Turfed out Amona residents choose new outpost to call home

The residents of the Amona settlement outpost in the West Bank, who were recently evacuated from their homes in compliance with a court-ordered demolition of the site, have chosen another similarly unauthorized outpost as the location where they want to reestablish their new community.

During a Wednesday night meeting, the residents decided by a majority vote that they will move to the Geulat Tzion unauthorized outpost, located in the Shiloh settlement bloc. While Amona was built on privately owned Palestinian land, Geulat Tzion lies on a state-owned tract.

Under an agreement forged with the government ahead of the evacuation, the Amona residents were allowed to pick a new site to rebuild their community — a first state-sanctioned new settlement to be built in decades. Community members have been surveying alternative locations in recent days.

According to the deal, the new settlement is to be set up within two months. In order to pressure the government to keep its word on a new site, Amona residents planned Thursday to set up a protest tent in the the Rose Garden park opposite the Knesset in Jerusalem.

Geulat Tzion is an illegal outpost that has been demolished several times by the Civil Administration. Police and security forces have conducted numerous raids at the 600-dunam (150-acre) site and several occupants have been arrested by police in the past.

[mappress mapid=”6084″]

Earlier this month, the Jerusalem District Court indicted four Jewish teenagers for allegedly threatening Palestinian farmers with rocks and crowbars in the area of Geulat Tzion.

Last week, over the course of two days, thousands of police officers streamed to Amona in order to clear out the 42 families and hundreds of protesters who had barricaded themselves inside the homes and a synagogue there, in compliance with a 2014 court decision.

The evacuated residents of the Amona outpost were set up temporarily in the nearby Ofra settlement.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced earlier in February said that he had ordered the creation of a new settlement to replace Amona. It would be the first official new Israeli community in the West Bank in some 25 years.

While Israel stopped establishing settlements in the early 1990s, outposts set up since then have been retroactively given approval, and existing settlements have expanded their footprints, sometimes being neighborhoods of existing settlements in name only.

On Monday the Knesset approved new legislation, spawned by the political battle over Amona, that enables the government to legalize West Bank outposts built on private Palestinian land.

The law allows the expropriation of 16 parcels of private Palestinian land for Israeli settlement outposts in the West Bank, paving the way for the government to recognize some 4,000 illegally built homes.

Under the law, which was roundly condemned by the international community, Palestinian landowners will be compensated financially or with other land.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.