Moves to regulate the Havat Gilad outpost in Samaria will be advanced at next week’s Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a Likud faction meeting Sunday.
Netanyahu’s comments on the matter came hours after Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told Army Radio that the prime minister was “dragging his feet” in pushing the measure forward.
“For his reasons, the prime minister did not want to address the bill today. There was no reason for the postponement, and we expect that it will come up [at the Cabinet meeting] next week. This is the second week in a row that the issue will not be brought up in the government,” Shaked said.
On January 9th, Rabbi Raziel Shevach, a resident of Havat Gilad, was murdered in a shooting attack carried out by Palestinian terrorists. Shortly after the attack, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that the outpost will be regulated.
While not mentioning the name of the outpost, a statement released by the Defense Ministry said “a new settlement should be advanced on private Israeli-owned land in the Samaria area.”
Havat Gilad would mostly meet the requirement as the outpost is built on land purchased by Moshe Zar after the murder of his son Gilad, the security coordinator of the Samaria Regional Council, who was shot and killed by Palestinian terrorists in 2001. Â Some 42 families currently live in the outpost.
In order to accomodate parts of the outpost that may not meet that requirement, the Defense Ministry statement added that the new settlement, which would have its own independent municipal status, “would also absorb residents from the area.”
However, despite Liberman’s comments, concrete measures to advance the proposal have yet to be taken.