Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Israel evicts settlers
Police drag hard-liners in Amona from homes.
AMONA, West Bank — Thousands of police on Wednesday surrounded a Jewish settlement in the West Bank deemed illegal by the Israeli high court and began dragging angry residents, sputtering curses and prayers, out of their mobile homes.
After years of delay, the evacuation of the hard-line Amona settlers commenced, as longhair youths in skull caps burned tires, hurled rocks, and pushed and shoved authorities, alternately taunting police or pleading with them to disobey their orders to empty the community.
The day’s bitter clashes transfixed the nation, as Jews evicted Jews, with the democratic state fighting to uphold the rule of law as religious, messianic settlers claimed the rule of God. The scenes played out live on television and the internet, as Israeli politicians promised this would not happen again.
Even the settlers seemed to know that this may be a last eviction. They were zealous in their resistance, but there was more the feeling they had lost a battle — even a skirmish — and not a war.
The Israeli supreme court ordered the demolition of the village of 40 families in 2014 because it was built on land privately owned by Palestinians from the neighboring villages.
Many settlers and their supporters who climbed the rocky hill to defend Amona blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the community’s imminent destruction.
As the police carried redfaced settlers and demonstrators from the homes, bulldozers idled down the hill, ready to knock down the cheap metal caravans, as well as playgrounds, vineyards, olive groves and a synagogue.
The settlers said the government should have defied the court order or found a solution that would allow Jews to remain on biblical land they believe was promised to them by God.
Settlers also said they hoped Amona would be the last of hundreds of settlements and outposts built in part on private Palestinian land to be evacuated, because the new U.S. president would support them.
“We will be the last to be dragged from our homes,” said Eli Greenberg, 43, a father of eight who was barricaded inside his family’s trailer on the bitterly cold mountaintop.
“Why give this land to the Palestinians, who preach nothing but hate and violence, and want to destroy Israel?” he asked, speaking by cellphone as police surrounded his home. “We feel good vibrations from Trump. This is the end of this terrible time.”
In an attempt to calm the settlers’ fury, Israeli leaders promised that the dismantling of Amona would bring renewed building in the West Bank.
Last week, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced 2,500 new homes would be built in the West Bank. On Tuesday, in anticipation of the Amona clashes, they promised 3,000 more.
In the neighboring Palestinian village of Silwad, the Arabs clapped and shook hands.