Herzog to Amona residents: Zionism is not a land grab

Opposition leader Issac Herzog joined the chorus of lawmakers urging the residents of Amona to refrain from violence against security forces during the upcoming evacuation of their illegal West Bank outpost. The head of the center-left party also said the land on which the settlers live had been subject to a “land grab.”

Speaking at a cultural event in Tel Aviv on Saturday, Herzog addressed the 40 or so families living in Amona, who on Wednesday rejected a compromise deal with the government and vow to resist the court-ordered eviction of the community, which is expected in the next few days.

“Do not raise your hand against soldiers or police,” he said. “Though it is indeed painful for a person to leave their home, this is an issue of theft,” he said.

“Zionism was not built on the redemption of the land, and not a land grab,” Herzog said.

“Don’t forget about tomorrow,” he added. “Experience tells us that even when settlers who have been evacuated from their homes, they’ve been able to establish stronger and better communities elsewhere.”

The opposition leader’s comments came after the residents of Amona overwhelmingly rejected the state plan to relocate them to nearby plots.

Israeli security forces are expected to begin evacuating the outpost in the coming days ahead of the December 25 evacuation deadline date, and Amona residents have said they will resist.

On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also called on Amona residents to leave their homes peacefully and “not to harm IDF soldiers and security forces under any circumstances.”

Calling his cabinet “more committed than any other” to Israel’s West Bank settlement enterprise in a video posted to his Facebook page Friday, Netanyahu said his government had made “every effort” to find a solution that would allow the settlers to remain in their current homes.

He also vowed to crack down on all illegal construction in Israel, not just West Bank settlements, intimating his government will crack down on illegal housing in Arab communities.

A day earlier, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned there would be “no acceptance or tolerance of violence against IDF soldiers and members of the security forces.”

“I see organization [for violence] and I see several well-known faces there. I hear voices speaking about violent opposition,” Liberman said, a day after dozens of protesters began to flock to the site. “I call to all the residents of Amona and to all the guests who came in solidarity — simply take [violence] off the agenda.”

Comprised of a few dozen caravans near the settlement of Ofra, Amona is among about 100 outposts built in the West Bank without permission but generally tolerated by the Israeli government.

That indulgence ended when Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled in 2014 that Amona was built on land illegally appropriated from its Palestinian owners and had to be evacuated within two years, by Dec. 25 of this year.

Though the evacuation of Amona would hardly alter the reality of Israeli settlement throughout the West Bank, it has become a major flash point on the political right and the left.

Attempts to remove some buildings in the outpost in 2006 resulted in violent clashes between protesters and security forces.

While stopping short of calling for violent resistance to the evacuation, Amona residents have not ruled it out.

Last week, residents called for help from other Israelis to protect their homes.

“We call for all the nation Israel to come to Amona and protest the wrongdoing of a Jewish settlement’s destruction,” one widely-circulated text message said.

Over the last several weeks, hundreds of young Israelis have gone to Amona to protest the evacuation. Many go for daylong visits, while others camp out in greenhouses and shacks that residents have erected, braving frigid nights and rain. Since the storms started deluging Israel last week, some Amona residents have let visitors sleep in their homes.

JTA contributed to this report.