Then-prime minister Shimon Peres in settlement of Ma'ale Efraim, West Bank. 1985 Hananiya Herman, GPO
In the heart of the
settlement of Ofra there’s a 41-year-old tree residents say was planted
when the community was founded by then-Defense Minister Shimon Peres.
On
Wednesday they made sure to distribute the picture of Peres planting
the tree in a place that for journalists became one of the symbols of
ideological settlement in the West Bank.
Peres
and the settlers had a complex relationship – more complicated than
what ultimately became entrenched in global public perception. He was an
architect of the Oslo Accords, and even as president he was a driving
force behind promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The West Bank settlement of Ofra, in 2012.Chaim Levinson
The
statement issued by the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and
Samaria upon his death pretty much summarizes this complexity.
“At
this time, we choose to remember the great contribution Shimon Peres
made to establishing Israel’s security infrastructure from its first
days, and his substantial contribution to Jewish settlement in Samaria.
“He
was one of the founders and trailblazers of the state, and despite the
various disputes over the years we will remember his consistent support
for settlement as the defense minister who brought about the
breakthrough in Samaria and the establishment of the settlements of Ofra
and Kedumim, and for his laying the groundwork for the establishment
and consolidation of additional communities.”
Indeed,
Peres made a very significant contribution to the establishment of Ofra
and Kedumim. In 1975, when members of Gush Emunim, the prominent
settler movement of the time, tried to set up an outpost at the
abandoned train station in Sebastia, Peres came to visit them.
Although
he did insist that the settlers leave the site, he subsequently allowed
a few dozen families to settle in the nearby Kadum military base, which
eventually became the settlement of Kedumim. That same year, the first
settlers moved in to Ofra, as well.
Benny
Katzover, one of the early Gush Emunim members among those who
demonstrated in Sebastia, says that when Peres came to the site he was
welcomed with cries of happiness.
“We
were happy because the assumption was that the issue would finally be
taken care of,” he said. “Eight times we went there, and eight times we
were removed. He would express publicly that we had the right, that we
have settle the Samarian mountain ridge, and there was the feeling that
his arrival pointed to some kind of arrangement.”
They were surprised to hear Peres say he had come to remove them.
“He
told us he’d been sent by the government to demand that we leave.
[Ariel] Sharon, who was with us the whole time, gave us the feeling and
many hints that things could work out,” Katzover said.
“During
that period Zionism had been condemned by the United Nations as a
racist movement. [Then Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin recruited all the
world’s Jewish leaders to come to Jerusalem. Some of them we even
managed to bring to the train station at Sebastia. The feeling was that
it was going to work out, but against all expectations, Peres insisted
that we leave.”
Peres left the site, but a short time later summoned the group's leaders to his office in Tel Aviv.
“We
come to the office in Tel Aviv, and there Peres opened with the
announcement, ‘I’m interested in closing this up. Let’s not conduct
negotiations like the Histadrut.’
"We
wrote up three-four clauses, after each clause he went to a side room
and spoke to whomever he spoke to – I understood it to be the prime
minister, but he never told us – about every clause, and that’s how we
ended up with what is now called the Sebastia compromise, when we were
moved to Kadum,” Katzover said.
The
connection with Peres continued, and the feeling was that he supported
the West Bank settlers, Katsover said. “When he was still the postal
minister he set up four telephone centers for us in Kiryat Arba, and his
opinions, which today are considered right-wing, were well known. He
visited us afterward in Kadum.”
As Katzover sees it, Peres veered leftward at the end of the 1970s.
“He
contended for the Labor party leadership twice against Rabin and he
came to the conclusion that if he didn’t turn left he had no chance. He
donned the cloak of a left-winger in a pretty sharp turn, and I think
that since 1979 or something like that he was already talking like a
leftist. Until then he had been clearly right wing.”
After
a while, Peres was viewed by many of the settlers as a bitter political
rival, particularly after the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, giving
Palestinians a measure of self-rule in parts of the West Bank.
“In
my opinion he brought about this disastrous agreement, the Oslo
agreement, which led to 1,500 murders,” said Katzover. “It was out of a
desire to benefit the people of Israel, I have no doubt about that, but
it did incredible damage.
"Perhaps
only Sharon’s disengagement was comparable in terms of a cow spilling
all the milk it had given,” the settler leader added, referring to a
2005 pullout under Sharon's rule, in which thousands of settlers were
evacuated from Gaza and the northern West Bank
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