At the end of a long and strange saga, and at the end of countless petitions, statements, promises and oaths, this week the Khan al Ahmar issue found its predictable death.
The burial of the Khan al Ahmar farce came in the form of seven pages of a fairly conservative High Court ruling, in which the justices rejected Regavim's request to force the government to evacuate the Khan, located near Kfar Adumim. The main reasons for the rejection depended on opinions and confidential data presented by the government to the court, which chose not to interfere with the executive branch's authority to decide if and when the site would be vacated.
For the benefit of those who are not in the hardships of Khan al Ahmar, or who have been dizzy by the exhausting legal, media and political preoccupation with it, here is a brief history of the place – from then until today, until the grave burial of the intentions to evacuate it.
Khan al Ahmar is an illegal settlement of the Jahalin Bedouin tribe. The tribesmen claim to have stayed there since the 50s, but the state uses the 80s as the date of settlement. Over the past 15 years, countless petitions have been filed, especially by Jewish residents of the area and the Regavim movement, seeking to enforce the law and evacuate the outpost. Israel's High Court of Justice approved the evacuation but did not specify a date, and Israeli governments have repeatedly postponed the evacuation amid international pressure and even a threat by the International Court of Justice in The Hague that it would be declared a war crime.
Another important thing to know about Khan al Ahmar is the uncompromising oath of almost all elected right-wing officials to carry out the evacuation, no matter what. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised that the site would be evacuated "within a short time" as early as 2018, as did Naftali Bennett, who attacked Netanyahu for his laxity on the matter. Ayelet Shaked, Gideon Sa'ar, Avigdor Lieberman, Zeev Elkin and others also called boldly for the evacuation, but in practice did nothing, when they had the power to carry out the never-ending promise that Khan al Ahmar would be evacuated.
On the evening of one of the last rounds of elections, the website "Srugim" held a special broadcast from the site, where senior right-wing politicians who came to the field again made uncompromising commitments and declarations that the right is worth evacuating. As mentioned, there were promises for the most part, but no one promised that he would keep. In reality, Khan al Ahmar did not fall again, and in fact it did not fall in the beginning.
It's not clear what motivated so many politicians to put such a spotlight on the place they knew deep down would never be evacuated. They are likely to have breathed a sigh of relief with the recent Supreme Court ruling, which exempts them from a similar manipulative round in future rounds of elections.
This is even stranger when one considers the electoral impact of the eviction declarations: it is doubtful whether a single voter was deeply impressed and chose to cast a ballot for a candidate who turned Khan al Ahmar into a flag that was clearly false.
The Khan al Ahmar issue is dead, at least as of now, the political career of the false prophets is still alive and kicking, and is likely to live a long time, all the way to the next false "right-wing" saga.
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