Tel Aviv: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would build the regime’s first new colony in a quarter-century after thousands of security officers forcibly removed residents from an unauthorised West Bank colony outpost.
Netanyahu’s announcement came after Israel’s Supreme Court late on Wednesday struck down a plan agreed by colonist leaders to move some families from the evacuated Amona site to a nearby colony, and others to an adjacent plot of land. The court said the adjacent site was privately owned by Palestinians.
The prime minister “appointed a team this evening that will advance the creation of a new [colony] as the [colonists] were promised,” Netanyahu’s office said in a text message. Israel last built a West Bank colony in 1992, the year before the Oslo peace accords with the Palestinians.
Israel has accelerated plans for construction on land claimed by Palestinians since the January 20 inauguration of US President Donald Trump, who has promised to be more supportive of the Israeli regime than his predecessor.
In the past two weeks Israeli officials have announced plans to build more than 6,000 apartments in parts of the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem that Palestinians want for a future state. Such proposals were frequently denounced by the Obama administration during eight years of friction with Netanyahu. Trump hasn’t denounced them, and has also made a controversial campaign pledge — welcomed by Israel’s government and condemned by Arab leaders — to move the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem.
The Palestinian representative to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, condemned the new construction plans in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, accusing Netanyahu of “blatantly exploiting transitions in the global political landscape.”
Israeli police on Wednesday evacuated most of the 40 homes in Amona, a hilltop northeast of Ramallah, and removed hundreds of youths who came to support the colonists. Most of the activists merely sang and chanted against the operation but some hurled rocks, injuring 20 police officers, according to police spokeswoman Luba Samri. At least 13 protesters were arrested.
By Thursday morning dozens of activists had barricaded themselves inside Amona’s synagogue. Police tried to convince them to leave peacefully but were preparing to evict them by force if necessary.
Thousands of Israelis live in unauthorised enclaves like Amona that were built without following formal procedures, though regime officials often knew they were being erected and provided infrastructure hookups and military protection. In addition, Israel has built more than 120 authorised West Bank colonies, housing about 400,000 people, which it considers legal but which the United Nations Security Council last month deemed a “flagrant violation” of international law.
Netanyahu earlier this week pledged to advance a law that would provide a lasting arrangement for Jews-only West Bank colonies by legalising about 4,000 homes in unauthorised outposts built on Palestinian-owned land. Construction on private Palestinian land — as opposed to unclaimed but occupied land — is prohibited under a 1979 Israeli Supreme Court ruling, and Attorney-General Avihai Mandelblit has said he can’t defend some provisions of the bill against legal challenges. The bill is due to come up for a final parliamentary vote on February 6.
The legislation declares that the squatter outposts were established in good faith under the belief that the land was not privately owned. It sets up a compensation system under which Palestinians would be given alternative properties or be paid an annual sum equal to 125 per cent of the potential lease value. Palestinians describe the bill as a land-grab aimed at facilitating Israeli annexation of the West Bank.
