Netanyahu misses the point. The outposts are being built to symbolize the Jewish right to set our feet anyplace in the Land of Israel. That is an important symbolic issue, not a housing affair.

Encouraged by the Knesset speaker’s demand to legalize their hamlet, Migron settlers are likely to refuse Netanyahu’s offer.

In the middle of the night, brave IDF fighters including the elite Border Police unit fell upon the hamlet’s residents and evicted them all, including babies, while severely damaging their homes.

The leftists appealed to the High Court, and the government submitted a response offering to exclude ‘or the territories it controls’ from the law, thus leaving it applicable only to Smaller Israel, and defeating the law’s purpose.

Israel has stated repeatedly that we would hold much of Area C in any peace agreement with the Arabs.

Another three conservative Jews were arrested for the crime of stalking army forces. Oh no, they did not plan to sell information to Hezbollah. The youngsters simply watched the army to see when it was coming to destroy their hamlets (‘illegal outposts’), at which point they were to call their fellow protesters.

Jews provide services and police protection to the Arab areas, which are entirely off-limits to them. Jewish policemen even patrol such hellish places as the Shuafat ‘refugee camp’ and Arab villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Those were included in the Greater Jerusalem area not for historical reasons, but because of misguided politics.

Now, we would applaud the fulfillment of the commandment to evict our enemies and settle the land. But failing that, maintaining administrative responsibility over areas where the PA actually rules, even to the point of grading school exam papers, is senseless.

In very few cases are outposts built on private Arab land, and in those cases ownership was established well after the construction. The bill could well pass the Knesset.

His move is theoretically correct because the allocation is indeed skewed if Likud wants proportional representation of its voters on the committee. But that misallocation has stood for twenty years, and every other Likud leader has preserved it in order to keep the party distinctly conservative. Netanyahu’s idea is to weaken opposition to the eventual withdrawal from the West Bank.

He may be mistaken, though. With all the support the withdrawal would enjoy from leftists and Arabs, he should be more concerned with maintaining a shred of support for his more conservative policies in the central committee.

By declaring Migron outpost a closed military zone the army plainly misuses its powers in pursuit of a leftist agenda.

Thus the PA shows its intent to push Israel back into the 1948 borders. No Israeli government, though, can afford to lose Maaleh Adumim and evict tens of thousands of Jews. But the government showed its willingness to sacrifice settlements: construction was approved in Efrat, but not Tekoa and Nokdim.

The cabinet also suspended tax transfers to the PA—a good measure that won’t last.