| Submit your comments on this article |
| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Israel evicts settlers from West Bank settlement |
| 2009-05-22 |
| KOKHAV HASHAHAR, West Bank - Israeli police evicted Jewish settlers from a West Bank hilltop on Thursday, a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from Washington, where he was urged to take just such action. Yet soon after paramilitary border police removed some three dozen people, bulldozing seven makeshift cabins, some were back rebuilding what they call Maoz Esther, or Esther’s Stronghold—an “outpost” deemed unlawful even by Israeli courts, which reject international rulings that all settlements are illegal. Maoz Esther sits about 300 metres (yards) from the government-approved Jewish settlement of Kokhav Hashahar, northeast of the West Bank administrative centre of Ramallah. About three dozen adults and children were in the middle of Bible study when the police arrived. They were allowed to finish and then left as ordered, one evicted resident said. A Reuters journalist saw some of the settlers return after police left. One day before the homes at Maoz Esther were razed, Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Jewish settler leaders that all of the unauthorised outposts had to go. A statement quoted him as saying Israel “cannot compromise over enforcing the law”. Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said the government wanted the outposts “taken down through a process of dialogue”. He could not say how long the process might take. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman denied the West Bank settlements obstruct a peace agreement with the Palestinians. “I always hear people trying to portray Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria as an obstacle to peace,” he said, using the Israeli term for the West Bank. ”I ask, what was happening before 1967, when there wasn’t a single Jewish settlement ... but there was no peace either? |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #1 About three dozen adults and children were in the middle of Bible study when the police arrived huh? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2009-05-22 10:13 |