Eight times, the Elon Moreh nucleus went up to Sebastia and was removed, until the turning point. But not before several anxious moments and even concern for the safety of the defense minister.
With the approach of the anniversary of the day of liberation of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan, we spoke with a number of key figures in the settlement enterprise, we aroused memories from the first days and we wondered how much the vision of sovereignty occupied the pioneers of Judea and Samaria in those days, days of the first steps of the settlement enterprise.
Avraham Shvut
In those beginning days of the settlement project, Avraham Shvut was a member of the Elon Moreh secretariat, and when he was asked to recall one dramatic moment from those days he takes us back to the eighth attempt of the nucleus to ascend to the train station in Sebastia, on Hanukah, 1976.
Thousands came at that time to the train station to support the families of the nucleus. Among those who gathered there from all areas of the country were high school students, yeshiva students, former EZ”L and LH”I members and many others.
“On the seventh day of our stay at the place, the defense minister at the time, Shimon Peres, came with an entourage including GOC Yonah Efrat and other significant figures. We members of the Gush Emunim secretariat and the secretariat of the nucleus, entered for a discussion with him in one of the rooms in the building of the Ottoman train station. The rest of the public, about five thousand people, sat down in a kind of natural amphitheater opposite the entrance to the station, and Rav Neriah gave a lesson while they were waiting for the results of the negotiations”.
Meanwhile, at the meeting inside the building, the meaning of the minister’s arrival quickly became clear: “Even at the start of the meeting, the defense minister told us ‘I came to tell you that you must leave the place’. Rav Levinger stood up, tore his garment, left the room in an emotional storm and yelled to the people ‘the defense minister demands that we leave! They came to expel us!’ The crowd heard Rav Levinger, got up and began to move in the direction of the station”.
The thousands of people that marched to the building where the defense minister was, along with his people, frightened the GOC who was responsible for the safety of the VIPs. “The general was alarmed. After all, the defense minister was under his protection. He announced to the hundreds of soldiers on the hills to come down to the place and there was some concern that a hot confrontation might ensue. The members of the entourage were alarmed and Avraham Mintz, one of the members of the secretariat, a man who, before the War of Liberation was in Birya, went up to General Yonah Efrat and told him ‘Let me take care of things’. The general claimed that ‘No one can control such a mob’. Mintz requested a few minutes. He took a megaphone, went out to the crowd, who did not know him, and said ‘I am a representative of the Elon Moreh nucleus. We began a discussion with the defense minister and we need to continue it quietly. I am asking all of you to go back and return to your places’. The entire crowd, without objection from even one person, turned back and sat down. Mintz turned to Rav Neriah and asked him to continue the lesson, and we went back to the building to continue the negotiations with the defense minister”.
The wonderful discipline of the crowd, which understood that it was necessary to listen to the instructions of the leaders, was amazing. There was not one person who thought he had a right to act alone”, said Shvut and notes that indeed, at the end of that meeting the parties did not reach an agreement, but as a result of the discussion, after Peres left, there was an announcement that he requested our representatives to come to him, and they traveled to him to continue the negotiations – Rav Levinger, Rav Hanan Porat, Amnon Weiss, Benny Katsover, Rav Menahem Felix and Prof. Mordechai Hen as representatives of the nucleus. They met in his office, and at the end there was an agreement for permission to begin establishing the new community of Elon Moreh as a forward base, south of the train station, and from this beginning, the community of Kedumim was established and afterward, Elon Moreh and so forth, to the rest of the communities of Samaria”.
On the subject of the sovereignty vision in the period of the first steps of the settlement enterprise, Shvut says that the concept that guided the pioneers and their leaders was a combination of the vision and facts on the ground. “We did not discuss sovereignty in every gathering or every evening, but it was understood that the goal of the settlement enterprise is that Judea and Samaria would be part of the State of Israel. This was the assumption, just as the essential settlement before the establishment of the state was intended as preparation for the establishment of the state. This was the goal of all the Zionist parties”.
“We also saw the goal as assuring that Judea and Samaria would remain forever as part of the State of Israel, it was also clear that the settlement enterprise would advance the State of Israel’s rights and obligations toward the Land of Israel. It was clear to us that every group and nucleus that began a community without approval by the settlers’ institutions, was later approved so that they could continue living there and the institutions recognized these communities, and we too, would establish communities and the approval would come later on. All of the repeated attempts were done with the idea that ultimately the state and the institutions would recognize the groups that wanted to establish communities”.