Israel Dismantles Illegal W. Bank Outpost

HAVAT MAON, West Bank â€”  Acting on orders from Prime Minister Ehud Barak, hundreds of Israeli police and soldiers began forcibly evacuating this illegal Jewish settlement before dawn today, dragging and carrying away about 150 residents and supporters who shouted at them and struggled to resist.

The evacuation, which the government had warned repeatedly would be carried out if the settlers didn’t leave voluntarily, is the first serious test of the government’s resolve to dismantle a dozen controversial hilltop outposts erected in the West Bank by hard-line settlers during the past year.

Eleven other hilltop outposts ruled illegal by the government have been evacuated or relocated in recent days, in accordance with an agreement that Barak struck last month with mainstream settler leaders. But most of those were uninhabited or consisted only of a trailer or two. At this outpost, about 30 miles south of Jerusalem, a small group of younger, more radical settlers had vowed to resist, defying both the settler leadership and the government.

As the troops, some of whom were armed, moved in about 3:30 a.m. today, the greatly outnumbered settlers stood on top of makeshift buildings and trailers shouting “Shame!� Some spit at the troops, and an army spokeswoman said several settlers struggled or sat down but didn’t violently resist removal.

Rachel, who would only give her first name, said: “This entire country is ours, and it won’t be Ehud Barak who tells us where to settle. We are religious Jews, and we are fulfilling what God above is telling us to do.�

One man screamed at a soldier: “What are you going to tell your children, that you pushed Jews out of their homes?�

But the soldier replied: “I am proud to carry out my orders.�

Hours earlier, the residents and many newcomers worked to fortify their encampment, trying to make it as difficult as possible for the police and troops to remove them. They piled boulders and a few freshly cut pine trees near roads approaching the outpost to obstruct the army vehicles and placed tires nearby, ready to be set alight in protest.

In recent days, the encampment had burgeoned from four families and a few single residents living in trailers on a barren hilltop to more than 150 people in a small tent city.

Most of the newcomers were from settlements near the outpost, but others, eager to lend their support to the young resisters, came from Jerusalem and distant parts of the West Bank.

Led by a new settler organization called Dor Hahemshech, or Next Generation, the young people had promised that they wouldn’t resort to violence as they tried to hold out against the inevitable evacuation. But they said their struggle was intended to force the government into a confrontation, highlighting their battle to hang on to the biblical Land of Israel and prevent it from being turned over to the Palestinians in future peace deals.

Barak had allowed the main settler leadership to negotiate with the Havat Maon residents for several days, evidently hoping that they could be persuaded to leave voluntarily. But he signaled recently that his patience with the renegades was wearing thin. Elected in May on a broad mandate to move forward in the peace process with the Palestinians, the Israeli leader made clear that his decision was final.

“There will be no new settlements,� Barak told reporters Tuesday in Paris, where he attended a conference of Socialist leaders before returning to Israel late in the day. “This is the time to make decisions, not to make private initiatives on barren hilltops.�

The Palestinians--and most of the international community--regard all settlements on occupied land as illegal and demand that they be dismantled under terms of a permanent peace treaty.

The government’s removal of the settlers comes two days after Israel and the Palestinians began negotiating in earnest on a blueprint for a final peace agreement that has long eluded them.

At Havat Maon on Tuesday, several dozen young men labored to reinforce the outpost’s few buildings, including a recently constructed synagogue, piling boulders around their bases to prevent easy removal and pouring concrete to try to moor them to the hillside. “These are the lands of Israel, and they belong to the people of Israel,� said Donny Stiskin, the rabbi of the neighboring settlement of Maon, who arrived to watch the work. “It’s just not acceptable to give it away, even for peace.�

Meshulam Ben-Meir, 40, a resident of Ofra, a settlement north of Jerusalem, said he had come to the remote outpost to try to prevent the evacuation through civil disobedience but said he and the others would not fight the troops.

“The soldiers are our brothers, our cousins, our friends,� said Ben-Meir, a clinical psychologist who works at a mental health center in Jerusalem and emigrated from Brooklyn in the early 1980s.

When the soldiers arrive, Ben-Meir said Tuesday, “we’re going to sit down, hold hands and try not to let them take us away. And if they do, we’ll come back again and again and again. And eventually, they’ll have to let us stay.�

Signaling their continued defiance, several activists here also established another new encampment Tuesday, moving cars and tents onto a neighboring hilltop and dubbing it Maon North. And late Tuesday, Israel Television news reported that settlers had taken over a number of large caves in the area, staking their claims and daring the Israeli army to remove them from those as well.