The IDF evacuated seven settler families from their illegally built modular homes in the Beit Dror outpost, located in the South Hebron Hills, ahead of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's pending trip to the United States later this month.
Settler leaders and right-wing politicians immediately called it foul. Parliamentarians appealed to the Knesset House Committee to advance legislation to legalize the outposts. The committee rejected their plea.
The move caught the South Hebron Hills Regional Council by surprise, since it believed that it was in the process of authorizing the seven modular homes, which had been placed at the outpost in April, also known Adorayim.
Back and forth conversations between South Hebron Regional Council head Yochai Damri and the IDF, the Defense Ministry and even Defense Minister Benny Gantz did little to halt the evacuation, in which the structures were lifted off their foundations by a crane and carted away.
The South Hebron Hills Council also turned to the High Court of Justice on Monday when it became clear that an evacuation was imminent.
The council told the court that homes had been erected in "full coordination with government officials" who pledged that authorization was forthcoming.
The court rejected the petition on Tuesday but did insist that structures be removed intact and not be demolished.
After the evacuation, the community held a corner-stone laying ceremony for the eventual creation of a new neighborhood that would expand Adorayim.
The seven homes were part of a complex that was once used as a military base and then briefly as an emergency service center for the area located on state land.
Some 14 families moved onto the site in 2016 after the shooting terror attack on Highway 60 in the South Hebron Hills in which Miki Mark, 48, of the Otniel settlement, was killed.
Damri said he has a contract that grants him permission to utilize the complex.
According to the court, however, that did not grant him the right to place the modular homes prior to receiving full authorization.
Tuesday was the last day by which the IDF could remove them without a protracted legal process.
After the evacuation, Damri said that the communities in Judea and Samaria were taking the "long road" toward the eventual goal of settling the area.
"We will be victorious. We will continue to plant and to grow," Damri said.
The evacuation comes as right-wing politicians and settler leaders renewed their push to legalize West Bank outposts, dubbed young settlements by proponents of building in the West Bank, many of whom they argued are simply communities already in the process of legalization.
The US has opposed any settlement building activity, including the creation of new outposts, which it holds constitutes a unilateral act that harms the eventual actualization of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Last month, Bennett agreed to the eventual authorization of the Evyatar outpost in exchange for an agreement by which the residents left without military intervention.