(Burqah) Israelis erected prefabs on Monday on the land of a former emblematic Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, which has been the subject of international attention for several weeks, AFP journalists noted.
Under the strong protection of the Israeli army, around twenty young men wearing yarmulkes took part in this work in Homesh, one of the four settlements in the West Bank destroyed by Israel in 2005, as part of its unilateral withdrawal plan from the Strip. Gaza and an area in the northern West Bank around Nablus.
PHOTO OHAD ZWIGENBERG, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Israeli soldiers secured the places where the construction of prefabricated blocks was taking place.
Three blocks of prefabs were thus placed on Monday, on the heights of an arid hill where a group of settlers had been setting up tents on site for years, regularly destroyed by the Israeli army.
Commenting on this work, Public Security Minister Itamar ben Gvir, a figure on the Israeli far right and a staunch supporter of Jewish colonization in the West Bank, and in particular of the reconstruction of Homesh, hailed a “historic and moving moment”, according to a statement from his office.
In March, the settler movement won a major victory in the Israeli parliament with the passage of a law overturning the ban on Israelis traveling to the area of Homesh and other settlements evacuated by Israel in 2005.
The United States said the day after the vote to be “extremely concerned” by this decision, in their eyes “provocative”.
While ruling that MPs had struck down “a discriminatory and humiliating law that prohibited Jews from living in areas [faisant partie] of [leur] historic homeland,” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu then assured that his government had “no intention of establishing new communities [juives] in these areas”.
The entire Israeli colonization enterprise in the West Bank, occupied since 1967 by Israel, is deemed illegal under international law by the UN.
Questioned by AFP, the army and the Ministry of Defense did not communicate on these new constructions, while the local media affirmed that the Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant had authorized the installation of these prefabs.
PHOTO MENAHEM KAHANA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Shlomo Neeman, chairman of the Yesha Council, one of the main bodies representing settlers in the West Bank, welcomed this “historic” decision in a statement.
The far-right settlers have made this place a symbol of their fight and have for years set up a “yeshiva” (institute of Talmudic studies) there, which has since been evacuated dozens of times by the police.