Zionist Occupation Israel evacuates E1 protest village

Zionist Occupation Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Palestinian outpost, built in the geographically sensitive area known as E1, could remain for six days while the issue of the removal of the tents was being discussed.

Zionist Occupation Israeli Prime Minister Butcher Benjamin Netanyahu, in the meantime, ordered those gathered there to be evacuated. A police spokesman said the court allowed for the removal of the protesters even if the tents, for now, will stay.

Netanyahu’s pledge last November to build settlements on E1 caused an outcry, with European diplomats warning it could kill off any hope of creating a contiguous Palestinian state.

The prime minister’s office said in a statement on Saturday that the government was petitioning the court to retract its ruling on the outpost, and had instructed security forces to block off roads leading to the rocky desert terrain.

Hours later, at 2.30 a.m. Israeli police and border guard officers entered the compound and told a crowd of around 100 to leave the 20 large, steel-framed tents that were erected a day earlier in an effort to preserve the land for a future Palestinian state.

Those protesters who refused to leave were carried down the hill by Israeli officers, but there was no violence.

“Everyone was evacuated carefully and swiftly, without any injuries to officers or protesters,” said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Palestinian National initiative MP Mustafa Barghouti and eight other community activists were detained at the scene, witnesses said. Rosenfeld said they had all been released.

The encampment’s name, “Bab el Shams,” which means “Gateway to the Sun” in Arabic, was taken from a novel by Lebanese writer Elias Khoury that tells the history of the Palestinians through a love story. Earlier, the writer called the protesters in solidarity.

For years, Israel froze building in E1, which currently houses only a police headquarters, after coming under pressure from former US President George W. Bush.

But Netanyahu recently announced plans to expand settlements after the Palestinians won de-facto statehood recognition at the UN General Assembly last year.

E1 covers 4.6 square miles and is seen as particularly important because it not only juts into the narrow “waist” of the West Bank, but backs onto East Jerusalem, the capital of the promised Palestinian state.