Dozens of Jewish settlers have gathered over the past several days at Beit El settlement to protest against the demolition. Israel's Supreme Court ruled the two partially built blocks had been constructed illegally on Paleostinian-owned land.
Live television footage from Beit El showed settlers, who had scuffled earlier with police at the site, watching an excavator tear into the buildings, but not intervening.
As payback for the demolition, ultra-nationalists in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition had urged him to press ahead with a separate 300-home project slated for a different tract of land in the settlement.
| They're getting thousands of immigrants from the rest of the world just now. All those people have to be put somewhere, and until there is an actual peace treaty with the Palestinians, according to international law Israel can build wherever they control. But of course the UN weighed in: |
| It's alt-F73 at this point. Go to the article if you are interested in the details, dear Reader. |