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Regavim (NGO)
Regavim (Hebrew: רגבים) is a pro-settler Israeli NGO that monitors and pursues legal action in the Israeli court system against any construction lacking Israeli permits undertaken by Palestinians or Bedouins in Israel and in the West Bank. It describes itself as "a public movement dedicated to the protection of Israel’s national lands and resources" and aims to "[restore] the Zionist vision to its primary role in the Israeli policy process".
It was founded in 2006 by Yehuda Eliahu and Bezalel Smotrich as "response to a Supreme Court case against the illegal outpost of Harasha in Samaria" initiated by Peace Now in 2005.
Regavim focuses most intensely on construction work in the Galilee, Negev, and the West Bank. Regavim's objectives converge with those of Israeli settlers, with whom the group maintains close institutional ties. Regavim is financed by public funds from West Bank local settlement councils and from the settler organization Amana.
According to Neve Gordon and Nocola Perugina, Regavim was founded as a settler-rights NGO. Perugini asserts that Regavim's objectives converge with those of Israeli settlers, with whom the group maintains close institutional ties. According to Gordon and Perugini, purpose was to counteract what its founders considered to be the improper use by "liberal" NGOs to "subvert" Israeli democracy by using the legal system to pursue advocacy of human rights when the left failed to achieve electoral success. According to Dror Etges, former Director of the Peace Now program, Settlement Watch, Regavim was not only conceived as a response to the work of anti-settlement NGOs, it was modeled directly on Settlement Watch and Yesh Din. This recourse to rights advocacy is dismissed as "undemocratic lawfare" by Neve Gordon. According to Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, settler rights NGOs like Regavim turn the relationship of oppressed and oppressor on its head, in transforming dispossession as a human right.
Regavim is financed by both private donations and public funds from West Bank local settlement councils. It received more than 2 million shekels ($550,000) of funding in 2010, a sixfold rise over 2008. Regavim also receives funds from the settler organization Amana. West Bank local settlement councils that have funded Regavim to the tune of millions of shekels include the Mateh Binyamin regional council, the Samara regional council, and the Hebron Hills regional council. Many settler members of Regavim have, under the direction of Bezalel Smotrich, been inducted as civil servants into Israeli Civil Administration overseeing the West Bank. Smotrich, who appointed the former Yitzhar settler Hillel Roth as the ICA's deputy direction in April 2024, has managed to have the IDF transfer many of its power over by-laws to these civil servants, a measure which according to Michael Sfard, will effectively move Israel towards a de facto annexation of that territory.
The name, Regavim, lit. "patches of soil", is taken from the Hebrew word regev, meaning a very small piece of land, a word used in a Zionist poem about reclaiming the Land of Israel, "dunam by dunam, regev by regev". (A dunam is 0.1 hectare, about 0.247 acres.)
Regavim focuses most intensely on construction work in the Galilee, Negev, and the West Bank that has been done by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians without Israeli permits. Regavim has also directly petitioned against government removal of settler outposts. It has also petitioned successfully to stop Israeli demolition orders against settler homes, as in the case of Har Bracha in April 2010, and Migron. According to its director Ari Briggs, the courts and Civil Administration are often slow to act against "illegal Palestinian construction activity", and Regavim files lawsuits to prod the courts to issue demolition orders. After Yesh Din successfully petitioned the state to force settlers in the illegal Israeli outpost of El Matan to seal an unauthorized synagogue, Regavim retaliated by petitioning the Israeli Supreme Court to have a mosque, still under construction and serving 400 worshippers in Al Mufaqara, bulldozed in the West Bank on the grounds it was in Area C. Their suit was successful.
Regavim argues that the Jewish people are "being robbed of the Land of Israel ... ever so quietly without the roar of battle and the clamor of war" Regavim appears to mirror the practices of human rights organizations like Yesh Din, which appeal to the courts on behalf on Palestinian communities, with the difference that for Regavim, all of Israel and the Palestinian territories is "national land" and Palestinian habitation is an "illegal overtaking" of that land, it systematically inverts the terms of human rights language, by designating Jewish settlements as legal, and Palestinians under the Israeli occupation as "trespassers" engaged in illegal occupation, settlement, and outpost construction. By using a network of settlers to scout, photograph and report on Palestinian construction, it monitors and then reports on constructions by Palestinians that lack full Israeli legal permits, and prosecutes cases of such construction through the judicial system.
