With last Amona home cleared, police plead with synagogue dwellers to leave peacefully

AMONA, West Bank — After a day clearing out settlers from the illegal Amona outpost in the West Bank, police forces were gearing up for a possible battle over the synagogue in the outpost where dozens of people have barricaded themselves inside, refusing to leave.

Police said its forces were making last efforts to convince the protesters to depart peacefully, but were getting ready to clear the shul by force if necessary, setting a final showdown in the outpost which was the scene of a violent melee during a partial evacuation in 2006.

The synagogue is the largest permanent structure in the outpost, and a particularly sensitive site given its religious nature. Protesters barricaded the entrance to the building with wooden planks in an apparent effort to slow the security forces.

A police source told Ynet that they wanted the protesters to file out voluntarily “to prevent forcible evacuation and to preserve the holiness of the place. We hope that these efforts will bear fruit and that the evacuation ends peacefully.”

Police say between 60 and 100 people may be inside the synagogue.

Earlier in the day, two Torah scrolls were seen being removed from the outpost along with a carful of women who had chosen to leave of their own volition. The women were part of about a dozen families who chose not to resist the eviction notice during the afternoon. However, a police officer remarked that while they were leaving without force, “at this point, no one is leaving here willingly.”

All the homes in the outpost were cleared as of midnight on Wednesday. Police said they removed by force some 400 protesters from the hilltop enclave, as they neared the end of the operations.

Throughout the day, police clashed with protesters and pulled tearful settlers from their homes, carrying out a court order to clear the outpost found to be built on private Palestinian land, ending decades of legal battles and political fighting over the settlement’s fate.

Protesters hurled stones, bottles and bleach at police and most others resisting the eviction order only passively. However, emotions ran sky-high, with protesters and evacuees yelling at officers or pleading with them to refuse the orders.

One border police officer at the scene said he would not take part in the evacuation. He was led away by a colleague as a protester ran alongside, praising him.

“This is a dark day for us, for Zionism, for the state and for the great vision of the Jewish people returning to its homeland,” Avichay Boaron, a spokesman for Amona, told Channel 2 TV.

Unarmed police in blue sweatshirts and black baseball caps made their way up the hill around midday. On the hilltop, home to some 40 families, hundreds of nationalist youths erected makeshift barricades out of smashed tiles, rusty metal bars and large rocks to slow their advance. Some protesters threw rocks at security forces, while others set fire to tires and trash piles.

Twenty-four police personnel sustained light injuries in the fighting, and several protesters were also hurt.

Thirteen people were arrested for disturbing the peace and obstructing police work, while some 400 protesters were simply led by officers off the hilltop with no charges, police said.

About 3,000 security personnel were deployed to the operation; about 1,000 people — residents and their supporters — were estimated to be at Amona when the evictions began.

Police said they planned to work through the night to clear out the remaining homes and protesters.

“There’s no deadline for the evacuation. It’ll end when it needs to end. We don’t want to go into time pressures,” police spokesperson Meirav Lapidot told Channel 2 news.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Wednesday night that he had ordered the creation of a new settlement to replace Amona, the first official new Israeli community in the West Bank in some 25 years.

The announcement came hours after the High Court struck down an agreement for most of the settlers to move to an adjacent plot of land, after the land’s owner came forward.

The deal, struck last month, staved off an earlier evacuation that had also threatened to be met by violence.

As the army began to prep for the evacuation operation Tuesday night, protest organizers had told supporters to make their job as difficult and long as possible, and that message was apparently taken to heart.

Hundreds of protesters, most of them religious teenage boys, but also a number of right-wing lawmakers who had flocked to the outpost ahead of the evacuation, locked themselves inside houses and sheds. At one home, several dozen young residents and supporters linked arms, sat on the floor and sang songs, including the national anthem, when police came to remove them.

‘We lost the battle’

On Tuesday residents were given eviction notices, warning them to be out of their homes within 48 hours. The order allowed residents to file a new appeal to the IDF for a further 48-hour extension. Nevertheless, police began the evacuations a day later.

After over a decade of delays and legal wrangling, the High Court ruled in December 2014 that Amona, which lies east of Ramallah, was built on private Palestinian land and must be demolished. Nine homes in the adjacent Ofra settlement were also due to be demolished.

The eviction came ahead of the final February 8 deadline to demolish the outpost.

Residents of the neighboring Ofra settlement announced that Thursday would be a “public fast day.”

The fast — a Jewish sign of mourning — is being called “over the destruction of houses and communities in the Land of Israel, a merciless and unjust [High Court] ruling, and the wantonness of elected officials.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.