“The outpost will be evacuated. It is illegal. It is not at all a question of right or left. It is an order from the army and the civil administration,” declared Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid at a June 22 press conference.

Evyatar is an illegal outpost in the domain of the Samaria Regional Council, close to the Palestinian villages of Beita and Yatma. The Israel Defense Forces has ordered its evacuation and now it is the center of a political storm. According the security establishment, the outpost has fueled conflict. The IDF has long kept tabs on the activities in the outpost and the site has been built up in recent years, including structures inhabited by dozens of families in violation of the law. Reports this evening say that Defense Minister Benny Gantz reached a compromise with the settlers, but no official decision has been published. 

Though even former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could not ignore orders from the IDF and ultimately would have been forced to evacuate the illegal outpost, his government postponed dealing with the evacuation. It left the hot potato for the new government to deal with, portraying the new government as a leftist body that is intent on harming the settlers and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett as trying to destroy the settlement movement.

That Bennett had served as head of the Yesha Council and was viewed as the settlers’ inside man, had created expectations that the government would have a right-wing orientation. But it is the center-left parties and Ra’am that are setting the tone. The fact that Lapid spoke so clearly and decisively about the evacuation of Evyatar shows the direction the new government will take.