Opening the Tekoa-Jerusalem Road (Za'atra Bypass)
The First Action: a Success.
What Next?

Report: Last Friday, June 9, 2006, more than eighty cars came to the entrance to Tekoa, so that we could drive to Har Homah and thereby demand the opening of the Za'atra bypass road, that has been closed to Jews since it was paved. An average of four people were in each car, including men, women, youth, and children. There were inhabitants of Efrat, Gush Etzion, Kiriat Arba, Hebron, the southern Hebron hills, and even from Beersheva. More than 150 people came to the second jumping-off point, in the Har Homah shopping center, in order to join up, on foot, with their brothers from Gush Etzion and the Hebron hills. |The marchers included Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad, and residents from Har Homah, Gilo, the Old City, Maaleh Edumim, and even Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The impressive convoy of automobiles set out from Tekoa and drove about eight minutes arriving at a gate and a barbed wire barrier, at a distance of about a kilometer and a half from Har Homah. On the way we all were impressed by the wonderful road, really a superhighway, in which the Israeli government invested millions, that until now ,only Arabs have enjoyed.

At the barbed wire barrier, that is right before the unpaved section, people left their vehicles and breached the gate to the security road that leads to Har Homah. This is the road - that is completely ready - on which we demand to travel now, until the final section of the Za'atra bypass road will be paved. At the barbed wire, there were a number of Border Police officers and blue policemen, but they could not stop the people breaking though. After a march of a few hundred meters on the security road, with two Border Police officers on horseback unsuccessfully trying to hold us back, a group of about seventy of our activists, who had started out from Har Homah and marched toward us, joined up with us. They told us that, on their side, Yasam (Special Patrol Force) policemen tried to stop them, and Border Police officers even threw four concussion grenades at them, but the police brutality didn't stop them, and they continued to march.

After the members of the two groups embraced, danced, and heard words of encouragement from MK Aryeh Eldad and from Rabbi Uzi Sharbaf of Hebron, among the heads of the Land of Israel Faithful, the organizers of the road opening declared that this first action was a great success. It has been quite some time since Gush Etzion has seen such a demonstration of unified forces and determination in the struggle for our right to live and travel everywhere and anywhere in Eretz Israel.

The Question Now Is: What Next?

Obviously, a single activity is not enough to officially open the road. Quite surprisingly, the night before the struggle to open the road, the Gush Etzion Regional Council distributed a flyer to all the residents of Gush Etzion with a message by the commander of the Jerusalem Police District, Major General Ilan Franco, to the effect that "The subject of the opening of the Za'atra bypass road, in the section that goes alongside the Har Homah security road, was reevaluated. In light of the harm to the everyday life of the inhabitants of the Gush, on the background of the intensification of the security checks at the Tunnels crossing, at the present we are conducting an evaluation of a number of issues in the infrastructure and operational sphere, for the purpose of enabling the opening of the road section to traffic on a trial basis, and for the period of time that will be determined. Upon the conclusion of the evaluation I will give you another update."

We regard this letter as a direct result of our activity. This proves, once again, that "quiet, behind the scenes, negotiations" are insufficient. For months the heads of our councils have been trying quietly to attain things, but this is of no avail. Only major public pressure and the public setting aside its routine life for actions and struggles on the ground are capable of getting results.

Accordingly, the question of what we do next has a clear answer: we will give the authorities a short time to honor their written commitment to open the road. If there will not be any developments in the near future, and they will continue to put us to sleep with nonbinding and vague assurances, we will have to repeat the action, this time with even greater participation by residents.

Read the flyers in your mailboxes, and join the SMS notification list.

"Aloh Naaleh Veyarashnu Ota!!" "Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of it" (Numbers 13:30)

[To sign up for the Land of Israel Faithful and the Gush Etzion-Hebron Hills Action Committees, send an SMS to number 1315 and write עציון הפעל To sign up for Land of Israel Youth: send an SMS to number 1315 and write ישראל הפעל - the cost of each message is half a shekel.]

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