Security forces start evicting several hundred settlers from illegal West Bank outpost hours after announcement of further construction
Peter Beaumont in Amona
Wednesday 1 February 2017 17.55 GMT
Israeli security forces began the long-threatened eviction of hundreds of hardline Jewish settlers from the illegal outpost of Amona on the occupied West Bank, hours after the government said it was approving the construction of thousands more settlement homes elsewhere.
The move, by several thousand police who descended on the windswept hilltop on Wednesday morning, came after years of foot-dragging and political controversy over the outpost, which is built on private Palestinian land.
The court-ordered eviction was expected to continue late into the night on Wednesday, as police moved in to drag out hundreds of mainly young supporters from the several dozen prefabricated homes in which they had barricaded themselves.
At least 13 police officers were injured in sporadic clashes with the settlers as teenagers set fires, threw objects and scuffled with officers as they swamped the outpost.
A bulldozer and water cannon were brought up as residents were told to pack up their belongings.
The scenes in Amona, however, stood in sharp contrast to the wider political context where the inauguration of Donald Trump as US president has triggered a surge in settlement building announcements in the last week.
Hours before the operation to seal the outpost of Amona, Israel announced 3,000 new homes in the West Bank settlements.
In total, some 6,000 new settlement homes have been announced since Trump’s inauguration last Friday. Next week, Israel’s parliament is expected to vote on a bill to allow the “legalisation” of a tranche of other illegal outposts built on private Palestinian land.
As the police descended on the Amona site, Israel’s far-right education minister, Naftali Bennett, demanded the annexation of the “entire West Bank”.
About 250 people in 50 families live in Amona, but in recent weeks dozens more people have arrived to face off against Israeli forces. Residents had said they planned to resist their evacuation peacefully.
“This is a dark day for us, for Zionism, for the state and for the great vision of the Jewish people returning to its homeland,” Avichay Buaron, a spokesman for Amona, said as the operation began.
Far-right lawmaker Moti Yogev, whose Jewish Home party is part of Israel’s governing coalition, was among those who joined the settlers in a show of solidarity and linked the demolition to the prospect of further construction elsewhere.
“Yes, Amona will be destroyed,” he said, “but against Amona we are going to build 3,000 new homes.”
As youths who had arrived in Amona to try to prevent the demolitions chanted, “How will you feel tomorrow after you evacuate a Jew ?” and “Today it’s me, tomorrow it will be you”, many of the residents themselves seemed resigned to their departure.
One woman sitting in a car with her daughter, who declined to give her name, told the Guardian they had been expecting this outcome.
“I’ve lived here 20 years. I met my husband here, who is an artist. We knew this day we would come,” she said, adding her family would spend the night in dormitory accommodation in the neighbouring settlement of Ofra. “This was a place where we felt free,” she added.
Bilha Schwarts, 24, another settler who came along with her husband and nine-month-old daughter to support the residents, added: “If they want it they can take it, we will not fight. We will leave but we will come back.”
The fate of Amona has long threatened to destabilise Benjamin Netanyahu’s narrow coalition, which includes the far-right pro-settler party Jewish Home and other hardliners, who are opposed to its demolition.
Israel’s supreme court ruled in 2014 that Amona was built on private Palestinian land and must be demolished. It has set 8 February as the final date for it to be destroyed.
Amona is the largest of around 100 unauthorised outposts erected in the West Bank without permission but generally tolerated by the Israeli government. The outpost, built in the 1990s, stretches out over a rugged, grassy hilltop and looks out across the valley on to Palestinian villages.
Netanyahu has struggled to find a balance between appeasing his settler constituents and respecting Israel’s supreme court, which has drawn the ire of hardliners by ruling against the settlers.
Trump has signalled that he will abandon the policies of his predecessors and be far friendlier toward settlements. He has appointed a prominent US supporter of the settlements to be his ambassador to Israel, and a delegation of settler leaders was invited to his inauguration.
This has emboldened Netanyahu, who repeatedly clashed with Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, over settlements, to announce a series of construction plans over the past week and a half. The Trump White House has remained silent, a dramatic departure from the vocal condemnations issued by Obama.
Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Trump at the White House on 15 February, and the two men are expected to seek understandings on Israeli construction plans for the West Bank.
Speaking of the Amona eviction, Amnesty International’s Middle East and north Africa deputy director, Magdalena Mughrabi, said: “The evacuation of Amona, which was illegally built on Palestinian land more than 20 years ago, is a welcome move, but the Israeli authorities must ensure that security forces do not use excessive force against settlers and their supporters.
“The authorities must also ensure that settlers are not permitted to re-occupy the land and that access to it is granted to the Palestinian owners.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/31/israel-west-bank-settlement-homes
