Homesh ruling a blow for settlers

Israel’s legal establishment has shattered a settler dream, announcing that a settlement evacuated eight years ago will be returned to its Palestinian owners.

When Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, it also evacuated four West Bank settlements – Kadim, Ganim, Sa-Nur and Homesh.

A strain of the settlement movement has been claiming since the disengagement that, with Gaza used as a base for launching rockets at Israel, it has been proved to be a mistake and must be undone. Its rallying cry has been “Homesh first” – repopulate Homesh and then the other evacuated areas.

Activists have held sit-ins and protests at the Homesh water tower, the only structure that remains there from the settlement, and campaigned widely, but last week the High Court ruled that the Palestinians who own the land can return to Homesh.

The lawyer who petitioned for the hand back, Michael Sfard, told The AJN: “The Homesh affair proves that the settlement project is reversible.”

Sfard, who acted on behalf of the human rights group Yesh Din, added: “With the cancellation of the seizure order, the evacuation of the settlement is complete.

“We will now have to secure the Palestinian owners’ access to their lands so that they could restore its use to pre-Homesh days.”

But the Homesh lobby was furious. One of the keenest advocates of a return to the former settlement, former National Union parliamentarian Michael Ben-Ari, hit out at the new government, criticising it for “not putting a word in the coalition agreement about the Land of Israel”.

In other settlement-related news, the government has decided to legalise four outposts that were built without state permission.

It is beginning the process of transforming Ma’ale Rehavam, Haroeh, Givat Assaf and Mitzpe Lachish I into bona-fide settlements, it said, responding to a court petition by the dovish group Peace Now.

Referring to peace-building efforts by America’s Secretary of State John Kerry, Peace Now called the decision a “slap in the face of Secretary Kerry’s new peace process and is a blatant reassurance to settler interests”.

NATHAN JEFFAY