Migron residents urge Netanyahu to find a new solution

Minister-without-Portfolio Benny Begin said on Monday he was surprised by Sunday’s court ruling that the Migron outpost must be removed by the beginning of August, but that he has no intention of appealing the decision.

Residents of the illegal outpost, the largest in the West Bank, for their part, said that they were now looking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to find a solution. At a press conference on Monday, they said they wanted to avoid a repeat of previous violent evacuations of outposts, but that apparently the authorities in Israel did not share that goal. “We sought a just solution,” said a spokesman, Haim Teitelbaum, “and we still expect justice to be done.”

Netanyahu and Begin met on Monday night to begin considering how to resolve the situation.

Begin told Army Radio of his disappointment with Sunday’s ruling, which gave the government and residents of the outpost just four months to find an alternative location for the community. The ruling effectively nixed an agreement Begin brokered with the settlers that would have seen residents of the outpost relocated only in 2015.

“The court didn’t deal with the heart of the matter,” Begin said, noting that Migron is a community of 200 families. “It will be very difficult for the families to meet the four-month deadline.”

While Moshe Feiglin, the leader of the “Jewish Leadership” (Manhigut Yehudit) faction within the Likud party, warned that any Likud MK who endorsed the court decision would not get his supporters’ backing in the future, Begin distanced himself from calls to alter the functioning of the High Court in order to make it more sympathetic to right-wing and settler ideology.

“We will accept any decision of the court,” Begin said, but added that the state would continue to support the residents of Migron.

“We were with the residents in court and we will be with them to lay the cornerstone of their new location in the same area,” he said, referring to a planned alternative site for Migron that is several hundred meters from its current location.

Begin promised that the state would meet its requirement to relocate the settlers, but, since it would not be able to move them to new permanent homes by August, it was looking for an interim location.

[mappress mapid=”656″]