West Bank outpost cleared as Israel approves more
MIDDLE EAST: Israeli police clashed with hardline Jewish settlers yesterday as they tried to evict them from an illegal outpost, just hours after the government unveiled plans for a further 3000 homes in other West Bank settlements.
Settlers, and dozens of activists who flocked to Amona to oppose the evacuation, burned tyres and made makeshift barricades at its entrance. And while several families with small children left the outpost minutes before the operation began, others resisted the eviction.
Teenage girls wrote slogans on the walls of their caravan homes, while youngsters chanted: ‘‘A Jew doesn’t evict a Jew!’’
Meanwhile, Avihai Bavaron, one of the outpost’s leaders, said: ‘‘We won’t leave our homes on our own. Pull us out, and we’ll go . . . it is a black day for Zionism.’’
Amona, near Ramallah, is the largest of scores of West Bank outposts built without official authorisation, and is home to about 330 settlers.
Last November, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled they had to leave because their homes are on privately owned Palestinian land, but this operation marked the end of months of attempts by government militants to legalise the outpost.
Most countries consider all Israeli settlements on occupied territories to be illegal, but Israelis cite historical and political links to the land to rival those of the Palestinians, as well as security issues.
The Amona issue had caused tensions within Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government. But they eased after the prime minister got behind a law proposed by the Jewish Home party, a far-right political ally, to retroactively legalise dozens of outposts.
‘‘We have lost the battle over Amona but we are winning the campaign for the Land of Israel,’’ Naftali Bennett, a cabinet minister and Jewish Home leader, tweeted after the evacuation.
The former US president, Barack Obama, despaired of Israel’s accelerating settlement expansion which he regarded as the biggest obstacle to Middle East peace.
However, yesterday’s announcement of more settler homes was the fourth since President Donald Trump took office on January 20, after he signalled a softer stance on the issue. The Trump administration has already angered Palestinians after suggesting the US embassy in Israel could move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Israel calls Jerusalem its eternal capital, but Palestinians also lay claim to the city, which is sacred to Muslims.
– Telegraph Group