Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's leadership on the question of the five disputed houses in the Ulpana neighborhood of Beit El is significant because it began a national dialogue. We all got used to unresponsiveness in Right-Left relations. Right-wingers are not ashamed to call left-wingers traitors; left-wingers don't hesitate to twist reality and call settlers criminals. Netanyahu reminded us of the possibility to view things a little differently. Anyone who knows the settlers up close is able to look beyond their stereotypical portrayal. Degel Hatorah, part of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, voted against the outpost arrangements bill because of an edict from Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman stating that it is forbidden to coerce someone to sell his capital. In 1974, one of the first settler attempts was the establishment of an outpost on a rocky hilltop near Huwara, a village just outside of Nablus in Samaria. This early settlement attracted a barrage of court petitions from the Left to dismantle it immediately. I remember how the father of the settler movement, Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, published instructions to remove everyone from the hilltop. He had learned that some Arabs actually possessed land ownership certificates. Kook simply said, "we are not thieves." Do we not have something to learn from the Left? Netanyahu certainly believes we do. His proposed solution to move the Ulpana houses and to build more clarifies his dedication to the settler enterprise. Netanyahu reminded us that national unity is not just a magnificent political exercise; it is a national value.
