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Israeli soldiers struggle with a demonstrator
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| By Debbie Berman October 20, 2002 |
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Scores were hurt earlier in the day, but this evening teenaged boys and girls are reconstructing what security forces earlier tore apart. 24 hours of clashes between settlers and soldiers resulted in injuries, arrests, and harsh criticism of the decision to mobilize troops for the evacuation during the Sabbath. This evening they are rebuilding a synagogue and agricultural structures, announcing intentions to remain.
Security forces are not expected to attempt a renewed evacuation during the evening. A lone jeep reportedly remains on the hilltop.
Army Radio reported that settlers were burning tires and setting brush fires in the fields surrounding Havat Gilad, in Samaria some ten kilometers [six miles] east of the Israeli city of Kfar Saba, to thwart the planned demolition of the outpost's synagogue by security forces this morning. The synagogue has since been eliminated.
Settlers reportedly damaged IDF equipment and threw water bottles and stones at soldiers. Security forces sealed the roads in the area to prevent the arrival of additional demonstrators. Several additional light injuries were reported among security forces. So far 24 members of the security forces have been injured, along with 17 protesters. 9 protesters have been arrested.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Sunday sharply condemned the demonstrators' forceful resistance against the army's orders to evacuate. "Any attack against the IDF, the security forces or the police, is an attack on the rule of law," Sharon said on Israel Radio. "This must be condemned in the strongest terms, and must not be allowed to take place."
Sharon, who in 1982 as defense minister ordered and supervised Israel's only previous mass evacuation of settlements, the dismantling of northern Sinai communities to fulfill terms of the peace treaty with Egypt, added that "Protest, no matter how justified, must be within the framework of the law."
The partial dismantling of the outpost began last night immediately following the end of the Sabbath when police and soldiers arrived to take apart a shack and two large containers at the site. The forces met with some 180 settlers, some of whom attempted to physically block the dismantling of the structures. Police had been instructed to maintain restraint in clashes with demonstrators. Eyewitnesses reported that security personnel dragged settlers from buildings, and several female soldiers broke down in tears when faced with young women close to them in age, begging them to refuse their orders.
The revolt of the settlers against the government is a life-and-death danger. If they were not rebelling, we wouldn't need to waste time on this," Defense Minister Binyamin "Fuad" Ben-Eliezer told Israel Radio this morning. "There are two or three outposts left in this series of evacuations. I intend to carry this out to the end."
Yesha Council representatives say last night's dispute was sparked when Ben-Eliezer reneged on an agreement he allegedly made last week allowing the protesters to leave voluntarily and promising that a Jewish-run agricultural development would remain at the site.
"From now on, we intend not to leave this place at all," said Havat Gilad resident Oren Zar. "Fuad [Ben-Eliezer] simply steamrolled, in an ugly and unprecedented fashion, explicit understandings according to which the agricultural structure and activities at the site would stay. We now intend to go up on this hilltop and stay there, as long as necessary, as many times as necessary, to establish a settlement here with all of our strength, without doubts, without compromises, without agreements, without being 'thieves in the night,'" Zar said.
The Defense Minister released a statement Saturday night condemning any attacks on security forces by militant demonstrators. "We are speaking of a group that are wild 'Youth of the Hilltops,' that even the rabbis cannot control, some of whom are quite problematic, violent types, who go clash head-on with IDF soldiers. I won't lend a hand to this, and will oppose this all the way," Ben-Eliezer said.
Anger at decision to evacuate outpost during Sabbath
Sabbath observant IDF soldiers complained that they were unnecessarily mobilized for the evacuation before the end of the Sabbath. Parents of Orthodox soldiers said their sons they were falsely informed by their commanders that the IDF Chief Rabbi had approved their traveling to the outpost on the Sabbath.
IDF Chief Rabbi Yossi Weiss vehemently denied claims that he approved traveling on the Sabbath, saying: "The statement that I approved the departure of soldiers on the Sabbath does not have a hint of truth. It would have been correct to inform me of the matter, and I don't know why that was not done." IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ayalon ordered an investigation to examine the claims of the soldiers and identify who ordered the Sabbath operation.
Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer also denied his involvement in the decision to send in troops on the Sabbath, but right wing and religious cabinet ministers still called for his resignation. "I heard him saying 'I didn't give the order.' Is he that stupid, as well, not to have understood that an operation beginning on Saturday night and requiring masses of soldiers, will not cause a mass violation of the Sabbath? This is a form of cowardice diluted with lying. A figure like this, who is prompted by political panic to make decisions like this, cannot be defense minister in Israel," Minister Effi Eitam said at this morning's heated cabinet session.
"There has been cabinet decision on this, and there is no backing [in the Cabinet] for evacuating the outposts. It is a case of Fuad bringing the Labor Party primaries into the camps of the army, into the government, to the soldiers," Eitam said, saying that the defense minister had with "insufferable cynicism" legitimizes a "security operation" on the Sabbath for internal political gain.
Sharon also expressed "deep sorrow, in my name and on behalf of the entire cabinet, for the mass, superfluous violation of the Sabbath that was forced upon hundreds of soldiers for the sake of the evacuation of Havat Gilad. This should not have happened, there was no reason for it to have happened, and it should be strongly denounced."
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