An article written by Yesha Council's Pinchas Vallerstein was published in the Binyamin Regional Council newspaper outlining the Council's concept used in negotiations with the Defense Ministry over the past several years.
The basic idea is one which allows for the "legalization" of the majority of the so-called outposts which are, after all, on state land and only require finishing the bureaucratic process of authorization, while developing a community on the closest state land available to those few which are built on private Arab lands.
Attempts would be made to purchase the land before resorting to the drastic measure of moving families. That measure would only be undertaken once (a) purchase proved impossible and (b) the new location is fully developed with homes erected.
Vallerstein agreed that the price of such a solution is painful, the re-location of a few long-established communities, but that the long-term overall benefit of putting an end to the issue as one of contention and erasing the uncertainty from the lives of thousands of outpost residents is worth the price.
The agreement is conditional on the lifting of the freeze on Yesha community builiding.
"We will not cooperate with anyone who has the erasure of Zionist settlement in Judea and Samaria at the top of his political agenda – and is only adopting legal terminology as a fig leaf," the Council leader said.
"A new outpost agreement may demand a certain, possibly difficult and painful price from us, but it will allow us to finally place a legal stamp on many of the outposts, and finally be able to build in them and unfreeze them," he concludes.
