When youngsters were struggling against Israeli security forces last week, writhing and wriggling as they were carried out of homes during a settlement evacuation, there was an unlikely choreographer in the background.
Benny Saville is a resident of the West Bank outpost of Netiv HaAvot, where 15 homes were cleared last Tuesday after a court said they were built illegally, without a plan or the correct permits.
He helped to run a residents’ committee that oversaw protests in which hundreds of youngsters descended on the homes and opposed the security forces’ operation.
Outposts — sometimes called wildcat settlements — normally lack Israeli government authorisation and in many cases are built on privately-owned Palestinian land.
Such outposts alarm the Israeli left, which sometimes brings court cases to have homes evacuated — as with Netiv HaAvot. But for the ultra-right, outposts are cause célèbre. The activists turned out again this week to protest another evacuation, this time in Tapuach West.
Mr Saville is not the stereotypical champion for this group. At 48, he is more than twice the age of most of the protestors seen last week, he speaks in a perfectly-enunciated British English accent, and he heads the finance department of an Israeli company.
He had recently returned to his outpost from a trip to Middlesbrough, where his father grew up before making aliyah. Mr Saville was born in Israel and lived in Jerusalem until he moved to the West Bank 25 years ago for a mixture of ideological and lifestyle factors.
Back to the pressure cooker of Netiv HaAvot after the Middlesbrough trip, he was involved in planning the day of the evacuation. He knew the battle to keep the homes was already lost as the Supreme Court had ruled them illegal, but says that he felt a battle for Israelis minds still had to be fought.
One objective was to allow families to make an emotional exit from their homes, he said: “The other was to say to Israel that this can’t be a regular day, and to get the headlines that we wanted.
“We knew because of the Supreme Court order that it was going to happen, but you can still demonstrate.”
While left-wing groups like Peace Now, which petitioned for the evacuation, say it is essential that Israel cracks down on unauthorised building, Mr Saville and much of the settler movement disagrees. They say Israel should give more building permissions and that, when construction takes place on privately-owned Palestinian land, the owners should be compensated instead of homes being evacuated and demolished.
The protests, he said, were all part of efforts to push this point with the political establishment. “Justice wasn’t done, and we can still say it,” he argued. “We want our MPs to know we are unhappy.”
The demonstrations were “about the headlines, about saying that while we do it, it’s under protest.”
Journalists covering the evacuation noted that youngsters resisted and cried as security forces carried them out of homes, but were then seen smiling and grinning. Some questioned how genuine their upset was.
Mr Saville acknowledged these varying expressions among protesters, but insisted it was “not a game, not a show.” Rather, he said, everyone makes “switches” between emotions.
For him and his fellow activists, the fight is only just beginning. They say that the government has told them that some 350 homes will be built in Netiv HaAvot, as part of a push to start turning outposts into authorised settlements.
“We will be lobbying, promoting the plans, and doing everything we can to make sure it happens,” he said.
