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Leza L Olson  09/05/2006 01:07:54 PM  From  DB/Inbox:  Leza L Olson

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S E C R E T        TEL AVIV 03511

SIPDIS
CXTelA:
    ACTION: ECON
    INFO:   IPSC SCI IMO CONS RES ADM FCS PD POL DCM AMB
            AID

DISSEMINATION: ECON
CHARGE: PROG

APPROVED: AMB:RJONES
DRAFTED: ECON:RRUFFER
CLEARED: DCM:GCRETZ, ECON:WWEINSTEIN, POL:NOLSEN

VZCZCTVI613
OO RUEHC RUEHXK
DE RUEHTV #3511/01 2441527
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
O 011527Z SEP 06
FM AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6113
INFO RUEHXK/ARAB ISRAELI COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE

S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 03 TEL AVIV 003511 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/31/2016 
TAGS: KWBG PGOV PREL IS
SUBJECT: SASSON SHAKEN BY MOJ PLAN TO LAUNDER, EXPAND 
OUTPOSTS 
 
REF: A. TEL AVIV 03438 
     ¶B. TEL AVIV 03458 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Richard H. Jones for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d) 
 
¶1.  (S) This is an action request message. See paragraph 11. 
 
¶2.  (S) Summary:  Talia Sasson, the attorney who wrote the 
blockbuster report in March 2005 on illegal outposts activity 
in the West Bank, was visibly disturbed and agitated by a 
draft proposal in response to her report that the Ministry of 
Justice (MOJ) is preparing on how to handle construction 
activity in the territories.  Sasson met with EconCouns and 
econoff on August 31, and explained in detail what her main 
concerns are about the draft proposal:  no mention of 
evacuating outposts; secret government decisions on where to 
build settlements; various ways for the settlers themselves 
to expand existing settlements; the possibility of 
retroactively authorizing illegal outposts; and the 
possibility of providing government funding for illegal 
outposts.  Sasson not only criticized the recommendations, 
but objected to the indecipherable legal language used, which 
she speculated was designed to confuse both cabinet ministers 
voting on the proposal and the USG.  She explained that the 
draft proposal contradicts the spirit of the recommendations 
in her March 2005 report, which is to give the GOI more 
direct authority to restrict and dismantle settlements and 
outposts, and added that she expects the MOJ proposal to be 
ratified in the near future. End summary. 
 
¶3.  (S) Talia Sasson, an attorney commissioned by former 
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to investigate illegal outpost 
activity in the West Bank, published a report in March 2005 
that offered numerous recommendations on how the Israeli 
government should amend legislation to give it more legal 
control over housing construction in the territories.  An 
inter-ministerial committee was established to study how to 
implement her recommendations, but the implementation effort 
was sidelined for over a year by Gaza disengagement, Sharon's 
health problems, and government elections.  Over the summer, 
however, the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), which chaired the 
committee, prepared a draft proposal on how to reform the 
laws pertaining to illegal outposts.  Sasson said she 
received a copy of the proposal for comment, and subsequently 
wrote a very critical 30-page letter to the MOJ detailing her 
main concerns.  She told EconCouns and econoff on August 31 
that the draft proposal moves in the exact opposite direction 
of her March 2005 report (which detailed a pervasive 
inter-ministerial web of support for settlement activity 
throughout the West Bank), and clearly contradicts the spirit 
of her recommendations, which is to give the GOI more direct 
legal authority to restrict and dismantle outposts and 
settlements. 
 
---------- 
GOI Intent 
---------- 
 
¶4.  (S) Sasson commented that the Israeli government thinks, 
"erroneously and arrogantly," that the proposal will somehow 
co-opt the West Bank settlers by legalizing many outposts and 
allowing settlement expansion in some areas, while winning 
their submission to the idea of some settlement evacuations 
in the unspecified future.  Sasson said that, even if there 
is a withdrawal of settlers and settlements from the West 
Bank, which she doubts, the government should not trust the 
settlers to go quietly, and should in fact realize that 
giving outposts a legal basis for existence will only make a 
future disengagement all the more difficult. 
 
