“Terrorists,” Knesset member Mossi Raz of Meretz described the settlers in the illegal outpost of Evyatar. His sharp remarks in an interview this week came in response to a compromise that the government reached with the settlers living in the outpost.

The Israeli Defense Forces initially ordered the settlers to evacuate, but later on the government reached a compromise with them to be evacuated by 4 p.m. today in exchange for the government looking into the status of the land and verifying if it would be possible to regularize it. In other words, the residents would be removed, but their homes would not be demolished for the time being. The outpost was evacuated peacefully today.

“Bennett has just promised a government that is 10 degrees to the right of the previous government. It is insanity, plain and simple. It is letting criminal terrorists decide where a new military base will be located,” Raz raged.

If Raz had not been a member of the new coalition and if the leaders of his party did not hold key cabinet positions, little media attention would have been paid to his remarks. After all, Raz is a former head of Peace Now, a movement founded in 1977 to oppose the Israeli occupation of the territories. Now, he and the other members of Meretz find themselves in an impossible situation, expected to ignore their own banner issue.