Police injured in clashes with Israeli settlers during West Bank eviction

ALMOST a dozen Israeli police officers were injured in clashes yesterday as they began evicting Jewish settlers from an outpost in the occupied West Bank.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 11 officers had been lightly injured during the eviction of 10 buildings in the Tapuah West outpost in the northern West Bank.

Israel’s supreme court had in February last year ruled that part of the settlement outpost must be removed since it was built on private Palestinian land.

According to Rosenfeld, six protesters were arrested.

Pro-settler legal advocacy group Honenu said 40 youths had been removed from the area by police. One was said to be lightly injured.

On Tuesday last week, police evicted settlers from 15 homes in a separate outpost north of the West Bank city of Hebron that was deemed illegal.

All Israeli settlements are viewed as illegal under international law, but Israel differentiates between those it has approved and those it has not.

Israel occupied the West Bank in the 1967 Six-Day War. Settlements there are seen as major stumbling blocks to a peace deal since they are built on land the Palestinians want for their future state.

Some 600 000 Israeli settlers live among almost three million Palestinians in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. —