World

Israel Evicts Rogue Settlers

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

November 10, 1999 / 4:21 AM EST / CBS

Israeli soldiers forcibly evicted defiant Jewish settlers from a rogue outpost in the West Bank on Wednesday. It was a possible harbinger of what Middle East peace moves could bring if and when Palestinians are given control over more lands occupied by Israel.

Â"This is ethnic cleansing of Jews by Jews and we are ashamed of our government,Â" said Nadia Matar, leader of the ultranationalist Women in Green group, at the unauthorized hilltop settlement named Havat Maon, or Maon Farm.

Crying Â"shameÂ" and Â"Arafat is proud of you,Â" settlers kicked and screamed as soldiers and accompanying police dragged them away in an operation ordered by Barak, who is engaged in intensive peacemaking with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Â"What happened at the site was a test, and not a simple one, for democracy and a red light on the road to anarchy,Â" Barak's office quoted him as telling his cabinet, which met to approve Israel's next handover of West Bank land to the Palestinians.

Some of the hundreds of settlers at Maon Farm threw eggs, paint and flour at the security forces, who numbered about 1,000. No serious injuries were reported in the three-hour operation carried out mainly in early morning darkness.

Under a compromise Barak negotiated with the leaders of the settlement movement, 12 outposts erected without government permission were to be uprooted while 30 were allowed to remain.

The settler leadership had complied with the earlier evacuation orders. They apparently hoped to avoid televised scenes of soldiers battling settlers -- a conflict that could sway public sentiment away from the settlers.

But a renegade group of youths calling themselves Â"Young GenerationÂ" decried their elders' compromising ways and reinforced their positions at the Maon Farm.

Â"This place is a symbol for the continuation of the struggle,Â" said Malachi Levinger, a leader of the Young Generation group. Â"We don't want them to think in the future it will be easy to evacuate settlements.Â"

Dozens of settlers at the farm took to the roofs of caravans and half-finished houses where they pelted troops with eggs and sang the national anthem. Soldiers climbed ladders to pull them down and bulldozers later demolished the structures.

Police said 26 people were arrested for threatening, insulting or hindering the security forces.

The original five families and 12 single people at Maon had been joined by several hundred supporters -- settlers from elsewhere in the West Bank -- in the run-up to the eviction.

During the raid, soldiers smashed their way into a small wooden synagogue erected at the site two weeks ago and pulled out men wrapped in Jewish prayer shawls.

Untouched, but escorted by the troops, two men carried Torah scrolls (Scriptures) out of the prayer hall.

At one point, a small group of hardcore holdouts holed up in a house threatened to exlode a gas canister. A special police anti-terrorist unit stormed the house and removed them.

Later Wednesday, meanwhile, the Israeli Cabinet approved a troop withdrawal from an additional 5 percent of the West Bank. The pullback, which will take place Monday, will turn more than a dozen settlements into islands in Palestinian-controlled territory.

About 170,000 Jewish settlers live in more than 145 settlements dotting the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians regard the settlements as illegal and destructive to peace. Barak wants them to remain under Israeli authority as part of a final peace deal.