Regavim (NGO)

Regavim (רגבים) is a pro-settler Israeli NGO, partially subsidized by local authorities, 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 sees its own mission as one of ensuring "responsible, legal, accountable and environmentally friendly use of Israel's national lands and the return of the rule of law to all areas and aspects of the land and its preservation".Peter Beaumont also cites its aim as one of preventing "foreign elements from taking over the countries [sic] territorial resources", pursuing cases in areas beyond Israel into territory occupied by Israel in 1967. d. 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 public funds from West Bank local settlement councils, and according to the last available public statement of accounts, 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.

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