Minors held for urging troops to refuse Amona razing order

Two Israeli minors were arrested Sunday morning for encouraging police officers and soldiers to disobey orders to evacuate the Amona outpost in the West Bank.

The two minors were arrested by the police at the Tapuah Junction in the West Bank, where they were handing out flyers calling on members of the security services to refuse commands to take part in the planned evacuation, according to the Israel Police spokesperson.

The High Court of Justice has ordered that the outpost be removed by December 25, placing the hilltop at the center of a political storm amid vows by residents and other settlers to thwart the demolition.

A lawyer for the two, Nati Rom of the Honenu legal aid group, wrote on Facebook that the teenagers, ages 14 and 17, are being interrogated by police for “incitement to insubordination” for distributing the flyers.

Honenu provides legal aid to far-right activists.

Rom claimed that the officers threatened the younger boy with physical violence and are interrogating him without his parents present, “as if he were a terrorist.”

Israeli security forces are currently preparing for the possibility of violent resistance to the evacuation, fearing a repeat of the clashes that followed the demolition on nine homes in the outpost in 2006, which resulted in the injury over 220 people, 140 of whom were civilians.

To prevent the scenario, Israeli forces — soldiers, border guards, and uniformed and undercover police officers — will likely try to keep as many people away as possible with the area set to be declared a “closed military zone,” in the days running up to the December 25 deadline.

However, residents have spent the last several days building temporary structures on the Ramallah-area hilltop to house activists expected to flood the settlement to try to stave off the razing.

On Thursday, a resident of Amona sent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a letter which was published Saturday night, in which he vowed they would physically block an attempted evacuation.

“In the case that heavy machinery arrives to remove us from the mountain, we and our children will block the bulldozers with our bodies,” said the letter sent to Netanyahu on Thursday and released to the public Saturday night. “We are calling on all our supporters to join the struggle.”

Last Monday, some 120 rabbis, who identify with the national religious camp called for “all who are able” to come to Amona and “vigorously protest the destruction of the settlement, with passive resistance and without violence.”

That call came a day before dozens of Israeli youths burned tires and blocked a major West Bank highway in protest of the planned demolition.

The cabinet is currently debating the Regulation Bill, which would grant legal status to outposts built illegally on Palestinian land in the West Bank, such as Amona.

The bill is expected to be come up for the first of three votes in the Knesset on Monday.

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