WEST BANK: Israeli police clash with right-wing youths trying to infiltrate a former settlement

Record ID: 559971

  • Title: WEST BANK: Israeli police clash with right-wing youths trying to infiltrate a former settlement
  • Date: 23rd July 2007
  • Summary: BORDER POLICE OFFICER CHASING FORMER SETTLERS ON HILL
  • Embargoed: 7th August 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
  • Reuters ID: LVAJKKUJK46C3BLT9V4TX1469E
  • Story Text: Israeli police forcefully evacuate hundreds of right-wing youths trying to reoccupy a former West Bank settlement evacuated in 2005.
    Israeli police arrested a dozen Jewish settlers on Monday (July 23) and evacuated hundreds of others carrying bricks they intended to use to start rebuilding an outpost Israel had evacuated in the occupied West Bank.
    The protest, illustrating the rightist obstacles Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert must overcome to withdraw from occupied land, came as Tony Blair arrived on his first mission as envoy of the Quartet of Middle East peace brokers.
    Television footage showed police dragging protesters kicking and screaming from the site of Homesh, a settlement demolished in 2005 that has since become a rallying point for those seeking to oppose further such concessions to Palestinian demands.
    Homesh was one of four West Bank settlements evacuated at the same time as all 21 settlements were closed in the Gaza Strip. Some quarter of a million Jews still live in scores of settlements among 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank.
    Hundreds of young settler men and women had forced their way past a number of Israeli roadblocks to reach Homesh. Police arrested a dozen of some 300, the rest of whom were evicted from the site.
    A settler spokeswoman who said she attended the protest with her 10-month-old son said demonstrators had hiked there carrying their bricks in their bags, which some of them used to lay a cornerstone for a synagogue.
    She said the protesters had numbered close to 1,000 but that most fled to the nearby hills after police arrived.
    Olmert has opposed the campaign to resettle Homesh, and said on Friday (July 20) Israel would have to withdraw from "many areas" in the West Bank in exchange for peace.
    But Olmert has so far failed to meet a commitment, under a U.S.-backed peace "road map" for peace, to remove dozens of unauthorised outposts built in the West Bank by settlers who see the land as promised to the Jews by God.
    Ends
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