Leaders sign "Samaria Pact," in which they pledge never to allow the region to be evacuated.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFHomesh march 248.88(photo credit: Channel 10)
Settlers in the West Bank regions of Samaria and Binyamin are making preparations to prevent any move to evacuate Jews by forming new citizens committees.
In Samaria the committee is headed by Benny Katzover, a former chairman of the Samaria Regional Council and a founder of Gush Emunim. The Binyamin committee is led by Yitzhak Shadmi, a well-known activist and a former IDF lieutenant-colonel.
Working at the grassroots level, both men have vowed never to allow another evacuation like the one that took place during Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005.
Katzover said that in Samaria, which lost four settlements during disengagement, he had already created many branches to galvanize the settlers to prevent a second evacuation.
On Monday night the Samaria citizens committee formally launched its campaign. It held a meeting during which some 100 settler leaders - including Samaria Regional Council head Gershon Mesika and Hebron-Kiryat Arba Chief Rabbi Dov Lior - signed the "Samaria Pact" in which they pledged never to allow the region to be evacuated.
The meeting came a day after the cabinet was set to discuss paying settlers who live outside the West Bank security barrier to move inside the barrier. But the timing, said Katzover, was coincidental and the meeting had been planned well in advance. The cabinet discussion was postponed due to a lack of time.
Dani Dayan, who heads the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, and has lived in Samaria for 20 years, also signed the pact.
Dayan told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that he was one of the first five signatories.
Katzover told the Post that activists were going door-to-door in Samaria, asking residents to sign the pledge.
"Samaria is ours," said Katzover, who added that it has belonged to the Jews since the start of its history as recorded in the Bible.
"We want people to know that we will not be sacrificed and from here we plan to make our stand on behalf of the Land of Israel," he said.
Shadmi said he, too, was creating branches throughout Binyamin. Both men said that their committees were working to prevent any evacuation, including those of the unauthorized outposts. The Samaria Pact, however, simply speaks in global terms of working to keep Samaria in Israeli hands and does not specifically address settlements or outposts.
The inclusion of the outposts in their campaign puts the citizens committees at odds with the overall Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, with which they are affiliated.
Dayan said the committees were created at the initiative of the regional councils, which preferred to focus on municipal matters and to create an independent committee to deal with more political issues.
He said that he did not see a conflict between the work of the citizens committees and that of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip that he heads, even though he was working on an agreement with the Defense Ministry to move some of the unauthorized outposts to legalized areas within the settlements.
The first fruit of this agreement is the unauthorized Migron outpost in Binyamin, which the council has agreed to move to a legalized location nearby.
Shadmi said his committee opposed moving Migron, which it considers a settlement and not an outpost.
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