The IDF evacuated activists from the ruins of the former Sa-Nur settlement, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to heed a right-wing call to allow settlers to remain at the site.
Right-wing activists and settlers had illegally entered the site in the predawn hours in hopes that Netanyahu would prefer to allow them to remain then risk a forced evacuation just one week prior to the March 23 election.
Earlier in the day, they had challenged Netanyahu to prove he is truly a right-wing leader by authorizing their presence at the site, which is a closed military zone.
They demanded that Netanyahu agree to rebuild that settlement and three others in northern Samaria that Israel destroyed in 2005 as part of the Disengagement Plan.
“We call on Netanyahu to begin his fully Right [government] already today, and not to wait until after the elections,” the activists said in a statement they issued from the site.
They spoke as Netanyahu has increased his campaign rhetoric for the need for a strong right-wing government.
The activists noted that he could already act on the principles of that future government.
“We call on [Netanyahu] to allow us to stay here at least until after the election and until the creation of a right-wing government that would allow for the community to be rebuilt anew,” the activists stated.
IDF officers from the Menashe Brigade failed in the afternoon to sway the activists, some of whom were original evacuees from 2005, to leave the site of their own volition. When night fell, they forcibly evacuated them from the site.
“Stop the evacuation,” Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan said, in a message aimed at Netanyahu. “Allow the families to stay and resettle Sa-Nur.”
Dagan himself is a Sa-Nur evacuee. “Let us return home,” he added.
Dagan made a solidarity visit to Sa-Nur on Tuesday. In the past he has led multiple failed initiatives to resurrect the demolished communities, including failed legislative drives.
“I expect to receive government approval to issue building permits” for homes here, Dagan said.
Many Likud parliamentarians in the past have spoken in support of rebuilding the four demolished Samaria settlements and have also made solidarity visits to the site.
Coalition Chairman Miki Zohar on Tuesday immediately tweeted support, noting that those who spend an encampment in Sa-Nur “were taking a brave stand to correct the injustice” which had occurred in 2005.
“With God’s help we will continue to support the settlements and we will do everything to restore its crown to its former glory,” Zohar said.
Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich also tweeted a supportive message.
He called on Netanyahu to form a fully right-wing government that would rescind the disengagement law that prevents the reconstruction of the four settlements.