Yesha says willing to transfer outposts built on private property
Yesha Council director says transfer will occur only if 'decree on freezing
of settlements is lifted'
Efrat Weiss YNET Published: 06.28.09, 20:27 / Israel News
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3738323,00.html

Yesha Council Director-General Pinchas Wallerstein wrote in an article
published Sunday that he would agree to evacuate outposts built on private
property in the West Bank.

The article, published in a local Binyamin region paper, says that "if an
outpost is found to have been built on private land, which belongs to
someone, and there is no way to settle it or purchase it, we will be willing
to pay the painful price and transfer it to a permanent location somewhere
nearby".

But Wallerstein says he will cede the land "only on the condition that the
decree regarding the freezing of settlements is removed".

"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 to decorate himself with," he adds.

Wallerstein writes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech
"proved he would not cede to all of the US president's demands, but his
speech still includes a rather large risk, and his regime still yields to
the dictates of Haim Ramon and the prosecution".

He claims that "Netanyahu's speech returned some sanity to the reality drawn
after Obama's speech", adding that the prime minister "did not fold under US
pressure".

Referring to American demands on the freezing of settlement in the West
Bank, Wallerstein accuses the US of attempting to extract "Barak Hussein
Obama's pound of flesh for the Arab world towards which he now sets his
sights".

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"If indeed Netanyahu means to allow the development of settlements, and
desires to take the 'illegal outpost' issue out of the agenda by
regularizing them, I am willing to cooperate, but by examining (the issue)
from an objective point of view and not from a political one," Wallerstein
adds.

"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.