Likud backbencher joins settler hunger strike for security funds

Likud MK Oren Hazan announced Sunday evening that he will be joining a hunger strike launched hours earlier by a group of settler leaders and representatives of bereaved families demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately transfer funds he pledged for West Bank security and infrastructure development.

Hazan said that he is currently not in good health having undergone two operations in the last month. However, after seeing “bereaved families sitting here in the cold, hunger-striking in order to obtain security for the residents of Judea and Samaria, something that is really my responsibility and your responsibility, Mr. Prime Minister,” Hazan announced that he would join the protest.

“My health is now on your shoulders,” the controversial Likud lawmaker warned the prime minister in a video statement filmed at the protest tent that was erected outside Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence.

Refusing to take Netanyahu at his word, Samaria Regional Council chairman Yossi Dagan, along with two West Bank local council heads, and representatives of families that lost relatives in terror attacks on roads beyond the Green Line launched the tent protest on October 24. The group said they would not leave  the sidewalk until the prime minister convened the cabinet to transfer the NIS 800 million ($228 million) that he had promised settler leaders in a meeting last month.

The package would include bypass roads around Palestinian towns, additional cellphone towers to improve reception in rural areas, more streetlights on poorly lit roads, and the bolstering of armored buses that travel through the West Bank.

On Saturday evening, Hadas Mizrachi, whose husband, Baruch, was gunned down in an attack near Hebron in April 2014 as he drove to a family Passover seder; Ruti Hasano, whose husband, Avraham, was mowed down in a car ramming, also near Hebron in 2015; and Yitzhak Abutbul, whose wife, Hadas, was shot outside the Mevo Dotan settlement in 2001, penned a letter to Netanyahu announced that after nearly two weeks sitting in the protest tent, they would be launching a hunger strike.

The bereaved families’ representatives said the decision to strike was made after Netanyahu failed to convene a cabinet meeting to discuss and approve the funding.

While Dagan’s substantial clout in the Likud Central Committee has led to visits by over a dozen lawmakers from the Likud, Jewish Home and Kulanu parties, the Samaria Regional Council chairman does not appear to have the backing of most settler leaders. Of the 24 local and regional council chairman in the West Bank, only two have joined Dagan outside Netanyahu’s residence.

Last week, former chairman of the Yesha settlement umbrella council Avi Roeh told The Times of Israel that his organization was not taking part in the protests, saying he believed Netanyahu would honor his pledge.

Settlers say the roads, which would circumvent Palestinian population centers, are integral for their safety, citing terror attacks that have taken place on roads that run through Palestinian villages.

But opponents of the new roads say they are discriminatory: that bypass roads encourage the establishment of illegal outposts and are sometimes paved on private Palestinian land.