Right-wing politicians attacked Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government for allowing the IDF to remove an illegally-placed modular settler home in an area outside the Bruchin settlement in the West Bank.
“Are there no limits,” the Religious Zionist Party asked, on top of the “freeze” on the advancement of plans for new homes in Judea or Samaria?
The RZP said that the confiscation of the home – which the IDF literally lifted off the ground on Monday with cranes – comes after it cleared the Evyatar hilltop of settlers last year and has harassed the seminary students at the West Bank Homesh hilltop.
The right-wing NGO Regavim said it was “easy for Defense Minister Benny Gantz to flex his muscles against a handful of hilltop youth, while not enforcing the law in the Arab sector.”
Regavim accused Gantz of enabling the Palestinians to establish a state by ignoring the 1,054 illegal Palestinian buildings in the area of Bruchin in the Samaria region, but instead going after these a caravan.Dozens of settlers came to the site of the modular homes in hopes of swaying the IDF to allow the structures to remain (Credit: HaKav HaAdom).
According to the UN, the IDF had demolished 157 illegal Palestinian structures in the West Bank as of April 18.
“This government needs to be replaced,” said Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan. “We will fight for the Land of Israel, we will not give up on our land.”
Dozens of settlers came to the site where the modular home stood, hoping to persuade the IDF to leave the structures in place. Some of them held Israeli flags. At one point, male seminary students from Bruchin formed a circle and danced to the song, “God will not abandon his people.”
A Samaria Regional Council spokesperson speculated that the IDF had intended to confiscate two additional nearby modular structures, but refrained from doing so after Bruchin residents and seminary students came out to protest.