Police to guard West Bank mayor amid threat over outpost deal

Samaria Regional Council chairman Yossi Dagan was reportedly to get increased protection from police starting Thursday due to danger posed by far-right extremists over his backing of a compromise over the fate of an illegal West Bank outpost.

Dagan is considered to be facing the highest level of threat, according to the Walla news site.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Defense Minister Benny Gantz reached an agreement with settlers in which the latter will evacuate the Evyatar outpost by 4 p.m. Friday, but the state will work to legalize control of the land and establish a yeshiva at the site at a later date rather than totally raze its structures.

In the meantime, the Israel Defense Forces will establish an “immediate round-the-clock presence” at the site.

Police received intelligence information that right-wing extremists planned to harm Dagan after he backed the compromise plan for the outpost, Walla reported.

As part of the protection, there will be regular patrols around Dagan’s home, according to the report.

Dagan had earlier defended the agreement as necessary given societal rifts.

“Any step toward the other side is for the unity of the people of Israel during these tough times of division,” he said in a statement early Wednesday.

The international community regards all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, but Israeli law differentiates between settlements permitted by the Defense Ministry and outposts established without permission, often by ideologically motivated youths. Many settlements start as illegal outposts and only gain retroactive government approval after reaching a critical mass of residents.

Earlier iterations of Evyatar have been razed several times since Israelis first tried to settle the site in 2013.

The most recent installation was set up in May to protest a terror attack at the Tapuah junction that killed Yehuda Guetta, 19, with the number of residents has rapidly increased to 50 families over the past two months. The population further ballooned this week as far right-wing youths set up camp at the site and prepared to resist the looming evacuation.

The compromise with residents came as an alternative to the complete razing of Evytar, which had already been given final approval.

Bennett, a former director of the Yesha council settler lobby who now leads the right-wing Yamina party and the government, was reported Sunday to be eager to avoid the outpost being removed under his leadership, especially given the current political situation in which the coalition is struggling to maintain a majority in the Knesset.

The prime minister’s position evidently won the day, despite Gantz and the security establishment’s initial insistence that the outpost be removed due to the strain it imposes on the IDF.