---------------------- 
No Word on Evacuations 
---------------------- 
 
¶5.  (S) Sasson reported that one of her concerns with the 
MOJ's draft is that "there is not one word on evacuations" of 
any illegal outposts, whether pre- or post-March 2001 
outposts.  She said that the GOI clearly has the legal 
authority to evacuate, at the very least, any outposts which 
her research found were built on private Palestinian land, 
but the MOJ's proposal does not discuss this issue, leaving 
it sufficiently vague that pro-outpost advocates can continue 
to stymie evacuation efforts.  She also stressed that her 
report counted 105 illegal outposts, but that the MOJ draft 
uses a figure from the Ministry of Defense (MOD) that, while 
not specified in the MOJ draft, Sasson knows from her 
research to be about 81 outposts, not 105. 
 
------------------------ 
Decisions on Settlements 
Will be Secret 
------------------------ 
 
¶6.  (S) Sasson said that another of her concerns is that a 
committee of six ministers -- the prime minister and 
ministers of defense, justice, housing, interior, and 
agriculture -- will replace the former structure which 
required the approval of entire cabinet to decide where a 
settlement will be established, and their decision need not 
be publicly disclosed.  She explained that when Binyamin 
Netanyahu was prime minister in 1996, he wrote a directive 
that required that the entire Cabinet decide where a 
settlement would be built in the West Bank.  (Note:  The 
previous prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, had ordered 
construction of new settlements to stop during his tenure in 
office, which gave rise to the illegal outposts phenomenon. 
When Netanyahu because prime minister, he publicly rescinded 
Rabin's order that halted construction, and himself wrote the 
directive requiring full-Cabinet decisions.  End note.) 
Sasson noted that Netanyahu's directive implied that if the 
cabinet makes a decision, it should be public knowledge 
because meeting minutes are published.  Now, however, no one 
will know what the smaller committee decides about 
construction in the West Bank because committee minutes are 
not required to be published, she concluded. 
 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------------- 
Approving Expansion of Existing Settlements and Illegal 
Outposts 
--------------------------------------------- --------------- 
 
¶7.  (S) Sasson voiced distress at how the MOJ proposal would 
dramatically increase the channels by which the settlers 
could secure approvals for expansions, whether for those 
supposedly already covered by existing master plans or for 
entirely new expansions.   Another of the draft's proposals 
that Sasson took issue with is the retroactive approval of 
illegal outposts.  According to Sasson, currently a 
settlement must meet four criteria for the Israeli government 
to consider it a legally-established entity:  the government 
must have formally decided to build on a particular location; 
it must be part of an approved master plan; it must be on 
state land; and it must have municipal borders.  If a planned 
expansion is missing one of the components, the GOI consider 
the location to be an outpost, she explained.  In order to 
make an outpost legal, she continued, the MOJ draft proposal 
suggests that a master plan be prepared for construction of 
houses "around" the outpost, rather than retroactively 
authorizing what is already in place.  For example, if an 
illegal outpost consists of three or four trailers on a 
hilltop, the GOI will prepare a "legal" plan to build houses 
around the trailers, thus providing de facto authorization 
for the entire area without technically approving the three 
or four trailers themselves.  Sasson asserted that this can 
in no way be legal, and said that she hopes an organization 
like Peace Now will  take the GOI to court over its 
intentions to proceed in this manner.  In response to 
econoff's question on the logic of this idea, Sasson 
speculated that it could be a way for the GOI to claim to the 
USG that it is not technically retroactively authorizing 
illegal outposts. 
 
