Brutality of the world most moral army

Last update - 01:43 20/10/2002


18 hurt as troops, settlers clash as illegal outpost removed

By Jonathan Lis, Nadav Shragai and Amos Harel, Ha'aretz Correspondents

photos: http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=221299&contrassID=1&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=0

Eighteen members of the security forces and ten settlers were lightly wounded Saturday night in clashes that erupted when security forces began the evacuation of an illegal outpost near the West Bank city of Nablus.

Five buses containing police officers and IDF soldiers, accompanied by a bulldozer, arrived at Havat Gilad (Gilad's Farm) to remove settlers and structures from the illegal outpost.

Some 1,000 settlers protesting the removal of the outpost were waiting at the site, Channel One television reported.

Three of the officers were wounded by blows to the head from stones thrown by settlers. The officers received medical treatment at the scene and returned to efforts to clear the enclave. A spokesman for the Judea and Samaria police department described the settlers' resistance as "fierce and violent."

The enclave had been reclaimed by settlers after troops cleared the site earlier in the week.

Security forces tried several times to calm the situation. The Zar family, for whose son Gilad the outpost was named, arrived in an effort to prevent a confrontation between settlers and troops. Contacts between settler leaders and the Defense Ministry also failed to prevent the violence.

Gilad Zar, a West Bank security officer, was killed in a Palestinian terrorist ambush in May, 2001.

Moshe Zar, the patriarch of the Zar family, was knocked unconscious and taken to hospital for treatment. He later returned to the site.

Hardline veteran settlement leader Danielle Weiss, who opposed the evacuation of the enclave, was also at the scene.

Far-rightist MK Michael Kleiner (Herut) accused Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of being responsible for the clashes.

"The one to blame for the evacuation of outposts is Arik [Ariel] Sharon, who has returned to the Arik of Yamit," said Kleiner, in reference to the forced evacuation of an Israeli Sinai community in 1982, when the land was handed back to Egypt as part of a peace treaty between the two nations.

Members of the National Religious Party called Saturday evening for Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer to be sacked. Former party leader, Tourism Minister Yitzhak Levy, said that at Sunday's cabinet meeting he would bring up the order that allowed soldiers to break the Sabbath in order to travel to the outpost.

Some 300 settlers returned over the weekend to the outpost following rumors that the IDF was planning to remove the last remaining sheds left in the field.

Dozens of settlers remained at the site Saturday after rumors spread that troops were to dismantle the rest of the remaining structures at the site.

On Thursday, soldiers and police demolished the agricultural structures at Havat Gilad, after previously removing the settlers' caravans. Some 1,000 settlers and demonstrators left the outpost of their own accord at the end of a day of protests over the planned evacuation of the site.

The settlers left the area saying that a deal had been struck with the army, whereby they would no longer reside there, but would be able to work the agricultural lands that make up Havat Gilad, and keep most of the farm buildings in place, under an ongoing IDF guard.

But Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer denied that any agreement had been reached with settler leaders over the evacuation of the outpost, and insisted that the IDF reserved the right to decide whether or not to post soldiers at the site. He also denied claims that an agricultural farm would be established there.

Ben-Eliezer had ordered the IDF to begin dismantling the Nablus-area outpost Thursday morning. He later put the decision on hold after the settlers at the site, headed by Moshe Zar, said they would leave voluntarily.

"We ask that for the sake of the future and of our achievements, you leave voluntarily," Zar called on the protesters yesterday morning, after talking to army officers at the site. After lengthy discussions, during which Hebron-area settler official Noam Arnon pronounced the deal a victory for the demonstrators, the protesters began filing i00nto armored buses for their return home.

Earlier, the demonstration had threatened to spin out of control, as a stone-throwing crowd of militant settlers attacked a Red Cross worker, as well as a film crew from Israel's Channel One television covering the event.

Settlers parked hundreds of cars on the road to the outpost, in an effort to thwart what was to have been the first evacuation of a populated outpost since Ben-Eliezer launched a campaign this month to take down as many as 30 unauthorized enclaves.

Before the protests began, settler spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yossef said the settlement movement would "take great care not to have confrontations with the soldiers, and also make sure that those who come to demonstrate their sympathy with the struggle will act accordingly.

"The intention is not to interfere with the evacuation, rather to protest against it, and to do so in the most respectable manner," Mor-Yossef said.