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Israeli Police Evict Palestinians From Planned West Bank Settlement Israelis Evict Palestinians From a Site For Housing
(35 minutes later)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians who pitched tents at a strategic West Bank site to protest plans to build a Jewish housing project there were evicted early Sunday, the police said. JERUSALEM — Israeli security forces evicted scores of Palestinian activists before dawn on Sunday from a tent encampment they had set up set up two days earlier in a strategic piece of Israeli-occupied West Bank territory known as E1, east of Jerusalem, where Israel says it plans to build settler homes.
The protesters put up tents in the area known as E-1 on Friday, saying they wanted to “establish facts on the ground” to stop Israeli construction in the West Bank. They were borrowing a phrase and a tactic usually associated with Jewish settlers, who believe establishing communities means the territory will remain theirs once structures are built. The police said the eviction had been carried out swiftly, with no injuries on either side. But a spokeswoman for the protesters, Abir Kopty, said that six Palestinians had sought hospital treatment for injuries, some caused by punches to the face.
Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said officers evicted about a hundred protesters from the site early Sunday morning after a court decision authorizing their removal. He did not know which court had allowed the eviction. The encampment, which the protesters called the village of Bab al-Shams (Arabic for “Gate of the Sun”), represented a new kind of action by Palestinian grass-roots activists involved in what they describe as the nonviolent popular struggle against the Israeli occupation.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the eviction was carried out despite a temporary Supreme Court injunction preventing it. Employing a tactic more commonly used by Jewish settlers who establish wildcat outposts in the West Bank, the protesters had pitched their tents on Friday on what they said was privately owned land, and with the permission of the Palestinian landowners. They were immediately served eviction notices by the Israeli military authorities, but their lawyers had obtained a temporary injunction against their removal from the High Court of Justice until the state detailed the grounds for such a move.
Mr. Rosenfeld said that no arrests were made during the half-hour eviction and that no injuries were sustained on either side. He said that the tents were not dismantled, but that a decision on that would be made later in the day. But on Saturday evening, with the end of the Sabbath, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying he had ordered security forces to evacuate “forthwith” the Palestinians who had gathered in the area between Jerusalem and the large urban settlement of Maale Adumim.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered roads leading to the area closed on Saturday evening, and had the military shut off access. Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the state was petitioning the Supreme Court to rescind its injunction blocking the evacuation. The state responded to the High Court of Justice on Saturday night, arguing that the gathering would become a focus of protest that could lead to rioting, and asserting that most of the tents had been pitched on territory that Israel had declared state land. The court overturned the injunction, allowing the people to be removed from the site. Discussions about the fate of the tents were to continue on Sunday.
Israel announced it was moving forward with the E-1 settlement after the United Nations recognized a de facto state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in November. The Israeli authorities declared the area a closed military zone on Saturday evening and began building up security forces around the site.
Palestinians said E-1 would be a major blow to their statehood aspirations, as it blocks East Jerusalem from its West Bank hinterland. They are demanding these areas, along with Gaza, for their future state. The Palestinians claim E1, just east of Jerusalem, as part of a future state. The protest came six weeks after Israel announced that it was moving forward with plans for thousands of settlement homes in E1, stirring international outrage. Israel announced its intention as a countermeasure after the United Nations General Assembly voted in November to upgrade the Palestinians’ status to that of a nonmember observer state.
The protesters said they wanted to build a village called Bab al-Shams at the site. Israel wants East Jerusalem, which it has annexed, and Maale Adumim, which lies beyond E1, to be contiguous and says that the future of the West Bank has to be settled in negotiations. In the meantime, critics say, Israel continues to establish facts on the ground — a policy that the Palestinian protesters sought to emulate.
The construction plans drew unusually sharp criticism from some of Israel’s staunchest allies, including the United States, who strongly oppose the E- 1 project. Ms. Kopty, the spokeswoman for the protesters, said about 100 Palestinians were removed from the site and taken to the Qalandia checkpoint between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israeli officials have said actual construction on the project may be years away, if it ever happens, while Israeli critics have questioned whether Mr. Netanyahu actually intends to develop E-1 or is pandering to hard-liners ahead of the country’s Jan. 22 election. “The amount of support we got from Palestinians and across the world was heartwarming,” she said, speaking by telephone from the hospital in Ramallah where she was accompanying those who had been injured. “We hope this action will inspire Palestinians to do more, to break through the apathy and to take the popular struggle to the next level.”
In a separate episode Saturday, the Israeli military said soldiers shot at a Palestinian who tried to enter Israel from the West Bank. The military said soldiers called on the man to stop, then fired warning shots in the air, and finally fired at his legs when he refused to stop.
The Palestinian police said he later died of his wounds.
It was the second shooting death on the borders with the Palestinian territories in two days. On Friday, Palestinian officials in the Gaza Strip said a man was shot and killed near the coastal territory’s border fence. The Israeli military said he was part of a group who rushed the fence to damage it.