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Regavim (NGO)
Regavim (Hebrew: רגבים) is a pro-settler Israeli NGO that monitors and pursues legal action in the Israeli court system against any construction lacking Israeli permits undertaken by Palestinians or Bedouins in Israel and in the West Bank. It describes itself as "a public movement dedicated to the protection of Israel’s national lands and resources" and aims to "[restore] the Zionist vision to its primary role in the Israeli policy process".
It was founded in 2006 by Yehuda Eliahu and Bezalel Smotrich as "response to a Supreme Court case against the illegal outpost of Harasha in Samaria" initiated by Peace Now in 2005.
Regavim focuses most intensely on construction work in the Galilee, Negev, and the West Bank. Regavim's objectives converge with those of Israeli settlers, with whom the group maintains close institutional ties. Regavim is financed by public funds from West Bank local settlement councils and from the settler organization Amana.
According to Neve Gordon and Nocola Perugina, Regavim was founded as a settler-rights NGO. Perugini asserts that Regavim's objectives converge with those of Israeli settlers, with whom the group maintains close institutional ties. According to Gordon and Perugini, purpose was to counteract what its founders considered to be the improper use by "liberal" NGOs to "subvert" Israeli democracy by using the legal system to pursue advocacy of human rights when the left failed to achieve electoral success. According to Dror Etges, former Director of the Peace Now program, Settlement Watch, Regavim was not only conceived as a response to the work of anti-settlement NGOs, it was modeled directly on Settlement Watch and Yesh Din. This recourse to rights advocacy is dismissed as "undemocratic lawfare" by Neve Gordon. According to Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, settler rights NGOs like Regavim turn the relationship of oppressed and oppressor on its head, in transforming dispossession as a human right.
Regavim is financed by both private donations and public funds from West Bank local settlement councils. It received more than 2 million shekels ($550,000) of funding in 2010, a sixfold rise over 2008. Regavim also receives funds from the settler organization Amana. West Bank local settlement councils that have funded Regavim to the tune of millions of shekels include the Mateh Binyamin regional council, the Samara regional council, and the Hebron Hills regional council. Many settler members of Regavim have, under the direction of Bezalel Smotrich, been inducted as civil servants into Israeli Civil Administration overseeing the West Bank. Smotrich, who appointed the former Yitzhar settler Hillel Roth as the ICA's deputy direction in April 2024, has managed to have the IDF transfer many of its power over by-laws to these civil servants, a measure which according to Michael Sfard, will effectively move Israel towards a de facto annexation of that territory.
The name, Regavim, lit. "patches of soil", is taken from the Hebrew word regev, meaning a very small piece of land, a word used in a Zionist poem about reclaiming the Land of Israel, "dunam by dunam, regev by regev". (A dunam is 0.1 hectare, about 0.247 acres.)
Regavim focuses most intensely on construction work in the Galilee, Negev, and the West Bank that has been done by Israeli Arabs and Palestinians without Israeli permits. Regavim has also directly petitioned against government removal of settler outposts. It has also petitioned successfully to stop Israeli demolition orders against settler homes, as in the case of Har Bracha in April 2010, and Migron. According to its director Ari Briggs, the courts and Civil Administration are often slow to act against "illegal Palestinian construction activity", and Regavim files lawsuits to prod the courts to issue demolition orders. After Yesh Din successfully petitioned the state to force settlers in the illegal Israeli outpost of El Matan to seal an unauthorized synagogue, Regavim retaliated by petitioning the Israeli Supreme Court to have a mosque, still under construction and serving 400 worshippers in Al Mufaqara, bulldozed in the West Bank on the grounds it was in Area C. Their suit was successful.
Regavim argues that the Jewish people are "being robbed of the Land of Israel ... ever so quietly without the roar of battle and the clamor of war" Regavim appears to mirror the practices of human rights organizations like Yesh Din, which appeal to the courts on behalf on Palestinian communities, with the difference that for Regavim, all of Israel and the Palestinian territories is "national land" and Palestinian habitation is an "illegal overtaking" of that land, it systematically inverts the terms of human rights language, by designating Jewish settlements as legal, and Palestinians under the Israeli occupation as "trespassers" engaged in illegal occupation, settlement, and outpost construction. By using a network of settlers to scout, photograph and report on Palestinian construction, it monitors and then reports on constructions by Palestinians that lack full Israeli legal permits, and prosecutes cases of such construction through the judicial system.