In response to the fatal terror attack near the Machpelah on Sunday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the controversial Beit HaMachpelah will be inhabited. Ironically, when the Jewish community tried moving in to the building which it legally purchased, then Defense Minister Ehud Barak prohibited the move despite their showing documentation validating the legal sale. Now, following the murder of a soldier by a terrorist, in a punitive action, the prime minister declared he will permit Jews to move into the building, which undoubtedly will elicit objections from the left-wing community.

The prime minister’s announcement came after midnight, ordering immediate action towards moving families into the building. “Those trying to uproot us from the City of our Fathers will achieve the opposite” the prime minister is quoted as saying.

Bayit Yehudi leader and Minister of the Economy Naftali Bennett said “we know how to build and settle, not murder”, calling on the prime minister to okay moving residents into the building immediately. Bennett added “under the cloak of ongoing negotiations, the yomtov of Sukkos has become a bloody one. There can be no doubt that recent events that have occurred since the resumption of the negotiations compel the cabinet to reevaluate its future course of action. The response to terror is not negotiating but a tenacious war against the murderers.”

Hebron residents are not too optimistic for the court ruled they may enter the building 18 months ago, yet the political establishment has prevented them from doing so. Activist Itamar Ben-Givir reminds readers that “The prime minister promises a great deal, like renewed building in E1 which never occurred. This is another case of too little too late.”

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)