Palestinians evacuated, Netanyahu affirms plans

The Israeli prime minister vowed to press ahead with construction in a key area of the West Bank.

Joel Greenberg, Washington Post, Jerusalem

Palestinians evacuated, Netanyahu affirms plans — The Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 January 2013 — The Philadelphia Inquirer · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · 14 January 2013

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“JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Sunday to follow through with plans for settlement construction in a key West Bank area known as E-1 after police evicted scores of Palestinian protesters who had set up a tent camp there.

‘We will complete the planning, and there will be construction,’ Netanyahu told Army Radio hours after the eviction, but he cautioned that planning for the new development ‘will take time.’

Netanyahu, who is in the home stretch of an election campaign, moved swiftly against the Palestinian encampment, a new form of grass-roots protest modeled after scores of wildcat outposts set up by Jewish settlers on West Bank hills without government approval.

While many of those outposts remain in place, Netanyahu ordered the evacuation of the Palestinian camp — a cluster of about 20 tents that protesters called the village of ‘Bab al-Shams,’ or Gate of the Sun — a day after it went up Friday.

It was cleared early Sunday after Israel’s Supreme Court overturned an injunction delaying the removal of the protesters, who had argued that they were on private Palestinian land. The court accepted the government’s argument that the continued presence of the protesters could lead to riots and that there was an urgent security need to remove them.

About 500 police officers moved into the area at 2:30 a.m. and evicted about 120 Palestinians, some of whom were carried off when they put up passive resistance, said Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman. He said there were no injuries during the hour-long operation.

But Abir Kopty, a spokeswoman for the protesters, said that some were punched in the face as they sat and resisted removal, and that six required hospital treatment. Pictures of men with facial injuries were distributed by protest organizers, known as the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee.

Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian legislator and political activist who was at the encampment when it was cleared, accused Israeli authorities of a double standard. ‘They are allowing more than 100 outposts to stay, illegal settlements by every standard of international law, while preventing people from being on land privately owned by Palestinians,’ he said.

Israel’s advancement of plans to build in E-1, announced in November after Palestinians gained recognition as a nonmember observer state at the U.N., were condemned. The United States and European nations said the move would hurt prospects for a contiguous Palestinian state.”

Context added by this archive

Palestinians using the settlers’ own method — putting up tents on a hill — and being removed within a day, with the comparison made in the story by a Palestinian legislator. The police account and the protesters’ account of injuries are both printed.

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"Palestinians evacuated, Netanyahu affirms plans," The Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 January 2013, p. 1. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2013-001. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2013-001