Court gives settlers 4 months to clear outpost

Israel's Supreme Court on Sunday gave settlers four months to evacuate the largest illegal outpost in the occupied West Bank, rejecting a government petition to allow them to stay on the Palestinian-owned land until 2015. "All must adhere to the law and this is the moment of truth," the court said. Migron is one of more than 100 outposts built without Israeli government authorization in the West Bank. The court had ruled previously that Migron had been erected on privately-owned Palestinian land and had ordered the government to evacuate it by March 31. In order to avoid a forcible evacuation, the coalition government, comprised mainly of pro-settler parties, reached a deal earlier this month with Migron's 50 families under which they agreed to move down the road to a nearby settlement by November 2015. But in its latest ruling, the court rejected that agreement, saying the settlers must leave by August 1, giving them only a four-month extension from the original March 31 evacuation date. "The desire to be considerate of the plight of Migron residents, which should not be taken lightly, cannot come at the expense of the plaintiffs and the rule of law," the ruling said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated that the court's decision would be adhered to. "The government of Israel, like all Israel's citizens, abide by the decisions of the courts and act according to the state's laws. Sometimes even this obvious fact has to be said and I choose to state it at this time," Netanyahu said in a speech. An official for the anti-settler watchdog Peace Now, one of the petitioners for the land to be returned to its Palestinian owners expressed satisfaction with the deal. "The land of Migron should go back to it's owners, the Palestinians, and this is what the Supreme Court has decided... It was very clear that the ... settlers are not above the law and should obey the decision of the Supreme court," Peace Now's Yariv Oppenheimer told Reuters. But Migron settler Shimon Riklin told Channel 2 television that the court decision came about as a result of political wrangling that was intended to present the settlers as law breakers and that the ruling could result in unrest. "Clearly this will not pass quietly ... the settlers are law abiding citizens who wanted to come to an agreement with the government. The Supreme Court wants a mess and it will get it," Riklin said. While the United Nations deems all settlements in the region to be illegal, Israel backs 120 official settlements, home to about 310,000 people. Though never officially sanctioning the outpost, the government has spent at least 4 million shekels ($1.1 million) on maintaining the cluster of mobile homes at Migron. Migron settlers have long maintained they were encouraged by the state to live there. About 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war that Palestinians want for a future state together with the Gaza Strip.