Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett on Monday reached a deal on a new outline for dismantling the Amona community in keeping with the Supreme Court ruling, and concurrently offering the residents an alternative location on the same mountain, using impounded absentee landlord plots. According to Israeli media reports, the plan, approved by AG Avichai Mandelblit, will be presented to the residents Monday night and, should they accept it, the government would petition the court for an extension past the Dec. 25 eviction date, to facilitate a trouble-free evacuation.
“Following many efforts with the Prime Minister and the AG, we managed to forge a good absentee landlord outline and achieved our goal of keeping Amona on the same mountain,” Bennett told a meeting of the Habayit Hayehudi Knesset faction. According to Bennett, the new outline provides a much longer time horizon and on a larger territory that can include all the families with room to spare for future expansion.
“I believe we’ll received the consent of the Amona residents for the move to the new area on Amona Hill using peaceful means, and with that we’ll be able to approach the Supreme Court with a request for an extension.”
Bennett added that “uprooting any community is wrong and we feel the pain of the residents; but in the current conditions we succeeded in keeping the residents of Amona on the mountain as well as achieved the strategic Regulation Act last week.”
The new bill, which passed the Knesset vote in its preliminary reading, will compel Arab claimants against Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria to accept monetary or land compensation but not the already inhabited land.
Meanwhile, the security apparatus has been preparing for the evacuation of Amona on the due date. According to Honenu, the senior IDF Commander of the Central Command, Gen. Nitzan Alon, is planning to issue dozens of administrative detention orders against Jewish activists, to prevent them from reaching Amona to protest and prevent the evacuation, should the new deal fall through.