Police set up operations unit ahead of outpost evacuation
By Anshel Pfeffer and Jonathan Lis Haaretz Last update - 01:42 22/07/2009
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1102026.html

The police's Shai District, which is responsible for the West Bank, has set
up a special dedicated command to handle preparations for a large-scale
evacuation of illegal settlement outposts.

The government has not yet formally ordered the defense establishment to
start preparations, so the command is not up and running officially.
However, the settlers have already set up their own "counter-command" to
handle resistance to the anticipated evacuations.

The new unit will be headed by Brig. Gen. Amitai Levy, commander of the
Border Police forces in the West Bank. It will follow the model of the
special commands set up in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank prior to
the evacuation of settlements there during the 2005 disengagement.

Though the command was set up by the police, all police operations in the
West Bank are formally under the authority of the Israel Defense Forces.
Therefore once the government gives the order for preparations to start, any
IDF units involved in the evacuations will presumably be attached to the
command.

The first exercise conducted by the new command took place two weeks ago at
an army base, as reported Tuesday in Haaretz. That exercise, which simulated
the simultaneous evacuation of several outposts, involved three Border
Police companies and various police units - including a team of mounted
policemen and a team from the elite anti-terror unit Yamam - as well as some
army forces, including a team from the IDF Medical Corps.

Even though all police activity in the West Bank takes place under the
auspices of the IDF, and both GOC Central Command Gadi Shamni and Brig. Gen.
Noam Tibon, commander of the IDF forces in the West Bank, observed the
exercise, the army is trying to minimize its involvement in outpost
evacuations. IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi has said publicly and
repeatedly in recent months that he believes policemen should evacuate the
outposts, while soldiers should be responsible only for guarding the
perimeter of the area being evacuated. Dealing with civilians is the job of
the police, Ashkenazi argues, while the army's job is to handle security.

For this reason, the army is unhappy with a plan now being drafted by the
defense establishment for the simultaneous evacuation of all 23 outposts
established after March 2001, which Israel has repeatedly promised
Washington it will dismantle. Since the police do not have enough manpower
to evacuate 23 outposts on their own, this plan would require soldiers to
participate in physically removing the settlers as well.

But the army's concerns do not relate solely to the formal definition of its
mission. Its real fear is that IDF involvement in a new round of large-scale
evacuations would spark a massive wave of refusal to serve on the part of
settlers and their supporters, and perhaps even physical clashes between the
evacuating forces and the soldiers and officers who themselves reside in the
outposts.

Not everyone in Defense Minister Ehud Barak's office is comfortable with
Ashkenazi's stance. "The decisions will be made by the government, and the
army does not choose its own missions," one said.

For the record, however, Barak's office insisted that "The defense minister
and the chief of staff see eye to eye on this issue."

A more technical problem with the simultaneous evacuation plan is that the
army's chances of keeping it secret from the settlers - thus denying the
settlers a chance to mobilize their forces, and thereby minimizing clashes -
are almost nil. The exercise conducted two weeks ago was leaked to the
settlers by border policemen who participated in it, and word of the new
command also quickly made its way to the outposts.

In recent days, West Bank roads have been plastered with signs urging anyone
who observes a suspicious movement of forces or learns of a planned
evacuation to call an outpost hotline that will operate 24 hours a day -
even, thanks to a special permit from Rabbi Dov Lior of Kiryat Arba, on
Shabbat, when Jewish law normally forbids use of the telephone. Once word of
a planned evacuation is received, settler activists will mobilize thousands
of people to go to the outposts to fight the evacuation, as well as others
who will block roads and engage in other protest activities inside the Green
Line.

In preparation for that day, activists have opted not to exhaust themselves
by clashing with security forces over every minor evacuation of a few
caravans here or there. Instead, they have opted for a "price tag" policy:
attacking Palestinians or their property in retaliation for such
evacuations.

Tuesday, however, settlers of the veteran West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin
did clash with policemen who came to arrest two residents suspected of
disturbing the peace. One settler was lightly injured and another was
arrested.