to start preparations, so the command is not up and running officially. However, the settlers have already set up their own "counter-command" to handle resistance to the anticipated evacuations.
The new unit will be headed by Brig. Gen. Amitai Levy, commander of the Border Police forces in the West Bank. It will follow the model of the special commands set up in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank prior to the evacuation of settlements there during the 2005 disengagement.
Though the command was set up by the police, all police operations in the West Bank are formally under the authority of the Israel Defense Forces. Therefore once the government gives the order for preparations to start, any IDF units involved in the evacuations will presumably be attached to the command.
The first exercise conducted by the new command took place two weeks ago at an army base, as reported Tuesday in Haaretz. That exercise, which simulated the simultaneous evacuation of several outposts, involved three Border Police companies and various police units - including a team of mounted policemen and a team from the elite anti-terror unit Yamam - as well as some army forces, including a team from the IDF Medical Corps.
Even though all police activity in the West Bank takes place under the auspices of the IDF, and both GOC Central Command Gadi Shamni and Brig. Gen. Noam Tibon, commander of the IDF forces in the West Bank, observed the exercise, the army is trying to minimize its involvement in outpost evacuations. IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has said publicly and repeatedly in recent months that he believes policemen should evacuate the outposts, while soldiers should be responsible only for guarding the perimeter of the area being evacuated. Dealing with civilians is the job of the police, Ashkenazi argues, while the army's job is to handle security.
For this reason, the army is unhappy with a plan now being drafted by the defense establishment for the simultaneous evacuation of all 23 outposts established after March 2001, which Israel has repeatedly promised Washington it will dismantle. Since the police do not have enough manpower to evacuate 23 outposts on their own, this plan would require soldiers to participate in physically removing the settlers as well.
But the army's concerns do not relate solely to the formal definition of its mission. Its real fear is that IDF involvement in a new round of large-scale evacuations would spark a massive wave of refusal to serve on the part of settlers and their supporters, and perhaps even physical clashes between the evacuating forces and the soldiers and officers who themselves reside in the outposts.
Not everyone in Defense Minister Ehud Barak's office is comfortable with Ashkenazi's stance. "The decisions will be made by the government, and the army does not choose its own missions," one said.
For the record, however, Barak's office insisted that "The defense minister and the chief of staff see eye to eye on this issue."
A more technical problem with the simultaneous evacuation plan is that the army's chances of keeping it secret from the settlers - thus denying the settlers a chance to mobilize their forces, and thereby minimizing clashes - are almost nil. The exercise conducted two weeks ago was leaked to the settlers by border policemen who participated in it, and word of the new command also quickly made its way to the outposts.
In recent days, West Bank roads have been plastered with signs urging anyone who observes a suspicious movement of forces or learns of a planned evacuation to call an outpost hotline that will operate 24 hours a day - even, thanks to a special permit from Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, on Shabbat, when Jewish law normally forbids use of the telephone. Once word of a planned evacuation is received, settler activists will mobilize thousands of people to go to the outposts to fight the evacuation, as well as others who will block roads and engage in other protest activities inside the Green Line.
In preparation for that day, activists have opted not to exhaust themselves by clashing with security forces over every minor evacuation of a few caravans here or there. Instead, they have opted for a "price tag" policy: attacking Palestinians or their property in retaliation for such evacuations.
Tuesday, however, settlers of the veteran West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin did clash with policemen who came to arrest two residents suspected of disturbing the peace. One settler was lightly injured and another was arrested.
By Anshel Pfeffer and Jonathan Lis
Источник: Haaretz
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