'Outposts' thriving in the West Bank

[oberliner]

BRUCHIN, West Bank - With its playgrounds, identical houses and manicured flower beds, Bruchin looks like any placid Israeli suburb. Except that Bruchin is not supposed to exist.

Bruchin is among more than 100 West Bank outposts never officially authorized by the Israeli government. And Israel's repeated commitments to freeze settlement construction haven't hampered Bruchin's transformation from a cluster of trailers less than eight years ago into a thriving community of 380 people, girded by government supplied roads, electricity and water.

"Normally, when you think of an outpost you think of a water tower. This is a real town," said Amishai Shav-Tal, one of Bruchin's founders.

Unlike the full-blown settlements that have been built in the face of international criticism, the outposts have never gone through the public process of gaining official government approval. Many of them began as little more than a cell phone tower or trailer erected by settlers on a West Bank hilltop to establish a presence there, a seed they used to quickly establish a new community.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070217/ap_on_re_mi_ea/west_bank_birth_of_a_settlement;_ylt=AjTy8cRoW6GRp8ha.JcpR5nMWM0F