Israel to justify new settlements with Amona eviction: Activist

Israeli forces have started evacuating the Amona outpost that was built on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. 40 settler families were forced to move out following an Israeli court order.

The evacuation comes amid a push by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to legalize all wildcat settlements built on occupied Palestinian lands. Israel has also announced plans to establish a new illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank to accommodate the settlers evicted from the illegal Amona outpost.

Press TV has spoken to Paul Larudee, member of the Free Palestine Movement, as well as Maxine Dovere, journalist and political commentator, to discuss the issue.

Larudee believes the evacuation of the Amona outpost is a “fig leaf to justify the construction of 3,000 new illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, adding that it serves the purpose of additional ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

“In order to justify the creation of 3,000 illegal on Palestinian land, they [the Israelis] create this diversion and this covering so that people will think the Israelis are actually removing these illegal Jewish settlers and so they cannot be all bad,” he said.

He went on to say it is not an accident that the number of Jewish settlers keeps increasing in the West Bank but there are no Palestinians “in what Israel calls its state.”

The activist also noted Israel seeks to use this evacuation as a propaganda tool in order to show “it is a country of laws.” However, he said, most of the laws that exist in Israel are against Palestinians.

“There are roughly 50 laws that discriminate against non-Jews in Israel and the whole purpose of this is to place a cover story over the continuing seizure of Palestinian land, denial of Palestinian rights and the ethnic cleansing of the entire region,” he stated. 

Larudee further asserted that there is plenty of room for “natural expansion” within the boundaries of the pre-67 borders which are the only internationally recognized borders in that region.

He also emphasized that every single unit that is outside the 67 border is “illegal under international law” and it has been backed up by numerous United Nations resolutions.

The analyst denounced the fact that Palestinians are not permitted to found any new towns anywhere, arguing that the whole point of it is to expel them by any means possible. 

Elsewhere in his remarks, the activist expressed doubt that the United States will pull out of the United Nations, given US President Donald Trump’s remarks about the UN becoming a club for people to “have a good time.”

He also said the fact that any administrative measure at the UN requires the vote of the five permanent members of the Security Council indicates that the world body benefits the powerful nations.

Therefore, he said, the United States as a “superpower” stands to profit from the UN more than any other country.

Larudee further opined that there might be a division or a difference of opinion between the European Union and the United States over the two-state solution.

However, he said, many people no longer consider the solution as being “realistic” and believe it is being “bulldozed out of existence” with the ever expanding settler units in the West Bank and the exclusion of Palestinians from the process.

Meanwhile, the other panelist on Press TV’s program, Maxine Dovere maintained that the evacuation of the Amona outpost, which is illegal even under Israeli law, is “an example of living by the law.”

“There needs to be a look at the balance. The Amona settlement, the outpost that the Israeli government declared illegal and has closed and removed the settlers from is an example of living by the law and the Israeli law said and it was agreed to the fact that this was an illegal settlement built on private land and the settlers were removed,” she said.

She also stated these additional settler units are assumed by most of the negotiators to be part of a future land swap when peace is made, arguing that it is hard to declare them illegal because they are part of “natural expansion.”

Dovere further asserted that the United States will not pull out of the United Nations because a lot of issues that need to be dealt with are not political and they are truly humanitarian.

However, she condemned the “fighting words” of the new US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley as “quite worrisome,” adding that taking names is not a tactic that one would like to see as a policy of the United States.

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