With the clock ticking, hundreds gather in the wildcat outpost, slated for evacuation by next Sunday, to protest, comfort and celebrate
The Amona outpost is full.
Full of people, full of cars, full of tension and singing and dancing and hope that the planned evacuation of the illegally-built settlement won’t take place.
There was also a fair amount of hatred, directed towards the High Court of Justice. After 15 years of legal wrangling, the court ordered the government to evacuate the settlement, built privately-owned Palestinian land northeast of Ramallah, by December 25.
On Wednesday night, Amona residents turned down a government-backed deal that would have allowed them to receive a plot of land on the same hill, with the possibility of creating a long-term settlement there, in return for leaving their homes peacefully.
As a counteroffer, they said they would accept the deal only once the replacement outpost was built so they could go “from door to door,” from their current homes to their new ones.
The government reportedly turned them down immediately, but on Saturday afternoon, an Amona resident and one of the leaders of the protest, Avichai Boaron, said they had been in touch with people unofficially representing the government.
That night, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel of the pro-settlement Jewish Home party said, “Even now we are working to settle the Amona crisis in a satisfactory way.”
Despite these hints at ongoing negotiations, on Thursday and again on Saturday rumors had spread that the army and police might begin the evacuation first thing in the morning and would, beforehand, close down the surrounding roadways and declare the area a “closed military zone.”
The Thursday reports about an imminent evacuation had, of course, not panned out.
In the time since then, the number of people in Amona has more than doubled. Hundreds flocked to the tiny wildcat outpost on Saturday night to join the dozens of protesters already there. Most of them were minors.
These teams of teenage protesters had also built up defenses around the outpost, with scrap metal, tires and refuse heaps set along the roads leading up to the settlement, ready to be set on fire when the evacuation forces arrive. They rolled a huge old plastic cistern to the outpost’s entrance as a makeshift barricade.
Some of these fortifications may slow down the army and police units slated to carry out the evacuation. Others were more amateur.
During “briefings” with the protesters, protest leaders instructed the youngsters to fill every building in the outpost with dozens of people in order to make the evacuation as difficult as possible. They were also told to document any aggression by the security forces.
The great question hovering over the buildup is clear: will it turn violent? A 2006 evacuation of nine buildings in Amona resulted in bloody clashes between protesters and security forces, with more than 200 injured. As the evacuation deadline approaches, right-wing Israeli politicians and most rabbis connected to the settler movement have instructed their followers not to fight soldiers and police.
But at least two radical groups — the so-called “hilltop youth” movement and the racist anti-miscegenation Lehava organization — have taken central roles in the protests.
Before the evacuation even began, the potential for violence could already be seen: the tires of at least one news van, that of Channel 1, were slashed.
When asked about the prospect of physical confrontation in an Israel Radio interview on Saturday night, one Amona resident said he was offended by the assumption that they were violent. But outpost leaders have acknowledged their control over the incoming protesters is partial at best.
Not all those arriving over the weekend came to protest; many simply wanted to show their support in a difficult hour. For many, the visit had the feel of a social gathering.
Throughout the tiny outpost, young girls squealed as they found their friends, teenage boys shook hands and gave back-slapping hugs.
Hasidic followers of the early-19th-century sage Nachman of Breslov came to the outpost in a van blasting energetic religious music from loudspeakers.
Separated by gender in keeping with the requirements of Orthodox religious observance, the boys and girls danced to the techno beats pumping from the multi-colored van.
As the night wore on, the music faded. Some people bedded down in the settlement’s buildings, some in hastily constructed plywood and plastic structures, and others in their cars. A dedicated crew carried on with their fortification effort.
And some just left, with half-hearted promises to return.
As reported by The Times of Israel