Dan Ephron reports on the Israeli government's recent removal of Migron, the "flagship" of about 100 unauthorized settlements in the West Bank. Its origin:
The saga of Migron began, improbably, with a cellphone tower some 11 years ago, early in the second intifada. Palestinians were ambushing Israelis in the West Bank, and settlers complained that they were losing reception at a certain bend in the road south of Ramallah. Worried that if an attack ensued, victims wouldn’t be able to call for help, Israeli authorities placed a cell tower on a hill high above the bend. The tower required a guard—Palestinians were also vandalizing Israeli property—and the guard needed a trailer. By 2002 settlers had towed several more trailers to the hilltop and called the place Migron, the name of the biblical town where King Saul camped out before attacking the Philistines.
It grew to some 50 families, who have now been relocated. But the settlers are undeterred:
Some activists now argue that petitioning the high court over settlements should be avoided because they’ve backfired too many times. After a court case forced Netanyahu to evacuate roughly 30 families from another outpost earlier this year, he simply approved the construction of hundreds of new homes elsewhere in the West Bank. The Migron eviction has triggered a similar spree. Nevertheless, [Israeli peace activist Dror] Etkes says he’ll continue to fight back. After obtaining land-registry data for the entire West Bank through Israel’s Freedom of Information Act, he now estimates that about 35 percent of the territory on which settlements were built is the private property of Palestinians. "It creates a discussion," he said about the court cases. "It forces Israelis to look at their own reflection in the mirror." Unfortunately for Etkes, reflections, like beauty, are often in the eye of the beholder.
(Photo: An Israeli border policewoman stands gaurd as a truck removes a structure from the illegal outpost of Migron on September 5, 2012 near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Migron, the largest and oldest settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank unauthorised by Israeli authorities, was built on private Palestinian land and in August 2011 Israel's Supreme Court ordered that it be cleared. By Lior Mizrahi/AFP/Getty Images)
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