Violence erupts after forced evacuation of Jewish settlers

World Today

Violence erupts after forced evacuation of Jewish settlers

A forced evacuation of Jewish settlers has sparked violence in the West Bank.

It erupted at an outpost an Israeli court says was built on Palestinian land.

Shortly before, the Israeli government announced plans to build a new settlement in the West Bank, and to add homes to an East Jerusalem settlement. That’s in addition to other construction plans in Jewish settlements announced last week.

CGTN’s Stephanie Freid reports.

Jewish settlers occupied Palestinian land twenty years ago, but in 2014, Israel’s high court ruled the forty families in Amona are living there illegally. Several of the 42 families living on the hilltop opted to go without a fight.

Others, joined by hundreds of Jewish settlers from neighboring areas who traveled to the hilltop to show solidarity, confronted the thousands of police units sent to evacuate the outpost in defiance of the court order.

Multiple settlers were arrested and more than a dozen police operatives were injured as the operation continued into the night

Amona is not the only illegal West Bank outpost and there are about a hundred. But it is the biggest, sitting on 600,000 square meters of land.

The court deadline for settlers to be off the land and for all structures to be demolished is Feb. 8.