Hundreds of rightwing Jewish settlers returned under army protection Monday to a West Bank settlement cleared in August 2005 as part of Israel‘s so-called disengagement plan.
The settlers, whose numbers organizers expected to swell into the thousands, vowed to reoccupy the abandoned settlement at Homesh and rebuild homes the Israeli army razed there a year-and-a-half ago.
‘We are here to stay,‘ pledged march organizer Betzalel Smotrich. ‘If they evacuate us by force we will return again.‘
The militants erected tents and hoisted the Israeli flag atop a water tower, the only intact structure in the abandoned homestead.
‘It is an historic day. The Israeli flag will again fly above Homesh,‘ trumpeted Yossi Dagan, a former resident of a neighboring settlement that was also uprooted at the same time.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a news conference that the settlers would not be allowed to remain past nightfall, and police said that they would forcibly remove demonstrators if they tried to stay the night.
‘At the end of the day it will end and I certainly hope we will not have to use any other measures in order to make sure the place remains as it was,‘ Olmert said at a news conference with visiting UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
Police banned settlers from driving to Homesh, so they covered the eight-kilometer (five-mile) distance from the still occupied settlement of Sheve Shomron on foot, passing several Palestinian villages on the way.
Around 1,000 police officers and border guards and several hundred soldiers were mobilised to maintain order and protect the marchers, a police source said.
The Israeli peace group Gush Shalom accused the army of caving into rightwing threats by allowing the settlers to march on the evacuated settlement.
‘The settlers threatened to beat soldiers who would prevent them from getting to Homesh and the army caved in and let them pass,‘ a statement read.
Homesh was established as a military outpost in 1978 but turned over to settlers in 1980. Many of the 70 families who occupied Homesh were pious and militant zealots who believed that they were doing God‘s work resettling their biblical homeland of Samaria.
Then prime minister Ariel Sharon evacuated Homesh and three other West Bank settlements as part of his now-defunct plan for a partial withdrawal from the West Bank.
He also evacuated 21 settlements and all army outposts from the Gaza Strip after a 38-year occupation.
But following last summer‘s Lebanon war Olmert shelved an election pledge to follow through on his predecessor‘s plans to redraw Israel‘s borders by withdrawing from most of the West Bank and annexing the largest settlement blocs.
Now Olmert‘s popularity is at an all-time low and settlers are flexing their muscles up and down the West Bank.
Late Monday, 200 Jewish settlers occupied a house near the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron that they claimed to have bought from a Palestinian for $700,000. A local Palestinian said that he has owned the house for 15 years and has not sold it.
Israeli police have said that they are checking the validity of the settlers‘ documents laying claim to the home before deciding on whether to evict them.
Under the now stalled internationally drafted road map plan for peace in the Middle East, Israel was to freeze settlement expansion, but is today building more than 3,000 housing units in the occupied West Bank, according to the Israeli watchdog group Peace Now.