----------------------- 
Exceptions Committee to 
Fund Illegal Outposts 
----------------------- 
 
¶8.  (S) Sasson also highlighted a proposal in the MOJ draft 
calling for a new exceptions committee, that could circumvent 
restrictions on the use of public funds for illegal outposts. 
 This committee would be comprised of the director general of 
the Prime Minister's Office acting as the chairman, a 
representative from the MOD, and a representative from the 
Ministry of Finance.  A representative from the AG office can 
participate in the discussions.  Sasson pointed out that the 
AG in 2004 ruled that no public funds can be invested in 
illegal actions, i.e. outposts.  However, the MOJ draft, 
while noting this, says that "in exceptional cases in which 
the necessary needs of the public require the investment of 
resources," the committee will be authorized to approve 
funding for unauthorized outposts.  Sasson stressed that this 
contradicts the AG's ruling, and stressed the fact that there 
are no criteria set forth to determine which "exceptional 
cases" would require public monies.  (Comment:  Emboffs are 
not naive enough to think that elements in the GOI stopped 
providing support to illegal outposts after the AG ruling, 
but the creation of the exceptions committee would clearly 
and formally contradict the ruling.  End comment.) 
 
------------------- 
Report is Terrible; 
Why Write It? 
------------------- 
 
¶9.  (S) In addition to protesting the recommendations 
themselves, Sasson said that she objected to the way the 
proposal was written because the language of the draft is 
indecipherable legalese.  She explained that it is nearly 
impossible to understand, and that she spent hours going over 
the ten-page document in order to ferret out what the MOJ's 
recommendations are.  She mentioned that she showed it to 
several other attorneys who also could not make heads or 
tails of its meaning at first glance.  Sasson speculated that 
the language used is designed so that cabinet ministers will 
not understand what they will be voting for, and partly so 
that the USG will not complain about the proposal.  When 
asked by Econcouns whether the MOJ took GOI commitments to 
the U.S. to dismantle illegal outposts into consideration 
when writing the draft, Sasson replied that this did not 
enter into their consideration. She asked rhetorically, "If 
they didn't want to do anything with my report, why bother? 
They should've just let it go and done nothing, rather than 
this." 
 
---------------------------- 
Draft to be Ratified Soon 
---------------------------- 
 
¶10.  (S) EconCouns asked whether Sasson expects the draft to 
be reviewed and possibly revised in any way.  Sasson replied 
that the only opposition to the draft currently stems from 
the Labor Party, and even in that case probably comes from 
only Ophir Pines-Paz, and possibly Kadima's Shimon Peres. 
She said that Defense Minister Amir Peretz might be opposed 
to the draft, but thought that he does not have time to deal 
with it.  Sasson speculated that the orders to write a draft 
such as this probably came from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert 
himself.  She claimed that then-Justice Minister Haim Ramon 
spoke to the settlers about the proposal over the summer, and 
that the settlers gave comments on the draft.  She said that 
she would not be surprised if the settlers themselves wrote 
the proposal.  (Comment:  Peace Now Secretary General Yariv 
Oppenheimer and Settlement Watch Coordinator Dror Etkes 
(please protect) told econoff that they had testified in 
front of the inter-ministerial committee on the Sasson Report 
in June and July, as had the settlers.  Oppenheimer and Etkes 
said that, while Ramon asked good and pertinent questions 
about outposts, he seemed to take the settlers' side.  End 
comment.)   In response to EconCouns' question on how close 
the draft is to being ratified, Sasson replied that she 
thought it could be imminent  because it needs only Cabinet 
approval -- not review by the Knesset or High Court.  She 
explained that the Cabinet review -- and possible action -- 
had been scheduled for Sunday, September 3, but that it was 
postponed, probably so that Acting Justice Minister Meir 
Sheetrit can get up to speed on the issue.  She assessed that 
the vote will be re-scheduled fairly quickly. 
 
¶11.  (S) Action Request: We urge Washington to call for 
urgent consultations to ensure that GOI commitments to the 
USG on settlements and outposts are not irrevocably reversed. 
 Proposed talking points will be provided septel. 
 
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