Sasson's report took particular note of Avi Maoz, who headed the Ministry of Housing and Housing for much of this period. A political activist who spoke openly early in his career about expelling all Arabs from the West Bank, Maoz helped found a settlement south of Jerusalem in the 1990s and began building a professional alliance with Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israel's ambassador to the United States United. Nations and would soon move on to his first term as prime minister. Years later, Maoz would be instrumental in ensuring Netanyahu's political survival.
“The picture that emerges in the eyes of the beholder is grave,” Sasson wrote in his report. “Instead of the government of Israel deciding to create settlements in the territories of Judea and Samaria, its place was taken, from the mid-1990s onwards, by others.” The settlers, he wrote, were “the driving force,” but they could not have succeeded without the assistance of “various ministers of building and housing in the relevant periods, some of them with a blind eye, and others with support and support.” encouragement.”
This clandestine network functioned, writes Sasson, “with massive funding from the State of Israel, without adequate public transparency, without mandatory criteria. The construction of unauthorized outposts is carried out in violation of correct procedures and general administrative rules and, in particular, in flagrant and continuous violation of the law.” These violations, Sasson warned, came from the government: “It was the State and public bodies that violated the law, the rules, the procedures that the State itself had determined.” It was a conflict, he argued, that effectively neutralized Israel's internal checks and balances and posed a grave threat to the nation's integrity. “Law enforcement is unable to take action against government departments that themselves break the law.”
But, echoing Judith Karp's secret report decades earlier, the Sasson Report, made public in March 2005, had almost no impact. Since he had received a mandate directly from the prime minister, Sasson might have believed that his investigation could lead to the dismantling of the illegal outposts that had spread throughout the Palestinian territories. But even Sharon, in her high office, found herself powerless against the machine now in place to protect and expand settlements in the West Bank – the same machine she had helped build.
All of this occurred in the context of the withdrawal from Gaza. Sharon, who began overseeing the removal of settlements from Gaza in August 2005, was the third Israeli prime minister to threaten the settlers' dream of a Greater Israel, and his effort sparked bitter opposition not only from settlers but also by a growing part of the population. political institution. Netanyahu, who had served his first term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, and who had previously voted in favor of a withdrawal, resigned as finance minister in the Sharon cabinet in protest – and in anticipation of a 'another race for the highest office.