Israeli police
clash with settlers in the West Bank outpost of Amona yesterday. Israeli forces began evacuating this controversial settlement, which is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without permission but generally tolerated by the Israeli government.
Israeli police began evicting dozens of hardline Jewish settlers from a wildcat outpost yesterday, just hours after unveiling plans for 3,000 new homes in other West Bank settlements. Hundreds of officers marched into the Amona outpost near Ramallah to carry out the evictions ordered by the High Court after it determined the homes were built on private Palestinian land.
It marked the end of months of attempts by government hardliners to legalise the outpost, and the announcement of the new homes elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territory was widely seen as a sop to their supporters. There had been fears of violence after hundreds of hardline sympathizers of the settlers slipped past army roadblocks on foot and lit tyres around the outpost. Some threw stones at the media as residents started packing their belongings, an AFP correspondent reported.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP there were around 3,000 officers in and around Amona to move the 42 families, “and hopefully people will evacuate the area peacefully and quietly.” He estimated that another 600 people who were not from the outpost had arrived for the eviction. “We’re hoping that things will go relatively calmly and quietly. We’re ready to respond if necessary to any violence,” he said.
Youths confronted the forces with chants such as “How will you feel tomorrow after you evacuate a Jew from his home?” and “Today it’s me, tomorrow it will be you,” as police began evacuating them from the area. Earlier, some women holding children left their homes, as youths barricaded themselves inside. Teenage girls wrote slogans about their right to the land of Israel on the walls of the caravan homes, soon to be demolished.
Protesters said that they would not leave willingly but that they would not resort to violence against the police. “We won’t be going, they’ll have to take us,” Amona resident Rivka Lafair, 19 said. Far-right lawmaker Moti Yogev, whose Jewish Home party is part of Israel’s governing coalition, joined the settlers in a show of solidarity. He said that the demolition of the outpost was “a bad decision” but that the new homes announced by the defense ministry late on Tuesday were some compensation. “Yes, Amona will be destroyed, but against Amona we are going to build 3,000 new homes,” he said. The former US administration of Barack Obama despaired of Israel’s accelerating settlement expansion which it regarded as the biggest obstacle to Middle East peace. — AFP