Two weeks ago, Israeli police and soldiers began tearing down such outposts in a hesitant first step implementing the "road map" peace plan. But for the eight tiny enclaves Etkes says were removed he has already counted nine new ones — Jewish settlers staking their claim to Biblical lands one hill at a time.
"This is one big show," Etkes, of the anti-settlement Peace Now group, said Monday of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s evacuation of several outposts in recent days. "The vast majority of outposts simply aren't being touched."
Etkes, 34, has spent the past year and a half painstakingly tracking every sign of new settlement in the West Bank.
A father of two with cropped brown hair, two rings in one ear and a sunburned face, Etkes was a soldier during the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s, which he describes as a disturbing experience. After his discharge he traveled the world for years before returning to Israel, where he has abandoned his religious upbringing and has become a full-time peace activist.
He straps on a bulletproof vest before setting out down winding dirt roads and perilous highways, where piles of stones and fluttering Israeli flags mark spots where Israelis were killed in Palestinian ambushes. He monitors dozens of settler Web sites, and makes at least one or two flights a month over the area.
While some settlers welcome him with cups of coffee, he is often received with stony silence and sometimes with outright hostility. He regularly receives threatening phone calls, and in one case his car was stoned.
Asked why he perseveres, Etkes replies: "Pure patriotism." The future of Israel, he believes, depends on peace with the Arabs and the creation of a Palestinian state.
Like many Israelis, Etkes wants Israel to disengage from the West Bank and Gaza, which together are home to 3.5 million Arabs. Without this, Israel — with 5.5 million Jews and more than a million Arab citizens of its own — could become in effect a binational state.
"If Israel wants to take care of Israelis, it must take care of Palestinians as well," he said.
Some Orthodox Jews believe Israel has a God-given right to the West Bank, which Israel seized from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war, when the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) was also taken from Egypt. Both territories, which were never annexed, together with Israel formed British-ruled Palestine before 1948.
And many Israelis say the West Bank is vital to Israel's security; it surrounds Jerusalem from three directions and comes close to Israel's main metropolis of Tel Aviv.
About 220,000 Jews live in about 150 veteran settlements in the areas.
Under the road map peace plan, a blueprint for the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005, Israel must freeze construction in those settlements and also take down unauthorized settlement outposts set up in the West Bank since March 2001. Palestinians have to dismantle militant groups and end all violence.
The government will not give exact figures on the number of unauthorized outposts. Peace Now — consulted by embassies and the government's own security forces for information on settlements — has identified 62 new outposts among a total of 103 set up since 1996.
The outposts are valuable, some Israelis say, in establishing a presence along West Bank roads where Israelis have been killed in ambushes.
For Tehila Cohen, originally from Jerusalem, moving to the West Bank four years ago was a way of fulfilling her dream of a self-sufficient life growing herbs and raising livestock within a tight, rural community. "If people can live happily in Tel Aviv, and they don't think it is occupied, then I don't see any difference here," she said.
For Palestinians, all Jewish settlements are illegal encroachments on land they claim for their own state.
Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has conditionally accepted the plan. But the ex-general is a career hawk who has spent decades promoting the settlements, and many observers — like Etkes — doubt he has truly changed his positions.
Last week, in front of the world's media, soldiers and police got into bloody fistfights with settlers as they dismantled the first inhabited outpost — a collection of tents and makeshift buildings called Mitzpeh Yitzhar.
Critics say the occasional evacuations are largely a charade aimed at easing pressure on Israel, creating the appearance of compliance with the road map peace plan and underscoring the opposition such evacuations face.
And settlers quickly establish new outposts nearby.
Near the Maale Michmas settlement, scraps of wood litter a hilltop where bulldozers razed an uninhabited outpost over a week ago. But on the next hill, a dusty trailer strewn with broken furniture and pieces of paper already heralds the establishment of a new outpost.
"This is how it starts," said Etkes after finding the site. "In a few weeks or months from now, we might find several containers with people living in them."
Settler leaders do not deny it.
"We promised that if the government takes down the outposts we will put in new ones," said Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a settler spokesman.
What does Etkes make of the settlers?
"I think they are living on borrowed time," Etkes said.
