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Nathan Jeffay

By

Nathan Jeffay,

Nathan Jeffay

Analysis

'No need for fence. It's all ours'

December 22, 2011 12:33
1 min read

Newlywed Yedidia Slonin, 20, says that his first marital home is in a "very central location". It is a wooden shack on a West Bank hilltop that has a population of two dozen.

But to him, his three-month-old outpost, Oz Zion, is "central" not only because it is close to the main road. It is because the location, near the settlement of Beit El, is in what he considers the heartland of biblical Israel. And despite repeated operations by Israeli police to destroy the shacks, which are unlicensed and illegal according to Israeli law, he is determined to rebuild and stay there.

Mr Slonin is a member of the so-called hilltop youth - young ideologues who are determined to fly the Israeli flag on the hilltops of the West Bank. To them, the settlers of towns like Efrat and Ariel are akin to armchair Zionists. Fired up with religious fervour, they believe that the hilltops are where the future of Zionism is being determined.

The "price tag" attacks against Israeli army and Palestinian targets are thought to come from their community, which numbers several thousand, but its members deny employing violence.

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