Liberman: Netanyahu threw his military aide under the bus for outpost clearance
Ex-defense chief accuses PM of a ‘desperate attempt to find a scapegoat’ after criticism from right over Amona evacuation
Former defense minister Avigdor Liberman accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of attempting to divert blame for the removal of illegal West Bank settlement homes to his military secretary.
After Netanyahu took heat from right-wing lawmakers over Thursday’s clearance of two mobile homes from where the Amona outpost once stood, Hebrew media reports said Col. Avi Blot was instructed to call off the evacuation but failed to relay the order in time.
“The shameful attempt by the prime minister to shift blame for the evacuation of Amona to his military secretary… is no less than despicable,” wrote Liberman, who heads the Yisrael Beytenu party, on Facebook.
“One cannot see this but as a shirking of responsibility and desperate attempt to find a scapegoat,” he added.
Liberman noted Blot grew up in a settlement, studied at a pre-army academy in the West Bank and was the commander of the Judea Brigade stationed in the Hebron area, which he said “eliminates any possibility of blaming him for the failure” of the Amona evacuation.
Liberman’s criticism of Netanyahu was echoed by Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist Yesh Atid party.
“He is prime minister and defense minister and he ordered the evacuation of Amona,” Lapid wrote on Twitter about Netanyahu.
“His effort to evade responsibility at the expense of the military secretary is typical Netanyahu, but it is shameless and even in his terms,” Lapid added.
The reports that Blot was responsible for failing to stop the violent evacuation at Amona have been met with skepticism by settler leaders, who questioned whether Netanyahu had actually ordered the evacuation called off, or was attempting to temper criticism against him from the right.
The evacuation saw dozens injured as far-right youth clashed with security forces who arrived early Thursday morning to carry out a Jerusalem District Court order to remove the caravans, installed on the site of a previously evacuated outpost. It was met by angry denunciations from the right and settler leaders, some of whom pointed fingers at Netanyahu.
It was unclear why the military would not have been able to reverse course even if troops were on their way to the outpost. The reports, which were unsourced, also did not say why Netanyahu, who is also defense minister, had decided Wednesday night that the caravans did not need to be removed after all.
A defense official confirmed that Blot would appear before IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot Friday morning. According to Hadashot news, which first reported the story, Netanyahu had ordered Eisenkot to summon Blot over the apparent snafu.
Late Wednesday night, some 300 settler youths converged on the pair of mobile homes illegally installed on the West Bank hilltop where the Amona outpost once stood.
Border Police officers who carried out the evacuation said the settlers hurled stones, burned tires and thew iron bars at them. By the completion of the three-hour evacuation, 23 officers had been injured, primarily from stones hurled by the far-right activists. One officer was stabbed in the hand by a sharp object brandished by one of the teen protesters. Seven rioters were arrested and later released.
For their part, the young demonstrators claimed the border cops used excessive force in clearing the hilltop. Footage from the evacuation shows one officer kneeing a non-resisting teen in the groin outside one of the mobile homes as well as the indiscriminate spraying of teargas on the demonstrators both inside and outside the caravans.
In total, four teens were injured in the clashes, though Border Police said one of the boys was wounded after being hit by a stone thrown by one of his peers.
All 27 of the injured were released from the hospital after having received treatment for minor injuries.
The two mobile homes were installed overnight on December 14 by a number of settler leaders, who claimed that the land on which they were placed had been legally purchased from the original Palestinian landowners.
However, they did not coordinate the installation with the state bodies and lacked the permits required to make such a move. The Haaretz daily reported Wednesday that there were considerable legal problems with the alleged purchase and that the settlers had not received permission from all of the owners of the various plots they claimed to have bought.
The community was established in 1995 and demolished in February 2017 after the High Court of Justice ruled that the settlement had been built on private Palestinian land. Last March, its evacuees moved into Amichai, the first newly constructed West Bank settlement in over 25 years. The community is located just east of the Shiloh settlement in the central West Bank.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
