Israel’s security forces began evacuating an illegal outpost built on private Palestinian-owned land Wednesday, even as Israel once again ramps up its settlement program elsewhere.
The announcement of the creation of thousands of new housing units in the West Bank came as Israel began to evacuate the illegal Israeli outpost of Amona near Ramallah in the West Bank.
Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said about 3,000 members of Israeli security forces were deployed to Amona, with many blocking access to roads to the settlement to prevent settlers’ supporters from joining efforts to resist the eviction.
About 600 settlers are protesting and have set fires and thrown rocks, nails and other debris on the road in an attempt to hinder the security forces’ passage.
By Wednesday afternoon, at least four Israeli protesters were arrested and 15 Israeli police officers suffered minor injuries after stones and liquids were thrown at them near Amona, Rosenfeld said.
The Israeli High Court ordered residents to leave the area last year. But the attempts to dismantle the outpost have recently been held up for months, and it has been more than a decade since the legal process began.
Some families leave voluntarily
There are 42 Israeli families living in Amona. So far, nine families — including 33 children — have evacuated on their own, Rosenfeld said.
CNN saw some settlers leaving the site of their own volition. Police say one family surrendered weapons that had been stashed in their home.
“As part of the Amona evacuation, during dialogue and discussion taking place between Israeli police officials and those Amona families that have decided to leave the outpost of their own volition, one of the families gave the police a bag containing weapons, stun grenades and flares, which had been hidden in their home,” a statement from Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri read.
Amid the evacuation, Naftali Bennett — the right-wing Jewish Home party leader and Education Minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — told his supporters to move beyond the perceived setback of the outpost’s clearance.
“From the ruins of Amona we will move to build a new settlement. From this mountain we will move towards applying Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria,” he said, using the biblical terms for the West Bank.
Thousands of homes to be built
The announcement of the creation of an additional 3,000 settlement homes in the West Bank is seen as an attempt by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appease his right-wing base, which is dissatisfied with the decommissioning of the Amona outpost.
The government has approved the construction of the new units, according to a statement late Tuesday from Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman.
The settlement program is illegal under international law, but Israel disputes that finding and insists the status of the West Bank is more ambiguous than international law allows. Many in the international community believe that such settlements are illegal and a barrier to any future “two-state” peace deal. Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The UN Security Council resolution states that Israel’s settlement program has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is concerned about Israel’s plan to build thousands more settlement units, his spokesman said in a statement Wednesday.
“We once again warn against any unilateral actions that can be an obstacle to a negotiated two-state solution,” spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.
The government-approved expansion of the settlement program is distinct from illegal settler outposts like Amona.
The announcement in Jerusalem came just a week after 2,500 new settlement homes were approved by the administration. At the time, Netanyahu told the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, that the expansion was just a “first taste.”
“We are in a new period where life in Judea and Samaria is returning to normal,” Liberman said on his Facebook page.
Of the 3,000 new homes, 2,000 are set to be built immediately, while the rest are in various stages of planning, Liberman said.
The decision, along with other recent expansion announcements, has drawn criticism from the Palestinian Authority and the EU.
A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned the latest settlement announcement in the occupied West Bank, which he said defied United Nations resolutions and international law.
“We have started urgent consultations in order to take the necessary measures to confront the settlement activities,” spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.
“We call on the US administration to rein in this Israeli government’s policy, which is going to destroy the peace process.”
US support
US President Donald Trump’s marked departure from the Israel policy of his predecessor Barack Obama has buoyed the Netanyahu administration’s desire to settle contentious areas of land.
Last week’s announcement of 2,500 new homes came just days after Trump’s inauguration and marks one of the largest settlement expansions since 2013, according to the settlement watchdog Peace Now. Trump also spoke with Netanyahu two days before the announcement.
Israel had also reacted angrily to the US abstention in a UN vote on Israeli settlement activities prior to Trump taking office. Trump later expressed his support for the settlement program.
With Trump in office, Netanyahu has been under pressure from his right-wing coalition partners to accelerate settlement construction.
Almost two weeks ago, he stalled a legislative push in an attempt by some politicians to annex parts of the West Bank, including Maale Adumim. Located just outside Jerusalem, Maale Adumin is one of the largest settlements.
The new construction comes two weeks after a peace conference in Paris, which called for Israel and the Palestinians to embrace a two-state solution and find their way back to the negotiating table. The Israeli Prime Minister called the conference “useless.”