The decision about Homesh (and Sa-Nur, Ganim, and Kadim) in northern Samaria is a classic case of Israeli bungling. Ariel Sharon, who spearheaded the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria as a Likud prime minister, gave up Gaza and wanted to hint to the president of the US that his intention was to continue the action in the West Bank, as well. The hint was delivered through the evacuation of the four settlements in Area C.
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The law that allowed this to happen was passed, and the residents were compensated and removed, but the land – the vast majority of which was privately owned by Palestinians – was never returned to its owners even though it had been confiscated for military reasons that were no longer relevant and the High Court had demanded that the government allow its owners to use it.
Only a native of the fictitious town of Chelm, where everything is mishandled to a grotesque degree, could have come up with such a delusional solution. Either the four settlements should have been evacuated and handed over to the Palestinian Authority, thereby fulfilling part of the 1995 agreement to which Israel had committed; or they should have been left as they were. The evacuated settlements, mainly Homesh, wound up becoming pilgrimage destinations for right-wingers who wanted to return and who built a yeshiva in Homesh, in violation of the law. The only thing the High Court can do is tell the government to follow the absurd law and evacuate the yeshiva.
The Right has consistently demanded that the Disengagement Law be altered to allow freedom of movement for Israelis in the demolished settlements, while the Left is demanding that the government inform the High Court of the date on which it plans to evacuate the Homesh yeshiva. Defense Minister Benny Gantz submitted a "response" to the High Court this week in which he repeated that the yeshiva would be evacuated, but the government would decide when.
Rather than renewing the conflict over Homesh for the umpteenth time, rather than a demolished settlement becoming another holy place for religious Zionism, and rather than its evacuation becoming the top priority for my own camp, I'd like to propose a different approach – reaching an agreement that would allow Israelis freedom of movement in northern Samaria in exchange for freezing the decision to build some 4,000 new housing units in the West Bank. This equation would give both the Right and the Left half of what they want – the foolish law would be changed, the yeshiva evacuation would be suspended, and so would further construction in Area C.
Bad people with guns: The NRA held a convention in the same town where 21 first and second-graders and their teachers had been slaughtered only days earlier. It would be hard to imagine a more bizarre coincidence. Rather than the convention being cancelled, Donald Trump opened it and explained that what America needed was more guns so that its citizens could defend themselves against those who wanted to kill them. Sen. Ted Cruz framed this deep ideology by trumpeting: "What stops armed bad guys is armed good guys."
But he's wrong. Bad people with guns should be dealt with by a police force that doesn't decide to jump into a killing field after an hour of hesitation. But when US President Joe Biden promises to restrict the free sale of guns in America, everyone knows that he can only take action on the sidelines. The NRA is stronger than he is because it is backed by a dubious interpretation of the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which supposedly guarantees the right of every citizen to carry weapons.
The amendment was passed in 1791 to ensure that the federal government would fulfill its obligation to arm state militias. The Supreme Court interpreted it as the right of private citizens, and not just members of local militias, and thus the US became a country in which it is very easy to procure guns, where the "good people" are killed by "bad people" in inconceivable numbers. But what can you do when a country is bound by a constitution from the 18th century?
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